Three Social Weeks in The Netherlands

We had timed our return from France in such a way that we would be in Almkerk for the ‘Regional Days’ or in Dutch ‘De Streekdagen’. This is a yearly two day event in which my family always has been very involved. My father was the director for a long time and the rest of us have always volunteered. Julia had heard a lot about it from me and was keen to visit and so was I as it had been six years since last time I went. It starts on the Friday night with Truck Pulling and in the tent there is a party with a DJ and live music. Truck Pulling means that both modified and non modified (road) trucks pull a trailer over a 100 meter track. On the back of the trailer is a weight that moves forward and increases the pressure on the sled on the front of the trailer which pushes in the dirt. Longest distance or fastest full pull wins. It’s quite the spectacle with lots of smoke, flames out of exhausts and trucks going airborne. Have a look at the videos to get an idea.

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Holidays in France – Sunny Days in the Vineyards

Coming from Switzerland we decided to break up the drive and spend a night just over the border outside a small town called Ducier in the hilly Jura region. It is a nice area but we had one of those days that you sometimes have when you travel where things don’t go smoothly.  For example, it took us a long time to find our campsite even with the help (lack of) from the GPS.  Or, we thought we’d go for a swim as we were in an area with a lot of lakes and it was another piping hot day.  Only the lake closest to our campsite had no beach and we weren’t allowed to swim in it because it’s a fishing-lake only.  Then the lake that we were allowed to swim in was part of a massive campsite complex and we bypassed paying for parking by hiking a 20 minute trail to the swimming area, only to find that the wind had changed direction during our 20 minute walk and the day was no longer hot but freezing cold.  In the end reading our kindles in the fast declining sun and going for a walk to see the waterfalls next to the campsite were the highlights of the day. The pretty walk showed off several waterfalls pooling into each other and was the highlight of our first day in France.  We camped in the campground next to the walk, and had one of our quietest nights sleeps. Continue reading

Switzerland in Three Stops: City – Mountains – Food/History

The planning was to visit Switzerland for about a week so quite a bit of time was spent (mostly by Julia to be fair) on figuring out what to do and where to go. We were helped by a long email from Julian, a Swiss guy who lives in Colombia and who we met on the Carretera Austral in Chile with his wife. He is from the Gruyeres region, so we decided to at least go there and follow up on his tips. We also wanted to go to the Alps of course and Grindelwald seemed to be a scenic place. However we started off with a city; Lucerne.  Continue reading

The Beautiful Alps of (Mostly) Sunny Austria

On Monday Sabrina went back to work so it was time for us to move on to a new country; Austria. Unfortunately it was pouring down so we decided to take it slowly, as not to arrive on a damp campsite too early. It was definitely a day for inside activities and the best we could come up with was to pay tribute to Ahnold Schwarzenegger and visit the gym in Bregenz to pump some ihon.

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