Fraters Libertas

On The Road Again...

I could have waited to get on the road again. I left Minneapolis on Saturday at 6pm which caused me to miss a visit by the President, the conclusion of the Twins playoff game (a definite blessing in disguise), and some of the best autumn weather in years.

Yesterday, I got in to Amsterdam around 9am. Slept for maybe an hour and half tops on the flight over and caught one of the silliest movies ever made (more on that in a future post) in between watching episodes from The Simpson's Third Season DVD on my laptop. I'm traveling with a coworker on this bidness trip, and we decided to take in some of the areas of The Netherlands that neither of us had visited before. We picked up our rental car at drove to The Hague.

We spent a couple hours walking around the center of the city taking in the sites. Some interesting architecture interspersed with bland buildings housing various governmental ministries. The weather was decent with sunny skies and temps in the 50's. We stopped off at a local brew house for a pint, but spent most of our time on the move. We didn't really have enough time to form any perceptions about the city other than the noting the distressing lack of public restrooms, which is common in much of Europe.

We also drove through Rotterdam and stopped for lunch at Cafe Rotterdam, which featured a scenic view of the Maas River. The food? Meh. The appetizer combo plate we shared hit the spot, but my steak left something to be desired. That something being taste.

By the time we arrived at Veenendaal (our final destination) we were both fried. The cable in our hotel was out and it doesn't offer internet hook ups. We considered trying to find a sports bar in town to see if we could catch the Vikings game and find out what happened to the Twins, but fatigue overcame fandom and we elected to chill in the hotel bar instead. A Palm and a couple of Leffes (a damn fine Belgian brew) later we called it a night.

This morning the cable was back, but I couldn't get an update on the Vikings or Twins from CNN International or the BBC. Plenty of slanted news coverage. Little or nothing from the sporting scene in the States.

It wasn't until I got into work this morning that I was able to discover the fate that befell the Twins and read Atomizer's bitter screeds against Gardenhire and Lohse. Oh well. There's always next year, right Atomizer?

More later as events and free time warrant.