gLausGo

Glasgow's weather has been kind to me. And never (yet) more so than last weekend, when the Powers that Be decided to plan the first day of spring. So, I did what living in a foreign country is good for: finding the holiday feeling just a 30-min ride from home (well, unless you're me, and turn out to be not so good at being your own navigation system). I drove to the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond , Van 100523 Ben Lomond left my car in the one empty space in the sea of metal (when the weather decides to be kind, it doesn't do it just for my sake), and - at the timely hour of 3pm - took the high road . At that time, most other people were taking the low road back, so so much for the feeling of empty wilderness that Scotland has to offer. On the bright side, Scottish walkers are very friendly, so my vocal cords got a true workout.There were also some other joyful encounters: Van 100523 Ben Lomond Van 100523 Ben Lomond At the top, my hope for solitary aw...

My timing for moving was lousy, hobby-wise. I had spent the last few years sometimes making myself a little bit useful to the PvdA (Dutch labour party) but I was in between foreign countries (Ecuador and Scotland) when the government fell, and didn't have much spare time to devote to political musings, what with the moving and everything. I left thinking we were in for the dirty PvdA-CDA (Christian Democrats) war, part III - and didn't mind not being around for it. But then. A text message with a lot of exclamation marks alerted me to a game-changing change: a new labour leader. Everyone excited, the party sky-rocketed in the polls, politics seemed fun again - and I wasn't there. The British government must have felt sorry:  Gordon Brown called the inevitable election just a few weeks after my arrival, just so I could enjoy TWO campaigns! To make me feel more at ease, the British decided their campaign should look familiar, though with some delay: only 50 years af...

A mere month ago (whoops, sorry) I completed a crucial step of settling in: I moved into my new home-to-be-for-the-next-two-years. I couldn't wait, this seemed the real start of it all. My parents had decided to come over, bring me a car, and celebrate my housewarming with me. Or maybe they had decided to have a nice Scottish Easter weekend. Unfortunately for them, 'Scottish' turned out to be best interpreted as 'Cleaning a Scottish house which has previously been cleaned in some hitherto unknown Scottish way which we would define 'optical' ". Luckily for me, my parents are less familiar with optical cleaning than I am, so by the time they left, my house had seen more disinfectant than they had seen of Scotland. It had also seen more carloads of Sainsbury goods added to its inventory. But that wasn't all. I lived a two-week return to the 50's: one channel, no internet, and no flights (many thanks to Eyafjakowhatshisname). Fortunately, getting in...