the south of NL

After leaving Chris at the airport, I made my way to visit a friend from the Summer, Boris in Leiden. Leiden is on the west coast of holland, south of Amsterdam and is a lovely place right by the sea, with a lot of the actual old and very traditional windmills and is the heart of tulip fields. Boris is also one of the chief managers at ESA (European Space Agency) so offered to kindly take me on a technical visit of ESTEC at Noordwijk near Leiden where is works, but is currently off work to apply finishing touches to his phd thesis.

Needless to say, that was Amazing! I got to see some really amazing facilities: large test space simulators, many satellites being tested (saw Herschel on the testbed!), etc plus the automated transport vehicle (ATV) which is the european automatic rocket that will take supplies to the International Space Station. I also saw some old soyuz capsules which have been in space. With Boris' commentry, it was a good mini-revision for my interviews this weekend!

Then, I headed to Boris' place near Leiden where I also had the pleasure to meet his girlfriend May (she is Chinese, but from French-Canada). We had a really large and delicious meal cooked by Boris and May after which plans to go and see Lieden failed to appeal due to the cold and rain. Luckily, Boris has a home-cinema and Star Wars 3, so we spent a long time with that! May got up early in the morning (bless her) and drove me to the station: I feel like a cold coming on now due to the lack of sleep!

luckily, Chris had put some 18 CDs worth of music on the mp3 for my journey back to Strasbourg which helped me to not go insane on the journey alone! The whole coach was full of Italians drinking Carlsberg and smoking continuously right next to the 'no-smoking' signs! Gosh, impressive as it was that they could still do that after most of them looked like they had spent the last 3 days stoned out of their heads!

Strasbourg is still cold, but the snow is gone: it did look like a winter wonderland! As I got on the tram from the coach, I sat rite next to the guy who is visiting to take my morning lecture: its official, ISU is EVERYWHERE!

which reminds me: I have to sleep some to get to classes tomorrow and concentrate. and was only writing this email to ask you guys: what did you get upto over new years and where are you!?