Back from vacation

Monday, October 17th, 2005

As you can make out from the post below, I’m back from vacation.

Since we’d both been slacking off just before we actually went on vacation we hadn’t gone through the trouble of planning and making reservations for a trip of any kind. Initially we thought about going to Cuba, but that wasn’t do-able on such short notice (unless you want to spend two weeks in a very very boring resort with mostly old people). Instead we booked a last-minute flight to Greece on thursday and left on a friday (I’m glad I can pack my bag in less than half an hour). Of course on the day we had to leave the whole train station in Utrecht was down due to a computer malfunction and no trains could enter or leave the station, including the one to Schiphol airport. Fortunatelly, Michiel could find it in his heart to put off drinking his whine for about an hour and a half in order to drive me to Utrecht by car. From there we could get into the train station and wait until the malfunction was over or, alternativelly, take a taxi to the airport.

We (wouter and me) spent two weeks in Greece in a small village called Parga. Since it’s quite a small village, you won’t find it on the map, but it’s on the west coast of Greece right between Préveza and Igoumenítsa. It’s also fairly tourist-oriented which made communicating with the locals a lot easier. Many inhabitants own restaurants, bars or various other tourist accomodations and have got a pretty good grasp of the English language. Many greeks also spoke very good German. The tour-guide had an explanation for that, but I wasn’t really paying attention to her. Naturally we tried to learn as much as possible of the Greek language, but more than a very basic grasp of the vocabulary was out of the question. At least now I know how to order two beers and perform a toast when in Greece.

As for our activities there… we didn’t do much. We just hung around, drank beer, read some books, did a bit of swimming and climbed some mountains. There was plenty of nature to see there, but most of it was olive trees. The beaches and mountains were beautiful though; as where the fabulous fortress ruines. We met two great Czechs and the four of us rented a car so we could drive to a nearby town called Igoumenítsa. Unfortunatelly we arrived at the start of the Siesta (which ran from 14:00 to 17:00) so the place was pretty much deserted. We actually had the plan to rent a car for more days in order to drive around greece but, let’s face it, we were way to lazy and didn’t really feel like it. And since it’s our vacation we weren’t willing to go around and do stuff we didn’t feel like doing.

Even though we didn’t really do anything the two weeks where over before we knew it. On saturday we had to get up at 6:00 in order to catch the plane back to the Netherlands. This vacation was actually the first time I’d been on a plane, and I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. People were being nervous and air-sick, but all I could think was “This is just a really noisy, large bus with a better view; wouldn’t want to sit in one for eight hours straight either”.

Anyway, I’m back and had a great time (even though the beds felt like they where made out of solid concrete and my leg-muscles still ache from all the steep roads in Parga). I’ve got another week of leisure-time vacation ahead which I will no doubt enjoy and then it’s back to the normal working routine again. Let’s see if I can put my free time to some good use.