August went by very quickly. Main reason was that I was on the road for almost half of it. Nearly two weeks in the Netherlands to study samples from our latest Kazakhstan well made the time fly by.

I spent the first five days in Leiden, which I visited in February of this year. I was looking forward to seeing it in daylight and in warmer weather than last time but it did not work out that way. It rained every day and sightseeing was not an option. The weather improved when I moved to the Hague and bought an umbrella. After one more substantial downpour during which I managed to get thoroughly soaked in spite of my new umbrella, conditions improved substantially. Temperatures during the day were around 20 deg C, ideal. Nights were quite a bit cooler and since my hotel claimed to be equipped with complete climate control for every room and I could not get the heating working I went to complain. They thought I was crazy, apparently this was one of the warmer Augusts on record.

(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) I took advantage of being "trapped" without access to the company building on the weekend and took the train to Amsterdam to re-visit the town and some of the museums I saw exactly 30 years ago. I have no way of quantifying this but I am certain that the number of tourists has gone up considerably. Museums were totally jammed, obviously weekends in August are a poor choice for this kind of activity. Luckily just wandering around was just as much fun. I finally witnessed the famous hooks in action when I saw people pulling up a big green sofa to an apartment on the fourth floor. I took a picture of the pillows being moved but did not hang around to see the real heavy piece hauled up.

Now that everything is priced in euros and the conversion to dollar is close to 1:1 the prices struck me as more shocking than ever before. I bought a small packet of gooseberries (there could not have been more than 15) and paid nearly 3 dollars. Standard price for a tiny glass of beer which I would estimate at 200 ml is between 2 and 3 dollars and in general museum entrance is around 7 dollars. Did not come across many bargains or fat people and I suspect that in addition to the vigorous bicycling the cost of food may be helping to keep their weight in check.

So in the end I was quite happy to return to the Houston subtropics with its moist air seldom falling below 30 degrees C and one dollar papayas. While I was gone Monica started school, today is the last day when community and city pools are open and the general feeling is that fall is just around the corner.








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