My brain needed a rinse, and as everybody else has been away this summer (for work in my other half’s case, but he did get his dose of culture shock) I thought I’d treat myself to a bargain day-ticket for the train. It was about a quarter of the normal price, with some restrictions— only valid on the national network and not on the local networks, which thwarted me on one stretch, and not valid until 9:00, which I didn’t mind much because otherwise I’d have taken the 8:45 at the earliest.

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So I’m a single parent without any children— other half is in India, Prima and Tertia at camp, and Secunda cat-sitting for friends who don’t want their ancient cats to be alone at night so she only comes to dinner. I expected that I’d be able to do a lot of work that’s otherwise swamped by distraction and domesticity (like migrate the server), but nothing seems to come out of my hands. Apparently I need the distraction!

I’d promised Secunda that we’d visit her godmother, my cousin the nun, who lives in The Hague, and today seemed the day for it so I bought a special-offer day-ticket for two and we hopped on a train. On the train I realised that I hadn’t informed the godmother of our intentions, but my phone battery was flat and Secunda didn’t have her phone with her (“we’re that kind of people”, she said). But being a nun, the probability that she’d be at home was very high so we didn’t worry.

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This is what Google Maps made of a walking tour in my home town that took about 50 minutes without stopping at the places meant to stop at:

Not that the original route survived contact with the enemy me when I actually walked it. I think the current version takes even less time.

This version, on the other hand…

(Note that there’s not a single place marked on this map where I’ve actually been, unless “G” is Halifax, where I landed once on my way to Toronto and eventually Edmonton.)

I wanted to do a coherent blog post (and in fact I did do a coherent blog post) but I had all this stuff left over that wouldn’t cohere. Ah well.

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Most people will think this is the meat of the story, but I still intend to write a hotel review too.

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I’m splitting this into four parts because otherwise it’s too long; parts may still be boring. If you only want to read about FOSDEM, Part 2 and for my hotel review/recommendation, Part 3.

Note: It’s possible that some parts aren’t up yet. In that case, please try again later.

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Spent about half an hour mending Tertia’s bike tire in front of the house.

Greeted by 2 acquaintances and 5 complete strangers who passed on foot or on bikes.

Talked to 1 neighbour (a nice old lady) when she came back from shopping.

Dragged bike out of the way of 1 delivery lorry.

Accepted mail from 1 postman who was confident that the woman in the road belonged with the open door behind her.

Asked 1 young man not to throw his cigarette end on the ground practically at my feet. Young man’s friend agreed with me and kicked it in a grating.

Declined 2 offers of help, one of them very sexist.

Showed 1 person the way to somewhere just around the corner, but hard to find. Helped 2 pairs of tourists with their maps (we live in a very confusing spot because all the road signs seem to say different things).

Got a screwdriver to fix my own bike light, but of course Tertia went to school on my bike this morning so I couldn’t.

While in the shower —this kind of thing always happens in the shower— it suddenly occurred to me that the next major station on the railway line in each of the four directions that trains can go from this town starts either with A or with Z. For people with a railway map of the Netherlands and some diligence, this fact alone is probably enough to figure out which town we live in, but as that’s not a secret and easy enough to find out by other means anyway, I don’t mind.

And when I thought some more about it, I realised that both stations on the east-west line start with A, and both stations on the north-south line with Z.

The smaller stations that not all trains stop at (and some of which are too new to be on the map I linked to) blur this elegance with letters like T, R and H, but that’s not to be helped.

View from our living-room window:

It was even more crowded before I got out the camera. When I took the picture two cyclists and most of the school kids had already gone away, and the blue lorry on the right backed up a bit. On the other hand, the representative of a posh German handbag company (with the black car) had appeared.