04-01-2012

.....back to work today, always a shock to the system as one explores the torrent of emails that have come in during time away. Below is a picture of our new premises ( taken on a sunny day in August... not in windy, wet January!

We occupy the 3rd and 4th floor of Churchillplein 6, neatly sandwiched between two extremely secure buildings - Europol ( European Police Headquarters) on one side and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ( ICTY) on the other. It is quite strange to know that within a few minutes walk Radovan Karadzic and Ratco Mladic are currently going through their trials for genocide.
Before I left for Wales two colleagues and myself traveled to the city of Maastricht for their Christmas Fair which you can see below

We had a very pleasant day in such an interesting city (link)

I had an unexpected Dutch lesson today when visiting a local pen shop, the owner was very particular and picked up on my apology for my poor Dutch, he quite rightly told me that I should just dive in and use the language if  I know roughly what to say, he was right of course it is the only way to learn, people around the city are very good at picking up on English if given the opportunity. Mr Akkerman, then insisted that I ask carry on the conversation as much as possible in Dutch..... this was an excellent lesson to learn and I thank him for it.