Last week I visited India for both business and leisure. As soon as we exited the airport, we were confronted with the heat and the extreme humidity. It became clear that this is not a good season to visit India.

Fortunately we had a driver and a car with AC which took us to our hotel. After a short night we were taken by another driver to Pune, about 150 km from Mumbai, this is were the main office of our project is located.

We stayed here for about 3 days to meet our Indian colleagues, see how they work and to explain the different types of documentation. My role was primarily to explain the Dutch webguidelines and the user interface guidelines to the developers and testers. Overall the business visit was a succes, we booked good results and it was useful to meet the people working on the project in India.

After the business part of our trip, we went back to Mumbai to catch a plane to Delhi. From Delhi we first went to Agra to have a look at the Taj Mahal and other tourist attractions. The historical buildings are amazing, but the people can be quite annoying. We attracted the locals like ants on honey. As soon as we got out of the car people tried to sell us hats, books, photo’s, balloons, everything…

The next day we went on a tour through Delhi were we saw different temples and other buildings. After 2 days we went back to Mumbai to catch our return flight back home. We had half a day of spare time so we decided to do some sightseeing of Mumbai on our own (without a driver). This turned out to be quite a task in the blistering heat. We thought it would be a good idea to do some walking, but after a couple of miles we were sweating like a pig and took a taxi to take us to our destination. After seeing The Gate of India and having some lunch we headed back to the airport in a local taxi.

Overall India is an amazing country, it takes a few days to get used to the culture. There are a lot of poor people, which live in terrible circumstances. There is a lot of pollution in the cities and it can be quite dirty. However, there are also a lot of people that are very nice. And even people how don’t speak a word in English try to have some conversation with you. With our Western European look we became a tourist attraction for the locals as well.

Take a look at the other pictures

Last week I was in Madrid to see my girlfriend and just relax. We have been going to touristic places like Plaza Mayor which is always nice to visit. We also went to Faunia, a quite nice animal park on the border of Madrid, where the animals live in natural looking surroundings, instead of crappy cages.

We also discovered the El Capricho park. It is not as big as El Retiro but much nicer and very good place to have a walk and chill out during weekends (since it’s only open during the weekends). Besides this we went out with my girlfriends’ friends to a cocktailbar where I had a typical spanish beer and afterwards we ended in a bar in the famous Chueca neighborhood, also known as the gay area.
I put some of the pictures online.

Hi! I just got back from another great holiday in Spain. This time me and my girlfriend visited Salamanca and the ‘Green Spain’ (Galicia & Asturias).

To my opinion this is the most beautiful part of Spain, with some nice little villages, green mountains and a great coast. We went by car from Madrid to Salamanca, A Coruña, Luarca and Cudillero. And back to Madrid.

For me, the extremely warm weather (30-35 degrees) in Madrid was too much, so it was a good thing to go to the north. In Galicia and Asturias it was between 20-25 degrees, which is ‘agradable’. The beaches and coasts were amazing. Especially the Playa de las Catedrales and the Playa del Silencio.

Feel free to check out the pictures.

We got back from our Switzerland adventure yesterday night. It was worth every mile of driving. The city of Bern was completely filled with people in orange. I would guess about 90%, the rest was in blue (France) or from another country. Really amazing!

There were 3 big squares with huge televisions to see the matches. The weather was great and I didn’t see any fights or whatever. It was like queensday in Amsterdam. The people from Bern didn’t know what happened to them and their city. One big party. And even they were supporting the dutch mannschaft.

Ofcourse the match was great and we were lucky to be there with such an important match, which was also very attractive to watch. The following day we did some site-seeing and discovered that the city is actually really nice without all the dutch supporters.

Enjoy the pictures!

Today I’m going for a quick visit to Bern (Switzerland) for 2 days, with two of my friends. The reason? To support the Dutch football team at the European Championship. We don’t have tickets for the match, but we will head to the Orange square in the center.

They expect 50.000 people there, so I guess it will be a little crowded. After our 3-0 victory against the current world champion hopes are really high. We are going to see the match Netherlands-France. I’ll keep you posted.