I found out today that filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was killed in Amsterdam a few days ago. [Update – I wasn’t sure of the exact date – seems it was November 2 when we were still in London.] He made a film that cast Islam in a somewhat negative light – or at least was interpreted to be doing so – and had been receiving death threats for some time. I only mention this because I read in the news report that 5.5% of the population of the Netherlands are Muslim. I do remember seeing a fair number of people walking around Arnhem in traditional middle-eastern dress, and although it didn’t occur to me at the time, on reflection this does make sense.

We managed to catch a few more sessions today. Rick Strahl in particular is always fun to see.

No sessions to present today. We probably should have gone to some sessions by other people, but instead, we rested and worked on some outstanding bugs.

In the afternoon I did venture out of our room and checked out a couple of sessions.

We had almost a full day of sessions to give today, starting at 10:00 am and finishing up at 5:30 pm, with regular breaks of course. Then L had an extra bonus evening session after dinner, which I contributed to, a little.

Despite the flood of new information we delivered, I think most of the attendees understood where we were going with it and appreciated it. But I’ll be the first to admit that it would have been a hard slog.

When news first leaked out about major revisions to Visual FoxPro’s reporting system in version 9.0, I think everyone had their own expectation of what that might be. Well, today we presented the reality of the new reporting system, and almost inevitably, there was going to be some disappointment. This really put us at a disadvantage. It was very obvious after 10 minutes or so into each session that a portion of the audience were thinking, “but this isn’t what we expected…”

Luckily, I think the rest of the attendees made up for it – there was always someone in the audience nodding and smiling every time they realised what they could now do that they couldn’t do before.

Still – it was hard work.

We had time for a leisurely breakfast before having to check out and catch our train to Frankfurt. When we tried to settle up at reception with Traveller’s Cheques, they informed us that they could not accept them. I see a definite pattern here…

The train station was across the road from the hotel, so it took almost no time at all to lug our bags across and sit in the cafe at the station for a while, drinking my second coffee of the day in my case.

Several trains pulled up at our platform, including some double-decker carriages. I’d never seen anything like that before. I wondered if our train would be like those, but as luck would have it, it wasn’t. The ICE high-speed train just had plain ordinary single-story carriages. Car 23 was somewhere near the middle of the train. We stashed our bags in the above the seat racks and found some seats. Shortly afterwards, the train pulled away from the station and we concentrated on watching the Dutch countryside.

It’s hard to take pictures on the train. Just as I was positioning and focusing, a tree in the foreground would whip by and mess up the shot. I can’t help but feel that if I were more proficient with pre-setting suitable f.stop and aperture settings, I’d get more acceptable photos under these extreme conditions.

I saw only one old-style windmill, but I was unable to snap it in time. “No worries”, I thought, “there’s bound to be others.” There never was. There were many turbine-style ones though. After about an hour I tired of taking pictures and just watched the scenery go by.

I have no idea when we crossed the border into Germany, but looking at the route it must have been fairly immediate. We went through Duisburg, Dusseldorg, Koln, Bonn… In total it was about a three hour journey, with the surroundings slowly becoming more industrial in nature.

Eventually we arrived at Frankfurt.

We waddled down the platform and found the taxi stand and thrust a piece of paper with the name of the hotel written down on it so that we wouldn’t literally get lost in translation. The taxi driver took some back roads but eventually we found some familiar landmarks and we pulled up at the Lindner Congress Hotel. I remembered it from my last visit in 1998.

We checked in, went up to our room, and collapsed. Later on we joined the conference organizer, R, for a very pleasant dinner in the hotel restaurant.

It’s Sunday, and breakfast is available a little later than on other days, but still we woke up at the usual time, got dressed, and went down. I found the milk this time – it’s over the other side from the coffee, with the fruit juices.

We had no specific plans for the day, but at 4:00 pm we expected to be met by B who had invited us to come back with him to his house for dinner to meet his wife E and their 5 (?) cats. But that was some time away, and instead of going out and walking around the town as we had planned, I crawled back into bed and went back to sleep for 4 hours. This was unexpected, but I have learned that jet lag is not to be disregarded – at least if you are me. I would have expected this to hit me several days ago, but it seemed like it out-waited me and hit me on day 5 instead. I knew it was bad; I knew I consequently wouldn’t be able to sleep well that evening, but I can never resist the ‘lag unless I absolutely have to.

B meet us downstairs at the arranged time and we walked to the bus stop to catch a bus to his house. I have to remember to carry my camera everywhere because the number of times I see stuff and realize that I don’t have my camera with me are countless.  This time, fortunately, I was prepared. The light was fading as the sun hid behind the cloud in the West, but I kept seeing things I wanted to take pictures of. L pointed out this image on her side of the bus – I leaned over and did my best to capture it.

We had a great time with B and E in their house, being introduced to their cats and E’s artwork.  And B’s cooking! And not talking about work for a change.

Much later, B walked us back to the bus stop and we caught a bus back to the hotel. For reasons I still don’t understand, it cost exactly twice as much to go the same distance but in the opposite direction.

As we got into bed, I didn’t feel sleepy at all, but somehow managed to doze off. At 4:00 am I woke up, completely awake. Arghh.

I don’t know what it is about the Dutch. They live in a country famous for its butter and cream, yet the hotel restaurant supplied only condensed milk as a coffee creamer. Where was the milk? I could not find it.

After a quick breakfast, we waited downstairs in the lobby to wait for B and S to collected us. Well… we waited a bit longer than we expected because they got a flat tire! It was hard not to doze off while waiting. I’m not used to a big breakfast, but it was all so tasty…

Eventually they showed up and we drove down to the place where the VfpSig.nl user group was due to assemble. It was a nice long room with a desk and two long parallel tables with chairs at which the group members arranged themselves. We had a little LCD projector which worked fine after a little tweaking and setting up, and then we just got stuck into our sessions due to the late start.

The sessions went well. I’ll say it again here: Thanks guys for putting up with a large amount of new material (some of it new to us, in that we hadn’t presented it before), and for allowing us to go later than planned, even though this meant missing out on some hands-on time that was on the schedule. Thanks to B for organizing it and for doing so much to make everything work out.

Several members of the group took us out to dinner at a place called Restaurant Falstaff just down the road from the hotel. It was very crowded (quite a small room really) but truly wonderful food. I chose grilled smoked salmon. It was fantastic. I’m definitely eating too much. So far I still fit my pants though.

Our British Midland Airways flight to Amsterdam was due to leave from Heathrow at 4:20 pm, so after breakfast, checking out, and leaving our bags downstairs with the nice gentlemen at reception, M, L and I wandered out for a last walk up Warwick Way and, in my case, a last Latte and almond croissant at Cafe Nerd. Sorry, *Nero*.

I had an ulterior motive, which was to use the Cafe’s wireless access point to get online and retrieve email, which had presumably been piling up for the last few days. No go. Couldn’t get online. Oh well.

Originally we were planning on catching a train or bus to Heathrow, but as M pointed out, he was driving back to Southampton and Heathrow is practically “on the way” so we’d let him win the argument and agreed that he could drop us at the terminal. Such a nice guy.

We had plenty of time so he took the scenic route around the Chelsea Embankment – I think. I had packed the map away by this time so really I’ve no idea which way he went except that we had a good view of the Thames for a while.

We said our goodbyes to M and wished him a safe drive back to Southampton, and waddled into the terminal with our bags. We’re way too early for our flight to be able to check our bags, but what the heck. We sat for a bit, taking turns to wander around the terminal.

Once our bags were checked and we’d gone through security to the other side, we spent some Brit money on presents for J and A, then approached the TravelEx desk to see if we could get some Euros. Well, they took our pounds and pence but wouldn’t accept our Travelers Cheques. Grr. We used some more of our supply of $US cash to get Euros.

Our boarding pass said we needed to be at the gate by 3:45 pm and it was getting pretty close to that and our departure gate still hadn’t come up on the board. We clutched our bags and watched the board, and as soon as the flight came up, we looked at the gate (40) , then at the sign that indicated how long it would take to walk to the various gates – we needed 15 minutes! We did it in 10. I think 15 was the pessimistic estimate. Once at the gate, we ended up sitting around for a bit. The gate was empty. Apparently, 3:45 pm didn’t mean anything serious. We weren’t the only ones who thought we were late… shortly after we settled down, a guy came sprinting up the corridor thinking he was too late to get on to the plane.

More people arrived at a more leisurely pace, including what could have been an entire soccer team but the paunchy physique on some of them, and the sheepish look of one of them convinced us that they were, in fact, a stag party. Going to Amsterdam. Yup, my money’s on that.

The flight was short, the airline food quite possibly the worst ever, and if I’d known the drinks and cocktails were free I would have indulged. Free cocktails on a 1 hour cheap flight to Amsterdam? We wouldn’t have guessed.

We were met on the other side by our host B. He had already met up with S from Yorkshire who had come in for the conference earlier on a different flight. L managed to identify them despite the fact that we’d never actually met in the flesh before.

The drive to Arnhem took about 1.5 hours. I watched the stars through the window. The Pole star is much higher towards the zenith here. And it is Autumn so perhaps this was exaggerated.

B made sure we are comfortably checked in to the Hotel Haarhuis, then after dropping our bags in our room we went down for a late dinner in the hotel restaurant. I don’t know if I was very hungry, very tired, or both, but it was a fantastic meal. We were well looked after by a talkative, cheery hostess who commiserated with us for having to eat British cooking for the last few days. Hey, it wasn’t that bad!

…I’m eating too much and we aren’t even in Frankfurt yet.

At Victoria Coach Station yet another person stopped me to ask directions. This time I said, “You’re about the 4th person to ask me directions, but I’m a visitor here myself. Do I look especially knowledgeable or something?”

“Well, you’re holding a map…” he replied.

“Hmm. Okay, you have a point. I’ll allow it.” I said.

Elizabeth Street eventually crossed over Eaton Square and turned into Sloan Street, which had a lot of designer clothes shops on it. We turned North and crossed over Knightsbridge and through the Albert Gate into Hyde Park. What a change from the town! As we walked towards the Serpentine, the sun came out briefly and gave everything a wonderful glow. It was still fairly cold, though, and the wind picked up at one point and it started raining. We had to shelter behind the wide trunk of a tree. I wished I’d brought my hat – in just a minute my ears were already beginning to ache.

Past the Lido tea rooms and under a bridge, we saw signs pointing to the Serpentine Gallery, but we didn’t follow. We were on a mission to find Peter Pan. There were a lot of interesting plants growing up around us as we came out from under the bridge. The park had turned into a garden. I kept playing with the macro focus mode on my camera trying to capture some of the dew-on-leaf action that was taking place around me. Sometimes I really wish I was a talented photographer instead of an amateur.

We saw the new Diana Memorial Fountain. It is basically a big concrete circular artificial stream bed with what appears to be a continual stream of water circulating around in a kind of perpetual flow, encountering various kinds of stream topology to demonstrate all the different kinds of rippling turbulent water flows that you might find in nature. That sounds very clinical, but the actual effect was quite nice. The surrounding grounds were quite boggy and recently re-seeded with grass, so I think they’ve been having some problems with it.

As we followed the footpath around the curve of the Serpentine, suddenly there he was in his own little meadow. Blowing his pipes and watching the children feed the ducks since 1914. Speaking of ducks, there were many different kinds – of ducks and other webbed-footed relatives – swimming around the railing and talking to the people who had gathered to enjoy the view of the water and the trees in the sun. There was an information plaque in front of the railing where children could read about the different species of birds and see how many they could actually see swimming around. It was a lot of fun, but we wanted to keep moving.

At the Italian Fountains we took a diagonal path towards the Round Pond. More Squirrels. More swans, geese, and other birds. If the day were only a bit warmer… Kensington Palace didn’t look as grand as I expected, but maybe I was getting used to all the famous buildings appearing smaller, yet more concentrated than I expected. I wondered whether a more comprehensive knowledge of the history of these places would enhance my enjoyment of walking around them. It probably would.

At the end of the Board Walk we had the option of going back out to Kensington Road but we stayed inside the park boundary and walked towards the Albert Memorial. The sun came out again and lit it up splendidly. “Yup, Victoria sure was fond of her Albert,” commented L. Opposite the memorial was the Royal Albert Hall. I’m embarrassed to admit that my knowledge of this arts venue is pretty much limited to that gleaned from an Emerson Lake & Palmer record.

Lame or not, it was still a thrill to be standing at the top of Albertopolis. Serious museums awaited us. But before we ventured too far down Exhibition Road, we were feeling a little peckish. A little place across the road caught our eye: Hugo’s Cafe. It was a little early for lunch, but the items on the menu looked so good we kind of looked at each other, said “what the heck” and went for it.

 I’m glad we did, because, early or not, that was one of the nicest meals I’ve eaten to date. I ordered a smoked haddock on mashed potatoes with hollandaise sauce and a poached egg. It was pretty fantastic. The back of the restaurant had a big mural on the wall that must have been an enlarged black and white photograph of Queen Anne’s Lace plant, or something similar. The tables were all plain wood, and reminded me of a junior high art classroom, but comfortable.

After we had stuffed ourselves with a completely needless dessert, we paid our bill and rolled out on to Exhibition Road towards the museums. I was hopeful of seeing some dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History Museum, but that’s a big place and as soon as we walked past the Science Museum, we saw one of the entrances to the Museum of Natural History, and ducked in. It turned out to be the entrance to the Earth Gallery. This was pretty cool. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around the lower level looking at semi-precious minerals and stuff before ascending the escalator, through the big globe, into the upper level where the volcano and tectonic stuff was. We spent a lot of time exploring it.

In hindsight, this was a mistake. If I’d been serious about tracking down the paleontology displays, I would have done more research and realized that we were in one tiny part of the museum and we should really have walked a bit further down to Cromwell Road where the front facade of the main museum building would have made it pretty obvious that I was missing out on the Real Thing. As it was, by the time we emerged from the Earth Science gallery, we were feeling a little overdosed on museums already. At least, I was.

As I stood there trying to take a picture of the building, lit up in the late afternoon sun, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the sole of my foot. I’d been resting it on the lower part of the wrought-iron fence and I hadn’t realized that it consisted of fairly sharp prongs. I’d put enough pressure on my foot to penetrate my walking shoe. Ouch! All I could think of was Babies on Spikes. 

We turned left and admired the atrium of the Victoria & Albert Museum. A centerpiece of the forum is a tremendous hanging glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. It was like some enormous sea creature. We tried taking some pictures of it but it was hard to capture it. None of the current exhibitions in the museum appealed to us so we carried on up Brompton Road towards Knightsbridge.

Eventually we came to Harrods. It looked like a golden castle in the late afternoon sun. We wandered in with full knowledge that we would be crazy to actually buy anything there, although there were lots of wonderful things (and wonderfully over-priced to match). We headed to the food section, to seek out Marmalade and Other Things. Well, we found them. And I found myself picking out little jars of things that sounded yummy, only to wander around with them clutched in my hands for a few minutes, before realizing how silly it was and ended up putting them back on the shelves. Fun and impractical.

Coming out of Harrods, the sun was mostly down and the temperature was really dropping as it got dark. I was feeling pretty tired and worn out, but M and L were full of energy and raring to keep going – perhaps we could see a movie? We consulted a local paper and decided on trying to see Finding Neverland, which seemed very appropriate considering the whole Peter Pan thing earlier in the day. M was sure that we would find cinemas around the Trafalgar Square area, so back to the bus route map we went, to plan our next move. Hyde Park Corner was within walking distance, where we could catch a Route 9 bus to Trafalgar.  Busses in London are cool. If you don’t have a day pass or whatever, you just need to have a 1£ coin to put in the machine and it spits out a ticket. Then you hop on a bus and it takes you anywhere along its route.

M was watching the streets and as soon as the bus rounded Piccadilly Circus and turned down Haymarket Street, he said we should get out at any point from then on. The bus stopped shortly after that and we emerged on to Haymarket Street in front of the UGC Cinema where Finding Neverland was showing. Good planning or Good luck? I choose to believe that M knew what he was doing, even though we were still some distance from Trafalgar Square. We bought tickets to the show and then, with about an hour to kill, we walked up Haymarket and back to Piccadilly Circus to see Eros. The Criterion Theatre had a big sign up for the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which, in an alternative universe where time has no meaning, I would have much enjoyed going to a show. (Ok, that’s weird. How much more time would we have needed to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company? Less than you’d expect, I reckon.)

Back to the cinema, we much enjoyed Johnny Depp’s performance in Neverland. Where does he get the talent?

By now we were feeling hungry and, having checked off all the required London dining experiences already (Fish-n-Chips, Indian, etc), we settled on Italian which both M and I were hankering for. We found three restaurants in a row in a street near Leicester Square, and after some perusing of the menus, chose one – the name of which eludes me now. We had a very pleasant meal accompanied by depressing pop songs. The restaurant sound system started with Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. and basically went on from there. L actually asked the waitress who chose the music, and she indicated that it was the bartender. Before we left the restaurant, she went over and asked him if he had just broken up with this girlfriend. He said no, but I think the evidence doesn’t lie.

Walking back down Charing Cross Road, we caught a packed-full bus on route 24 to take us back to Pimlico and our little hotel. The bus was so full that we were standing like sardines, and even though he stopped at the next bus stop, the driver didn’t open the front door because nobody got off. A prospective passenger knocked at the door, in vain. “Where are you going to sit? On my lap?” asked the driver.

We had a very nice conversation with a young lady on the bus with us, but unfortunately we had to get off the bus before we could arrange for M to get her phone number.