life2gether.nl

A lot has happened since our holiday in Austria.

I quit my job at the chocolate company, because it just wasn’t right for me. As a consequence I’ve been unemployed most of August. Although I felt quite nervous about quitting one job without already having the next one waiting , it worked out very well for me. Within a week I had my first interview scheduled…and before the end of the next I had 4 more and an invitation for a second interview at that first company. Last week, only the third of my unemployment, I’ve received an offer and accepted a job. This time I’ll be working for a luxury brand of eyewear, being the central point of contact for Dutch and German clients. And I’ll start on Monday!! So keep your fingers crossed for me!!

In the meantime we’ve also had some friends over here in London. Martijn, Martine and their son Florian had been spending their holiday in England and came over to London for a night on their way back home. We all agreed that with the fuss about the Mexican Flu we preferred to stay away from the tubes and the centre of London, so we decided to spend the Saturday in Richmond Park. It was a beautiful day, so we weren’t the only ones to come up with this brilliant idea… Thankfully the park is huge and we managed to find a nice and quiet path and walked around for a good part of the afternoon. Of course we couldn’t resist a little break for ice creams half way through…
They’d be leaving on Sunday, sometime around noon, so we only took a little stroll along the Thames that morning. And that took us to part of our immediate neighborhood we hadn’t even seen yet!!

All in all we still haven’t seen a lot of the city. Well, I’ve spent some time travelling through the city to and from client visits…but that’s not really seeing a city, now is it?
A couple of weeks ago we decided we had to at least find a good cinema. As you may remember (Living Life in London) our first cinematic experience in London had left us with…well, let’s call it a hangover… But we were convinced London should have better to offer. So this time we didn’t go for nice and comfy close to home, but for hip and in the centre of London: Leicester Square. There, it turned out, we had a choice of at least 4 cinema’s, within spitting distance from each other and all with their own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop!! So this is where we watched Harry Potter’s latest movie. And enjoyed it this time! But that might have been partly due to Ben & Jerry’s…

Another experience we felt we shouldn’t miss out on, was the Proms. Patrick, Emanuel’s boss, had asked us if we’d liked to go together with a few more colleagues. Well, most people know that neither Emanuel nor I are great fans of classical music, but we thought it’d be great to go to a concert in the Royal Albert Hall anyway. Just to have been there… And I have to admit, it’s a beautiful sight. And I’ve read my share of historical novels, so I could just picture ladies and gentlemen in elaborate evening dress strolling about. Everybody trying to see who’s with who, who’s in the box across from them and who’s wearing what… Yes if only for that, it was worth going…

And then our latest trip. About a week ago we went to the largest vineyard in England. Yes, a vineyard in England Apparently there are about 365!! And Denbies is the largest. It turned out to be a bit of a hassle to get there, because of course that day there were maintenance works on the tracks. But we got there and met with some friends. After a bit of wine tasting (I skipped that part) we took a Disney-type of tour through the vineyard, during which you are of course exposed to all sorts of superfluous information like which famous persons lived on the estate, or which counties you can see from the vineyard… But it was very nice nonetheless. And apparently the wines are not bad at all!