Guus Bosman

We're leaving for Washington D.C!

I'm excited, not only because I'm looking forward to see old DC again, but also because it's the first long-distance road trip that I'll make by car.

We'll leave in an hour or so, and pick up 3 of Sasha's classmates who will join us. We're going to stay at Rosa's place tonight, and tomorrow morning Sasha and Vladi will vote in the Bulgarian elections in the embassy in D.C.

It's a 4 or 5 hour drive, and the weather looks good although we may get some heavy winds in Virginia.

The morning Jaap and I went to the American consulate in Amsterdam, two weeks ago, we saw a this car.


Immediately we associated this with the Juf Mieke, juf being a Dutch honorific for teacher.

When I was in Middenmeer Mieke and I went to the bus stop to pick up Jaap.

Jaap and Peter went to the Frankfurter Buchmesse for 3 days. Initially my plan was to arrive in the Netherlands on Wednesday stay until Sunday which would have meant that Jaap and I would see each other only on the last day, but I was able to arrive in Holland a few days earlier and Jaap and Peter returned on Friday from Germany, so thankfully we could spend a lot of time together.

We wanted to pick Jaap up from the trainstation in Alkmaar, but he didn't have a cell phone so we didn't know when exactly he would arrive. We guessed the arrival time of his bus in Middenmeer, there were basically 3 busses he could take.

When we were waiting for the first bus I took some pictures of Middenmeer. I enjoyed this Friday, spending time at home and shopping with Mieke.

This Saturday Sasha and I spent a day exploring the area we live in.

We started by opening new bank accounts. The accounts we have are with banks in the Washington DC area and they don't have branches here. Most of the transactions we do via internet, but it is useful to have a local bank, especially for cashing checks.

As expected, opening the accounts took a while but after an hour or so we completed all the paperwork.

The lady in the bank recommended us a nice diner to go for brunch, in downtown Durham. It was busy (we were there around noon) but we got a table quickly. It's a place for classic American breakfast, and with unlimited refills for coffee which was great.