Antwerpen Report

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Karneval time in Cologne is frighteningly busy: there are crowds everywhere (huge portions of which are drunk), terrible music (schlager, of course) in every bar and none of the shops are open. There are of course the charming traditional parades and celebrations but for me, it is all bit much.

Belgian Frituur
Belgian Frituur

Instead, we embraced the fact that Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) was touring Europe and playing a show nearby in Antwerp, Belgium to take a long weekend away from the insanity. We took the train West on Friday, checked into our flat then grabbed a dish of frites and headed straight to see Mark Sultan perform. Continue reading Antwerpen Report →

Spanish Summer of Code

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I never mentioned it because I didn’t want to jinx it, but a little while ago I applied to participate in an intensive web development course run by Ironhack. The course runs for 8 weeks in Barcelona, Spain and covers all the latest in front end development. Well, after two interviews and a few email conversations with previous students, I found out that I have been accepted! Continue reading Spanish Summer of Code →

Belgian BBQ

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This weekend we are travelling to Antwerp in Belgium. Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) is playing a gig there and it’s also just a good excuse to get out of town for a couple of days and do something different. It has seemed as though the last few weekends the weather has been completely rubbish and either I or Tom has been sick so we didn’t want to do anything at all (although we did see Bill Callahan play at Köln Kulturkirche last weekend and it was terrific).

All I really know about Antwerp is that it is up on the Dutch border and is a big port. Which is fine – you certainly don’t always need to know everything about a place to enjoy it! Continue reading Belgian BBQ →

Choose your own language

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One of my favourite sites is AirBnB. I like the concept, I like their design and I have used it to book accommodation for almost all of our trips while we have been in Europe. Sometimes the site switches to German from my profile selection of English which is a minor pain but it also brought home an interesting function of the website: the language picker.

On AirBnB, the language dropdown (or, dropup, actually) uses native language names or characters and the only icon is a globe on the actual dropdown. This struck me as interesting given the emphasis on colour throughout the rest of the site. This function felt a little boring and I wondered why they don’t use flags as I have seen elsewhere. Continue reading Choose your own language →

Train travel

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Last week my reserved train seat was in the little compartment at the front of the train just behind the driver. This meant my fellow passengers (about a dozen of us) had a terrific view of the train simply eating up the distance as the sun rose.

I have never before sat in one of these seats so I really enjoyed it. I don’t think it was a particularly fast piece of track although it was fast enough that sometimes things would whizz past in the middle distance before you had worked out if it was a shed or a cow. I especially enjoyed floating past the traffic on the autobahn situated alongside us: I found myself feeling extremely smug about that!

Still, I do find myself caught up in the opportunities for train travel in Europe. While my initial expectations were perhaps a little romantic and tinged with the drama of too many Agatha Christie novels as a child, I still find them endlessly convenient and valuable.

Continue reading Train travel →