Moving Day...

Later that day, we made two trips to Veronica’s storage unit to move all her stuff to her house. Lucky for me, Carlin was happy to drive on the other side of the road, so she rented the car and handled all the driving.

Veronica had an incredible amount of stuff considering it had all fit in her dorm room last school year.

Carlin was such a great helper!

Veronica’s new room is smaller than her old room with less storage space and no en-suite bathroom, but somehow she managed to squeeze everything in including her Darth Vader mask that she bought at a charity shop for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

Of course, there wasn’t enough space for Carlin and me to stay at Veronica’s place, so I booked us a hotel within walking distance of downtown. It took longer to find than expected, however, because the navigation system took us out of town and told us we’d arrived once we were driving alongside woods. That evening we met Veronica in town for a nice vegetarian dinner at Wild Thyme, one of my favorite Norwich restaurants.

Visiting Veronica...

A few days after Veronica returned to Norwich, Carlin and I took the ferry over to visit her and help her move her belongings into the house that she’s sharing with four friends. Veronica was happy to give us a tour when we arrived. Here’s the living room...

...and the resident mermaid. 

The front isn’t so special, but the backyard is large and includes a shed for Veronica’s bike. We wanted Carlin to see UEA, so we walked to campus, which took about 25 minutes. 

It was exciting to see Veronica’s face on the wall in the Student Union as one of the student officers.

We had lunch in the pub and then walked around campus on the nice sunny day.

Learning About Wind Farms...

The following day was all about wind farms. David, who’s studying engineering at Cambridge, also joined us in Amsterdam at the offices of Gemini, the company behind building one of the world’s largest wind farms off the Dutch coast. With 150 wind turbines it will generate enough energy for 1.5 million people in the Netherlands. Luckily the presentation wasn’t entirely over my head, although one speaker seriously got carried away while talking about cables. 

Once the presentations were done at Gemini, we hopped back on the bus and were taken to the coast where we boarded this fishing boat.

The classiest thing about this ship was definitely the cute dog.

We had sandwiches for lunch and just hung out until we reached our destination: the Egmond aan Zee Offshore Wind Farm.

The wind farm, built in 2006 as a joint venture between Shell Oil and Nuon Energy, consists of 36 turbines about 10 miles offshore which generate enough energy for 100,000 households. Although it was the first large scale wind farm built off the Dutch coast, it is small compared to the Gemini project, however, much closer to shore so easily visited in an afternoon.

The high point of the afternoon was the fresh herring that we were served; we all agreed that it was the best herring that we’d ever had. That evening, I went to a FILTH hash while Jimmy and Veronica went to a lecture. The following day, he took the group to the Deltaworks and then to Rotterdam for a walking tour. I eventually met him there, but first I went with Veronica back to Voorschoten.

She was catching a ferry that evening, but there was no train service to Hoek van Holland, so she had to catch a bus from Scheidam which ran so late that I received a call from Stenaline Ferry asking where she was (I was impressed that they called instead of just leaving without her). Jimmy and I stayed at the Lloyd again, had a nice breakfast out and then he hared an Amsterdam hash with a twist—the beer and bags were transported on Derek’s boat and the pack had to take a ferry across the IJ to get to the end. Afterwards, Jimmy and I went for a boat ride with Derek and Abbie, which was the perfect way to end another fun weekend.

Staying in Amsterdam...

Jimmy was staying at the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam for the three nights of the reunion. The first night he arranged for a speaker. There was no group activity on the evening after the Heineken tour, so he invited me and Veronica to go out for dinner and stay overnight.

The Lloyd is unusual because every room is completely different, ranging from one stars to five stars. His three-star room was quite large with a sitting area that included a couch, which was perfect for Veronica. This was the view from the bedroom...

...which had very high ceilings and beach scenes. After not being able to get a table at a few different restaurants, we opted to grab some food at a grocery store and picnicked along the river.

Tour of the Heineken Factory...

Jimmy organized a reunion weekend in the Netherlands in mid-September for his classmates from the renewable energy course. He invited Veronica and I to come along for a tour of Heineken in Zouterwoude, the largest beer factory in Europe. It isn’t open to the general public, so I was thrilled to be able to go along. During the busiest summer months, the factory operates 24/7 and produces an incredible million bottles per hour. It was very cool seeing thousands of bottles flying around their bottling machines. 

The tour primarily focused on Heineken’s efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. I can’t remember all those facts and figures, but was very impressed how they reduce waste by converting much of it to energy and selling left over grains to local farmers for high-quality cattle feed. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos inside, but I couldn’t resist taking this one of Veronica.  

The property was so large that we were driven from the visitor center to the factory in this funky old British bus. Here’s the whole gang after the tour and before going inside for an ice cold beer and snacks.

We had a great time and left very impressed with Heineken’s efforts to make their process as environmentally-friendly as possible.

The End of a Great Weekend...

Just like the day before, several of the RAs from other hashes came into the circle to give some down-downs. This was definitely one of the most unusual down-downs I have ever witnessed. Higgins brought an old laptop into the circle and beer was poured into the battery compartment.

Then it was handed to Neptunus to drink from.

The final down-down was for the five of us from mismanagement for putting together an awesome weekend.

We finished with vodka soaked watermelon. Afterwards we stuck around to empty the ships. There was a lot of beer left over which ended up in our garage for future FILTH hashes. What a great weekend!

Hangover Circle...

The hares usually get the first down-down, but in this case they were joined by Reinhardt and his father since it was those two fellows that led the pack astray.

Jimmy had the distinction of being the only hasher to get duct taped twice by Julie.

 Afraid I can’t remember what sin these hashers committed.

The ship captains were on hand as they would also be getting a down-down, but in the meantime our captain thought it would be funny to pour some beer over Jimmy.

 Reinhardt and I again made a great team to run the circle.