Geert's Place

Finally I arrived in Austin, after a LONG day of travelling.. Started by getting up at 6, off to the airport in Brussels, took the 10:50am flight from Brussels to Chicago, then had to wait 3 hours, and then another 2,5 hours to fly to Austin.. Currently waiting in the airport for a few colleagues to arrive.

Hope they land soon, because a day of travelling is more than enough!

Wish you all the best, a great health and lots of love for 2010 !!

Geert.

Day 4: Monbazillac & Bergerac
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Today we went to visit a small village called Monbazillac – known from desert wines (really sweet stuff). It’s only 10km outside of Bergerac so it didn’t take us long.

Over there we went to visit the castle of Monbazillac and its vinyards. At the end of the tour we had the possibility to taste a few wines. Luckily they also had a few varieties which were slightly less sweet, so more accessible for the everyday wine drinker.

We had dinner at Bergerac again and were basically chilling out – getting ready for the big trip of tomorrow again…. Again 9 hours of driving are ahead of us… 🙁

Day 3: Cognac
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After a nice breakfast we took off in the direction of Cognac, a trip which lasted for about 2 hours. A trip which took us thru a LOT of small roads and it made us believe we were driving some sort of rally. Max speed was about 160km/h in an unknown and steep environment. We made some videos but it’s safer if we didn’t post those 😉

We went to visit a cognac distillery called Camus – a friendly lady showed us around and told us about the history of the divine drink called cognac, and about the history of the region and how trade started to boom in the Middle Age. After the tour there was time for a small tasting of the brand – yum yum 🙂

Also we went to visit a nice park and hung around in the city for a while – distances here are always quite big it seems. We had to drive back for another 2 hours and had dinner when we arrived again in Bergerac. A dinner which caused quite severe stomach ache because the desert was some sort of choco mousse, which felt a bit like cement 😛

Tired and beaten …. signing off for today !

PS: french drivers just SUCK. They can’t drive, it’s quite official now. Don’t know what they are teaching these people in driving school ……. 🙁

Day 2: Bergerac & Hanging Gardens of Vézac
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Today it was slightly less hot than yesterday – still 35°C at some points though .. We went into the town of Bergerac, went to the Tourism Office and asked for a map. As nice little tourists, we followed the route which they gave us.

This took us thru the old city part and delivered some quite good picture material. We went for a boat trip on the Dordogne river, which took about an hour. We also visited the Maison des Vins for a wine tasting.

At that moment we took a break because of the heat and around 6 we drove off to Vézac, a small town about 70km from Bergerac, to visit the famous Hanging Gardens of Marqueyssac. This was quite amazing because every Thursday evening, they enlighten the paths with a massive amount of candles.

To close off this day, we stopped in a very small village called Brenac, which holds a medieval castle built in the 12th century. Funny (old) waitress messed up our order – I ordered a half liter of Kronembourg and ended up with a normal beer, Kurt ordered a pina colada and had to wait for about 45 minutes. Guess they still needed to import the pineapples…

Day 1 : A *LOT* of driving
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My mate Kurt and myself started off driving in a town called Heist-op-den-Berg at 9am, arrived on the “Boulevard Périphérique” of Paris around 12:30pm, took the necessary breaks and arrived in a lovely little town called Bergerac.

On the way to Bergerac we encountered quite a few muppets on the road and one very funny van (picture attached). It’s actually only funny if you understand Dutch 😛
The translation in English could be “Child’s Friend” — couldn’t get any more paedophile than that, I guess.

Had dinner in a small restaurant next to the hotel. I had a tuna steak with grilled tomatoes and a pesto sauce with crème brûlée as dessert. Quite yummy.

Quite exhausted at the time we arrived but unable to sleep quickly, because of some bloody heatwave hitting this part of France. Yesterday the mercury was rising up until 40°C. Not good !

So yes, still alive & kicking .. Same old story, I suppose.. Been concentrating on work quite a lot – I haven’t taken any holidays yet during the summer, but they’re about to come .. Next month ! It’s about time 🙂

I also put a lot of time and effort into creating a website for a colleague of mine – his wife wrote a book and he asked me to make a promotional website for it. Guess I can spam it here 🙂 The url is :
http://www.ribaucourt.com

As I said.. next month will be holiday period for me – finally !! So I guess I’ll have a lot more time again to keep this thing up-to-date 🙂 Anyways, have fun !

One would almost be tempted to ask “where the heck were you the past few months?”. The answer is very simple: I’ve been working like a maniac for the past few months; I just got back from Luxembourg with a colleague of mine. I’ve been in Holland for a couple of times too – Amsterdam to be a bit more precise. And next week on Monday we have a national day off, so I can breathe a bit now 🙂

Luxembourg is pretty cool by the way; it doesn’t really seem to be as boring as I thought it would be 😀 It’s very small so I guess it’s easy to manage and all; it’s really a banking country it seems; I saw Q7’s and Porsches on almost every corner of the streets; that’s pretty extravagant if you ask me 😛 A new hobby of mine is looking on Youtube for funny clips about Triumph, the insulting dog 😀 I mean.. just check this out and you’ll know why :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUQ3H4lmf2s

Quite hilarious huh? 😛

Well today a lot of people got back from holidays, OK. School started again for the kids/students, OK. It was raining this morning, OK. But that it had to take me 2 bloody hours to drive from my place to work (which is 50 km), is not so OK !!! 🙁 Usually I’m a very calm dude but traffic can get me quite crazy, especially if there are 3-lane highways being occupied by morons that drive 70km/h in the middle lane ! So I arrived at work around 9.30 or so, but there were guys an hour later so no big harm done I suppose.. I hate Mondays.

Apart from that, I bought a new guitar amp, which is producing rather fat noises 😀 I hooked my guitar onto the amp, turned the thing on, hit the upper string and it all sounded like the walls were about to come down 😛 I guess my neighbours are my biggest fans muhaha.. For the guitar players amongst us.. it’s a Behringer V-Amp 2, it’s actually an amp simulator but it has some VERY convincing presets on board 🙂

Hiya guys,

In the meanwhile I’m sober enough to write a short post 😀 I just want to wish you all a happy New Year full of luck, love and success in whatever you’re doing.. As for my own New Year’s Eve, it was pretty cool. We had a nice dinner with some people first of all, which went along with champagne and quite a lot of wine 😛 Of course at midnight we were counting down, followed by another wave of booze.. So by the time we went further on to some pubs, I didn’t even know which planet I was on anymore, but nevermind.. This is a once-in-a-year occasion so that should be fine 😀 I got back home at around 6am after a pretty cool night 🙂

Anyway, enjoy and make it a terrific year !!