The life of Niek Storteboom: October 2006

I"ll be damned..............

Amsterdamned to be precise.

As guessed by my way too clever mates thanks to my previous post : I'm moving to the Netherlands. After moving around the world for a good 52 months and living in Sweden, Belgium, China and now Germany : I will move to Netherlands, North Holland, Amsterdam.

Now in order to understand why this is such a big step for me I would to to explain to my audience that :

- I don't particularly like my native country and most of its inhabitants.
- I have not met a single Dutch girl that has floated my boat. Ever.
- I have somewhat of a red-neck accent in Dutch. Not that bad, but noticable. Comes from growing up in farm-boy land. Amsterdam people make fun of it usually.
- Enjoying driving is almost impossible. The Dutchies invented the speed camera, after all.
- Housing is stupendously expensive. I will have to move into a place 60% of the size of what I have now and pay twice as much for it.
- I have to turn in my cool D:ER 325 plates and get some yellow ones. And pay 1K for them. Fuck.

Didn't you swear to never ever move back to the Netherlands I hear you ask. And haven't you hated Amsterdam from the age of 10?

Yup, that is true.

Then why the hell am I doing this? Simple : I have found my dream job. End of story. I'm so excited that I am almost ready to explode. What/where/when etc. just ask me privately : but for now I have nothing more to say except that these dudes are going to be colleagues. :-)

Playing a tourist

Seeing as I had an old girlfriend of mine coming to visit me from Madrid this weekend, I had to be a tourist guide in my own home town.

Cool to see what you actaully miss living in a city if you just live there and never really bother with checking out the sights.

Checked out the Dom in Köln, which is very impressive. Saw the German Moesel/Wine Country which was the first time for me. Some parts of that region look like they're lifted straight from a fairy tale. Walked around the whole of Düsseldorf. All while enjoying nice weather with lots of sun. Global warming causes this you say? Let me rip off my catalyst and we can have a nice couple of WEs in November too! :-)

Anyway, it was a very nice/calm weekend. The next one will be the mark of my housewarming/house cooling. All at the same time.

That is right kids, Niek is moving again. To where? I dare not say yet, but that it will come as a shock, that is certain!

God bless those funny Germans!

Nearly crashed my car as I was so busy laughing, steering and taking this picture. At the same time. :-)

Sideways is the only way

Spend yesterday at Papenburg. A usually closed off to the public Mercedes testing site in the North of Germany.

I put on new front tyres, pumped up my rears to their bursting point and then spend all day Sunday driving around like a loon! At 45 degrees the normal angle :-D

To give you an idea (not allowed to take any pics anymore because of the secrecy agreement -> many prototypes are being tested there), here's a vid taken a few years back of the group of people I was with. It's taken at the same track. Even if you don't like cars, it's a great film!

Click me

In the beginning I had a few 120 kms per hour crashes into the sand box, but after being told to :

"Take it easier, you crazy idiot!"

......I slowed down a bit and felt the edges of the art of driving sideways slowly instead of just going for it with the enthousiasm of a fat kid in a chocolate shop. It went a lot better after that.

Fuel burned, tyres destroyed and perma-grin affixed. Life is GREAT!