time flies....

Tuesday afternoon, my weekend started one hour ago, when I landed safely at Amsterdam again. I had 2 shorts flight this morning, to Paris and back, which in dutch you can subscribe as 'het betere gooi- en smijtwerk'. Not even 50 minutes for the full service on a fully booked flight, with just 3 cabin attendants and 1 purser.
Together with my purser Rein, who had his last european flight week, I had a great week. We started last Thursday going to Helsinki, followed by another nightstop at Milano. The other days it was flying back and forward to Boekarest, Paris, Oslo and Paris again.

As this was Rein his last week in Europe, he will become sr purser on intercontinental flights, we had to celebrate (there is always a good excuse to do one drink after work). Although late arriving in Helsinki, about midnight local time, I ended up with Rein and the co-pilot in the hotelbar, where it looked like the locals had some kind of drinking contest. Speaking about getting drunk.... they invented this in Helsinki I think. After closing of the bar we wanted to go to the Helsinki club, called Helkinki club by my purser of last week. We quickly grabbed our coats upstairs, took the elevator down, the doors opened and.... it looked like we ended up in some kind of bad movie. The bar had closed and the drunken locals were waiting for their taxis. Meanwhile they were crawling all over each other, hugging, kissing, 2 guys with one girl, whatever.... Not such a bad sight, I have to admit, but the average age of the filmstars was about 50 years old... yak! Anyway, too drunk and too busy to notice that I took their cab, we ended up in front of a closed club. After walking around and asking in some bars, they all advised us to go to Lady Moon, a name which gave me the feeling I was going to enter a striptease club. Wrong! After some small and dark stairs we ended up in a dark basement, at least 10 years old house music, and drunken teenagers everywhere.... One after one they were falling down, and stayed there. After dancing on Michael Jackson music and started to have some fun, the slow music started as a sign that the club was closing. I asked the DJ to play some dutch DJ Tiesto for our purser Rein, but unfortunately it was not on his playlist. So there was nothing else that we could do than to dance the 3 of us in a big embracement on this slow music until the lights were switched on.
Most probably you will imagine that I haven't seen that much of the city of Helsinki the next day. I just went out for 2 hours, did some shopping and walked along the harbour.

Via Amsterdam we flew to Milano, where, again, we had to celebrate that this was going to be Rein his last night stop in Europe. He took me and my colleague CA out for a nice drink in a perfect lounge bar. Sipping our Mojito's, having some appetizers, we came to the conclusion that this is a good life, one evening in Helsinki, 24 hours later in Milano.... And everywhere you can have fun in your own way, it's just what you make of it.
The next morning I woke up too early, as I forgot to change my timezone on my alarmclock, which meant I had one extra hour to spend in Milano. While taking a quick look out of my window, I discovered that the street in front of our hotel was packed with people due to a local market, hooray! I stepped outside, wandered around, took a look at all the local vegetables, meat and cheeses and was surprised by all the designer stuff they sold. Did you ever buy shoes for 169 euros on a market?? Well, you can! I loved it!! The sun was shining, trees had blossems, I smelled fresh basil and heard italian all around me. I realized again why I love Italy so much....

But.... now I'm back in Amsterdam again, back home..... No plans ahead for the following days. Depending on the weather I just want to relax, take some rest, wander around in Amsterdam, slowly getting adjusted to my new environment.
Although not completely finished, I do feel quite at ease in 'my new place', due to some small things that I bought and my mum made.

This Saturday late afternoon I start flying again, to Rome and back and from Sunday on, I will be gone again for 4 nights on a row, visiting Madrid, Berlin, Glasgow and Geneva.
Did I mention already that in May I will mainly fly intercontinental? First again to Bahrain and San Francisco (Golden Gate bridge here I come!), later that month to Teheran, wow! This is going to be a culture shock that I really want to experience! For example, after disembarking the aircraft we have to use our scarf belonging to the uniform, for covering up our hair. We will get special clothes from the hotel to cover up the shape of our body. Only at our own crew floor of the hotel we are allowed to wear western clothes... Unfortunately the chances are big that I'm not even allowed to leave the hotel, which is a shame, as what I've read about Teheran there are many sites worth visiting.

This afternoon, during our break in Paris, I made a quick tour with the co-pilot around our aircraft just to check if everything was ok. I made some cool photo's, also one of me in the motor, but they will have to wait untill I will visit my parents again, where I have the possibility to upload them on my blog. I'm sure they will be accompanied by some lovely pictures of my cities of next week!

To end this long story (sorry, you all know me by now), I'm having a great time doing this work. I really LOVE to work with people again, make people smile. Physically the work is tough, strange hours of work and a lot of heavy weights and bending, so I have to be careful with that. But the flexible hours, all the different destinations, different colleagues... it's awesome!