Rusty cycling legs

Well Tuesday was strange as I would have been travelling back to Salym if it hadn't been all over...I could just imagine Florian making his way over, arriving at the MU hotel, and exactly who was sitting with him on the coach to BC. I hear he arrived safely which is good news.

Tuesday afternoon I had a meeting scheduled with my mentor so I spent the (late) morning writing up all my thoughts and opportunity framing my life :-) The meeting went well and was very useful-some questions answers, more found and some plans starting to form.

After the meeting I hung out in the learning centre and came across Damir, who was about to set off exploring for his new hotel. His booking had got messed up so he had been sharing with with Sergey R-just like the Good Old Days on the rig, though with a rather more transparent bathroom!
The new NH hotel he is now booked into seemed to be really close to my flat so we travelled together and found out where it was-All I did was go away for 8 months and came back to a new-look central station, a new hotel in my area and an unrecognisable tram route!

In the evening I nipped over to Allison and Malcolm's and caught up with Allison, Gracie Wuff and Malcolm when he got home later, which was lovely. All-in-all a good day...

Yesterday, I had a meeting scheduled with my discipline chief after lunch, so headed in early for a girly lunch which Allison had told me about-fun to catch up with some of the girls before setting off for more serious career discussions. By the way, I have no idea how anyone can arrange a new job AND keep working on their current project-it is all rather time-consuming!

The meeting went OK, and a chat with a manager I know afterwards meant that I now have a guaranteed job on return, and an interesting on too, although it doesn't fully fit my needs. Good to have a back-up plan though :-) so I am quite happy about that. Progress, enfin!

Next I headed over to the Grand Winston where I was due to meet Tatiana, having originally planned to cycle to the beach. In view of the weather (not good) we decided to go shopping instead :-) After a while though the sun came out, so we went to hire a bike for her from the little man at the station and came back to my flat for a cup of tea. After which we headed out for a pleasant cycle in the Haagse Bos before heading back to the station to meet Alexey and Sergey.





Relaxing on the balcony before our cycling expedition...chai time!








Fun in the Haagse Bos...


...but Alexey was
worried I
might kidnap
Tania...














It was really nice spending time with Tania as she has been learning a bit of English so we could have Russkish conversations and I didn't feel too self-conscious about making all sorts of mistakes...just kept talking away, excellent practice!

We all wound up at Rootz (a must) where we enjoyed sitting outside for a while, before heading inside for dinner and being joined by Damir.






Awww













Double trouble














Damir, what DID you say??















And so you see, when you take the first pretest...















Malchiki...











After a really enjoyable evening I took them back to Centraal Station via the parliament, which is my favourite Den Haag vista, at night with all the lights on...there is a music festival in the Hague at the moment and a stage has been set up on the water in front of the Mauritshuis-must investigate! It looks just too tempting (unless, of course, it starts raining). We randomly ran into 2 American guys who are also on G250 with Alexey and Sergey so ended up for quick last drink on the Plein...at Berger of course.
A Den Haag Classics evening through and through!


Ah yes, and this morning I could really feel my legs :-( admittedly, the cycling was a little difficult to keep up in Siberia...