News from London

Dear all,

Though it took some time to post you a little story about my life, here it finally is. During the last few weeks in Canada Kathryn found herself a teaching job in London, which putted her into the position to travel and discover Europe. As it didn’t make any sense for me to be an ocean apart, I started the search for a thesis in either the Netherlands or the UK. The latter one worked out very well, with Lloyd’s Register facilitating a very interesting master thesis on propeller ice interaction in their London headquarters. Though before the thesis could be started, a lot of things had to happen before. The first priority after arriving back in the Netherlands was to finish up three of the five remaining master courses, clearing the road for the thesis. In the meanwhile of course Sinterklaas, Christmas and New Years had to be celebrated as well, which were very, very joyful days. Being reunited with family and friends again made me quite happy, though it would have even be better if my sweetheart was there to join in the fest as well.
I didn’t had to wait long though before seeing her again, as she arrived on January the 7th in London. Beforehand during the Christmas diner a master plan was forged with my parents to give Kathryn a warm welcome to London, not knowing the cold would attempt to ruin it. For the first time in many, many years Brittan had turned white, and not with a small bit, completely white it was. Due to the snow many airports were closed on the 6th, the day I would fly in. By keeping the head cool however, the flight was swiftly swapped for a Eurostar ticket, still allowing me to arrive in London a day before Kathryn. The next day I hoisted myself in my best suit, bought a bunch of roses and went to Heathrow to collect my sweet love at the arrival gate.
The days thereafter we spent together finding suitable housing for, potentially, the both of us, as I didn’t had confirmation of my thesis at Lloyds by then. The search did show us at least some different parts of London, not all of them were very pretty. A minor car accident later, where the man driving us slipped with his Range Rover slowly into a car in front of us as the road was more an ice skating track, we found ourselves a home we liked. To relax a bit after the search we decided to take a small walk around Hyde Park, as the park closes after sunset. I already had discovered a nice restaurant there before I went to London, pretty close to the Marble Arch. When walking up to the restaurant from the Arch, all of the sudden two Dutch persons came to ask us for directions. It took Kathryn a couple of seconds to realize that those two crazy Dutchies were actually my parents, who just arrived that day in London as well! “I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER!!!” It turned out to be a fabulous and historic evening, with very nice food, quite some drinks and loads of laughter. Some days later I had to return to the Netherlands as well, as the courses were not yet finished.
Back in the Netherlands it was time for the traditional weekend away with the lads from secondary school. I believe we talked as much as we drank that weekend, making it another memorable event. A bit disappointing though was the weather in Gent, which potentially is a nice city. The touring boats there I would strongly misadvise, not only they are boring with nothing interesting to be told, the driver was a complete idiot, incapable of navigating his vessel through the canals, hitting at least three times the bridges. As an happy ending to the day in Gent there was a huge traffic jam in front of the underground parking lot we were in, making it very challenging to drive the heavily loaded car up the ramp without a working handbrake. After some frightening moments, as some expensive cars were closely behind us, we soon discovered the quality of Belgian road signing, it scored a -10 on the scale from 1 to 10. Luckily the navigation on Maarten’s phone directed us, after a couple of circles through town, towards home, were we celebrated a save arriving with an appropriate amount of beer.
A week or two later my beloved girlfriend found her way over to the Netherlands, getting herself introduced to the Brabant culture ;). The train ride over was one through an again wonderful snow covered landscape. As cycling is the best way around in the Netherlands, we grabbed the bikes to discover the council of Ruchphen. Soon to realize that it’s rather hard to get a decent pace while cycling on frozen roads. To show off some Dutch pride I took Kathryn for a drive via the Grevelingendam and Neeltje Jans to the beach in Dishoek, where we enjoyed a lovely walk on the beach. Before we could even realize it, the time was there to say goodbye and see you soon again, as the certainty of me doing my thesis in London grew.
Though the text above doesn’t reflect that too much, the tremendous effort of finishing up the courses paid off with unusual high marks. The road was thereby paved to start of the thesis in London. With good faith that the thesis at Lloyd’s would go on, I departed the Netherlands on the 14th of February, to be reunited with Kathryn. After the hard work of finishing up courses, moving my stuff out of my flat in Delft and clearing them away in my parent’s house, it was time for a short break. Kathryn and I found ourselves, not later than a day after my arrival in London, on board a train to the Peak District, a beautiful national park halfway the British isles. We stayed in a lovely youth hostel in Castleton, a perfect starting point for a couple of hikes through the surrounding mountains. The weather on the first day was absolutely stunning, with partly clouded though clear skies, allowing us to see for miles and miles. The tops of the mountains, especially the northern flanks, were still covered in a thin layer of snow, making the already pretty views simply stunning. As the peak district was formally known for its mining industry, a tour through one of the mines could not be missed upon. A little barge dragged us through the main horizontal shaft, bringing us to a natural cave at least a cathedral tall. Though the last day was drizzly and misty we went out for a walk, exploring the little river valley in which Castleton was situated.
A couple of days after the Peak District I met up with Ms. Burton and Mr. Carlton, my current supervisor at Lloyd’s Register, for an interview. Successively the formal paper process for the thesis was initiated, enabling me to start at the London office on the 22nd of March. The time in between I spent reading up as many articles as possible in the propeller ice interaction field, to get myself acquainted with the theory involved. The weekends were mostly filled with little trips to for example Windsor Castle and Greenwich.
Though celebrated around the World, St. Patrick’s Day in London has something special in our neighbourhood. The area where we live, Kilburn, is the old Irish town inside the city of London. The grand parade went through the city centre the weekend before St. Patricksday and was ended with an Irish party at Trafalgar Square. Our borough had its own parade on the actual day itself, completed with a true Irish after party at the community centre. Completely in style Kathryn wore a green wick to school, resulting is some strange looks from the kids, though they all agreed with me that she looked absolute cute with it!
For our spring break we took an easy jet to Edinburgh, a magnificent city on the sea half way up Scotland. Unmistakably present is the castle, standing firm above the city. The visit provided some shelter for the ferocious cold wind, raging straight through our wind tight jackets. The day after we climbed together with Manon, a lovely girl from Reunion Island, Arthurs seat, a rural mountain in the middle of town. The views from up there were spectacular, reaching far in the famous and snow covered Highlands. After the hike we intended to grab a quick bite and visit a museum afterwards, though soon we found ourselves enjoying a fabulous lunch in an Italian restaurant, lasting for roughly two and a half hours. The next day we spent strawling through the city, just having a peak everywhere, anxiously waiting for the upcoming ghost tour that night. Edinburg in that sense truly is a ghosted city, as was very well explained by our enthusiastic P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island, Canada) tour guide. Early in the next morning we flew back to London, where we had just a couple of days to prepare ourselves for the next trip to the Netherlands.
Main reason to return to the Netherlands was the birthday celebration of our most prominent member (after granny of course) of the family, our uncle Jos Vroegrijk van de Zeg ;). I managed to squeeze in a meeting with my professors at the MARIN in Wageningen, to discuss the progress of the thesis. After the meeting, I took Kathryn out for dinner to the amazing tapas restaurant Toledo, where we had celebrated Irene’s graduation as well. The food there was simply amazing, with a well balanced mix of cold and warm tapas. The birthday celebration of Jos was Kathryn first encounter with the sheer size of the Vroegrijk family, so many happy new faces at once. Luckily Kathryn found a “partner in crime” in Jaap, as it was his first time as well. The set up of the party was such that we started out with a traditional Dutch lunch, followed by a competition with typical old Dutch games. As a closure of the day, we boarded a small cruise through the Biesbos, a former river delta and a beautiful nature area. To digest all those impressions we celebrated my birthday that evening with a tomato-whine bouillon fondue, of course accompanied with a goodly amount of whine and true Scottish whisky, freshly brought over from Edinburgh. After the vivid visit we found our way back home to London again, accompanied with one of my bicycles, as the life of a Dutchman is incomplete without his iron horse.
Kathryn had another week of holidays left, she had planned a short city break to Oslo. Her first two days were really enjoyable, though soon she discovered that a grim cloud of ash would cause total chaos in European airspace, paralyzing all air traffic for at least a week. As she had already seen enough of the city and didn’t want to miss out on too many days of work, she decided to travel overland back to London. This exhausting and expensive journey will be remembered for many, many years, though not only on a bad way. On her journey she met up with a business man called Mike, with who she could share joy and grief, a nice bond was forged between the two them.
As we share a common passion for walking we decided to join the London Ramblers for a 24 kilometre walk from Sandwich to Dover. The group was enormous with 30 walkers that day, which however is still only a fraction of the 1000 members. Seeing the white cliffs from so up close was magnificent, in spite the fact that there was little time to enjoy it, as the pace was beating on. Though there was some clouds it was bright enough to see main land Europe across the channel. The view displayed the sad reality of the global economic crisis, with my maritime heart beating, very little shipping was going on, on the channel...the busiest shipping route of the world. At the end of the walk we had just enough time to down a quick pint in the pub, no better way to end a lovely day.
Meanwhile the work on the thesis continued progressively, resulting in some interesting findings in open literature. The chosen route for the thesis of course had to be discussed with the exam board, scheduled on the 12th of May. As this date was in the middle of a working week for Kathryn she was unable to come along to the Netherlands, as some revenue had to be made to enable future travel plans. The two hour long meeting with the board was very informative and positive, as the board supported the suggested solution paths completely. Time was then there to help the parents out with some computer problem caused by McAfee. Though time consuming, the quickest way of resolving that problem was to build in my own computer in theirs, by basically swapping the internal parts. Time was too short to completely reinstall theirs, as a very important meeting laid ahead. Dennis had invited us, the lads from secondary school, over to his new apartment in Nijmegen, for a delicious lunch and dinner accompanied with a goodly amount of beers. The return to London afterwards was a heavy one, when the weight of the backpack is considered. As Kathryn fell in love with Dutch appelstroop and hagelslag a serious amount stocked in the backpack, together with a package of speculaas and some Douwe Egberds coffee.
Last weekend we had a very relaxing weekend with almost tropical temperatures in London. When I went over to London I hold it for almost impossible to have true clear skies here, though the weather has been amazing the last couple days. Temperatures this weekend raised up to 30 degrees, making it very nice to stretch out a blanket in the park and plan a bit of the summer holidays, which if all goes well are bringing us to the Italian Dolomites. More on that and further developments in the study and of course the trips we are doing here will follow.

Bye for now, I’ll write you soon,
Erik