Members of the Czech team came to visit us

Left2Right: Mirek, me, Lenka & Robin

On Saturday evening three Czech ex-collegues and colleague (now all frieds) came all the way from the Czech Republic (one way is equal to 9 hours!) to see us. They were exactly on time thanks to the navigators (Lenka and an electronic GPS based). They brought us so many gifts: a wonderful album with printed pictures (which I started browsing through immediately), some batiked scarfs and a lovely tie, two bottles of Fernet (one of them filled with transparent liquid called “8000”), a bottle of Becherovka and a bunch of flowers. Unfortunately I  forgot to tell them that I can’t drink any alcohol in combination with the anti-epileptics (that I must take for the rest of life) so I’m afraid that I will have to give Mirek’s gifts away to other friends.

Why I was working in the Czech Republic in the first place you may wonder? I was ordered by my Dutch boss to setup a branch office in the Czech Republic (2001). I was appointed Director of this Czech branch office and was responsible for e.g. recruitment and finance. I numbered all my employees. I was number one and I recruited number two (Hana Jakobova, the Company Secretary). So also Robin and Lenka and Mirek. I guess they were respectively numbers 7, 15 and 5 and recruited by me. I remember clearly that we from time to time organized ‘fernet parties’ in the office where we used to mix coca-cola with fernet. I was often drunk these days :-).

Robin introduced me to moutain climbing. Although I was used to walking in the Swiss moutains with my parents (we visited Swiserland very often) to Robin that was kidsplay! We therefore first climbed to the summit of Mt. Snezka (real time webcamera’s can be seen here: http://kamery.humlnet.cz/en/videa/snezka/20090701 ), the highest ‘peak’ of the Czech Republic (1602 metres above sea level). Robin must have been impressed with my climbing so in September 2003 we went to the summit of highest mountain of the Slovak Republic: Mt. Gerlach of the High Tratras (2655 metres above sea level). You can find my Picasa (version 3) album here: Gerlachovsky stit

In the evening we went to restaurant Pieck in Haarlem. This used to be our favorite restaurant years ago because of the speed at which they serve you, the friendly ambiance and the quality food. Both ‘Pieck’ brothers are still running the show but don’t have their act together anymore. Pity. I wish we had dinner in the opposite restaurant Metzo instead. Dear friends, thanks for your visit!!