Eurotrip '08 - Amsterdam, Hague, Munich, etc.

This is a very long entry, nearly 175 selected photos.. Sorry I do not have the time to break it down.. Photos are posted in a chronological order.. almost.

Another trip to the Netherlands.. and Schiphol's "meeting point" still looks funny in red and white.

And this is why I went there.. It was nice to be back in NL again, this time for slightly different reasons.. and working with a new group of people.. an uber awesome bunch of guys.
I stayed in a different city, Den Haag (the Hague).. Never be to Den Haag before this trip.. Never been in a Tram before this trip (except in China), so I had to keep a copy of the tram schedule:

My first weekend arrived, and I did not feel like going outside the city.. at the same time I did not know much about it.. so I put on the tourist's hat and bought what is called The City Pass which is an absolute rip off unless you can manage to get into all the museums of the city before 6PM .. the Sculptures Museums was the best.. I like sculptures.. This was one savage piece.. I spent a lot of time enjoying the details of this one. This one was called "The Impossible".. A week passed quickly.. and next weekend's plan was to fly to Munich. Jeroen and Geoff were kind enough to give me a ride to Schiphol.. I can't remember what/who it was, but must've been otherworldly to turn heads like this ;) Flight to Munich was canceled on Friday evening.. Like I am only flying for a weekend, and delaying the flight one day doesn't really make a lot of sense. I got some stupid compensation vouchers and stayed in the airport's hotel, but the waste of time was a bugger.. anyway, I flew in the next day and delayed my return by one night to fly back to the office on Monday morning. Germany is Germany.. you still go to nice restaurants that don't have English menus.. which is not bad, makes you try to 'interpret' the menu.. I am not sure about the orange juice tho. Like I can buy around two liters of fresh orange juice back home for the price of a glass in there, which is alright.. but the confusing part was the definition of 'glass', which was worth taking a picture of.. the glass was served less than half full, and Its taste wasn't magical.. it was normal orange juice.. Some classic subway photos. .Like her reflection.. And closer.. and then to the streets.. Vid and Viola.. first time to meet them in person. Very nice people.. captured in some cozy restaurant they invited us to. It was a very short trip.. but a nice one nonetheless. I am sure I will pay Munich another visit one day. I flew back to Amsterdam on Monday morning, arrived around 8:30 and missed the train by 3minutes.. can't joke with train schedules out there.. I arrived one hour late to the office, we had some training kicking off that day. All team members from around the world were present.. some new faces to me as well. It was house full, and Lex organized Tapas dinner for the group in Gouda. Paul was the lucky man sitting opposite to me.. I'm expecting a spare camera battery from him, cheers dude! And I only had to put him out of focus when funny faces started to pop up and focus on more interesting people. Not sure what Ahmad was trying to tell Kjeld here but he didn't seem very friendly pointing his figure this way ;) Lex.. the man! And our friends from the Italian office.. I went to the little boys room, and the door was broken so I kinda had to keep holding it. I saw this note on the outside door as I was getting out.. for some reason I felt like taking a photo of it and ask what does it mean.. it said that the door is broken, so lock the outside door.. and of course if you don't know how to read dutch you will keep holding the door instead. Funny also how they put 'H' and 'D' to indicate if it's a Gents or Ladies room, makes me always try to recall train stations announcements that start with "dames en heren" so I remember that H is the door that I must chose.
Last round was for some good deserts.

Which were gone in seconds.. It did not bother me that candle light grabbed the auto focus of the lens, this was one of my favorite shots that evening.. I even put it as my Uber's page background. And then back to the Hague.. Part of the training attendees, Euan's personal assistants.. Ernie and his new bud, the dude is specialized in Middle Eastern projects. Company lunch in the canteen.. In the tram, to the central station, to Amsterdam.. Jamal came to visit whilst I was in the Netherlands, it was so cool of him to come over.. a touristic shot for him in the Dam Square. there were lots of pigeons .. hungry pigeons.. and there is always some dude who walks into your frame.. and poses like he's taking a .... between the pigeons. more and more tourists stepped in.. but there was this cute little girl posing in front of her dad's camera (and mine too).. it was funny when a pigeon landed on her arm.. pigeons like nice little ones. A wide angle shot.. Meeting some famous people at Madame Tussauds'.. Jamal plugged himself well in Van Gogh's painting.. But after sometime, it became boring to shoot still people.. so I found this dude pausing for quite long time in front of some figures whilst people waiting for him to walk away so they can take pictures with the wax! And here he was giving Lenny Kravitz some admiring looks. some old dude touching Mon Lisa's hand in a creepy way.. and back to the streets.. This dude in red didn't like me taking a photo of him, he raised the bag and started blabbing. I was shooting graffiti, he walked into my frame.. We spent sometime in Den Haag as well, we rented some sexy bicycles and went out following maps.. they had some seriously giant sculptures by the sea.. and we reached a spot in Scheveingen (oh yeah, it's a damn difficult word to read for the first time), almost everything was not allowed in there! No wonder it was deserted..
My royal ride.. It was funny were the dump was positioned right next to the door.. the question is: was this dump produced before or after getting in the car? the two guys below looked completely wasted walking towards us, one of them saw the camera and asked me to take a picture of them.. they didn't even asked for a preview or to have a copy of the photo, they just went away after the shot.. a very important pose. How often do you see an empty McDonald's in this freaky way.. their clown must've eaten all the little kids. I saw this book in one bookstore, she looked so much like Jainita and she was surprised when I sent her the photo.. J is in Japan right now.. and I am jealous. Captured from the backseat of Geoff's car..The sun came out warm in the last couple of days after lots of rain.. everyone was out and the beach was packed. some tan for some nice legs.. and some prefer to tan their snow white bellies.. Kissing on the run.. under the sun.. but not everyone was happy..
you can tell from the shadow how I was holding the camera ;) It was so funny to see this after few days!! lots of bicycles.. typical dutch. Beautiful people on sidewalk cafes.. the waiter spotted me, I only noticed that after I looked at the photo.. This shot is my favorite, the capturing of the image was so special to me, everything was done in fractions of a second, i did not have a lot of time to think.. otherwise i would've missed the kiss within this sidewalk rhapsody, lots of details, best viewed full size.. shot from the hip, 28mm f/3.2 at 1/400sec. Converted to BW using Chennel Mixer on CS2 and few burns to emboss details. I am submitting this photo to Uber's Street Photography Contest
shooting with the lens wide open at f/1.8 28mm is actually quite wide.. I wonder how would it perform on a full frame sensor or an analogue body. Last day of the training.. Donovan (The Dark Warrior) thinks that he's not photogenic.. what do you think? ;) Prospects.. her real name is Myprospects.. and she is a very nice mate from our South African office.. Prospects and Fatima.. And Mr. Denre.. Lex is always cheerful.. high spirit and with a smile. This can be an official corporate photo ;) I like the shades in the next shot.. the rest of photos are all thanks to Fatima. We had no plans for our last evening, until I knew from Fatima that some South American Carnival was kicking off in Rotterdam. From the tram.. on the way to the central station, to Rotterdam! so long.. ;) In Rotterdam, the Carinval was actually the next day but some drums battle was taking place that evening.. some shots on the way to the main street where the event was held. hmm.. cool bike! I couldn't get too close to the stage, I wasn't expecting a stage anyway.. and I did not need to be close to the stage.. I had a lot of people around me, so I was listening to the beats whilst taking lots of photos.. it was so crowded.. the presentation was all in dutch so I didn't know why everyone was clapping.. some quite out-of-context audience were there.. white hair, and a suit.. in a drums battle?! and then it started to get darker.. and some people got bored waiting for the winners announcement.. Apparently lots of people were happy for the winners..
I thought one only does such moves in rock concerts.. check out the T-shirt ;) Dancing drunk.. like nobody's watching.. This was past midnight.. It was kinda chilly, she didn't want to take her hand outside his pocket.. We had to go back to get some sleep I still did not pack my stuff at that time and we were still in Rotterdam.. It was so damn annoying to get out of the bed the next morning.. Jamal was very emotional on the way to Schiphol airport.. he did not want to leave =) Schiphol.. where lost people walk forward and look behind them.Train tickets for the whole family.. her shot.. and my lost shot =)
Thank you if you checked out all the photos up until this line.. I will try to make my future posts shorter. I am off on vacation in less than 24 hours.. which means more photos in September.. Stay tuned and take care until then.