Bagel Belly Blog

The build up to Apachecon

I deliberately arrived a little early for Apachecon this year, so I could take part in the annual Dutch celebration, Koninginnedag. I was here for it last year, and it was tremendous fun. This year was no different. The night before was spent running round the city drinking in the atmosphere (and just a little bit of beer), and the following day was spent shuffling through the crowds and marveling at how good the Dutch are at partying.

Someone foolishly nominated me as Apache tour guide du jour since my 6 months here last year means I should somewhat still know my way around (thanks Thom), so given the challenge of "8 people; somewhere to sit, somewhere to eat, somewhere to drink", we fought our way across the city to the Vondelpark, taking in the crazy scenes on Leidsegracht and the ridiculously packed Leidesplein en route. We chilled in the park for a while, soaking up the sun, before taking on the challenge of finding somewhere to eat on the busiest day of the year.

Heinekenplein seemed like a good plan, and I headed for the ribs venue from last year's Cocoon GetTogether. Bad choice! The food there has definitely deteriorated since last time. Although there were plenty of seats, after sampling the food it was easy to understand why. After the food we were all somewhat exhausted, so it was time to head back to the train station via a few more tourist sights.

When I got back to the hotel, there was just time to fire off a few shots out of the window before collapsing into bed. My favourite is below, and I'll try to get a better version this evening. For now, it's back to polishing my presentation for Friday, Web 2.0 with Cocoon 2.2. And trying to make sure Cocoon 2.2 works!

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