Archive for the ‘On the road’ Category

Getting back on my list of My Stupidities of 2010 Part 1 and Part 2; it’s time to wrap it up on the final day of the year.

Stupidity Number 3:

When flying back from Amsterdam to Phnom Penh I had a really bad flight on the first leg to Kuala Lumpur. I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane, making me this totally tired traveler walking around Kuala Lumpur International Airport on my way to the gate for the next flight to Phnom Penh. I sat down right next to the entrance, almost being able to touch the security x-ray machines and fall asleep.

Only to wake up hours later in a totally deserted area. The screens were showing how my connecting flight had already left an hour ago! Stupid me! Did nobody see that sleeping guy next to the gate’s entrance? My luggage was taken off the flight, but I guess nobody bothered to wake me up to ask if I needed to be on that flight. It wasn’t that I was not at the gate or something.

Oh bummer! So I went to the desk of the airline, where they told me that I had indeed missed my flight. My luggage could be picked up at the handling station downstairs and I could get on a next flight – the next morning! That wasn’t going to work out for me at all, as I was supposed to arrive in Phnom Penh today. Seriously, my cat was on that flight to Phnom Penh and I wasn’t! I HAD to be in Phnom Penh today to pick up this pretty jet lagged cat and feed him something!

So I stormed to the desk of AirAsia, knowing that they still had a flight scheduled for later in the afternoon. I paid some $60 for this flight, got the tickets and a ride to the other airport. As AirAsia didn’t actually fly from Kuala Lumpur Int Airport, but from some smaller air field about 30km out of town. Oh well! I made it. Arrived in Phnom Penh before nightfall and got my cat safely from the cargo terminal. Before finally heading home.

Lesson learned: do never fall asleep before boarding time of your air plane. It doesn’t matter if you are at the gate or not…

Stupidity Number 4:

It’s less of a big story, but how stupid could I be earlier this year. I was about to visit a friend of mine in the North of The Netherlands and enjoy some festival for a few days. Before taking off I had to fill up the gas tank of my car for this ride. At the gas station they told me their pin-machine was broken and they could only accept cash.

No problem, so I drove to an ATM and got myself €70 of cash. That could easily save me for a few days up North too. I took my card back, jumped back into my car and headed back to the gas station. Once there I looked into my wallet and – right! I didn’t take the money from the machine!

I guess I was so excited for this 2.5 hours drive and the coming week, that I totally forgot to take out that €70 from the ATM! I did drive back to the machine, but I guess I made someone else very happy with my donation. I had to get another €70 from the machine and felt so bloody stupid.

Stupidity Conclusion:

From all these big stupidities of mine in the last year I now can draw a few conclusions: 3 out of 4 stupidities end up with me in a car.
All of them involve some form of transport or traveling.

I traveled quite a bit in 2010 and I won’t stop doing that in 2011 for sure, but I do now know that I should eliminate driving a car as much as I can in 2011. It just makes me do stupid things.

Really.

The following event can be mapped at the top of the most stupid things I have done myself in this year, as the number two on My Stupidities of 2010, following number one which took place in Australia during a road trip with my best friend Antal in our van named Jack.

Stupidity Number 2:

Let’s stay in Australia, because that trip was quite an adventure. Every night we’d ride into an unknown town to find a place to camp. Most times it was at commercial caravan parks, but sometimes we could also just park our van in a communal park that also provided shower and toilets.

Perfect.
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The research for the European Cooking Trip has taken over one year now. My intern Laura Duhme has created a giant marketing communication plan on which she successfully graduated. The locations in the various countries were carefully selected on historic background, accessibility and the variety of the surroundings.

In the last week of August 2010 it came to a test phase of this trip: I traveled through Europe to calculate the distances in real time, meet the locals that are going to give the cooking courses in each country and visit the appropriate accommodations for my future clients.

I didn’t go on this test drive in the van that will be used during the final trips, I drove it in my small Seat Marbella Fun from 1995, which got quite some comments from my friends. “That car won’t even make it to France!”.

With Paris, France, as the starting point, I drove down the toll roads south into the Dordogne, a département in the south-west of France.

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Last weekend I was a little kid again. Well, a little kid with a giant dream.

At the Wunderland Kalkar in Germany, a former nuclear power plant – which took 15 years to build and cost over 8 billion euros until new politicians decided to never ever use it and take it down – I was able to get into the former cooling tower and go into a giant swing.

Who doesn’t want to do this:

(video by my brother)

The rest of the Wunderland is not worth anything. Not your visit, your attention and nor your money. It used to be a prime resort for all-inclusive accommodations, but it lost its gardeners and painters and looks like it’s about to go bankrupt anytime soon.

This makes it a sort of Neverland, actually!

It was the ultimate Australian Road Trip ever: in April and May of 2010 I traveled from Perth (West Coast) to Sydney (East Coast) in a Mazda E2000 campervan named Jack, with my best friend Antal.

This is what the dashboard camera filmed.