Europe 2012- Days 31-44: Lazy Days

Monday Nathan and Ken decided to leave us. They went up to Amsterdam for a couple nights and then rented a car to go visit some family down in Southern Germany.  

I walked Nathan and Ken to the train station to say goodbye.

Since all our company left, I haven’t taken trips while Nate is working. I’m just not that adventuresome to go out on my own. Luckily there is a craft store not far away, so I've been able to do some crafts to keep me busy as well.

A card I made, the picture is of the church outside our window

Hard to see in the picture, but these cards have parts that pop up giving it a 3D type effect.

Nathan decided that he wanted to stay home on the weekend to catch up on sleep and just be lazy. We did end up driving up to Amsterdam on Sunday though to exchange our rental car as the trunk had quit working a couple weeks before.

Nathan’s coworker and friend Charlie arrived on Sunday for a week of training, and we went out for dinner with him most nights while he was here.

This last weekend wasn’t so much lazy, but we didn’t go anywhere either. Nathan’s been dealing with an issue at work, and the issue blew up just before the weekend. Nathan didn’t get an e-mail demanding results until late Friday night. Not very many people work at ASML on the weekend, and a fix wasn’t going to just appear, especially since they had already been trying to figure it out for the past 2 weeks. Nathan had 4 conference calls as well as making a powerpoint or two to round out his Saturday, but he was able to make Intel and the local office back at home happy.

Nathan on a conference call.

Sunday there was a marathon here in Eindhoven, and the route went right in front of where we live. There was actually a full marathon, a half marathon, and a 5k for kids. Nathan knew of a couple coworkers who would be running in the half marathon, and told them we would be watching.

Since we were up late Saturday on Skype for my Aunt’s birthday we didn’t get up until just before the 1^st guy crossed the finish line. There was coverage on TV though so we were able to watch it. After eating and getting ready we headed down to the finish line which was close by.

One of the first runners we saw from our window.

Crossing the finish line with a time of 2 hour 5 minutes 46 seconds for the Marathon (a course record and only a couple minutes slower than the world record!)

These are the people from ASML running in the half marathon.

The black line starts their timers when they cross it.

Later we went and watched the start of the half marathon before heading back to the apartment to eat a quick lunch. We were able to get outside in time to see Nate’s coworker run by the Pullman (which is where we are staying) and then we tried to rush over towards the finish line to see him cross. Way more people were out though and the half marathon runners were all so close together it made it difficult to cross their path. It took us almost 20 minutes to get over to the finish line, and he had already crossed.

We watched the first person cross the finish line for the half marathon while eating lunch.

Nate's friend Patrick running past the Pullman (he's the one wearing black shorts)

This was the crowd of people we had to work our way up through on the side, then had to find a gap in the runners.

The finish line area was really crowded and there wasn’t much of a viewing area on the side of the street that we were on. I had to stand on the edge of a temporary fence and hold onto a tree for stability to barely see over the tall Dutch people standing next to me. 

Maps of some of the runs today

At that point we decided to just wander back towards our apartment. Along the way we saw a fresh stroopwafel stand, and I told Nate that he had to try one fresh since he liked the ones from the store so much. . . and they were very good. Just like how a fresh cookie out of the oven is so much better than a cold one.