Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Amsterdam Marathon: the moments before the moment of truth

I’d been building up to this event for a while. Organising this, Eroica and Humphrey Institute of
Music II nearly pushed me over the project management edge. However, when I gathered the forces of Nelmes Athletic in the Eurostar departure hall we looked a pretty formidable outfit. I doubt that many proper athletics clubs were fielding ten runners spanning all three distances.

The Eurostar trip was pretty much faultless and we arrived as Brussels Midi more or less on time. There followed a comedic relay back and forth between platform 13a and 5b. Nobody was entirely sure which trains were running and which we were allowed on but eventually we got onto the fast train to Amsterdam. They were using ‘fast’ in the same way that they do south of Oxford – to mean slow. In some ways it was a relief to see that foreign trains don’t work either.

Amsterdam Central is an island in a sea of tracks – rail tracks on one side and tram tracks on the other. We however opted for a taxi to our apartment – a place with the unprepossessing name of Mori Bund. The owner is a conceptual artist focusing mostly on boobs

After an expensive and low-volume meal and a few glasses of wine at Sogno Nina and I went on a long walk looking for Lidl before turning in for the night. 

We had a nice slow start on Saturday. I visited the Vincent Van Gogh museum (which I really enjoyed) and had a Vegetarian Pie which was mostly cheese for lunch. Only at about 9pm did I finally manage to track down a significant quantity of pasta.

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