Brussels

Last Sunday, I went to Brussels (Belgium) with some friends from ESTEC. We went by car and took a bit more than 2 hours to get there from Leiden. Our intention was to visit the city in a relax way and to see the most important places and enjoy the local food and drink ;-)

Some of the places we passed by are:

-The Royal Palace



-The central square full of ancient and beautiful buildings


-The Manneken Pis. Thanks to Andrea for his sense of humour ;-)



-The European Parliament



- This is the full group in the European Parliament. From left to right: Andrea, Alvaro, Marco, Davide, Ilaria, Laura, Diego and Daniel.



The last place we visited was the Atomium, one of the most famous symbols of the city. I expected to find a 2-3 metres high structure and instead I found a huge and magnificent monument! Really nice surprise!! A really beautiful place which was superb with the sunset light...




Of course, we enjoyed the good things in Belgium!!

-The beer!



-And the chocolate!!



A really nice day in company of nice people! ;-)

Kinderdijk

Today, I have been visiting Kinderdijk, a windmill park located south of Rotterdam. This place was declared World Heritage by UNESCO in 1997, and yes, it is well deserved.

It is a perfect example of the struggle Dutch have with the sea to maintain their country without water being most of it below sea level. It is composed of 19 different windmills and from some positions, most of them can be seen together. When you arrive there, you found hundreds of tourists and many windmills... Have a look at this picture to get the point:



There are three kind of windmills; circular thatched, octogonal thatched and like this one:



Without any doubt, the most beautiful aspect of the park is the perspectives the windmills create together with the rivers and canals. Enjoy some of them now! I think these are some of the most beautiful pictures I took today.

The peacock in ESTEC

One of the most curious things in ESTEC is the peacock which wanders around out of the main building. There are many legends and nobody knows why it is there. Is there a male and a female peacock or is there only one? Nobody knows...

Davide's birthday

Last Tuesday, 9th October, was Davide's birthday. For those who do not know, Davide is my office mate Manuela's boyfriend. ;-)



I was invited to their home and enjoyed an extremely good Italian dinner!! Manuela's mother had come from Sicily and she cooked delicious Italian/Sicilian food:
1st dish: Pasta called "Spaccatella al burro"
2nd dish: "Cotolette di Pollo"
3rd dish: "Gamberoni con Salamariglio"
+ Birthday cake and nice wine to accompany the dishes

IMPRESSIVE!!



The dinner was too good and so was the evening. Next day, I couldn't have breakfast and dinner but it was well worth it!



To end, Davide, "Buon compleanno! Auguri!"

TEC-ETM Dinner

Monday last week, all the microwave section of ESTEC gathered together for a non-related-to-work dinner. Of course, some people couldn't come... the head of section amongst them.



We went to an Indian restaurant in Noordwijkerhout, this is, in the middle of nowhere. The food was good and the environment ended up being nice. I was worried about that. Getting together all these people from different countries (many from the North of Europe) has some risks... and it can be really boring... but it wasn't.




Now it is time for important news. After one year of fruitful work in the microwave section, I have decided to move to another section in order to complement my training period here. The chosen section has been Antennas! After much thinking, I have taken the plunge and asked for a section change. So, maybe this dinner was my last time with all these people at the same time. It has been a pleasure to have been working with you!! "Que les vaya bonito!"

And the miracle occurred!!

Nice way of starting a Sunday...

Rugby World Cup. Quarter Final Day 1

Today, I have watched the two quarter final matches of the Rugby World Cup... The teams playing were Australia-England and New Zealand-France. The supremacy of the teams from the Southern Hemisphere has been clear in the last years and Australia and new Zealand were the two big favourites to become world champions.

I started being interested in rugby after my stay in Toulouse from February to August 2005. That year the team of the city, Stade Toulousain, won the European Cup and played the final of the French league. Of course, I supported the team with my local friends and after that, I started liking it! However brutal it looks, it is quite a noble game.

Well, today Europe proved to the world that rugby here is not dead. England defeated Australia and France did the same with New Zealand!! Unbelievable...

They have won because they know how to compete and try everything to win... that's what is missing in Spanish football national team. Congrats to these two great teams and to the other two, as well, for the great show displayed!!

3rd October

This week the main annual festival in Leiden has been held. Dutch were celebrating Spanish left the country after the War of the Eighty Years and we Spanish celebrated we moved to a warmer and nicer country ;-)

Well, the thing is Leiden become a chaos in terms of transportation, sleeping at night, etc... but gained quite a lot in night life! The "big night" was from Tuesday to Wednesday and we started with a birthday party at Paula's home. The birthdays we were celebrating were Ana's and Paula's, my fellow Spanish Trainees at ESTEC. After that and having drunk many cocktails, we moved to the big party... and went to bed really late...





The real pain was waking up early next morning to go to work at ESTEC. In Noordwijk, where ESTEC is located, it wasn't a local holiday!

It was funny, coz on 3rd October at ESTEC, all the food was traditional Dutch food:

-Starter: Haring -- raw fish with some onion and sometimes accompanied with bread



- Main dish: Hutspot -- historical dish consisting of potatoes, carrots and onions puree, altogether. The legend says that they got this from a Spanish camp once the Spanish left the siege of Leiden. As they were hungry after the siege they ate it on the original 3rd October... For a more rigorous explanation go here.



- Dessert: Vla -- like Spanish "natillas" but a bit denser



Back to Leiden, I didn't take any pictures of the streets at all... but I still have some I took last year! It looks like the typical "fiestas del pueblo"... hehe...

50 years of space

4th October 1957 will be regarded forever as the start of the space age. Add 50 years to that date, and yes! it is today! That day the Soviets managed to launch the Sputnik 1 satellite and make it work in orbit. It was the beginning of the dream: satellites for telecom, navigation, Earth observation came later. A few years later, the focus turned to humans in Space: Gagarin, Tereshkova, Apollo 11... The first man in space was Gagarin on 12th April 1961, but that is to be celebrated in a few years from now... And to complete the list of space age milestones, I shouldn't forget all those probes, rovers and missions to our sister planets in the Solar System!

Check this link out for further information about the Sputnik program.



As expected, NASA and ESA have echoed this 50th anniversary in their websites, and created some sort of special covering the info. Surprisingly, JAXA hasn't... maybe it has to do with the great amount of news from the Selene mission and the lunar orbit injection maneuvre today! Almost everyday there is something going on out there!! If you don't believe it check out this amazing picture of the Earth. It was taken by Selene a few days ago and is the first HDTV picture of the Earth from so far away!

One year in the Netherlands

1st October 2006 was the first time I set foot on the Netherlands. 2nd Oct was my first day at ESTEC. It is already one year since I arrived!! Once again, it is unbelievable to see how fast time passes by...

In this year, I have met many people and done quite a lot of interesting stuff at work... and discovered the bad points of ESTEC: you become friends with someone and they have to live in a few months... being more than one year here means saying farewell to so many people...

Anyway, I think my stay here has been satisfactory so far. I expect the next year, and the last in my contract, will be at least as good as this one.

The worst aspect of being here? ... being far from Naochan, of course...