3000km through Netherlands & Belgium

The Idea: with a bunch of coresystems employee, we visit some partners all around europe with our old volkswagen bus. This is kult, it makes fun, we can learn a lot, we get some feedback from existing customers, and hopefully get some more fans 🙂

11th of June 2012 we started our Trip with the old Volkswagen Bus from the Year 1966 in direction Holland.
Honestly we were not highly convinced that we will make it even to Holland, because this Bus just broke down the other week, when we visited some customers in the Italian Part of Switzerland (Ticino)

However, Lukas, Fabienne and me started our Trip – first day a little bit more than 600km! Everything went well, but it was a loooong journey.
In these 600km were also able to work, because we had a 220 Volt LKW Battery with us. Of course we also had WLAN, which made it like a almost-normal working day 😉 Just before the border, we also took some trampers with us from Amsterdam. I think they were quite high and had sooo much fun when Lukas played his Tetris Song.

The first evening we already had a appointment with our of our Partners. We were all very exhausted from the long ride and happy to be in Bed later on. This was not the only evening we actually had to drink. The dutch partners loved to go out with us. And believe me, after a point you just cannot drink any other beer anymore and you are happy when you are allowed to order a water without gas 🙂 It is not only the drinking, but also the sleep which is not long enough and of course the long journey to go to the next customer. But of course it was fun… and successful. We visited every day another city… and make it per coincidence on the weekend to Amsterdam 😉 2 days off – almost! Friday, when we arrived in Amsterdam, we were dead tired and we preferred the SPA Area in our Hotel instead of drinking and partying in city. However, Saturday morning Fabienne and me started with a huge breakfast buffet, including champagne. haha… maybe we get used to the drinking eventually. The saturday we spent with shopping, a nice boatride and looking for some nice orange (dutch) Accessoires for our “Bulli” In the evening we went to a party, in our of the most famous clubs: The Melkweg (http://www.melkweg.nl) there was also a concert from a guy called: Nik van der Berg (http://www.nikvandenberg.com/) it was amazing! We still try to get a CD from him….
Sunday morning, time to work and use the more or less stable WLAN in the Hotel. Later on we drove to Brussels. We intend on watching the last Holland Game in Brussels – at least there is more going on than in the city we actually have our appointment on Monday. In Brussels we missed the first half because I showed my colleagues THE Bar (http://www.deliriumcafe.be/) 2000 different beers. Okay, I confess: we actually like the beer by now 😉 Monday-Wednesday we spent in few other cities in Belgium. It was completely different than Holland, a little bit more chilled out. The way back from Brussels to Windisch was again more than 600km. Unfortunately we begun our way back a little bit too late, because we also wanted to see the Atomium (see picture underneath)  The last night we wanted to spend in Luxembourg. We didn’t book any hotel and we arrived quite late. Everything fully booked.. that’s why we spent our last evening in a crappy hotel in crappy town in France. At 11 PM there was nothing else open than McDonalds. Too bad…

Thursday, 21st June – it was again a long way back to our headquarter in Switzerland. But we managed to be back punctually for the usual Thursday after-work beer 😉 The trip was amazing but also very exhausting. luckily my next trip starts around 24 hours later to BCN 😉

Atomium, Brussels