Don’t cry on the running… wine!

It might be a better year than I would think…

During the last trip from the old to the new place using backpack and trolley I managed to crack a Bulgarian wine bottle bottom that was in the top of the backpack, certainly not wrapped good enough.

That spilled one liter red wine in the backpack and the floor of the room where I moved but I have been lucky for a few reasons:

• the wine filtered slowly from the backpack and I managed to contained it to a relatively small area and then managed to clean the floor pretty fast;
• the floor was not covered by carpet or similar, but wood floor easy to clean;
• I could retrieve all the parts of the bottle without cutting myself;
• in the backpack there were no clothes, no Aikido keikogi or my hakama, no official papers, no computer related stuff or electronics;
• that was supposed to be the last trip of the backpack us I could stick it immediately in the washing machine together with only other washable thing stained by wine: a small pillow that if it doesn’t get clean will be disposed of without many regrets!
• I found paper, towel and floor cleaning stuff to clean and especially remove the wine smell, not so welcome for my first night there.

So I am sad I could not taste that wine but I might go back to Bulgaria this year again for Kuribayashi sensei seminar.. a good excuse! Get more wine there and later today (still few large things to move and do the cleaning) enjoy the mess in my new room for the next few months!

I AMsterdam

On the move again.. it makes me thing to my past transfers for either work reasons, studying, or just interest:

1. Biella (Italy) to Trondheim (Norway)
2. Trondheim to Oslo
3. Oslo to Stavanger
4. Stavanger to Hefei (China)
5. Hefei to Shenzhen
6. Shenzhen to Biella again, looking for a job in Germany, but it did not work out and it ended up as:
7. Biella to Utrecht (Netherlands)

..and now we got:

• (8) Utrecht to Amsterdam

…another little step, quite natural, given that most of the time I went out in the evenings it was in Amsterdam and I already practice in Aikido Amsterdam dojo!

“8” is a lucky number in China (in East Asia in general I think..) but not especially for me, since this one will not be the last move.. I can predict 2 more internal in Amsterdam, and it is the first time I move inside a city! 🙂 One is already totally organized (beginning of January), from East to De Pijp, both extremely nice areas in Amsterdam, and the second has a time label (end of April) but not yet a destination and I really hope to find a more permanent location (I’d love to stay longer in one of these 2 areas, but my hopes are not high).

I cannot make strong predictions about my future but I certainly hope and plan to spend the coming year in Amsterdam and know much better this interesting city.

For now, I’ve started my second move inside the city…

I Am(Will)sterdam… sort of! 🙂

 

Farewell to a window on Autumn

Shy of two years, I bid farewell to my place in Utrecht.