February 7, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
It was Hanno’s birthday last week and he reached an age that was obviously hurting him just a bit. Yes, finally Hanno reached 40. I’ve been teasing him just a bit about that, because it obviously gets to him just a bit that he’s left his innocent 30s behind. Hanno is an eternal student who also fits as many as possible sporting activities into any one weekend as is humanly possible. Whenever I ask him what he had been up to over the past weekend I get a list of activities that simply exhausts me, just by listening to it. Skating, squash, cycling, running, sailing, wakeboarding (whatever that may be), paragliding, skiing, snowboarding, if there is any activity that’s popular with 20 year olds, then Hanno will be doing that with gusto. Except of course now he is twice that age.
To comfort him a bit, and also to congratulate him on reaching this very mature age, I decided to treat him to a dinner, so after work and my own sporting activities (swimming), I went over to his place in my old neighbourhood and we walked to Restaurant Duvel (named after a famous Belgian beer) where we had a very nice meal and talked about all kinds of things… whilst carefully trying to avoid mentioning the number forty.
The picture was taken as I cycled home after the meal. The full moon was shining over the solidly frozen canals and Amsterdam simply looked beautiful, almost picture perfect. There were no more skaters on Keizersgracht (picture above) but Prinsengracht still had some people out on skates on it.
