Barcelona, Spain

January

January was the month of an ice cold Amsterdam, with beautiful frozen canals. It was also when, almost by tradition, I went to Rotterdam for two days for the International Film Festival, staying at the Rotterdam Hilton for a mere 45 euros (65 USD). Most of all, however, it was the month that started in Barcelona. I had flown to the Catalan capital on 30 December (picture above shows Torre Agbar in Barcelona) and I was on the Plaça de Catalunya when the clock reached midnight on New Year's Eve. It was a wonderful and relaxing stay in Barcelona - exactly the reason why I repeated that trip at the end of 2009. Slightly exaggerated, you could say that 2009 was really the year when I lived in Barcelona, with some time in Amsterdam and other places spent in between. No complaints there.

February

The Richard Avedon exposition in FOAM was the best one of the year in either FOAM or Huis Marseille. It was very beautiful, very busy and very inspirational - as can be seen from this month's picture. Photography, of course, has remained my most important hobby. This year I uploaded 3,841 pictures to Flickr.com - much less than last year's 5,340 or 2007's 6,623. It's not that I'm making less pictures (at least I don't think so), it's just that I'm getting pickier with what I upload. This was the year that I switched from taking pictures as JPGs. All pictures taken with my D200 are now in RAW format, and through iTunes podcasts I keep working on my Photoshop skills. My photography will always be a work in progress.

March

March was a relatively busy month of travel. I flew to Glasgow in the middle of the month. We visited my first distillery of the year, Auchentoshan in the west of the city, and met up with Raymond - both equal pleasures in what remains my second home town. I still, after so many years, enjoy going to Glasgow so much. It's not just the brilliant, and much appreciated hospitality of Andy and Colin - it's also the feel of the city, the country, the people (in the latter case not to be taken literally). I always look forward to my next trip even though I am very much aware of the fact that I should not impose myself on my friends' lives too much. The second trip this month was to that other fantastic British city, London. Unfortunately it had to be cut short because of work duties. But, London, with four visits this year, is of course one of my all time favourite travel destinations.

April

I returned from a wonderful weekend with Andy, Colin and David in Canterbury, Kent and a subsequent night with Christophe and Jacques in London, to find my flat in disarray and some miniature bottles of whisky emptied. That was the last straw. Unfortunately things between me and my room mate weren't working out so I asked him to leave. He did so, returning to England, two weeks later - just before Queen's Day. I think it's really a shame things didn't work out because he really wasn't a bad person at all. I hope he's doing well in his new life. Of course, I would never have expected to take in another room mate this year (not after this experience), but yes, less than half a year after one room mate left, Darren, the next one, walked in. Experience with him has been fortunately much, much better. Quite a relief. And despite tragedy elsewhere in the country, Queen's Day in a blissfully unaware Amsterdam, was extremely sunny and very nice.

May

At the end of May I flew to New York City to meet up with Sarah - who spent this summer in the Big Apple. It most certainly was an impulse flight: booked less than 10 days before I actually set foot in Newark Airport. It also turned out to be my only intercontinental flight this year. In fact, this year has once more seen a decrease in my number of flights. I was on board a plane 22 times, with Edinburgh being the highest on the list of destinations (5), followed by London Gatwick (3), Barcelona (2) and as said Newark (1). And that was all! No new destinations this year. In 2006 I flew 55 times, in 2007 it was 38. Last year it was 30 times, so with 22 flights I'm keeping my promise of reducing my carbon footprint. I'm not sure for how much longer I can keep that promise though. This was fairly minimalist, you know...

June

The last couple of days in New York City continued to be great - and it was very exciting to see Sarah there, but the most unforgettable event of the month had to be the London weekend in the middle of the month. I saw the Queen, I was in the audience to see an excellent play in a local theatre, I cycled through central London. The weather was superb, the city was great. It was, in fact, so good that I booked flights for the same weekend next year as soon as they became available. At the end of the month Sarah was in Amsterdam for a brief visit and I met up with her here. Her mood was changing noticeably from slight homesickness to being happy for being in NYC - a mood that continued to change throughout the year. Excellent!

July

While most of the country, or at least that part with children, was abroad for their summer holidays, I spent most of this hot month in Amsterdam, with only one weekend off to Glasgow. In Scotland we went for a bike ride along the river Clyde and we met up with Raymond for drinks in the Three Judges after he had very kindly gotten us tickets to see the Doctor Who exhibition in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. I got back to Amsterdam to find out that smoking was once more allowed in Spijker, for the most adorable maintenance guy to come and check the flat's hot water system, to watch people getting absolutely soaked in torrential summer rain storms, to enjoy the city as seen from the outside terrace at De Engel, to prepare the spare bedroom for the arrival of Arno... and to meet Miss Porta Monet (pictured above) as she participated in the Drag Queen Olympics on the very last evening of the year.

August

August was the laziest and most enjoyable month of them all. A beautiful summer Saturday in its first weekend saw a fantastic Gay Pride parade that I watched with many people from the 'Gay Expats' Facebook group. This was of course, after the night of the Drag Queen Olympics (see July). Arno came over from Manchester for what was truly a great weekend. Two weeks later the same group of people gathered for yet another sun-drenched event: a wonderful Hartjesdagen weekend on Zeedijk. It was only a week later that my summer holiday started. I left warm Amsterdam to go to Scotland for a week in Nairn (slightly less warm than Amsterdam as the picture clearly shows) with Colin, Andy and David. Even though the weather wasn't always good, the week in Nairn was absolutely great. We visited distilleries and lovely places close to Nairn and just has a very nice, relaxed week.

September

Three places in the UK that I'd never been to. That was the mission for the first week in September - which was also the second week of my UK summer holiday. Barrow-in-Furness was wet, grey and industrial but still a good experience. The Cumbrian coast and the Ravenglass and Eskdale railway were beautiful, regardless of the weather. Leeds was a magnificent city. I stayed in a brand new hotel and had two great days in this West Yorkshire city. And then there was Aberystwyth - my first ever visit to Wales ended up in a most charming coastal town. Really a pleasure to be there. In the middle of the month I returned to Barcelona with Günter - my second visit to the Catalan capital with him (the first one was in 1997) and again it was a very nice time. Sun, sea, excellent food, and nice company - of course it was good! Oh, and I passed my own whisky test at home at the end of the month.

October

Just before the start of October I turned 43. In the middle of the month, Valentin turned 29 and very kindly invited me to a dinner and subsequent drinks party with a strong French influence, and at the end of the month my mom turned 69 and the entire family was invited to a weekend in Apeldoorn (80 kms east of Amsterdam) where we had a celebration dinner, spent a day in Apeldoorn town, and also a day in Royal Palace Het Loo, just in the outskirts of Apeldoorn. We took many family pictures that, just a couple of weeks later were slightly outdated again after my sister and her girlfriend broke up. Never mind - it was a very nice weekend nonetheless, even though my body was not doing all too well (flu like symptoms - the only health issue, I should add, of 2009).

November

I started my new function on 1 November, although for the first couple of weeks my old job kept peeping around the corner quite a bit. Things started getting very busy. Too busy. I made very long days in the office, worked on part time days and at the end of the month had to cancel a long anticipated weekend to Switzerland (booked before I knew about the new function) because the amount of work on my desk was simply too much. Apart from a weekend in Glasgow at the beginning of the month, I spent quite a bit of time in Amstelveen in November.

December

And so another year is over. As beautiful snow descends over Amsterdam and miraculously stays on the ground for a while, it's time to say goodbye to 2009 and look forward to 2010. Was 2009 a good year? Someone in Spijker asked me to give the year a mark between 0 and 10 and I could only muster a 5... let's say on the generous side of 5. Sure, there were many highlights this year. I've made quite a number of new friends in Amsterdam this year, and with the risk of unintentionally insulting some by not mentioning their names here, it must be said that it was especially nice to spend time with Bart and Michel, with Paul, and with the many 'gay expats' predominantly among them Valentin, Shaun and Ernst... I'm happy and thankful that my existing friendships, both in Amsterdam and in Scotland continued ever as strong as before. I'm happy that things in my family were relatively problem free after some more difficult years and I'm thankful for their support. I did some wonderfully interesting things this year... London, New York, Scotland - to name but a few. And still, and still. 2009 was not a good year because, more than in many previous year, I missed the love and affection a relationship could and should give me. More than many years in the past, I've actually felt lonely on too many occasions. It's not something that can be helped, and it's not something that anyone can do anything about, but it is something that has coloured this year too blue too often. Especially with work being so demanding (another trip, to Scotland this time, was cancelled by me because of work pressure in December - without my Glaswegian friends even knowing that I would have been in Scotland) it is sometimes very difficult and frustrating... that defeatist feeling of 'what am I doing all this for?'... or 'what is the point?'. If anything, I hope that 2010 will give new direction in my life, mostly in that respect. To find a point again. And to share that point with someone special.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

There's a Dutch saying that goes "de laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst", meaning that the last of a series of tasks become harder and harder to do. The dead batteries in the picture above symbolise perfectly how I feel about work these days. It's not getting any easier to drag myself to the office. I've put a lot of effort in my new job, but I still seem far away from getting any rewards from it. The number of things on my to-do list is overwhelming... and a bit scary. I stayed in the office until 6:45 today and decided that this would be the last day in Amstelveen this year. I'm still working tomorrow but that will be working from home. Just as productive, but more comfortable.

Another reason to work from home tomorrow came from the sky. As I cycled to Spijker at around 9:30, just after a phone call with Andy and Colin, for my last couple of drinks this year, there was already some light snow falling. During my stay in Spijker the world turned completely white though. Cycling home was a bit slippery but my mood was way too giddy to care. The idea of working from home does that to you.