live from the netherlands

i just arrived in the netherlands. my flight from austin to houston was delayed but didn't make me miss my flight from houston to amsterdam. it was a 10h 40min flight and i slept for about 7 hours of it, which was ideal. going through customs was depressing. the lines for eu passports was way shorter than the line for all the other passports. i need to get my irish passport asap so i get to go through the shorter lines (passport applications are separate from citizenship applications). after customs, i took a train from the airport to delpt. the conference organizers suggested there were three ways one could then get from the train station in delpt to the hotel: one of the organizers would take you if one of them was there, you could take a cab or you could walk. since the hotel was only 2.8km (1.8mi) from the train station, i decided to walk figuring that i would be able to see more of the city that way. the picture to the right is taken from one of the footbridges that crosses one of the many canals in the city. except for the last 400m or so of the walk, i was alongside canals the whole time. i took my time walking, partly because my bags were heavy and partly because i was trying to absorb everything. there are lots of windows here, and they're big windows too. i'm not sure if there is some energy-related reason for this, but i like it. at some point i started realizing how heavy my bags were, and conveniently, three people walked up beside me and asked if i was attending the conference. turns out they were from one of the labs at michigan and one of them was a teammate of mine from college! one of the guys graciously offered to carry my duffel bag the last bit of the way, which my shoulders and i greatly appreciated. i got checked into the hotel uneventfully, but just realized that i need an outlet adaptor for my computer. oops. the conference officially starts tomorrow and i'm excited to here what people are doing.