Avignon, Düsseldorf and all the rest

Song of the summary:
Morcheeba - Bullet proof

It's been a busy three weeks, with an aweful lot of time spent (wasted?) on trains, shuttle-busses, in cars, waiting halls and airplanes.
2 weeks ago, I went on holidays to southern France, to the beautiful greater region of Avignon. The time I spent there - one week with cicadas chirping happily away under the blistering sun, the endulgance of French food and wine and the view of a couple of very good-looking Dutch girls at the camping place's pool - was very relaxing, but too short to truly make me kick back and calm down. I'd have needed another week, better yet two, to actually come back with batteries recharged ... but I guess you can't have it all.

Last week was spent in Düsseldorf, Germany, on my first "real" field testing trip. Of course there was the field testing I did in January, which got me into this job in the first place, but this is the first one where I actually went on a trip, working with all the tools and as internal. Unfortunately, the trip was overshadowed by me suffering from diarrhea attacks throughout the whole week, only getting slightly better on Thursday afternoon. The aftereffects caught up with me on Saturday, when I spent the entire day in transit to my parents' place feeling sick to the stomach and suffering from a bad headache, both most likely due to dehydration and lack of minerals in my body from the diarrhea.
Still, the trip was good as an experience to how they it works, and I enjoyed Thursday night, when we went out for a little D'dorf night-life - I can recommend the club 3001, Thursday's event "Milchbar" was enjoyable in the music selection, and the high percentage of good-looking to make-me-drool-hawt girls quite stunning - and Friday afternoon and evening, when I went to see S in Cologne and had a great dinner at a Chinese buffet and drinks at the Früh brewery house, before being showered quite badly on the way back to her place and watching Inside Man, quite an enjoyable movie.
Saturday, as I already mentionned, had me in bad shape and was mostly spent in transit to my parents' place, where I arrive only roughly 4 hours later than originally planned thanks to train delays which resulted in missed connecting trains.

Today wasn't much different in that it was mostly spent in transit as well, but my overall fitness was much better after some good food - mothers are the best cooks, hands down - and well-needed rest. Now I'm back to Tampere, and tomorrow it'll be back to the aquarium and following up on 2 weeks of neglected bugs. Let's hope they were only neglected by me...

Ta-taa.