Gone Camping

Greetings from the back of my camper van. At the moment, the back of my camper van is parked at a former socialist youth camp in The Netherlands. (To avoid confusion, the front of my camper van is parked about three feet in front of the back of my camper van.)

Starting on Thursday, the campsite will be hosting HAR 2009. As of today, the campsite is hosting a lot of tent pitching and placing of wireless hubs in trees.

We came over on the Dover-Calais ferry on Thursday evening and got as far as Brugge before camping out in a motorway service station car park. (Not as awful as you'd think -- Belgian motorway service stations have 24-hour facilities including showers.) Come Friday morning, the rest of the drive was reasonably easy.

The most exciting event at the campsite so far has been the arrival from Germany of the first shipment of Club-Mate. This stuff is as close as you can get to a European version of Mountain Dew -- highly caffeinated, not particularly nice tasting, faintly revolting as a concept, but strangely addictive. You should try some. You know you want to.