There used to be pictures... Only they messed up my coding big time

[heleentje]

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but there was a Torchwood Meet-up in Utrecht yesterday, and I figured: hey, why not?

So off I went. Took the train in Mechelen at 8:40 (the one we call 'den Amsterdammer', the train from Brussels to Amsterdam) and stayed on it till Rotterdam. In Rotterdam I had 10 minutes to change trains, seven of which I spent running around the station, because apparently drinking a liter of water on the train really makes you want to use a toilet. Got onto the next train with two minutes to spare and spent that trainride listening in on some Chinese people gossiping about foreign people. (I think they caught on I could understand them when they went 'Foreign people are ugly' and I went 'Hey!').

I arrived at Utrecht station around 11:30 and met up with the rest of the group almost immediately, thanks to the sign and the infamous 'Ianto Lives' T-shirt. All in all, we ended up with eight people. I was, as I'd expected, the only person from Belgium, but there were also people from Finland and Australia, so we were a pretty international bunch. We decided on English as Lingua Franca, which actually made it a lot easier to talk about all Torchwood-related stuff. It just doesn't work in Dutch.

Despite the forecasts, the weather actually behaved itself most of the time (meaning I didn't have to expose my trusty umbrella to the wind). We went to an Irish pub, where we spent most of the afternoon gossiping and fangirling about Torchwood (obviously), Doctor Who, Harry Potter (Yes, Remus died), Merlin and pretty much everything else there was to talk about. Had an absolutely brilliant time, though I suspect the pub people wanted us to get out after an hour or two ^^

Afterwards we went to a bookstore (which had quite a bit of English stuff but sadly no Torchwood books), a few CD stores and generally just spent some time wandering around, before heading back to the station, where we spent some more time gossiping in a pub. After a while some people had to catch their train. I stayed for a bit longer and went to find something to eat, but finally also went to catch the train because otherwise I'd only be home after ten and there wouldn't be any buses anymore. Passed by Schiphol, had some guy look at me really strangely and decided I liked Zaventem better than Schiphol after all, and spent another two hours on the train to Mechelen.

All in all, absolutely BRILLIANT, I had a great time and next time I'm definitely going to go again!
 

Also went to see the new HP movie today. I liked it overall, definitely much better build-up for the Harry/Ginny thing than in the books, and Luna was awesome, but I'm sad that they left out the final battle with the Death Eaters in Hogwarts. Now it was just: 'Kill Dumbledore and run!'

And judging by the final scene, someone on the writing staff REALLY hates Ron. Geez...