The weather was really good for this late in the year. It mostly rained during the night and the sun was shining during the day. Silke and I seized the opportunity and went on extensive walks with our dog Vader. This was an excellent way to enjoy the stunning scenery. As I probably couldn’t find adequate words to describe it I’ll simply let the pictures do the talking.

In the following week we moved on to a dairy farm near Carlisle. From there we went on several excursions of Hadrian’s Wall’s.

Our dog Vader loved these adventure walks. He was almost flying up the hills.

If only his humans wouldn’t ask him to stand still for a photograph all the time.

Considering that it was early November we actually had very good weather. We took advantage of that and went on long walks with our dog Vader. He loved all the new locations full of exciting smells. He was constantly running up and down the hills and must have made at least twice our mileage.

We also visited the fishing ports in Polperro (very nice fish and chips in The Wheelhouse) and Looe (excellent Cornish Pasties in The Pasty Shop).

Back in our Cottage we enjoyed relaxing evenings in front of the fireplace.

Our week in Cornwall seemed to go by much too quickly. But at least we returned home happy and very relaxed.

On the way to the hotel we noticed that Madeira is very mountainous and features much more luscious vegetation than the Canary Islands.

This is due to the rainy climate in the mountains which provides ample water that is distributed over the island via levadas.

After relaxing in Funchal for two days Silke and I finally went on our first tour of the island. We decided to drive to Ribeiro Frio to visit the Laurisilva forest. When we arrived up there we gained first hand experience with the humid climate in Madeira’s mountains.

When we got sufficiently wet we drove to Ponta de São Lourenço, the east end of Madeira. There at sea level the weather was much nicer. The view on the Atlantic Ocean was splendid.

Two days later we had forgotten about the rains in the mountains and went on another tour, this time to Rabaçal. When we arrived there the weather was allright and the view was stunning.

But while we were walking down into the valley it started to rain lightly. We carried on nevertheless and decided to follow the path to the 25 Fountains, it was only 2.5km after all. But the path was narrow, steep and muddy and slippery from the rain. It tooks over an hour of effort to finally get there. But the spectacle at the destination was well worth it.

After enjoying the view for a few minutes we set off on the laborious way back to our car. When we finally arrived there we were happy to get out of the rain and being able to sit down.

On our last day on Madeira Silke and I took it easy. We granted our sore legs a day with little activities and a massage to loosen the stiff muscles. We felt slightly sad when we had to leave the island the day after. We really liked it on Madeira and are considering to come back outside the rainy season to explore the rest of the island.

I attended a presentation about the Native IPv6 deployment at XS4ALL and Silke learned how to brew beer. We even found time to leave the camping site and visited the nearby towns Vierhouten and Nunspeet. We especially liked the Pannkoekehuis Likkepot in Vierhouten where you can get an astonishing wide range of sweet and savoury pancakes. Those we tried were delicious. The rest of time we mostly hung out in the BSD tent, …

… talked to people and even got a bit of hacking done.

The four days spun away and on Sunday morning it was time to take down our tent and carry all our belongings back to the car. After a final meal of tasty pancakes we drove back to Hoek van Holland to catch the ferry back to England. We arrived in Cambridge the next morning, a bit tired but relaxed and in good humour.

Unfortunately the daily grind caught up us with very quickly. We had a rough week and were very happy when we made it to the weekend. But after a refreshing sunday afternoon tea at Peacocks Tearoom and a nice walk along the river Great Ouse things look much better now.

We hope this spot will also keep our tent dry in case of rain. Talking about rain: so far the weather is much nicer (fingers crossed and touch wood) than during What The Hack … probably because Silke and I are better prepared.

After setting up the tent and fetching all our stuff (too much as usual) from the car in the external car park we finally had time to roam through the camp. During our walk we met some old friends, bought the obligatory t-shirts, browsed the display of the book shop and finally had a nice dinner.

Silke and I dedicated our recent trip to the art of Claude Monet. We started by visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie which reopened in 2006 after seven years of renovation. Here we could finally see Monet’s magnificent paintings of the Water Lilies. For Silke a dream came true. While she had already seen other smaller paintings of the Water Lilies before she really wanted to see the eight tremendous canvases in the Musée de l’Orangerie.

The next day we went on a trip to Giverny a picturesque village in the Normandy. Claude Monet moved to a country estate in Giverny in 1883 and bought it in 1890. With the help of his family he planted a beautiful garden on the property. Monet spent most of his remaining life there and made his home world famous by painting the water lilies in his water garden. Silke and I were curios to see what the garden looked like which inspired Monet that much. When we got there we began to understand.

You can really feel the ambiance and tranquility that his garden has. And it would be even better if it wasn’t full of tourists.

What else did Silke and I do in Paris? We visited several parks, walked along boulevards, went shopping at Fauchon, Betjeman and Barton and the Galeries Lafayette and enjoyed a lot of very good food. But there are still so many places in Paris that we want to see.

Our next destination was the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The museum is an impressive building from 1881. But the exhibits are even more remarkable. You can view fossils of dinosaurs and other extinct animals and even the enormous 30 metre long skeleton of a blue whale. As the museum is much too large to see everything during a single visit we will definitely have to go back there.

Our last stop was the cafe and restaurant The Wolseley where Silke and I planned to have our first Wiener Schnitzel in years. While our dinner there was a tad on the pricey side it was well worth it as the food from starters to dessert was delicious. And the Schnitzel was one of the best I ever had.

Well fed (or perhaps too well fed) and happy after a day full of discoveries we skipped a couple of tube stations before finally hopping on and then taking the train home to Cambridge.

Setting up a network was quite a challenge back then. We had to fight with software problems (lack of congestion control in Amiga Envoy, unfinished IP routing support in the Linux kernel), hardware problems (Commodore ARCnet cards with the wrong network chip), cabling problems (too many long Thin Ethernet cables, sometimes mixed with a rogue RG59 cable) and power outages (too many desktop computers and CRT monitors). But when it was finally working we could enjoy a permanent, fast Internet connection which was quite a luxury at that time.

Fifteen years after the first event another MeKa took place last weekend. A lot has changed since the early days. The attendance has gone down and the average age of the participants up. There are still a few Amiga computers (among a lot of notebooks and the odd and often exotic desktop) but it is no longer about them. It is now a reunion of a bunch of old friends who only manage to stay in touch via e-mail or IRC for most of the year. But for one weekend in January we all come to Karlsruhe and meet again.

Over the years a fair number of NetBSD developers have joined the ranks. Just like in the previous years we managed to organize a BSD dinner on Saturday and Silke and I were happy to meet a few NetBSD developers for the first time.

Over the years there have only been two problems with MeKa:

1. It is always over too soon.
2. You never get enough sleep.

But well … that never stopped us from coming back the next year.

On Saturday we visited the York Minster, the impressive church on the northern fringe of the city centre. There was no way to get a complete photo so a partial will have to do.

The next morning we toured the National Railway Museum. There are a lot of famous trains on display in the museum including Queen Victoria’s carriage and the Mallard, the allegedly fastest steam locomotive of the world.

Hungry and a bit tired from exploring the museum for hours we had a really nice lunch break in Bettys Café Tea Rooms. After another walk through the city centre we set out to drive home -  and just in time as it started raining.