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.

After wandering through Old Town and visiting Mary King’s Close yesterday we decided to go to Holyrood park and climb up on Arthur’s Seat today. During our last holiday here we both hadn’t been well enough to get to the top. But we were determined to make it this time.

The weather seemed to be on our side and pampered us with a blue sky and sun shine. But we forgot about the wind. The higher we climbed up the stronger the wind got. When we finally reached the peak it felt like being caught in a storm. Silke had a real hard time to take some nice photos because gusts of wind kept shaking the camera. But she managed to get a decent shot of the Salisbury Crags and the castle nevertheless.

Although the view was spectacular we didn’t linger for long because the wind was quite unpleasant. When we were back down we decided that we had earned a treat after this ordeal.

We started for New Town to visit the Plaisir du Chocolat, our favourite cafe in Edinburgh. But when we arrived there about an hour later we were deeply disappointed. The cafe which had been relocated to Thistle Street during the last year was closed … hopefully only for redecoration.

After a break in the Great Grog bar we took a walk through New Town and finally had dinner at The Sizzling Scot which was opened to our delight.

After a short break we continued our trip to the Pinar de Tamadaba. When we finally arrived at the ring road through the forrest we parked the cark and began to climb the peak of Montaña de Tamadaba. It was hot as usual and the trees didn’t provide as much shade as we had hoped for. But in the end we made it all the way to the top. We were rewarded with an incredible view of the forrest, the Roque Nublo …

… and Tenerife.

We didn’t stay up there for long because the sun was still roasting us without mercy. As usual the way down was much easier.

After two hours of driving over mountain roads with lots and lots of serpentines we stopped for lunch at the restaurant La Candelilla. As we weren’t even close to our destination yet we changed our plans and settled on visiting the nearby Roque Nublo. The Roque Nublo is a 64 metre tall basalt monolith. It was created by volcanic activity over 3 million years ago.

The landscape in the mountains was spectacular. We grabbed a bottle of water and began the climb up the rocky path.

The air was hot and smelled intensely of pines. Altogether it felt like walking in a dry sauna until we were above the treeline. The landscape up there reminded me of pictures of the surface of the moon.

Another quarter of an hour later we finally reached the Roque Nublo. The view from up there was worth the effort. I was very happy that altitude sickness didn’t stop me this time.

After a few minutes we made our way back to the car park. Down there we bought a few bottles of mineral water because we had gotten very thirsty in the meantime. After a short break we drove back to the Hotel in good spirits.