Penny from Heaven meet

Attending: Adrian Chadd, Ben, Daniel, Eelco, Ingvar, Jeremy Stark, Jeroen, Jeroen B., Kimberley, Leo, Martin, Menno, Michel, Patrick, Penny, Rachel Coleman, Roach, Rolf, Skud, Tom, Uwe

Uwe & Rolf's view of the meet, including their pictures.

As some people may be aware of, Penny Parkin, longtime US afper, had moved to the right side of the Atlantic a few months ago. Now since she had a fair few friends in the Netherlands she expressed a wish to come to a Dutch AFP meet and muggins here promised to organise one.No sooner said then done --I wish!

After consulting agendas, looking for a suitable date at which the most people could be present, it was decided to hold it the 7th of october. Since I did not have the crashspace available to accomodate the huge number of people expected to come the meet, I decide to get Patrick "turtle" Dersjant involved, being blessed with a spacious flat as he is. In the end, even that didn't turn out to be enough, so Leo had to put up some afpers as well. Thank you very much, guys.

It seems a little bit more people were interested in coming over to see Penny then I had bargained for and we ended up with a truly international meet, having one American, loads of cloggies, two Germans, one Belgian, one Swede, two Australians and several UK types over, which was nice.

Penny arrived the friday before the meet, so I picked her up from Schiphol and we went for dinner with Kimberley, where she would be staying and Patrick. When we got to the pub the two of them were reading the just come out, hot of the press latest Discworld book, The Truth. It had just become available that day in the Netherlands and they hadn't told me! The swines!

So guess what I did the morning of the meet, before going to pick up various people from the airport: that's right, going into the local bookstore to get a few copies. Laden with copies, I then went back to Schiphol to wait for the arrival of Ingvar and Skud, coming from Sweden plus Ben and Rachel, traveling from the UK. From there it was off to the meeting point in the pub in Leiden, but not before Skud had made some touristy pictures of Leiden canals.

The meet consisted of two parts: a visit to the Asterix exhibition in the Rijks Museum van Oudheden followed by the usual dinner in the Noordend pub.

The Asterix exhibition was okay, not as good as it could've been, but then the museum was renovating at that time which also meant it was gratis that day, always a good thing. Mostly aimed at children it offered an overview of the way people really lived in the time of Asterix, as did the books which this exhibiton was based upon.

Meandering throught he museum, we eventually ended at the exit, where Kimberley and Rachel where playing the "Tour de Europe" game, throwing slightly larger than normal dice around and trying to answers questions like "what's the capitol of Denmark?". Riveting as this was, we found ourselves outside and on our way to the pub not long after. For a moment it seemed that Penny was lost, but it turned out she had looked at the museum's normal exhibits as well, located one floor higher.

Premeet done and over with, the group went back to the pub to wait for the arrival of various people and dinner. The usual topics were talked about, chocolate was present in huge quantities thanks to Patrick as were various geek toys.

During dinner, where we were forced to split in three groups, more geeking happened and the infamous brown envelopes where once again handed out the unsuspecting multitudes. Also given away was the infamous Book, which went to Jeremey, for punning above and beyond the call of duty. But the biggest suprise was for Skud, who got called to the pub's phone, although she hadn't given the number to anybody...

It turned out that Adrian had seen Skud would be at the meet and hoped to be there as well, but didn't know for sure as he only would be back from San Francisco that day. He made it though.

The meet ended somewhere around midnight when people went to their respective crash address. The following day we converged on Patrick's home, for the traditional breakfast. Sadly both Ben and Rachel and Skud and Ingvar had to leave early. For the rest of us, it was over somewhere in the early afternoon. My time at the meet ended at Schiphol, having hitched a ride with Patrick and Penny.

It had been fun.

pictures

	Playing tourist in Leiden: Ben, Skud, Rachel and Ingvar (left to right)		On our way to the Asterix exhibition
	Pub time: Flexor, the Dollies (Uwe and Rolf) and Roach		the #drum corner: Ben, Ingvar, Skud and Tom
	Kimberley and her wingnut		Leo has arrived.
	Penny taking pictures		Dinner: Patrick, Kimberley, Jeremy, Leo and Rachel.
	Penny anticipating the suprises in the Big Brown Envelope		The #drum table: Flexor, Ben, Adrian Chadd, Skud, Tom, Ingvar and Patrick
	Adrian "i just flew in from LA and boy are my arms tired" Chadd and Skud		Edible LEGO is not recommended.
	The Big Brown Envelope was suprisingly resistant to opening		Tom looking very happy with his new toy
	And Eelco is happy too. Rachel is less impressed.		I dare you to take any more pictures.