Hot on the heels of the last thrilling instalment, it gives me stupendous pleasure to bring you Amsterdam: The French Free-for-all!

Bénédicte invited me to accompany her on a weekend jaunt to the Netherlands. She was going to be catching up with old work friends of hers, one of whom (Kim) I met when she was briefly in Munich in December. I took Bénédicte up on her offer, and decided to combine this with a visit to my friend Simon in The Hague. I had hoped to catch up with my own old work friend Jan, but he was out of town that weekend.

So we got up hideously early and made our way to Munich airport, where check-in proceeded smoothly. We had a bit of time before boarding, so we had a quick coffee to try & wake up. Then we sauntered to our gate, only to be glared at by the ground staff! The lady claimed that we had been called by name three times already, but I swear I didn't hear our flight being mentioned once, let alone our names. I think my unruffled demeanour got right under her skin. Tee hee!

The plane was super-tiny, but thankfully they had left a seat empty between us, so we could both sort-of sleep all the way to Schiphol. I woke up at the baggage reclaim though, as I had no baggage to reclaim!

My heart sank as I thought of the stress of possibly never seeing my bag again; that fine, sturdy, aubergine rolly companion on so many of my most memorable voyages, including the topless ramble through the forests around Station Km. 154 in Karelia, north of St Petersburg. Not forgetting when I went all around the world in five weeks (hitting four continents in seven days) back in '01, where my little Samsonite gem held enough gear for two weddings and a beach holiday.

So it was with relief tinged with irkedness that I saw my bag (and several others) spat out of the conveyor mechanism through the judicious prodding of a big red button by a ground services dude to whom I had just reported the loss. Our flight being so small, they hadn't deigned to put our luggage on a proper ring conveyor; instead, we had to make to with a stubby old piece of crap in the corner. And someone had simply not waited long enough before turning the machine off. Pchuh!

Anyway, I digress. Kim met us outside the airport and drove us to her house in Haarlem. After a bottle of champagne to get us going, we walked into the town centre to do a spot of shopping and sightseeing. Ah! The chips! Slathered with satay sauce, they were a delight to the tastebuds if not the eye; the sauce looked as though it had recently emerged from the posterior of a baby with intestinal problems. Yum!

After a coffee on the sixth floor of the biggest department store, from where we had a view out to the dunes and the coast, we caught a train to the suburb of Amsterdam where Bénédicte used to work at Diageo, the big brewer. There we made our way to their headquarters building, which has a built-in bar for the use of staff - how handy! Bénédicte revelled in the luxury of drinking & smoking indoors, a pleasure denied her in Munich since the start of the year, while Kim & I got to know each other better and met Bénédicte's old colleagues, who were a very pleasant lot.

We were joined there by two friends of Bénédicte who she knows from previous jobs, Mélodie and Natalie, and several cocktails later the four of us, plus one of Bénédicte's old contacts from Africa, headed into the Nieuwe Markt area of Amsterdam in search of a bite to eat. We found a Thai restaurant that was still willing to serve us (it was 10.30pm, which I supposed is quite late for food, but at the time I was a little miffed that open restaurants were so thin on the ground), which turned out to be really rather tasty. And after the meal, the three of us caught a train back to Haarlem & a taxi back to Kim's.

On Saturday morning - which felt pleasantly like Sunday, thanks to our arriving on Friday already, with the comfort of having an extra Sunday to look forward to, if you know what I mean - Kim got us some breakfast ready in her lovely small house that reminded me of English terraced houses, only somehow a little bit smaller; the house gave me a bit of an Alice In Wonderland feeling, as if I had just grown bigger than my surroundings.

After a relaxed breakfast we walked into town again, this time heading straight for the Grote Markt and the DEEEELICIOUS fresh stroopwafel stand there! Oh my GOD I was in Heaven!!! I absolutely adore stroopwafels (for the incognoscenti - and yes, I know that word doesn't exist - or didn't until just now - but it should - and the meaning is clear - stroopwafels are those round thin wafers with a layer of syrup sandwiched in between) but these were better than any I had tasted before. Not only was the syrup flavoursome, but the waffles themselves were crispy. I watched as the wafflemaker spread syrup onto one wafer with a big spatula, then pressed the other half into place and popped the creation onto the counter before him. Oh what joy to behold! But I am secretly pleased with myself for stopping after one (albeit a giant überwafel); I did however buy six packs "for my friends", that I did actually give away most of.

I left the girls to do some more shopping and headed to the railway station. There I caught a train to The Hague and went to visit Simon. I hadn't seen him since a year before, when he came to visit me in Munich just after New Year 2007. There was a lot to catch up on, but also lots of time for the catching up. We went out for dinner at Va Piano, which was almost identical to the one in Munich in setup and quality. They do a mean bruschetta!

After dinner we went to the cinema to watch My Blueberry Nights, which had had good reviews when we looked online earlier. I liked the sound of the cast: Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman, and Rachel Weisz. They all put in great performances too, even Norah in her film debut, but the best performance was by David Strathairn, who I hadn't heard of before. But sadly, in spite of these star turns, the film was poor. There just wasn't enough story progression, so it ended up being a series of vignettes rather than a coherent whole.

On Sunday, after a spot of breakfast, it was time to say farewell to Simon and head back to Haarlem, where I went straight to the café that Bénédicte had booked for lunch. The place held a whole room for our group, which was most kind of them. And by and by the room filled up with friends & friends of friends, until - several bottles of wine later - it was quite a throng. Bénédicte & I sadly had to head off to the airport in the early evening, but it had been an excellent long afternoon of eating, drinking, and merrymaking.

We caught a bus to the airport, where again check-in was straightforward. But I have to say Schiphol leaves a lot to be desired in terms of Sunday-evening food & beverage options! We ended up traipsing up & down various wings of the building in search of a drink, only to be forced in the end to head back to where we started and buy something from a kiosk! How crap! In a petty act of revenge, we stole loads of sugars from one of the unmanned bars nearer our departure gate. I didn't feel much the better for it, but it was something.

Christian was a sweetie and met us at Munich airport, dropping Bénédicte off at her car and then taking me home.

And thus ends the story of a Dutch long weekend. Praise be to cheap international air travel.

Another weekend, another city: this time Christian & I drove up to visit Ben & Es in Berlin. We stayed in their grungy student-style flat in the grungy studenty edge of formerly up-and-coming and now officially arrived Prenzlauer Berg area of town, which is where I remember visiting my friend Caroline from uni when I had to come to Berlin on business for Powergen in the dim & distant past. She was living right in the beating heart of the Prenzlberg, and the feel of the place is little changed even in ten years!

It pissed with rain the whole time. No, really! We arrived in pouring rain, we ran through showers to get to the tram into town, where we walked bedrizzled from the Hackesche Höfe to the Bode Museum. There we escaped the elements to enjoy a selection of religious art and artefacts from around the world and through time. It was almost not raining when we came out and headed back to the girls' flat (via a huge cinema that was yawningly empty to pick up tickets for I Am Legend - well, it WAS a rainy afternoon).

Strengthened by a dürüm döner and some Efes Pilsner, we ventured forth into the sodden streets of the city, back to the now utterly overflowing cinema - good job we got our tickets beforehand! - to watch I Am Legend. What a pile of rubbish! The original short story is SO good, but here the whole point of it has been twisted into pretty much the opposite of what it should be. The end product is gripping in parts but largely moving-clouds cinema (where you might as well be lying on a grassy knoll watching clouds pass by for all the excitement in the film).

A few cocktails rounded off the day nicely, and we slunk back to the girls' flat to shuck off our wet clothes and crawl into bed.

Sunday was no drier than Saturday, but just as much fun. We spent many hours over an Arab brunch buffet in one of Berlin's seemingly endless supply of run-down hearths of funkiness, before retiring to the flat, borrowed DVD in hand, to lounge about, read, chat, drink tea, and do other studenty things. The film (The Deaths of, erm, somebody-or-other, it's really not important) started off with promise but slid quickly into mediocrity. Luckily the take-away Thai food made up for that. And then a round of a Pictionary-like boardgame to test our skills (Christian & Es beat me & Ben).

Berlin is an incredible city of contrasts: by far Germany's biggest city, and yet probably the cheapest to live in; super-duper-trendy and yet agreeably bohemian and alternative; a melting-pot of cultures unrivalled in Germany; damn cool! And, in a country with a birth rate way below the level to sustain the current population, Prenzlauer Berg (taken on its own) has the highest birth rate in EUROPE! It's all the yuppy couples that are busily sprucing the place up, of course, attracted by the city-centre chic of an area of town that benefited from fifty years of post-war neglect. But somehow, despite frenzied renovation, it retains its flair. Remarkable.

On Monday Christian & I headed into the centre of town (yes, we got wet on the way to the S-Bahn station) to meet Caro at the Starbuck's just opposite the Brandenburg Gate. It was so nice to see her again! We were supposed to meet on Saturday, but she was ill. Now we only had her lunchbreak's worth of time to catch up, but somehow we managed it and then, before I realised what was going on really, we were on the motorway heading back down to Bavaria. Where - of course - they'd just had a GLORIOUS sunny weekend. Tant pis!

The rain, our leitmotiv for the Berlin trip, cleared just about at the border between the old East and West Germany, where there's a funky motorway service station built entirely on a bridge over the Autobahn. We stopped for a bite to eat and were, it has to be said, mightily disappointed by the fare on offer, especially comparing it to the excellent food we had in a services a few kilometres away that you can sadly only get to when heading north. But the building was a bit of fun - and it made a nice change not to get wet outdoors.