World of Jop

Hallo from Holland, where the summer really starting now. In three days the Dutch Team will play its first match against Servie Montengro for the World-Cup. This matches always bring a lot of social activities; friends will gather in houses or pubs and watch the match together while drinking some beers. Victory will result in euphoric, collective, orange-coloured utterances of hapiness as described in a previous posting.

My personal day was less euphoric, I must admit, as I managed to fail second time for my driving test. As such it is no disgrace at all, as these tests here (like all kind of tests where you can get licenses and stuff) are among world-widest hardest, but of course I am quite sick of it. Would it be yesterday, I would have blamed the date (06-06-06 is supposed to be a day of evil, I heard, as six is the number of the devil; I heard some even expected the apocalyps yesterday), but 07-06-06 should be fine I guess.

The last time I started so cautious that my engine turned off right away, so this time I had planned to start more eager. Actually, I was a little bit too eager; I almost drove into a ‘ trolleybuss’ , which are a symbol of Arnhem (only Dutch city where you can find them). Luckily, my examinator did not really pay attention to it, obviously because nerves can be quite there during the start of a test.

Actually he was quite a nice man, but also had a sadistic route in mind. He told me to drive to some country-side roads, the ones where I probaly never would come, and where one needs to go half of the road to let opposing cars pass by. Of course I did that, but he had the annoying talents to tell me to move aside just one micro-second before I was planning to do it. Of course, he mentioned that he had to tell me to move aside all the time after the test…

I was delighted to have to do a ‘ hill-test’  this time, as I practiced a lot on it after my last traumatic experience with it (see previous post). it went perfect and moral increased. It increased even more after some well executed parking and drving away backwards excercise. Than, some things went wrong.

The man lead me into a part of Arnhem I never had seen before. After leaving a small street I missed a ‘ not allowed to enter’  sign, which forced him to interrupt. Major misstake…Followed by another one, when I gave priority to a car where I was supposed to take it while driving on a main road. Of course that would be better tahn the other way around (tkaing it when not having it) and I tried to save the day by joking that one always should let such a charming girl first (she was, I myst say ;-)), but of course this showed that I had missed some roadsigns. Indeed, I was more focused on the technical part at that time…

Well, it would not be that bad if all these friends, collegues anf familymembers asking me if I made it…the reaction ‘ well, there are worse things than not passing your driving exam’  of course is very true but gets annoying after a while ;-). Than, we should remain to be positive…Things went far better than the last exam and as we say in Holland: ‘ drie keer is scheepsrecht’ . Which means something like ‘ third time you will get it’ .

Caio from Holland..

Jop