Países Bajos mayo 2016 parte 2

Justo antes del comienzo de la fiesta imprimo la conferencia y ya me dice mi mami de venir, porque los primeros llegan puntual a las 3 de la tarde. Entre café, tarta y saludar a la gente, mi padre inaugura la party. B., mi tío, me da un pendrive y me pregunta si le imprimo su conferencia también, la cual va a dar junto con su hermana R.

Tenemos la suerte que el tiempo es maravilloso, alrededor de 25 grados, y algunos están sentados afuera de la tienda, sobre todo los fumadores. La gente bebe, baila, habla y yo hago algunas solicitudes para poner canciones más apropiadas de los años 60 y 70. Harry lo busca en su Spotify y es lindo ver como todo el mundo lo pasa bien.

Sobre las 6 abren el buffet y todo el mundo come. Estoy tan lleno que necesito esperar una hora para volver a seguir con las birras.

Después de un par de horas, los primeros visitantes nos dicen adiós y se van “pa casa” pero seguimos con un gran grupo y Laurens enciende nuevamente fuegos artificiales. Tiene la ventaja de vivir cerca de Alemania, dónde se puede comprar eso más barato que en los Países Bajos.

Cuando Harry se va, nos quedamos sin música. Busco la vieja radio y encuentro el cassette del álbum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness de los Smashing Pumpkins; después de media hora ya ponemos la radio normal y nos quedamos hasta las 2 AM en la tienda.

El dia siguiente mis hermanos se van a Groningen y Enschede. El tiempo sufrió un brusco cambio. Con mis padres y con Betty quitamos todo de dentro de la tienda y pasamos una tarde de vagos; sofá, siestecita, un contrarreloj de la Giro Italia y por la noche vamos a cenar panqueques en Ruurlo.

Como se han terminado ya las festividades, el lunes, he quedado con mi hermano Laurens para visitarle en Enschede. Al igual que la última vez en el 2012, mi padre me lleva allí, por la ruta antigua que yo tomaba siempre y dónde entre Haaksbergen y Enschede se encuentra un bar de señoritas de la “rue” (o sea, un puticlub) que se llama “El viejo liebre”. No es que conozco ese “establecimiento” pero mis antiguos compañeros de fútbol si lo conocían.

Está lloviendo hartísimo, no está pareciendo en nada al clima normal de mayo en mi tierra. Llegamos, tomamos café y comemos unos lindos panes de maíz caseros. Laurens me pregunta si quiero ver cabaret, y me pone un show muy gracioso del señor Daniel Arends.

En la tarde hacemos una visita corta a Niels y su novia, ellos viven en una ciudad a 10 KM de Enschede. El tiempo aún no está óptimo. Mediante la página web thuisbezorgd.nl pedimos una pizza, hablamos del pasado y del presente, tomamos una Grolsch y después de par de horitas volvemos a la casita de mi hermano para hacer una noche agradable con clips de música y birras Sobre las 3 AM vamos a dormir.

Cuando nos levantamos vamos al super, desayunamos y vemos la peli “Idiocracy”. Con M., la novia de mi hermano, paseamos por fin en la ciudad, el tiempo ha mejorado un poco. Es muy lindo estar en esta ciudad.

Sobre las 5 y media de la tarde Laurens me lleva de nuevo a Barchem. Hay bastante tráfico y tardamos una hora en llegar. Ya está la comida en la mesa.

Continuará

Netherlands May 2016 - part 1

My blog has been sleeping for about 6 months now. That is definitely not good, is there a good explanation for it? Am I suffering a writers´ block?

Well anyway, I have never really had a specific “writing style”. The small stories are all pretty easy to read and I never check them before posting, so every now and then some small error may slip through.

So, a couple of weekends back I saw how “la belle France” lost the final of their European Cup, against Portugal. The tournament was not having the same “ambiance” as previous tournaments, although the new teams Wales and Iceland made a real difference. There are some funny tweets I wrote which you can still find in my Twitter feed.

In May I returned briefly to my country. This was to be able to visit my family to celebrate my parents´ 40th wedding aniversary. Due to circumstances (my dear wife Yina is pregnant and the paperwork you need to arrange to get into Europe for non European people is complicated and bureaucratic), Yina stayed in the village. She did bring me to the airport with her brother.

When I got through Bolivian customs, one of the blokes tells me that I need to pay almost 20 bucks because I´m leaving the country. I see this as a “fine” so I ask the guy: So basically this is a “fine” which I wouldn´t pay if I´d stay in the country? He answers that it is not a fine, but merely a tax. Yeah sure, I think. I grab the dough out of my wallet and pay him, now having left only 30 Bs.

I continue and this police officer asks me to pass him my hand-luggage so that he can inspect it. And when we finally get  onto the plane, this sweet labrador dog comes around to sniff all luggage. Finally we fly to Madrid, where the ETA is 5 AM in the morning, Monday, 16 May. I play some cribbage on my cell, watch an episode of Mr. Bean and try to sleep.

The guy next to me is from Jordania, and he flies via Madrid and Istanbul to his country.

In Madrid I have to walk to another terminal and again I need to pass with all my stuff through the X ray ports, where a “hombre de seguridad” orders me in a bold way by only saying “zapatos”. Si, y que desea señor? Flying 11 hours is already annoying enough to remain kind with typical douchebags on airports who give orders.

“If you could show me your shoes sir”. Ah OK that´s better. I show him my 6 dollar valued 2nd hand shoes and the guy says I can go on.

When I arrive at the gate, where I eventually have to wait for a bit more than 1 hour, I search for a bar just to have a normal coffee, but everything looks incredibly expensive and there are only “combo” menus. So I grab some lemon water from a vending machine.

Air Europa then announces their flight to Amsterdam and I board the plane, which is obviously a lot smaller than the previous one. An Arab lady sits next to me with her 2 year old son, she speaks Dutch, Spanish and Arab and is very curious.

At Schiphol, the famous Dutch airport, it amazes me once more the long way I need to walk before reaching the luggage belts. After 4 minutes my suitcase arrives, I take it and walk through the green area of the dutch “Douane”, there is nobody there.

My Mom and Dad come to pick me up, they are very happy. We drive eastbound over the A1 and around lunch time we have a very nice salmon sandwich at the Golden Apple.

Meanwhile, my brother Laurens is talking with my dad on the phone. “When are you arriving”, he asks. My dad calculates traffic jams and says: “Around quarter past 2.” Nevertheless, the 2nd part of the trip the roads are clear and we arrive home just before 2. We are just able to see my brother and his girlfriend sneak back in the house.

They both jump out of the house with fireworks and a bottle of cava and the window has been colourfully and artistically painted “Welkom Robin”.

Overwhelmed by this welcome commitee, I put my suitcase in the hall and we step inside to drink the cava and afterwards, the first green Grolsch bottles come out of the fridge.

Oscar, my other brother still had to come from the northern part of the Netherlands. My mommy said I ought to have a siesta, since I should be having a jetlag. So I went to my old room and slept about 45 minutes.

In Bolivia I became an uncle automatically after marrying my wife. But that can not be compared with becoming an uncle of your brother´s little son, they gave him the name Daniel and he is 3 and a half months old. A cute fella, always smiling. When he cries or screams it is just because he´s hungry, says Oscar.

We continue drinking beer and turn on Mommy´s imitation iPad, playing some tunes to get in the mood for the 40th anniversary party. Tracks such as 1984´s Skin Deep by the Stranglers (probably one of the best tracks for brothers), 1987´s Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil and later, when selecting a playlist from the Clash, little Daniel moves his head on the melody. So the little man has got the same taste as his uncle, that´s cool.

The next day, my brother, his little boy Daniel, my Dad and I drive east to Borculo for a short visit to our Granny. She lives in a modern residence and is still very sociable with everybody. In the evening, when Oscar and Margriet go back north, my Mom is a bit sad because they take her little grandson away from her, although it´s just for a couple of days.

My parents take me out to go shopping on Wednesday, since it is kind of complicated to get size 45 shoes in Bolivia (you can only buy cheap trashy most probably illegally imported from the USA 2nd hand shoes on the Ramada, there are decent shoe stores, but when you enter one of them asking for size 45, the standard reply is: No, no hay (with a voice that is a blend of sadness and indifference)).

So we drove northeast to  a fashion house in the province Overijssel and first they spoiled me with some genuine Cars Jeans and some t-shirts. The fashion house had a coffee bar where I went with Dad while Mom was searching a suitable party coat.

En route back to my village, we acquired some pairs of decent shoes and get some fish for lunch. We visit the bank to obtain a card for my account (it had been sleeping all these years), since very soon I´m going to need dough that I would not be able to save up in South America in a lifetime.

When I told Johnny that I would come to the Netherlands, he said: “Oh that´s splendid news Robin, you should come to visit me and have a coffee”.

So I sent him  a message thru Whatsapp via Daddy´s  wifi (something that is still being developed here in Bolivia, i.e., it does exist, but it is expensive; all “fancy” tech stuff is way too expensive here). I borrowed one of the bikes and headed 5 KM south to Ruurlo. Johnny, a chess master and his wife Annelies are very nice and kind people, they are parents of my friend Niels. They laugh a lot about the typical south american situations.  After the coffee they invite me a couple of beers, one of them brewed by the father of Anne (Niels´ girlfriend) in a village near Saarbrücken in Germany. To avoid getting drunk I thank them for everything and go back home to have dinner there.

While the neighbours come to visit us to help with the setup of the party tent in the garden (they eventually fixed this in less than half an hour) I “lock myself into” the office and turn on Skype for a creative meeting with my brothers.

We talk about a small conference about our parents during the party and exchange ideas, consisting of all kind of funny anecdotes we can remember. In my brother´s former bedroom I find a box of “Sinterklaas rhymes” of the last decades which are funny to read.

In the mean time,  my Dad is sitting in the tent with the neighbours and the bottles of beer + the pica pica is on the table. I quickly put on a pullover and my jacket. Normally it is a bit warmer in May in the Netherlands. Everybody is curious about my experiences in Bolivia and I explain the people about how things are done in South America.

Around the end of the first week, my brothers come back to the village. Also our niece Betty arrives, she will be the main waitress at the party.
The neighbours are in charge of the tent´s outside decoration. The family does the inside decoration; balloons and coloured light bulbs.

The weather forecast for Saturday, May 21st is exceptionally good and the sun shines. Early in the morning I help my Dad and the catering guy to put some essential stuff in the tent, like chairs and tables. Harry, the DJ also comes early, a friend of my father.

Just before the start of the festivities, I print the conference for me and my brothers. Then I run to the tent, because the first invites have arrived punctually at 3 PM. Pretty soon the tent is full, we have coffee and cake.

Janvier 2016, adieu Lemmy et David

Avec ma biche, j´allais le samedi 26 Decembre au marché "El Abasto". Ce marché, avec la Ramada et la Mutualista, sont des centres commerciaux importants dans la ville de Santa Cruz. Nous achetions des cesires, poivrons rouges, nous parlions avec "las caseritas" et après nous promenions au centre Chiriguano.

Le centre Chiriguano est le marché pour des ordinateurs et installations stereo. J´avais besoin d´un cartouche pour mon disque dur de mon laptop HP, parque le disque etait braqué. Apart de ça j´achetais un controller pour mon Playstation 2. Le pauvre play se trouvait dans un cabinet sans utiliser depuis 1 année.

En cromi nous allions a la Ramada. Comme vous devez savoir, la Ramada est la folie, un labyrinth entre le 1er et 2ième anneau de la ville, avec commerciants, legumes, fruits, friandises, articles de droguerie (pas de Marie Jeannette car elle est prohibée ici, les flics te jettent au prison), nachos, poissons, viande, poulet, etc. etc.

Nous retournions dans le village et après le lunch j´allais a chercher mes jeux du play, parce que je les avait emprunté a mon neveu de 13 ans.
J´arrivais a la maison de ses parents, et sa petite soeur de 2 ans et demi joue avec son moteur. Sa mere me dit: "Bonjour Robin, comment vas-tu?"
Je lui répond que "ça roule" et je demande si Roger est là. Ba non, il est avec son grand-père.
Ah bon, mais est-ce que vous me pourriez retourner mes jeux? Oui, bien sûr.
La maman de mon petit neveu me donnait mes jeux et je partais a jouer quelques favoris: le Crazy Taxi, Pro Evolution Soccer, Flatout, Burnout 3 et GTA San Andreas.

Pour la musique, l´année terminait en mineur. Lemmy Kilmister, le chanteur de Motörhead, est decedé le 28 décembre. Je me rappelle le debut des années quatrevingtdix, quand j´ecoutais l´album 1916 avec un ami. Tous les fois que je visitais les bars de rock ou discothèques et quand le DJ mettais "Ace of Spades", la salle a danser c´etait un folie. Même que les extraoridinaires chansons avec Hawkwind, comme Silver Machine publiée dans le soixantedouze. A tous ceux qui aiment le rock, Lemmy va les manquer. Je vous demande de signer ici: Lemmium


Enfin, 2016 commençait un peu zarbi. Le 31 décembre, ma biche avait preparé des fraises avec wodka, je prenais un peu, je regardais un vieux film de James Bond de 1973 et vers 21 heures de la soirée je m´ai mis au lit pour une petite siesta.

Quand je me levais une heure et demie plus tard, il n´y avait pas d´electricité. Les connards de la Compagnie Rurale d´Electricité de Bolivie avaient bracqué une connection dans le village.
Ma femme s´allait a dormir avant douze heures, et moi a 0h30 après d´avoir ecouté une chanson d´INXS et quelques verres de wodka fraise.

Avant hier, lundi, j´ouvrais le FB et j´entre en shock. Je lis que David Bowie est decedé. Twitter, même histoire, tout le monde raconte leur tristesse, nous avons perdu un grand chanteur. Il a crée des pièces et personnages incroyables et inoubliables. David et Lemmy avaient cancer, deux grands artistes, a 69 et 70 ans, ils sont partis au ciel pour faire un concert avec les messieurs Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Bon Scott, Scott Weiland. Plutôt il y aura plus de qualité de musique là-haut que ici a terre. Pour ça nous devons être content avec cela que nous avons, selon le motto carpe diem.

Bonne année a tous!

Retrogaming, part 3

In May 2000, after new work experiences in the lovely city Zwolle, I found a new job in a customs agency. The company, that originally started in Germany, had a small and old office in a building from the dutch railway company in the city of Zutphen. This implied that I didn´t have to travel so far anymore and besides I could go and have a couple of pints in my favourite bar on Fridays.

With one of my friends who liked bundles (you know, stuff where the Lovin´ Spoonful sings about) I had already made holiday plans. In July, we were brought to the small railway station Ruurlo and left to the south.

When I finally bought my Interrail ticket in Maastricht, we crossed the border to Belgium, in Liège we hopped on a train to Namur, and from there we went via Luxemburg and Strasbourg to the Moselle area. The train didn´t get further than Saverne and we jumped on a bus there to get to Sarrebourg. There we took a taxi and arrived in Gondrexange, a small village with a lake  on a camping.

Camping sites had changed, I figured. As a kid, I hung out in camping arcades, if there were any. But in 1992 I was injured and in 1993 there was no arcade (former Eastern Block holiday in Hungary), whereas in 1994 I had more interest for the bar in the french village Volonne (area 04, Alpes d´Haute Provence) and the chicks from the southern part of the Netherlands.

There was no arcade on the small french camping in 2000. Well, it was no big deal. We didn´t need an arcade, we came to explore “la belle France”. At the reception we both bought a packet of Gauloises, we sat down in the grass and smoked our cigarette.

Yet in the last week of our holiday, when we finished the 24 hour Strasbourg-Avignon-Strasbourg roundtrip (which started in a Strasbourg night bar at 4 AM where we sang Another Brick in the Wall with great enthousiasm) we stayed in Sarrebourg and took a hotel for only 30 francs per night. We spent hours in the pub, just across the Sarrebourg station, drinking a nice coffee and there was a Tales of the arabian nights pinball machine to make sure you´d get rid of your small change. This was also the place where I celebrated the french EURO2000 victory.

Basically the retrogaming part of the stories starts here. My friend N. invited me over to his place and opened a closet. The bloke had 2 or 3 commodore 64 machines. I still have a C64 somewhere in my parents home, with a lot of floppies. No idea whether they still work, if it hasn´t been thrown away then it has been kept for already 14 years in a dark cabinet behind my old sleeping room.

Due to circumstances I leave my country in 2003. 7 years after my 7 weeks “practical holiday” in Salamanca, I go back to my dear Spain, now to the city of Valencia. But the weekends are dull and I have a lack of social life.

When I finally move to the city of Barcelona 18 months later, the gaming aspect returns. 2 boys from Basque country move in with us (typical “piso” for students) and show their pirate playstation 2 with Burnout Takedown, we play it for a couple of hours, with a Xibeca bottle on the table to keep the glasses filled with beer.        

In a very short period of boredom I spend money on a playstation 2 with GTA San Andreas and Pro Evolution Soccer part 4. One of my friends from Russia plays with me. We both moved out of the small flat to rent a room from a very nice Catalan girl. Naturally we keep on gaming while we listen the Skeletons in the Closet album from the Grateful Dead.

During a visit of Pamplona in the early autumn of 2007, I get introduced to the Nintendo Wii. I sleep a couple of nights in the house of a friend of my homie. Pamplona celebrates the “small” San Fermin, and everybody is busy partying. One morning I wake up and start to play tennis, baseball and golf with another friend. A little later I take the bus from Villava back to Pamplona. Pamplona has a nice square in the centre. After hanging around some time I decide to return to the quarter Txantrea to search for my homie. But he isn´t there yet. His parents invite me another beer, and in the evening we reunite in the emblematic bar Akelarre.

In November 2008 I leave the house in Barcelona, because the girl (George Thorogood would´ve said landlady, but she was a bit young to be called a lady) wants to go and live elsewhere with her boyfriend. My new friend from Pamplona also moves out of the house, he works in a bar in our area and he can stay there temporarily.

One of my colleagues from work offers me to move in his flat, a 6th floor attic without a lift. Since I do not really have any other choice I agree. My friend is from Algeria and his “cuadrilla” are from North Africa as well. A typical Saturday dish they like to prepare is cous cous, and often we enjoy a can of Estrella beer in our street or the nearby square. Arabic is very complicated for me and I only remember the word “sukran”. My arab friends like music such as Zebda and Gnawa Diffusion.

One of the guys is from Guelmim, a hot desert city in the southwest of Morocco. He´s got a Dr. Hyde inside himself after 3 beers which can cause pretty annoying situations.

After an old fashioned Dutch Christmas holiday with a new years eve in Enschede, I come back to Barcelona on the first Saturday of January, and we hit the town with another arab friend from France.

3 months later I meet Yina for the first time. We start to develop a relationship and in November I move into her place in a whole new quarter.

My Play2 comes with me and I connect it to her small TV to play Crazy Taxi and Flatout. After a couple of years we move to the republic of Bolivia.

Wow, I just crawled out of a time machine in this whole new continent for me. March 20, 2013. The cans of beer in the plane were small, but I´ve slept wonderfully well. It rains outside, we pass the customs, do not need to open our suitcases and stash everything in the early 90s Toyota of my brother in law. The stores and houses are more “messy” than in Europe. After approximately 1 and a half hour we arrive at El Torno. This village is about 33 KM southwest of Santa Cruz on the national route 7. From this village it is 24 KM to La Angostura, that is where the mountains begin, and even more to the west is the touristic town of Samaipata.

OK, so the country looks a bit old fashioned. Every city of village has a small collection of arcade machines. For a half peso you get a coin that you can use in an arcade machine. For what is just one US Dollar, you can buy 14 credits.

After some exploring on Twitter I found many retrogaming fans. When I uploaded some pictures of the Sega games Road Rash and Columns, which must´ve been part of a torrent, suddenly I received a lot of followers. It is very cool to see that there are so many fans of 20 & 30 year old consoles and their games.

Because of misfortune, the retrogames on my laptop were gone for a long time, the harddisk suffered damage. Also my PlayStation 2 has been out of the running for some time because the controller was completely worn out.

In the meantime, we bought a chinese retro console here on the Ramada in Santa Cruz. The Ramada is a crowded dirty open market place where you can buy a lot of stuff; food, veggies, chemicals to kill insects, clothing, and generally it is cheaper than in the supermarket. At some place there is an arcade with an Outrun game. However I would get lost on the Ramada cause it has a strange structure, generally the streets here do have names, but the people don´t usually know them. If you ask directions, they will never give you street names, they will say: 4 blocks, then left, 5 blocks, then right, or they will tell you that a place is between the 1st ring and 2nd ring. But after a few years, if you come to the city often enough, you´ll know which minibus to take and also if you fetch a taxi, you´ll know at which amount he starts to rip you off.

So, the chinese console, worth 14 bucks, consists of Super Mario Bros 1, 3, Galaga, Bomberman, Dig Dug, Arkanoid, Millipede, Pinball, Pooyan and a lot more 80s games. It´s connected on the AV1 of my TV, because my wife has become fan of the bomberman game.  On the AV2 I reconnected the playstation 2 because I bought a new controller (the non original controller costs 11.50 dollars) and also my harddisk has been repaired, so I´ve got my MSX, C64, NES, SNES and SEGA stuff back…

Greetings to all retrofans, I hope you´ve all enjoyed this little trilogy, I wish you all the best for 2016.

Retrogaming, part 2

We returned from an afternoon walk alongside a beautiful creek in the Dutch province capital of Overijssel, Zwolle. Immediately, we booted up the PC and opened a Sierra folder, writing sierra on the dos prompt. Immediately we heard the tra la la la la la la la la la la la laaa opening tune and a guy in a suit tries to catch a doll. And now, because of the “kinkiness” of the game, we´re being asked to “lie about our age” and answer 5 questions correctly.

My niece checked the sierra handbook. “Just hit Alt-X to avoid the questions…”

Thanks to the German emulator, I played Space Invaders, Digger and Conquest (sort of variations of Dig Dug and Joust) and when my dad bought himself a 486 PC, the old PC, still working fine, was placed in the alley between the livingroom and bathroom.

My new “routine” to borrow the Sega Megadrive or the Super Nintendo with a friend on a Friday or Saturday evening began somewhere in early 1992. I was 14 years old, my friend was 1 and we both had some dough earned from delivering newpapers, but yet we were too young to appear in the pub and ask for booze.

One night at my place, just having arrived at Sonic´s marble world trying to cross a path through lava, my mommy comes back into the living room and asks me to go to sleep. Gaming always made time fly. So we went to bed and got up only a few hours later and continued where we left off.

Meanwhile at school, there were 5 Commodore 64 machines with 1 diskdrive for the “alumni” to be used in large breaks or when you suddenly had an “inbetween hour” due to illness of a teacher.  Then you´d go to the principals office:

“Hello mr. Principal, would you please give me the disks and joysticks for the commodore?”
“Ofcourse Robin, go right ahead and when you´re ready you just bring them back here”

Since all C64s were connected to the same diskdrive, your fellow students would have to play either the same game or a different game from the same floppy. You needed to be able to type LOAD “nameofthegame”,8,1 very quickly in order to be the first to play. I particularly remember a very cool tennis game and Bazooka Bill…

With my “console-borrowing friend” I played many MicroSoccer games on my pc (although it was to be used by my brothers as well, but they didn´t care that much for gaming, until my youngest brother discovered the Retaliator game some years later). 

One of the most popular football clubs in the UK and worldwide, Manchester United, came up with a soccer game, created by Krisalis software, more or less similar to European Club Soccer. My dad had been so sweet to buy a VGA graphics card and monitor so finally I was playing in full colour. On my London excursion week having a small budget, nevertheless I felt the need, or desire, to play Taito´s Euro Football Champ on the ferry and flipped in a quid and then another quid.

When I turned 16 I graduated from secondary and I chose to study Commerce at a “college” where they 

provided spanish classes. ´93-94 was a turning point and I spent less time on gaming, it was more a period of learning new stuff and discovering music, especially grunge.

Most arcades in the Netherlands were divided into 2 parts. Adults came there to play fruit machines, and younger people only had access to the pinball / arcade area.

In May and June 1996, when I was temporarily living in Salamanca, I found an arcade on the Avda. Mirat, an important avenue in the northern part of the city and played tennis there, the 25 peseta coins value was . 20 years ago Spain was so cheap, and yet Salamanca is a place where many tourists and students go to.

2 years later, 1998, was a strange year. I gave up my study and started searching for a job. I ended up in a rock bar and played pinball there. The rest of the year I had three temporary jobs until February ´99.

Internet was not that magnificent yet, my dad would let me spend a little hour every evening on mIRC through a modem dialup connection.  Me and my brothers played a cruel but popular game in 1998 called Carmageddon…

End of part 2, part 3 will start in the 21st century.

Retrogaming, part 1

Four and a half years ago I opened my twitter account. Not that I had any intention to use it a lot, and it was merely to write about dumb, funny, silly or tragic situations, such as the day when a Russian store that used to sell delicious smoked pork chops decided to close down.

Approximately 1 year ago I started to post on my Twitter account about 90´s retro games such as Road Rash, my favourite Sega Megadrive game. It was then that I began to find a lot of gaming accounts related to Nintendo, Sega, Atari, MSX and the Commodore.

Let´s go on a blast to the past.

In 1986, one of my classmates has a Popeye Game and Watch which I play on a Friday afternoon before going to jiu jitsu class. The jiu jitsu itself was kind of boring, so I quit that and 2 years later I started to play soccer.

In the summer of 1987, my parents, my younger brothers and me went on holidays to a small village in the kanton of Zürich, Switzerland. After a few days we went further south to Italy. On the camping in Verbania, close to the swiss border was a small arcade with a sort of grandprix game. Basically it was my first holiday hanging around at an arcade, but unfortunately the Lago Maggiore flooded and we left to Neuenburg in Southwest Germany, near the french border of Chalampé.

In the winter that followed, my dad switched his blue Sierra for a red one. That same particular weekend, with incredibly boring iceskating on the telly, he was very busy in his office with his new PC, one of  those terribly heavy hardplastic suitcase machines. If I remember correctly it could even be locked with a small key.

He showed me the computer and eventually I asked him; Are there any games on this computer?

I found a pacman game in ASCII style, very basic and simple, and in GWBASIC there was a cute blackjack game.

In 1988, you could say that I got stuck in the Nintendo warp pipe. My cousins had the NES and they really had to drag me away from it. Their games: Super Mario Bros 1 & 2, Mach Rider and Tennis.

At a certain point I was more or less addicted to this japanese wonder, then somebody decided to hide the cartridges in a microwave, and a couple of hours later they were damaged enough and the NES wouldn´t recognize them anymore; bye bye Nintendo Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, almost all DOS games were for CGA, EGA or VGA, but I still played monochrome. There was a German emulator to play then on Hercules, so I started writing my first batch files. My niece had the same issue. I went to visit her one day and asked her what games she had. Oh well, most of them are for colour computers so…

Her dad, my uncle (a great guy with splendid music taste who rests in peace for almost 6 years now) had a fabulous collection of games. My niece said to me; Hey, I´ve got this strange game about a bloke who is in a bar, he buys a whisky and then he goes to take a piss…

 To be continued…

Scott has left us

This morning I sat in the micro scrolling the facebook feed and suddenly I read through a post by the Rolling Stone magazine that Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland has passed away.

Shocked, I immediately open my Twitter account to find out that it is true. The bloke is gone. Nostalgic feelings come back.

My imaginative timetravel device brings me back to 1993. In that summer I celebrate my 16th birthday, an age at which you do not spend Saturday evenings at home with mommy and daddy anymore watching a boring movie, but you go leave the small village to go elsewhere for a couple of beers and singing classic songs.

With 3 other guys we wait at the bus stop to go to the town of Groenlo, famous small city in the Netherlands where Grolsch beer was brewed first exactly 400 years ago.

We pay about fifteen guilders (at that time equivalent to seven bucks) for the bus trip and the entrance to the discotheque. After approximately half an hour we arrive in Groenlo, we hop off the bus and go straight to Café Kras, a crowded, smoky bar with ambiance and drink a half litre bottle of beer before entering the Lido.

Inside, we buy 25 guilders worth of coins (chips), for beer. So a glass of beer has a value of 1 dollar. We drink our first round while exploring the disco areas, checking which band will come to perform, looking around if there are already some chicks, and then we go to a small bar type area for our 2nd, 3rd and 4th beer. This is the rock zone. One of my buddies, M., at that time a huge grunge fan, asks the bartender to put the Plush single on. And keep it running for Sin as well please.
The dude smiles and we are satisfied.

(The crackling sound is so overwhelming that I had to borrow the CD Core soon after it was available in the library to record it on tape. But eventually I ended up buying the record a couple of years later).

When we´re finally very tipsy it´s time to get on the bus back to our village. When we come back around 2:30 AM, we´re a bit hungry. Eventually you could get all type of fast food at the Lido, but we quietly go home and have a ham-egg sandwich each.

For approximately one year, this was a Saturday night routine. Eventually I did not go out every weekend due to economic reasons. But my parents were willing to sponsor me when I behaved myself and helped them around the house in the weekends.

In April 1994 we we´re all stunned when we heard the news about Kurt Cobain. M. had a Nirvana bootleg CD from a concert in Rome which I had borrowed to record it on tape. Apparently the security was a bit rough cause Kurt kept asking them "piano, piano".

At the same time, when the topic "Nirvana" became less trending (there was no Internet), and life in the rock and grunge world goes on, Pearl Jam had this particular song from their Vs. album, Rearviewmirror, on of my favourites. Apart from STP, Nirvana & Alice in Chains, Eddie Vedder and his band were extremely popular in the Netherlands, especially the songs Alive, Black & Jeremy.

It wasn´t until the summer that Soundgarden became my preferred grunge band; I was singing Spoonman even on holidays in the Alpes des Hautes Provence, France. Soundgarden has similarities with the Stone Temple Pilots. But Scott, your voice was much darker than Chris´.

So Scott, this is a dedication for you. Thanks for the musical experience you brought me. You will be missed. You belong to a group of rockstars that left us way too early, apart from Kurt Cobain: Brian Jones in 1969, Jimi Hendrix in 1970, Jim Morrison in 1971, Bon Scott in 1980, Phil Lynott in 1986, Freddy Mercury in 1991, Michael Hutchence in 1997 and Layne Staley in 2002.

This is a weekend to put the Core disc on to listen it once more.