Spa baths: they should be required by law

Belated post about weekend. Last Saturday I went to Aachen, in Germany but just 5 km from the border with the Netherlands, to visit Francesco, a former colleague of mine.

Some background info: I joined Philips Italy, as a "research scientist" (this title really sounds good! My current title is not even close to that), in 2000. Francesco had started doing his internship as a graduate student one week before. Our research group turned out to be very good. We were using Bluetooth about three years before it became a trendy gadget present in all high-range mobile phone. And, most important of all, we were having fun doing what we were doing, with slack deadlines and quite a lot of freedom in choosing what to do. Francesco (who later on graduated and became a full-time employee) was a volcano of ideas, while I was more of a geek, focused on Linux and C programming (I still am, although no more so Linux-oriented. What a pity).
In 2002, Philips Research went under a restructuring, which involved closure of the Italian lab. So we were kindly "invited" to find another job. Motivation in all the lab employees plummeted. Our job became sending CVs, downloading songs from the Internet, watching movies during work hours... And we were paid for that! Not forever :( About one third of the people were moved in the lab next door (which, about two years later, underwent the same fate...). The others found jobs elsewhere, inside or outside Philips. My job was outside Philips, while Francesco joined Aachen's Philips research lab.

The weekend was a lot of fun. In Saturday Francesco introduced me to the Carolus Thermen, which are simply marvellous: hot water, cold water (much better than I expected), open-air pools with spinning water, sauna... Then we went to a pizzeria with some colleagues of him, mostly non-German. Then, one of them was having a party at his home, so we went there, had fun and drank quite a lot. Then, Francesco insisted we go to a bar, but I reached my limit, so I sat on a sofa and fell asleep...

On Sunday, we went to "les Trois Bornes", the point where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands border. 5 meters from that point, there is the tallest point in the Netherlands (327 metres above sea. Yes, they are flat). A pretty nice spot, woody hills, perfect for a weekend trip. Then we spent the rest of the day around Aachen, jumping from a tourist spot to a bar and back, and drinking spa water (bleuch...let's hope at least it's healthy). Then, back to Heerlen, in the Netherlands, where I caught my train. Actually, I missed my train, so I waited for one hour until the next one.

And no, no photos. I forgot my camera at home