With the snowy weather, the shortening days and the nearing Christmas the wish for a last team-event this year for the back-office team was there. And so we started to plan for a day that most of the people could make it. And yesterday would be the day….
Too bad Michiel could not make it, but we found Natasha wiling to come along. And why not, good company is always welcome.
So we planned yesterday to leave the company so we could get the train of 5 o’clock in the direction of Amsterdam. And as almost tradition starts to dictate that we didn’t made it :).
About an half hour later we were sitting in the train towards Amsterdam. And this time Federico was missing and no one of us had the number of mobile phone yet. So we hoped that he was by his own means on his way to Amsterdam (which luckily turned out to be true).
And so after a very fast and easy journey we found our way to Mulligans…. and there we joined Jeroen and Federico, who were there already… and soon we had our first drinks, which was for me of course a pint of Guiness.
Playing with glass is known to be dangerous, but luckily this time it didn’t turn into the mess it could have become 🙂
As all know, food is an important part of our team events (and it should be), so after our drinks we made our way to Pata Negra, a tapas restaurant were a table was reserved for us.
Warm baguettes with garlic sauce was served. And with that two big bottle with sangria… which were in scary short time empty again. But with that served there was also time for some conversation.
I liked the tapa dish and I thought it was a great idea to have served all kind of the available dishes. So there was beef, fish, seafood, chicken… so for everyone there was something. And I liked it all.
The food was very good. I specially liked the beef a lot. The people of the restaurant were kind and paid attention. And so Pata Negra made it to the list of cafés and dinners that I like.
And in the sense of looking for the 10 difference…
Well there was one event that needs to be mentioned… Anitha with her Indian background loves very spicy and hot food. And I have tasted things she called mildly spicy which burned away my throat. But yesterday she had found her match… as she had to admit that something was even to hot for her.
After dinner Anitha and Natasha went home. The rest of us went back to Mulligans to have some more pints. There Menno joined us (he was late because his neighbours above him caused a leakage. And he had to clean up the mess first).
As so often these kind of evenings go by way too fast. I enjoyed myself a lot. We have a nice bunch of folks at the company. But as it was just a normal Wednesday and next would be a normal working day again.
Tom and I needed to go back to Hoofddorp. Tom had his car parked there at the company and we would drive from there back to Heemskerk and he could drop me there at my apartment.
But time had went a bit faster has we expected. With a tram we went from Mulligans to the Central Railroad Station of Amserdam, to discover there that the last train to Hoofddorp had already left. So we took the train to Schiphol Airport and there we would see how to get further to Hoofddorp. Luckily there was a bus going from Schiphol.
Once in Hoofddorp we saw the result of the freezing weather… We had to clean the windows of the car of a rather nice layer of ice. And because of the same bad weather we could only drive slowly to Heemskerk.
The result was that I was late at home. When I finally went to bed (close to 3 am), I couldn’t get to sleep. I have this more often after having a nice, busy, exciting or long evening. I should have taken the morning off from work, but as I didn’t I was not very rested and well when I was at work. So after talking with Michiel I took off the afternoon off.
Once home, I took a cup tea with honey and went to bed. I slept wonderfully over the afternoon. That did a lot good to me.
Maybe I should not post the next picture (but I can always remove it when asked), but I never knew that a nice fellow as Paddy could look so scary… 😛
I have always enjoyed reading ur posts.. and this one sply becuase i was also in the event….
And yeah abt the peppers… It was an experience… But i really enjoyed it…
I loved the whole evening…All the back office guys & Natasha rock!!!!!!!!!