We should be moving to a new apartment (again) in about 4 weeks time. We plan to actually view a few places this time so that we don't have:

1. Europe's busiest bus stop outside.
2. Gossamer thin curtains that wouldn't shield you from the light emitted from a match at 80 paces.
3. A cosmic zapping zone outside our bedroom window that causes loud, spontaneous, tuneless singing to begin at all hours of the night.
4. An enormous church just feet from the door that inexplicably employs Quazimodo and force feeds him speed... thus he strikes the bells (around the clock) as follows:
• At a quarter past the hour  -- 4 times
• At half past the hour  -- 8 times
• At quarter to the hour -- 12 times
• On he hour -- 16 times followed by a four second delay and then "chimes" (at about 83,0000 decibels) the hour and then.... (This is where it gets just a tad annoying...) On Saturday morning at 9am (allow me to remind you this report is coming from Eindhoven,... yes... the one in the effin Netherlands!!) He strikes up "Home on the effin Range!!" Now, perhaps I'm just a little unobservant but I swear I just haven't noticed a herd of Buffalo roaming around the town square in recent weeks. It could just be me, I have to wear glasses after all, but I suspect that I would still be able to make out the silhouette of a two-ton migratory cow grazing happily on some special Dutch grass!

Anyway, this all adds up to my own special "power of veto" when we select a new pad up in Utrecht. The plus points of Utrecht are it's a decent sized town only twenty minutes from Amsterdam... so, it's great for visitors. It also has a beautiful ancient cathedral and some rather attractive canal side pubs and cafes. On the downside, it's an hour on the train from Eindhoven so my commute will increase greatly and in the summer it's apparently teeming with tourists viewing the things I said were attractive about the place.