Many things have changed since I last had my report written. The summer 2000 is almost over and so is my youth for a number of reasons which I will be getting into in a second.
Most people nowadays look at me and say: What a lovely dog. I think it's my looks but as you can see on the right, I have also learnt to behave when visiting people.
The pal on the right is a friend of Gene's who lives close to Salzburg in Austria. We spent a whole day with him watching the Salzburg rain fall while Monika was studying computer network administration in Vienna.
When we were reunited with Monika, the three of us set off for Hungary. Gene had found what seemed a very nice apartment to rent at lake Balaton. It's owner was Austrian, the rent was about twice as high as other local accommodation and the pictures in the internet just looked great.

To cut an awful story short, the apartment was lousy, we split on the third day and vowed that it'll take another twenty years before we return to lake Balaton.

I personally was more than delighted to go because what good is a lake to a dog when there are miles and miles of fences to keep you away from the water. As a human you have to pay to get close to the water but you cannot buy a day ticket. If you feel like going to a restaurant or doing some cooking in your appartment -if you can, that is-, you will have to pay again to re-enter through these gates. If you don't, you stay on the other side of the fence just like we did.

It seems to me that the people in the area have adapted to capitalism too well, everyone is busy putting up the prices and rewriting menus so that there is no time left to improve on customer service.

Just for the records, the empty hall was the cosy appartment. We lived downstairs and above we had a family with two kids who were constantly practising their skydiving landings. At least that was what it sounded like. With all that noise and no water to jump into I retired into the shade on the patio and helped Gene working on his laptop.

Just one rotten place to see the water. Nothing compares to Austria or the Netherlands! Although the weather was lousy where ever we went, I enjoyed the lake where Gene had met Monika for the very first time 25 years ago as much as I enjoyed playing ball in our garden in Upper Austria.(To be frank, I'm a much better ball player than most in the German national football team! But I guess it's due to the fact that I practise on a more regular basis.)

We hence went back to the Netherlands for our autumn holidays and again had a ball.

When the year 2000 had come to an end we had established two more rather important things:
First: Gene and Monika are the bosses.
Second: I eat when I'm hungry. When I was two years old, Gene decided that I was old enough to look after myself and he never again sat down to feed me by hand.