Sitting board on a flight, I found my mind wandering and eventually landed on memory lane about a chaotic trip to Amsterdam in early 2024, which inspried me to write this blog post.
Nearly a year after my last chaotic trip to Europe, I found myself shoved, unceremoniously, into an economy-class seat at the back of a KLM flight, returning home with a stack of power supplies in the overhead bin above me, and an oversize server box somewhere in the luggage hold below. Yes, this was the conclusion of yet another completely insane trip to the Netherlands, one which jammed way too much stuff into an impossibly short period of time. But, before I get ahead of myself, let’s take a quick look back to how it all began.
In the summer of 2023, a raid conducted by the Dutch police on a datacenter in Den Helder sent shockwaves throughout the Dutch hosting community. The raid was centered around an illegal IPTV service, and the datacenter at the center of it all was providing satellite television feeds to a customer who was then re-streaming them without authorization to their customers. These kinds of operations are often referred to as “sources” in the IPTV world. While this particular case was brought against one specific gray-market business, it would have legal implications for all satellite colocation customers in the country, including myself. I quickly found my service terminated, and I was left without access to the European Free To Air satellite feeds I had come to love since I first set it up in 2017.
I first tried to acquire my favorite channels via other means, including both legitimate and gray market sources, however, nothing worked the same as when I was doing it myself, so it was barely 6 months later that I started investigating what alternatives I had to regain access to European satellite feeds. My research would eventually bare fruit after I found another Dutch datacenter company willing to provide feeds from a number of satellites of interest, located in the extreme South of the Netherlands, near the small village of Eygleshoven.
Whilst conducting research into Internet options at the facility, I got in touch with my buddy Sean, who you may remember as the instigator of my previous wild trip overseas. I knew Sean already had a bunch of infrastructure in the country and was curious if he would be able to provide me with connectivity through his company, Unmetered. Well, one thing led to another and it wasn’t long before I was offered a flight and accommodations in Amsterdam for myself and my business partner Blair, in exchange for a couple of days work building and racking servers that Sean had ordered over the past few weeks.
Clearly, I am a glutton for punishment, because I accepted the offer even after the total chaos that was my previous trip with Sean trip to the country. This time though, I felt a bit more confident about the whole thing – I was flying direct from Vancouver, we were staying in an actual hotel (no more holiday park in the middle of nowhere), and, I wasn’t trying to conduct any of my own hosting company’s business at the same time (most importantly no side trip to Oslo this time around). I figured I was due for an easy trip since I had already experienced a hell flight from Edmonton the past summer, I couldn’t possibly have a worse time this go around, could I?
Now, I say I had no plans to do any work for my own hosting company, but the reality is Blair and I were bringing a server out with us to install at Sean’s new datacenter. We didn’t have a solid plan for the server, but we figured by bringing a company machine with us we would be able to expense incidental items like meals, parking and petrol. There had to be at least some advantage to owning a hosting company! The cost to ship the server ahead of time was obscene (something like $600), so instead we opted to take it on the plane with us as a checked bag. Fun fact; every single time I had traveled to Europe up until now, it had been with a server in some form. It’s starting to become a meme.
Once at the airport, the server was accepted by the check-in agent, and dropped off at the oversize baggage counter without incident. It almost wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except for the fact that getting the server to the airport was a bit of an undertaking.
Because the server itself is such an awkward object we brought along a folding cart to help us move it – particularly important since we needed to take a ferry, then public transit to reach the airport. Once the box was checked, however, we found ourselves left with an empty cart and needed to do something with it since we both doubted it would be accepted as hand baggage. In the end, we stashed the cart at a transit station a stop away from the main terminal, folding the cart up and hiding it under a pedestrian walkway, crossing our fingers that it would still be there upon our return.
Sadly, upon our arrival the cart was not, in fact, where we had hit it. I’m not sure if it was airport security, or just some individual who happened to spot a free cart, but following our arrival back in Vancouver we found ourselves down one folding cart. If I ever need to do something like this again I might try locking it to the bike rack.
The rest of the flight to Amsterdam was a breeze – the plane left on time, we were well fed throughout and we were even permitted to check our hand baggage for free, since the flight was so full.
Once in Amsterdam, we breezed through immigration and found our bags already waiting for us at the baggage carousal. Customs was a bit more interesting when they asked what was in the box, however, after we explained that “no, we’re not technically importing anything since our company still owns the servers, they’re just being placed in a different location.” we got waved through. I think the paperwork would have been extensive, and the customs officer didn’t want the hassle of dealing with us. After that it was time to pick up our rental car and we were off! Time to terrorize the Dutch motorists!
Our hotel was conveniently close to the airport – a roughly 10 minute drive away, and upon our arrival at the check-in desk we were met by a greeting committee of Sean and all his other associates who had been booked on this trip – 2 Brits (one of whom you will remember from last year’s European adventure as “Bob” since he doesn’t want to be named) and a Pole. Sean had actually booked a total of 7 rooms since we would be joined by another of his associates from London later in the day.
The hotel itself (the Ramada Schipole airport) is actually a pretty decent venue. It’s situated a convenient drive from the airport, next to a rec center and features a pool (which was closed for the entire duration of our stay), a buffet restaurant (serving breakfast and dinner), along with a bar and a self-serve convenience store which allows the purchase all manner of items from a kiosk. My room itself was simple but clean; which, at the end of the day, is all that really matters. The bathtub was a bit of an interesting experience since it had walls which were about 3ft high making entering and leaving an ordeal, while the toilet paper was so rough that I needed to go out and buy my own, but overall I was quite satisfied with my accommodations.
After checking in and getting settled the 6 of us met in Bob’s room to discuss next steps, and since Bob sits somewhere between being the comical town drunk and a raging alcoholic the beers were already being passed around, even though it was barely afternoon.
Since we had two cars (Blair and I had a rental while Pole and the Brit had taken a car ferry over from Hull) Blair, Sean and I decided we would head out to the datacenter first, while the rest of the gang would wait for the last member of our party to arrive from London in the coming hours.
We left the hotel, and about 2PM we rolled up to the colo,only to encounter our first hurdle of the trip – actually gaining access to the facility.
In most colocation facilities you are assigned an access card, or sometimes biometrics, and have 24×7 access to the facility and your rented racks. However, in this facility you needed to check in with security, who would provide you a badge to access the facility and the racks. Access was still 24×7 (since the onsite security always had someone on shift) but added an additional layer of complexity to the check-in process (and I suppose an additional layer of physical security for clients concerned about that). The problem came when Sean tried to check in using his driver’s license, which wasn’t accepted as it wasn’t from the EU. So we were stuck, and it was back to the hotel to grab Sean’s passport (seriously, who doesn’t keep their passport on them when outside the country), but not before we decided lunch was a good idea.
We then found ourselves wandering through the maze of a nearby co-working space; trying to locate a restaurant that had been advertised on the outside of the building. We eventually found our way to a cafeteria that was weirdly devoid of any staff – just a few people having snacks – and since we all felt a bit awkward about serving ourselves strange meat sticks without any way to pay we took our leave and headed back to the Ramada.
Back at the hotel, the 7 of us (our final person had arrived) ate some stir fry in the lobby (with more beers, of course) and then headed out to the datacenter, this time to actually start our work.
Once we were all checked in I realized how extensive the actual scope of work for this trip was, and why we had so many people booked in for work.
One of the first of the datacenter employees I was introduced to was one of the loading bay crew who was overjoyed to see us. The reason for his barely controlled delight quickly became evident when I spied the pallets of servers (yes, multiple pallets) that we would finally be removing from cluttering his floor space. I watched in awe as stack after stack of servers were dropped in front of me. 4 pallets worth – over 100 servers.
Now, if the only scope of work here was to install the servers in the racks, connect up cables and test them, our gang could have been finished in a day. This, however, was not the case. The servers we had in front of us were barebones shells – they consisted of the chassis, the motherboard and not much else. Many of the servers were even missing system fans, and our first task was to simply identify what boxes contained all of the parts we needed to finish building the servers; something that sounds simple enough, but we had a lot of boxes to dig through!
After an hour or so we managed to work out an assembly line strategy. We took over most of the loading bay; building two servers at a time with parts spread out across various tables in the space. The British and Polish dudes under Blair’s direction got busy installing RAM, CPUs, Heatsinks, Fans and Power Supplies, while “Bob” supervised the operation and I ran servers and parts back and forth between the colo room and the loading bay. Sean, meanwhile, was onsite to give high level direction and change his mind about where he wanted the servers racked – typically immediately after I had finished racking them (love you Sean!)
This winning formula carried us for a few hours until sometime after it got dark, After which our motley crew retired to the hotel and passed out in our respective rooms (though not before having a few more beers – a common theme on this trip). Personally, I’m impressed at how well I was able to function after being essentially awake for something more then 24 hours with only a couple of winks of sleep on the plane. Give me interesting work and keep me hydrated and I can apparently work on very little sleep.
One dreamless, dead to the world, sleep later I found myself staring bleary-eyed at my phone screen as my alarm rudely roused me from my slumber. At least I had quickly acclimated to European time!
The breakfast spread at the Ramada was actually one of the best I’ve had in a hotel. Not only did they have the classics like scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages but they had a wide selection of fruits and yogurts as well as just about every pastry imaginable. They even had an adorable mini pancake machine which cooked the bite-sized bread right in front of you!
By this time it was Friday, and our second day at the detacenter unfolded in much the same way as the first. We built more servers, racked more servers and slowly started eating into Sean’s power budget. By the time it was dark outside we has basically built all we could, with our supply of surplus CPUs and RAM beginning to dwindle. Fortunately, the glut of 1U servers was also dwindling, though we still had around 30 left on the pallets.
Before heading back to the hotel, we took a detour into the town of Haarlem so I could pick up a couple of SIM cards, since the lack of cellular service was starting to become irksome. I figured having cell service was going to be of particular importance, given the evening that Sean had planned for us.
While getting driving directions to a cellular store in Haarlem I discovered an important drawback of Google Maps – it didn’t have any concept of pedestrian and bicycle-only zones, something which seems to be common in various Dutch city centers. We ended up driving cluelessly over a narrow bridge towards a big red “no admittance” sign, only to have to abort at the last possible second which left us driving down an impossibly narrow dead-end alley. One 300 point turn later, we were going back the way we came, across the bridge again and into a parking spot outside the city center. One stroll through the city center later and at last I had my SIM cards and got to work trying to actually activate them. Note to future self – you actually need to call a special 4 digit number to enable service – something that was different then what I was used to.
Back at the hotel, the rest of our crew was wondering what had happened to us. Our little detour had consumed some 45 minutes. Nope, we were still on our way.
Now Sean, and “Bob” are fairly big into the party scene, and Amsterdam is well known for it’s night-life. Sean had booked us a VIP table at ‘Escape’ which is one of the most popular nightclubs with tourists in the city. While I am decidedly not part of the party scene (rarely going to bars and never to clubs) I figured I may as well at least tag along for the experience and see what it was all about. I now had a functional cell phone, so I figured I would at least be able to find my own way back to the hotel if it wasn’t for me.
Blair and our Brit decided it wasn’t for them and dropped off almost immediately, but Sean had befriended a couple of techs who worked at the datacenter and invited them along. We had all gathered in “Bob’s” suite (since it was the largest) for pre-drinking and to wait until the club was actually open (doors apparently didn’t open until 11PM) and I (who am usually a mild drinker) managed to consume a staggering amount of alcohol. I knew it was going to be a rough morning by the time I started doing pure vodka shots – even our Polish friend was impressed.
A couple hours and one Uber ride later, I found myself in downtown Amsterdam standing in line to get into this club. Even prior to being admitted I found myself ill at ease. Checkpoint one was an ID check with my passport being scrutinized even more closely then at border control, and checkpoint two was a security screening where I got the joy of emptying my pockets and getting a pat down. After that our gang was allowed into the club and I immediately experienced an assault on all my senses.
Going into this whole endeavor I had planned to end up sitting at a table, drink a few beers and watch everyone else having a good time. What I had not prepared myself for was the immediate ‘fight or flight’ response that I started to feel!
Quickly after entering the club, I began to feel an intense sense of unease – the blasting music, the erratic lights and the impossibly large number of people made me feel as though I was on an alien planet; my entire sense of reality had become distorted.
I followed my companions closely, not wanting to loose sight of them and get lost, possibly forever, in that strange land.
The first stop we made was at the coat check, and while the rest of my party left their jackets, sweaters and other accessories behind, I explicitly kept my coat close since I was already planning for a quick getaway.
Next, I spied the gang following Sean up a flight of stairs – watched closely by a burly bouncer. The VIP table Sean had booked was up in the rafters, something that was apparently a big deal. By this time, I had ended up at the back of the pack, and as I tried to follow my cohorts, the bouncer stepped in front of me and insisted, in no uncertain terms, that I was not to be wearing my coat.
It was this instant that I snapped; it was a “straw the broke the camel’s back” moment and I decided then and there I was getting out. I turned around and walked, with more conviction then I think I had shown the entire trip, towards the front door, catching more then a few confused looks from the bouncers who had let me in just minutes before.
Once outside and away from the lights, the music and the claustrophobia I started to feel a bit better, though I had a brand new stress – how to get home.
Pulling out my phone, I tried to book an Uber, but the entire downtown core seemed to be a no pickup zone. I’m not sure if it was something that happened because it was a busy Friday night, or if it was like this all the time, but there was no way I was going to arrange a pickup without a bit of a hike.
Fortunately, I had with me an NL Transit card; something that I had loaded with funds on a previous European excursion. If I couldn’t get an Uber I would take the bus, after all I was an experienced transit rider and even had previous experience riding trains in the Netherlands! I pulled out my phone and found walking directions to the nearest stop. Upon arriving I nodded at the other people waiting around and peered down the street for my bus.
By this time it was around 1AM and with no bus in sight I began questioning my decisions. 5 minutes turned into 10 and when I refreshed my phone the transit directions didn’t place me back at the hotel until well after 2:30. My eyes shifted towards the “walking directions” tab which was only around 30 minutes longer….
I looked up from my phone, glanced around at the other, equally despondent people waiting with me, and then decided “fuck it” and started walking. I figured that by walking I could at least guarantee what time I would arrive, rather then relying on a bus that didn’t seem eager to arrive. I also figured the walk would be a great way to sober up, and that I would be good and tired by the time I got to the hotel, allowing me to quickly fall asleep.
My walk home from the club was honesty a bit of a blur. It was a cool night, but not cold and I never really felt uncomfortable. At one point, I phoned home (since it was only mid-afternoon there) and had a chat with my parents to pass the time. At another point, I started listening to podcasts.
After I left the downtown core, the majority of my walk was on a single trail sandwiched between a bike path and a canal. From what I can remember it was actually a really nice walk, with the moon lighting my way and occasionally a person on a bicycle zipping past. Even though it was the wee hours of the morning there were still many people out and about, something that surprised me, coming from sleepy little Victoria, BC.
I made good time, and it wasn’t long after 3AM that I found myself collapsing into the welcome embrace of my blanket and sheets. I shot a quick message to my cohorts to let them know I was safe and drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I don’t know why, but I woke up sometime between 7 and 8am, and was immediately assaulted by a number of missed messages on my phone. I checked the scrollback and quickly learned that our British companion (the one who had stayed home the previous night) was downstairs at breakfast.
Never one to miss out on a meal, I threw some clothes on and joined him for toast, eggs, sausages and whatever else I could fit onto my plate. I was tired, but not really hungover, which was a welcome relief.
It wasn’t long before our Polish companion, “Bob” and others began to join our table. I quickly realized none of them had been to sleep yet, and were just now beginning to return from the club; apparently it’s actually quite normal to party until 6 or 7am! Armed with this knowledge, I became even happier about my decision to bail the previous night, since I need to get to sleep before the sun starts coming up or I really get fucked up.
Since most of the crew were in no condition to be working any time soon, Blair and I decided it was a prime opportunity to take a drive out to Dronten and retrieve my personal server since it was being redeployed to the new datacenter in Eygleshoven. It was around 11am that Blair and I found ourselves on the road to Dronten for what would likely be the last time.
Because it was a Saturday the facility was empty, and I was pleasantly surprised when my access card worked on the front gate without issue. I scanned us into the lobby and followed the convoluted 3-factor authentication process involving a code, fingerprint and a card to get through the man-trap to the inner part of the facility. It was here that I was forced to leave Blair behind, since he had apparently forgotten has access code, and got rejected back to the lobby. I waved at him through the class and proceeded to the data hall.
It had been more then a year since I was last there, and it took me a while to find my particular server. In retrospect, I should have documented the rack number – it would have saved me time, and a lot of stress. Upon identifying the correct rack, I located my server and and was not at all surprised to see that all the servers above mine, which had previously been connected to satellite feeds as well, were all powered down and disconnected. Clearly I wasn’t the only casualty of the shifting European hosting landscape.
I pulled the server out, and as I struggled with the rails, I suddenly remembered a crucial detail from the last time I was on site – one of the rails was completely messed up and needed some tools to remove. At the time, I had written this particular issue off as a “future Chris” problem, and the time had come to pay the piper.
I scrambled back to the common area and frantically looked around for a screwdriver I could use to aid in my removal. Nothing. I spied a butter-knife and brought that back, but it was insufficient. As I stared forlornly at the rack I realized something – the decommissioned servers above mine were the same make and model, and used the same rails…
I’m not proud of this, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I pulled one of the other servers from the rack, and installed it onto the rails that recently housed my server. Then I took the rails from that server, tucked them under my arm and whistled as I walked back to the common area.
Blair and I took our leave, stopped at a local grocery store to buy some stroopwaffel (I had promised to bring some home with me) and began the long drive back to the Ramada in Amsterdam.
The town of Lelystaad is a small city that lies between Amsterdam and Dronten and was the destination for one on of my previous visits to Holland. On that particular trip, Blair and I had spied a dyke we really wanted to check out but didn’t have time. Since this was likely to be our last trip to the area we decided to take a little detour and drive over the dyke and take the long way back to Amsterdam, and I’m glad we did!
The Netherlands is famous for it’s network of dykes, canals, and locks. In fact, over 25% of the country lies below sea-level, so without their extensive control of the ocean, most of the country would lie under water. The dyke Blair and I found ourselves on was truly a marvel of engineering. About 20 KM long and just wide enough for a two lone road, a bike path (this is Holland after all) and some grass it held the ocean at bay, decreasing sea-level by around 3 meters. It took around 15 minutes to drive from one side to the other, and the view was spectacular! Maybe some day I’ll go back and ride a bicycle along it, with the wind in my hair and the ocean spray just meters away.
The rest of our drive was relatively uneventful, and we found ourselves back at the Ramada before 5PM.
Sean asked where we had been, and we got to talking about the Eygleshoven datacenter, the satellite feeds and the cost of power and Sean immediately decided he wanted to get in on the action and asked that we put him down for a full rack at the colo. What was supposed to be a simple trip to install one server was quickly snowballing in scope! I sent a sales ticket into the datacenter and hoped that someone would look at it before Monday when I was scheduled to go there!
Our gang headed back to Sean’s datacenter and it was only a few more hours of work to get the rest of the servers assembled. Looking back at the empty pallet of servers, I was pleased with what we had accomplished in so little time.
The rest of Saturday was a bit of a blur. I think we hung out at the Ramada for a while, but ultimately, after my experience at the club the previous night I decided to call it a day and went to bed at a half decent hour.
Sunday arrived without fanfare and the gang decided we should go swimming at a nearby rec center, since the Ramada’s pool was closed for maintenance. While I wasn’t initially keen on going, I was eventually persuaded and piled into the car with the rest of the crew for our Sunday morning swim.
I don’t think any of us were prepared for how busy it was going to be at the pool. Apparently the pool is usually divided in half, but on Sunday’s its opened up to become a full sized Olympic pool, which brings everyone out to have a swim! Us included apparently.
It had been at least decade since I had last been in the water, and I was surprised at how good of a workout swimming is; after just a couple of laps I was tired and my arms and legs had a heck of a burn going. After a couple of hours all of us had enough swimming and dodging through crowds of people and we headed back to the hotel, and then to the datacenter to start racking the servers we had built.
While Sean had bought several pallets of servers, he had neglected to buy rails to actually mount the server, so actually installing them in the rack was an interesting game of Tetris as we stacked them one on top of another. By the time we got to the last rack, there were no more rails – so we just started stacking the servers on the ground – much to the chagrin of Sean’s account manager once she found out. By the end of the day though, we at least had all the servers off the pallets and the warehouse manager loved us.
Our final task of the day was to take all the servers Sean wanted us to bring to Eygleshoven and load them into our tiny rental car. We made it fit, but just barely – the back of the car was severely weighed down, and Blair is fond of referring to that drive as “uphill the whole way.”
Not long after, I found myself back at the hotel; at a table with Blair, the Brit and the Pole, enjoying what was a fairly decent dinner buffet spread. I’m not sure where Sean, “Bob” or the other guy ended up, but I assume it involved alcohol. Drinks were had, and after a while we all decided to try and play tennis at the courts located conveniently next door.
I’m not sure if it’s a British thing, or simply the way our companion rolled, but he left the restaurant carrying his pint and walked right out the door! I shrugged and followed, and before long the four of us were walking down the street to this rec center, pints in hand. Europe really is a different place!
It turns out you need to book the tennis courts in advance, and there was no space available for us, but the rec center did have a bar, so we were content to sit and enjoy our hotel pints for a while. After the place closed (it was around 11PM by this time) our motley crew headed back to the hotel bar to continue our festivities.
By this time, the hotel bar had also closed, but fortunately the hotel’s self service convenience store sells beer and wine. We sat at the empty bar which was quickly covered with empty beer bottles.
As we sat and drank we become more animated and attracted some attention. There was the Dutch man who recommended we try a different kind of beer, the two Polish grips who worked with a K-pop band, and even the front desk clerk who gave Blair a tampon because he was convinced he would be able to use it to open a beer bottle (he was not successful). Never before had I met so many different people at once, and it was honestly pretty fun!
Blair bailed around midnight, and not long after so did our Polish friend, but the Brit and I kept drinking and talking, talking and drinking; solving all of the world’s problems. At one point we ran out of bottled beer, so we decided to go behind the bar and pour our own pints! Apparently I’m not half bad at it.
Sometime around 3AM we decided to head up for one last round before going to sleep, after all I wanted to make sure I could be sleeping before the sun came up. I was polishing off a final bottle in the Brit’s room when all of a sudden there was a knock at the door. We made eye-contact, shrugged and decided “why not” and opened it up.
I didn’t get the whole story until later, but the middle of the night knocks had been going on for several days. Most of our crew thought it was other members of our party playing jokes, but it turned out to be something else entirely.
Upon opening the door I found myself confronted with two very intoxicated British guys, and two slightly less intoxicated women. I would later find out the guys were from London, and had picked up the women (one visiting from Egypt, and one visiting from Iceland) at a club. The two British dudes had been walking up and down the halls at night knocking on doors, looking for people to party with and we had answered the call!
Back to the lobby we went! More alcohol was consumed, more world problems were discussed and more good times were had. We did get caught by the front desk clerk as we showed the guys how to pour their own pints and had to take the party back upstairs.
I think I finally staggered back to my room around 6AM and passed out for a mere three and a half hours before I was roused from slumber by my alarm. It was time to drive to Eygleshoven!
I was, of course, in no state to drive, but Blair had wisely quit drinking hours before me and was able to pilot our chariot the 220 KM from Amsterdam to Eygleshoven. We stopped for gas just outside Amsterdam and I realized I needed to get a router for my server, as the one I brought from Dronten was not serviceable.
I figured there should be some store somewhere in Amsterdam that would sell me a Mikrotik router, and while I was ultimately correct, it was far more challenging to obtain then I thought. We first stopped in Utrecht at the address of a network wholesaler, only to discover that the address was actually their corporate offices – no equipment was actually sold from there. I turned back to my phone and finally hit paydirt with a place called Network Winkle (I would later learn that winkle is the Dutch word for store). They had an RB2011 in stock! I purchased one online and Blair drove us to the address.
We arrived, and the dude who answered the door was extremely confused. I explained that I had just placed an order online and needed to pick it up, but was distressed to hear that what I had ordered was not, in fact, in stock locally. Fortunately for me, Network Winkle did have another model in stock, so I left with at least something that would suite my purposes. Dodged a bullet there!
After about 2 hours of driving, Blair and I stopped in the town of Best to get some food at a McDonalds along the highway. It turns out this was, in fact, the Best McDonalds – not simply because it was in the town of Best, but because it was also totally awesome. This McDonalds had gone all in on retro, 1950’s American décor – it was laid out like a classic diner and going inside really gave us the feeling of being in a movie from the era. We got our food, took some pictures and were back on the road quickly.
The last hour of driving was uneventful, though we did have to pass through Germany on our way to Eygleshoven. I still find it to be a weird, yet awesome, experience to be driving in one country, and then suddenly to be in another, but the open borders of the EU made it possible. We found the datacenter without issue, and I rang the buzzer beside an imposing metal door.
The door burst open and I found myself face-to-face with a large German man and some of his lackeys. I explained I was there to rack a server and gave them my ticket number and the German dude told one of the lackey’s were to take me.
I followed and found myself inside a data hall like nothing I had ever seen. Stacks and stacks of tower servers (think classic desktop PC form factor) were piled meters high on the type of wire shelves you would expect to find in a meat packing plant. Next to me, this kid (probably between 17 and 20 years old) frantically looked around the room for where to send me.
We might still be there, except that his boss showed up and gave the kid shit for taking me to the wrong room, and brought us both to a more conventional data hall with a convenient slot for my server and router. “This intern is a pain in my ass” he confided in me.
I got my server racked and installed, while Blair dropped the bombshell on them that we were in the market for an entire rack, in addition to my small colo (the ticket I opened previously still hadn’t received an answer). Our German friend pondered this news and went upstairs to talk to the big boss, while I configured the router.
I am truly impressed they managed to put together a rack for us on such short notice. Within a couple of hours, Blair and I were racking and stacking the servers we had brought for Sean and brought them online one by one.
It was a long day, but by 7PM we were back on the road and I managed to get to bed at a decent time.
By this time it was Tuesday and I thought that I was done with Eygleshoven, at least for this trip. How wrong I was!
While Blair and I were racking servers, Sean was working a lead on some satellite tuner cards which had been pulled from some other company’s servers that had been decommissioned at the colo. Sean’s plan was to get the tuner cards and send us back to Eygleshoven to install them in the servers, so he would be able to get some of his own satellite feeds. This was a fine plan (though it meant another 6 hour round trip), but we also needed to procure some coax cables to connect the tuner cards to the satellite dishes, something we didn’t have with us.
Blair and I spent our morning running around to different hardware stores, trying to find someplace that would sell us coax and connectors. We first tried Praxis (I would equate this to a Canadian Home Hardware), then Gamma (basically Canadian Tire) before we struck paydirt at Hornbach (Home Depot). I liked Hornbach since it almost perfectly mimicked Home Depot – both in terms of the product lines and the layout and color theme of the store. With 50 ft of coax cable, ends and terminating tools in hand we headed back to meet Sean and pick up the tuner cards.
The Netherlands is known for its adherence to rules, and Sean’s datacenter was no exception. Even though the servers we were harvesting the tuner cards from were long since added to the discard pile the rule stated we needed to wait at least 24 hours after a notification has been sent to the previous owner before it could be removed from the premises. This meant that Blair and I couldn’t be on the road until after 2PM, since that was when the notification went out.
2 o’clock arrived and we hustled to the datacenter to meet the tech who would be handing over the cards. As we walked down the hall, I heard one of the other staff call out; “Hey, it’s Unmetered!” Apparently we were becoming local celebrities! Cards in hand, Blair and I hopped into our vehicle and began the three hour trek back to Eygleshoven – not something that I expected to be doing this soon.
The drive was uneventful; marked only by another stop at the Best McDonalds, and I even managed to build 12 coax patch cables while sitting in the passenger seat. I’ve never made coax cables while sitting in a car before, and while it’s not the most ergonomic experience but at least I didn’t manage to injure myself. Still, it’s not something I’m eager to repeat.
We pulled into the DC, installed the tuner cards, performed one last check to make sure everything was online and by 8PM were on the road back to Amsterdam.
This second trip was more surreal then the first. After we got on the highway, time seemed to loose all meaning – my entire existence seemed to consist of the street lights whizzing past at super speed. Looking back on the drive, both of us are in agreement that we lost at least 15 minutes – time that neither of us can account for. Perhaps it was the exhaustion beginning to get to us, or perhaps we got abducted by aliens but those 15 minutes will never come back.
Encouraged by the sheer lack of traffic, and the desire to make the street lights pass at an ever increasing rate of speed, we made good time and completed the three hour drive in about two and a half. Back at the hotel, I feel into a blissful slumber that would be interrupted just 7 short hours later.
Weeks after the fact Blair and I would receive a speeding ticket from the rental car agency. Apparently in the Netherlands it’s common to receive automated tickets from either drones or cameras, and our fast drive back had cost us. While I didn’t mind the ticket (we were after all speeding) I did mind how difficult it was to pay. Cash, Cheque and credit card were not accepted, so it was extremely lucky that Blair had a fried with a Dutch bank account, otherwise we might still be trying to figure out how to pay it.
The next day was the end of the trip for Blair and I. Our flight was scheduled to depart around 2PM, so we needed to check out of the hotel around 10. The flight back to Vancouver was uneventful, though I wasn’t able to sleep much on the plane.
Because of the time change, our arrival in Vancouver was around 3PM local time – only an hour after our departure from Amsterdam! I found it a surreal experience to walk outside and experience the late-afternoon sunlight, when my body thought it should be the middle of the night. I refer to the Europe-Vancouver flight as the “day that never ends” because the day ends up being around 8 hours longer then it should. While not sleeping meant that I was exhausted upon my arrival in Vancouver, it did mean beating the jet lag was much easier, since I was able to fall asleep nearly instantly upon my eventual arrival back home.
While you would expect the trip to end here, Vancouver wasn’t quite the end of the road for Blair and I. Sean had remained in Amsterdam for longer, and had left us with instructions to move some servers from his house to a datacenter in Vancouver. And so it was that I found myself standing, cart of servers in tow, inside yet another datacenter some 17 hours after waking up on a different continent trying to make them fit in yet another rack. It went well, and my reward was a 7PM ferry back to Vancouver Island and blissful sleep by 10PM.
The day that never ends, and the trip with way to many tasks had finally reached its conclusion.