I knew it was a bad idea the instant I heard Melissa say the words: “We have free Windows 7 Ultimate DVDs for anyone who asks Ken a question during the break!”

Within seconds this was the scene:

…and these weren’t lame just-give-me-my-Win7 questions, mind you—this was the toughest, most technical crowd of the tour, judging from the onslaught of really good questions we withstood during and after our sessions.

We were at KaHo Sint-Lieven Hogeschool, a college of about 5,000 students (and a Microsoft IT Academy) in Flanders. We had the honor of presenting to students well into their ICT bachelors degree program, and it was clear from the start that while they may be young in years, they have deep understanding of our products and technologies.

Tjeerd reveled in our proximity to his homeland, delivering his Win7 presentation in his native Dutch—except for leading a few crowd chants of “Windows 7, baby!” in an accent that can best be described as “Dutch Elvis.”

David retooled his Exchange presentation to be an introduction rather than a “what’s new” session—and you’d never have known it was done on the fly.

Liberty once again lived up to her reputation as the most dangerous person in Microsoft Learning, revealing (only some) of the secrets of how and why we develop our exams.

And as for me—it felt great to be back up to full steam after missing 3 days of the tour due to a bad cold. (Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty wimpy, but that’s our rule on the bus: get sick, get off).

Unfortunately, we’re having trouble keeping a full, healthy team: over the weekend, Chris took ill, so he’s recovering at home and will rejoin us in Berlin next weekend. Feel better, Chris–we miss you!

We lost Chris, but we picked up Ian, Stephen, and Janett Garcia-Riseland (our director of marketing) in Amsterdam, so for those of you keeping score, our roster for week two is:

Ken, Melissa, Tjeerd, Liberty, Stephen, Ian, Janett, and Bob. (and if you haven’t checked out Bob’s chronicles of life on the bus—you should: I’d love to say it’s all exaggeration, but it actually happened pretty much the way he described it…)