I'm back!

So it's been over four months since my last entry and I'm going to get my excuses out of the way right now: I was working two jobs, going to Dutch classes twice a week (with 10+ hours of homework per week) and doing my MA. Then I was having a life, and during that time, I couldn't be bothered to sit in front of a computer and write my tales. Now I have one job, my new Dutch teacher is on holiday until mid-August and I'm taking a semester break from my MA. I still have a life but now I have a bit of extra time to pen those famed tales. But instead of boring you to death with four months worth of drivel, I will do the highlights (in no particular order) instead.

Highlight 1: Today it was hot - around 30 degrees - and that's hot for this part of the world. Lots of people go to the beach (or have been relaxing on the beach for weeks already as most of the population heads south to Greece or Italy or Spain or insert other hot country here), or they go to a nice park and sit in the shade of a tree and have a picnic, or they sip rosé at a riverside bar. What do Nico and I do? We have lunch at our favourite socialist bar - Nijmegen is known as Havana aan de Waal (Havana on the Waal river) after all - and decide that we would cycle to Kleve in Germany. It's only about 25kms away so a 50km round trip is a good cycle. We also decided to take the "high road". Yes, the road that has many hills. This area where we live is the hilliest in the land, so as we were on our way, we saw many serious riders in all their kit speeding up and down the hills and dinging their bells whenever they were approaching so we could get out of their way. Eventually we got to Kleve and stopped at a city park, complete with ponds and fountains and cool trees. Instead of cycling back along the same route we had come from, we decided to do a loop (up more hills) to get back to Nijmegen. As we were doing this, we ran into a fair. Rather than going through it, we thought we'd take the next road. But it didn't quite turn out like that. Instead we ended up in mountain bike / dirt road territory. BIG hills, mud, dirt, rocks. Whatever suspension I may have had on my bike is now gone. Completely. After Nico's sense of direction got us out of there, we had added QUITE A FEW extra KMs to our journey. And then we faced another hill. At the end of this one we grabbed an ice cream and another LARGE bottle of water from a service station and headed towards Nijmegen. It was a few minutes later that we were on exactly the same route as we had come in on! Typical :) But we found a nice detour and MORE HILLS and after a while (I lost track) we ended up at home - sweaty, thirsty but well exercised.

Highlight 2: The vierdaagse. This is the famous four day march of Nijmegen. Those with slight bouts of insanity think it's acceptable to walk 40 or 50kms a day (you choose!) for four days in a row. Luckily, it coincides with Nijmegen festival so for seven days there's live music, good food, rides and general fun to be had in Nijmegen - most things for free (except the toilets, of course)! Nico and I enjoyed four of those days / nights - a couple with friends. On the very first day, Jessica and Geert came over for a day / night of fun, though I will never forgive them for introducing Nico to the Nintendo DS the following morning!! But here are some happy snaps of the evening:

Highlight 3: The EK - the European Cup football championships. Almost the whole country was washed in Orange in support of the Dutch team, who made it through to the quarter finals and unceremoniously crashed out to Russia. Spain won the whole thing...they've been winning a lot lately...the football, the tennis, the Tour de France. Anyway, for one of the matches we caught up with friends in Eindhoven and went to the old stomping ground 't Pandje. Patrick and Sam must again be thanked for their patience during the kaassouffle incident. Here are some pics, courtesy of Patrick and Sam:

Highlight 4: Eurovision Song Contest. Come on, who doesn't love this. We watched it on a wall (I kid you not) at Jessica and Geert's place in Breda, along with Sam and Just Jurgy. Good company, good food, good drinks, not so good music, but funny dancing (Sam just loved doing the Robo so much) and hats:

Highlight 5: Last, but definitely not least, Nico and I celebrated one year of marital bliss on May 18th. To celebrate, we went to Gent in Belgium for that weekend. Stayed in a lovely hotel and were upgraded to a €300/night room. Seriously. Who pays that for a hotel room. We might tell every hotel we stay at in the future that it's our anniversary, just for the upgrade!! It was a great weekend and if you're ever in Gent, go to the soup kitchen - the BEST place for lunch. You can choose from four soups of the day and you get a bowl of it, delicious fresh bread and an apple for next to no euros. We don't have photos of the soup kitchen but here are some others:



And with those five highlights, I'm ending this post. Fingers crossed (or uncrossed, depending on how bored you are after reading this post) that I'll be updating more regularly in the future. But for now, I'm off to bed.

Easter Images

A little French getaway

What's the point of living in Europe if you don't have weekend escapes? So we made another one to France with lunch in Luxembourg.

We arrived in Nancy on Thursday night so we didn't get out and about until Friday. Nancy isn't a huge city but it has so many restaurants we were spoiled for choice. We even got some delicious futomaki which was possibly the best maki I have eaten since leaving Japan!

Nancy, however, is not known for its Japanese cuisine, but it is known for its main square, palace and art nouveau.

After a lot of strolling and sipping cafe au lait in the sun, we headed for Colmar on Saturday afternoon. Being in the Alsace region and nearing the German speaking world, it is easy to see where the inspiration for some of its architecture came from.

I loved Colmar and if you ever find yourself in this region of France, I highly recommend you pop into this town. Here are some reasons why.

If that doesn't grab you, maybe knowing that you can stop at this town along the way will convince you.

While we were there we stumbled upon an Easter market.

And while Nico was hanging out with the bunnies, I went and sampled some (not so local) brew.

On Sunday we stopped into Metz for a coffee break, an easter egg purchase and a peak at the cathedral.

Our last stop was a windy, rainy and chilly Luxembourg for lunch and the surprise Irish dancing which was enough to get us out of there. But not before a few happy snaps, of course.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

If you are ever anywhere near where these guys perform, go and see them! Roxanne and I saw them in London way back in 1999 with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and it was HILARIOUS, I tell ya! So it was to my complete delight when I read they were in the Netherlands with their latest show, Completely Hollywood (abridged). Sam, Patrick, Nico and I made a night of it at the Park Theatre in Eindhoven and what a good night it was. The troupe was witty and clever and got laughs all round, while the bar served us up some good drinks and a comfy place to talk the night away.

Kinderdijk!

Nico and I decided to play tourist so we headed off to Kinderdijk. It's easy to see windmills while living in the Netherlands, in fact, we have one just up the road (an actual working windmill that's been going strong for a couple of hundred years). But if you want to see windmills all in a row and peek around inside, then THE place to go is the UNESCO World Heritage Listed Kinderdijk. Winding along the narrow streets we caught glimpses of these famed mills between quaint houses and not so quaint factories. We parked and strolled in the sun with families, tourists and cameras and we fulfilled one of my ambitions (!) to go inside a windmill! Even better than this though, was my discovery that some of these windmills are actually people's homes. I wonder how many people there really have been "hit by the windmill"?

Paris

A few weeks ago we took a road trip to Paris with friends Jessica and Geert. We saw a lot of the outsides of many famous sights and the insides of many restaurants, cafés and bars. There was entertainment everywhere: insanely comical French waiters, tourists who had gone that one drink too far and of course ourselves. A fabulous weekend all round!

Sorry

Finally an Australian government has come along and taken the first step with the most important word of all: Sorry.

Let's now look forward to the next step: Action.

(photo courtesy of the ABC: www.abc.net.au/news)

Birthdays, Beauty and Because Dutch News is News Too.

Birthdays

Way back in late October and early November, Nico and I celebrated our birthdays. Nico, 30, me, 32. Yes, yes, for those of you who didn't know, I am a cradle snatcher! We were supposed to celebrate the 30th in style, but not having finished the flat by that point we had a few friends over for a few drinks and a quiet night. The party was supposed to come later but I think Nico's night out with the boys a couple of weeks ago may have been it? On my birthday, we headed to Drenthe and checked out the Hunebed. 5000 year old tombs that look like mini-Stonehenges. For some reason, blogger isn't letting me upload photos at the moment, but if you have Facebook, you can see a few shots there.

Beauty

On the 18th November it was 6 months since we got hitched. To celebrate, we went to Den Haag to the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, home to Vermeer's famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. Although we did sneak a peak at this portrait, we were there to see the exhibition Dutch Portraits - The Age of Rembrandt and Frank Hals. The museum is small and intimite and the soothing sounds of two young violin players filled the air with a more than fitting soundtrack to rooms packed with aristocrats, merchants, scholars and families staring down their pointed noses at the curious creatures of the 21st century. Being able to compare portraits of the same era in such close quarters highlighted why Rembrandt has such a well deserved reputation. His depth and detail, in my eyes, surpassed many of his contemporaries. If you're in the Netherlands, you can see this beautiful and rare exhibition until 13th January 2008. After that, I guess these masterpieces go back to their private owners and galleries that are scattered around the world.

Because Dutch News is News Too

So goes the line from CCN - a short news comedy programme that airs nightly on TV in the Netherlands. It's part of the Boom Chicago crowd. We have a couple of friends, Jessica and Geert, who enjoy CCN (among other silly things) as much as we do. So we arranged to go to Amsterdam to see a live comedy improv show by Boom Chicago. We warmed ourselves up with a pint or two at a pub, then made our way to the theatre for food and fun. The theme of the night was Me, MySpace and iPod, quite fitting for me, especially since I had just got back from nerding it up in Milan at a 3 day conference on technology and education. The show was quirky and sarcastic and had the audience roaring with laughter. Add that to the best little cafe we had found earlier in the day, and the discovery of one of the funniest books ever published - Animals with Tourettes - and the company we had, it was a fabulous day and evening out.

Addendum to my last post

Well, it seems that with all the writing I have to do for work and for uni means that I don't have any other writing energy. Yes, curriculum writing and academic writing, as much as I love them, have squeezed me of any creative writing juices for Nanowrimo. You know, I love writing, but doing it full time makes me not really interested in writing in my free time. *Sigh*. I would have once thought that blasphemous!

So, I will postpone my Nanowrimo for next year, or the year after. Or whenever work and study don't involve so much, well, writing.

It's that time again...

Well, in about 30 minutes it's that time again.

What?

NaNoWriMo of course!

Remember last year I joined this crazy group of people who write 50000 words in the hope that it turns out to be some kind of story during the month of November?

Well it's almost November and I'm jumping back on board that NaNoWriMo ship.

Why?

Well emails that contain the following messages for a start:

The secret of NaNoWriMo. Which is this: There is a door in your brain. The door has been there your whole life. You may not have noticed it before because it blends in with everything else in your brain. Weird art. Mismatched furniture. Squishy gray bits clinging to everything. So what does this door have to do with your novel?Your job this month is not so much writing a book (which is intimidating) as it is finding that door (which is easy). It's easy because you'll have guides in November who will take you right to it. These guides are also known as your characters. They're kind of an abstract notion now, but you'll meet them in all their glory in Week One of NaNoWriMo. They'll be a strange lot. Insecure warlocks. Stamp-collecting squirrels. Teenage detectives. Whoever shows up, go with them. And go quickly. You may have a general sense of where you're going together; you may not. It doesn’t matter. Just write your allotment of 1667 words (or more) on November 1. Don't edit any of it. Editing is for December. Then come back and write another 1667 words the next day. And the next. And the next. By Week Two, you'll be at the door. A few words later, you'll be through it. You'll know you're there because the writing will feel different. Less like work, and more like watching a gloriously imperfect movie with cringe-worthy dialogue, heaps of confusing tangents, and moments of brilliance so delightful that you'll want to scream. Once you've stepped through that door into the vast reaches of your imagination, you'll be able to return there as often as you like. It's an enchanted, intoxicating place, and there are other great things besides novels in there. But we'll talk about that later. (Extract from an email to all the NaNoWriMo-ers out there from legendary creator, Chris Baty).

The hinges on my door are starting to creak.

D.I.Y?!

Trading in brain for brawn for a few days, we set about fixing the apartment that we're moving into at the weekend.

Thursday 20 September
18.30
Meet at Nijmegen station.
Find food.
Drive to our current 2nd home.
Eat.
19.00
Tape skirting boards, windows, light switches, edges of ceiling.
20.45
Run out of tape.
Go back to Eindhoven.

Friday 21 September
18.00
Meet the fabulous but slightly ill Jurgy at Nijmegen station.
Find restaurant.
Eat.
19.30
Drive to Nijmegen flat.
Nico finishes tape job.
Jurgy and I wash walls.
21.00
Bid farewell to Jurgs.
Drive back to Eindhoven.

Saturday 22 September
9.00
Drive to Nijmegen flat.
Slight diversion for coffee.
10.30
Paint walls.
Paint walls.
Paint walls.
13.00
Find food.
Eat.
14.00
Paint walls.
Paint walls.
Paint walls.
21.00
Drive home to Eindhoven.
22.00
Cook.
Eat.

Sunday 22 September
10.30
Drive to Nijmegen.
11.20
Smile at our yellow walls.
11.40
Unpeel tape from skirting boards, windows, light switches, edges of ceiling.
Lay foam.
Lay floor.
Repeat x 57458709740987487540074311704756538282932.
21.00
Drive back to Eindhoven.
22.00
Cook.
Eat.
Beer.
Drink.
Mmm.

We still have to lay the floors in the kitchen/dining area/hall/2xbedrooms/clean Nijmegen flat/pack Eindhoven flat/clean Eindhoven flat/move/unpack/have a life.But so far so good.

Road Trip **Warning: Very Long Story**

Setting off in the wee hours of Saturday morning wasn't even hard. It had been too long since our last road trip and our super tent needed to be used for more than a few days of festival going. We loaded up the car and set off with a bang. Literally. It was just a little bump into the car that was parked far too close for comfort, especially at dawn. But soon enough we were on those famous fast freeways of Germany. We were well on our way.

We drove towards the sun but it was a long way away. We sojourned in Graz, Austria for a meal and a night's rest. We woke early and drove towards the sun. Through the mountains and yo dee lay hee ho landscapes of Austria and Slovenia, we finally crossed into Croatia. We drank good coffee in roadside stops and breathed in crisp air. Our eyes opened in awe at the scenery. National park after national park. Craggy mountains. Glistening blue sea. Bright sunshine.

We kept driving south and the sun beat through the windows of the car with an intensity I hadn't felt for a long time. I wound down the window and let my arm work up a trucker's tan.

Split started to appear on the road signs. The kilometres clocked up in the car and clocked down on the road side signs. And then it came into view. A mish mash of buidlings straight out of Tito's times mixed with those of more distant reigns. It was Sunday and somehow the city felt like it had been deserted along with all those who had claimed Split as their own, so many times, so long ago.

We found a small hostel for a couple of nights. Super tent would have to wait a few more days to break out of its bag. Cool shower. Fresh clothes. And then down the hills to the heart of this brilliant city, home to God of tennis, Goran Ivanisevic.

Palm trees line the crystal clear waters of this harbour city. Diocletian's palace dominates. This is a palace that is truly public. Markets, cafes and restaurants are sprawled throughout this Roman emperor's retirement home. It also houses some of the city's residents who live on the poorer fringes of society - their flats handed down from generation to generation. Letting my eyes gaze up from the age old columns and gates, simplicity of life hits me: Laundry hanging out to dry. You can find the unexpected in the most amazing places.

Knowing we only had a couple of weeks to explore, and not able to find Goran, we headed further down the Dalmatian coast and pitched our super tent in Basko Polje. Not surprisingly, we didn't have a pump for our matresses but our friendly camper neighbours lent us theirs. Armed with a local brew, I got to work while Nico sat back in our Pevec chairs, sipped his Karlovacko and took some happy holiday snaps.

We'd hoped for endless sunshine and lazing on the beach, but Nico had secretly packed some Dutch weather. This didn't stop him from his first frolick in the Adriatic.

Our days here were spent walking, eating and drinking. Pizza was the specialty of, well, all of Croatia, and it was nicley complimented with any of the local pivo. We sampled such delicacies in neighbouring Basko Voda and Makarska. We also got closer to those craggy mountains that tower over and sneak through so many of these coastal cities and towns.

After filling up for a couple of days, we again headed south. After stopping off in Bosnia for lunch (and may I add that Bosnian pizzas outdo Croatia's, hands down) we drove into a most fascinating city. Dubrovnik. Little did I know that Nico didn't unpack that Dutch weather at our last stop and we had rain, rain, rain for our first few hours. But then the skies cleared and the sun shone and our expectations were more than met. And sometimes, pictures definitely speak louder than any words.

After a few days of sights, sounds and smells to fill our senses for a long time to come, we chased the sun to Hvar. This island boasts the most hours of sunshine in Croatia and it did not disappoint. Finally I submerged myself in refreshing salt water and joined the lizards on the rocks, lapping up the vitamin B that had been missing for a few years!

We stumbled on an amazing cocktail bar in Hvar and we spent most afternoons / evenings there sitting on cushioned couches, in cushioned archways and windows, enjoying a few drinks with the setting sun.

After a few days of true holiday life, we caught the ferry back to the mainland. Planning is not my strength and not something I really relish in. And sometimes I am reminded by mother nature why I am this way. We had decided to camp at Sibenik to visit Trogir and Krka National Park's famed waterfalls. As we cruised on towards the mainland, the clouds darkened and the temperature dropped. There it was. Rain.

Our solution? We decided to drive until it was sunny again. We ended up in Opatija. It has good ice cream. We stayed for about 12 hours. It was a little too long. But we did get perhaps the best picture of our holiday.

With a few days left on this Adriatic adventure, we left Croatia. On our mission for sun, we ended up in Trieste for the best cappucino and foccacia of my life. A charming seaside city where we were greeted with that certain hospitality that only Italy and its inhabitants can provide.


We stopped here only for lunch and a little walk. We thought it would be nice to spend our last few days in Venice. And it was. The perfect ending to a fabulous trip.