Austria Ski Trip 2007

Some photos from our ski trip to Lech with Isi and Lachie earlier this year.

Our little Christmas Tree

Bought our Christmas Tree yesterday. It was an exorbitant 4 euros. It's a cute little thing that has lights and we got chocolate balls wrapped in gold foil decorations. Edible Christmas tree decorations....what a fabulous idea! Whether or not there will be any decorations left on Dec 25th is another thing. Maybe we'll have a bare Christmas tree with little bits of scrap foil around it. The evening of 5th December is when the Dutch celebrate Christmas (Sinterklaas) with their families and the kids get their presents. We'll be going to a Christmas Party on that night with other expats in the neighbourhood. It's a dinner party and everyone has to bring a national dish. We're doing a main dish and I must admit, it was a struggle coming up with an Aussie national dish. We don't have a barbie as we don't have an outdoor area with our apartment, bangers and mash seems rather boring...a lamb roast, perhaps?...but at 35 euros a kilo lamb is a luxury item over here, and kangaroos are hard to find here. After flicking through many cookbooks, I think we'll make a big beef pie. Four 'n' twenty, that's as Aussie as you can get, right?

Sinterklaas and Zwarte Pieten come to town

Paul and I went to the Market Square today to watch the arrival of Sinterklaas on his horse and Zwarte Pieten (gliding down from the rooftop of the town hall) in Den Bosch. Halfway through November there is a big spectacle when the Sinterklaas arrives in the Netherlands. Television crews await his arrival from Spain at a port where he docks his steam boat full of presents, Zwarte Pieten [Black Piet] , and his horse. They are welcomed by a huge crowd of children and parents.

Sinterklaas simultaneously arrives at every city or village in the Netherlands. Suspicious thinking children who understand the impossibility of simultaneous sightings of Sinterklaas discover that this grand event unfolds with the help of "hulp-Sinterklazen" (people who help Sinterklaas by dressing up like him). Sinterklaas goes on a tour through the village accompanied by several Zwarte Pieten, who throw different types of sweets around and on the ground for children. After this day, Sinterklaas begins his assessment of all the children's behaviour in the past year, and proceeds to hand out presents. It culminates on the evening of December 5.

Sinterklaas is said to have originated from St. Nicolaus, the Bishop of Mira, Turkey, who did good things for children. Instead of living in the North Pole as the American Santa does, Sinterklaas lives in Spain, it seems. How it came to be that Sinterklaas lives in Spain is a mystery, but hey, it beats the north pole!

Autumn Photos of Den Bosch

Danny, Dinner, Disco, Dit..

Dan came over for the weekend. Got a few pics from last night. The boys went for a picturesque bike ride in Vught and then after a quick freshening up back home, we headed out for Dinner in Den Bosch. It was a lovely meal that ended with armagnacs and cigars. Yesterday was the first day of Carnivale (starts on 11/11) which will go into full swing in Feb next year, when the whole city gets dressed up, with lots of live music, singing and merriment. So there were lots of strange costumes and live bands around town yesterday. After dinner we passed a few bars with Carnivale people inside and loud dutch music blaring out. We decided to go for a quieter post-dinner drink. We ended up at 'Dit' which is a hip and quirky little bar. It was Silent Disco night, lots of dancing and no loud music so you can chat with your friends without having to yell. Everyone got a set of headphones and the live DJ music was played through the headphones. It was a great concept and a lot of fun.

The WES cycle

Most of this blog so far has been about holidays, travel, food and friends. So I thought it appropriate to write a post about the more mundane aspects of our life, which quite frankly, accounts for most of the periods in between blogposts. In general, it's what I call the WES cycle. I've made that up, but essentially WES stands for Work - Eat - Sleep, and that sums up a lot of our days. As some of you may know, Paul works near the Dutch-German border and commutes 97km each way to and from work. I work in Amsterdam and that's 90km each way. So, between us, we travel 374 kilometres every day. Actually, that's the first time I've done the sums and it sounds nuts, huh? It's fair to say that we are not a carbon neutral couple. The travel time varies. 'I will never complain about Melbourne traffic again. All I had to do was travel 200km return. Easy, right? 4 hours and counting, probably an hour to go' (Source - text message from Cessy stuck in traffic jam yesterday)

Because of the commute and the nature of our jobs, we generally leave around 7.30 in the morning and get back around 8ish at night. Dinner is usually relatively quick and easy and quite late and then we spend a few hours in our favourite places.... Cessy on the couch in front of the plasma and myself on the internet because I'm a facebook addict. Then we're off to bed and ready for the next WES cycle.

Our week also has a regular pattern:
Monday - Yuck! - Have to cram our Dutch homework when we get back from work and 5 days until next weekend.
Tuesday - Long! - Straight after work, go to Dutch class from 8-10pm, get home 10.30, dinner at 11pm and straight to bed.
Wednesday - Tired! - Because yesterday was a long day.
Thursday - Wahoo!! - Almost weekend and late night shopping today.
Friday - Fab! - The weekend is just around the corner.

Having said that we're still enjoying the novelty of living in Europe. We love that Paris is 4 and a bit hours away, Brussels is just over an hour and everything seems so close. I've realised that coming from Australia, sometimes we suffer from 'Isolation Syndrome'. ie. 'I'm so far from the rest of the world syndrome'. Since moving here, it's been really evident that most Dutch people consider Australia as a dream country, a land with beautiful landscapes and nature, wide open spaces, abundance of resources and relaxed people. Of course, we're biased and despite being far from the rest of the world, Oz is always going to be our Numero Uno.