We have had a white Christmas indeed, against all predictions. There had been the heaviest December snows for thirty years (sticking it right up the gravy-trainers and chicken-lickens in Copenhagen), but the snow ceased on 22 December and the snow became hard slippery melting ice over hard slippery cobblestones. Then came the rain.

Morgan and his family arrived from Switzerland early afternoon on Christmas Eve, and we indulged – gallons of gluhwein, Puglia Primitivo red wine, schnapps, beer, coffee. After sixteen months in Europe we found ourselves actually missing Kiwi food, so we went traditional for Christmas dinner. A huge roast leg of lamb with roasted potatoes, parsnip, pumpkin, onions, and carrot and beans, lashings of gravy and mint sauce, followed by the not so traditional Danish apple cake and cream and we also had the not so traditional Danish Jule Schnapps, and included potatoes of the more Germanic or Scandinavian type – Hasselbak as well as caramelised potatoes and Red cabbage.

The lamb we bought at a Halal butcher. Great quality and cheap – that is to say, still very very expensive. If you go to a Dutch butcher the price is not as low as expensive, it’s astronomical. When we bought the lamb we had to convince the butcher to not bone it and to not remove every single bit of fat. Thank goodness we had the support of a Dutch lady on our side of the counter who helped stop the butcher from butchering our leg of lamb.

When we wished each other “Merry Christmas” and retired to bed, it was still raining, as forecast. But old Huey the Weather God had other ideas. He must have figured that a couple of old fart expats needed a little romance, because when we rose at seven, there it was – two inches deep as far as the eye could see. JJ sat at the doorstep drinking espresso and smoking his pipe as the light slowly came up. By eight o’clock there was morning twilight, and the birds came out, feeding on the birdseed and fat balls we hang on the lower trees over the fence from our little alley, and the bread we had scattered along the fence line. Great tits, blue tits, a red-breasted robin, a jay, all brightly coloured at any time, but against a black-and-white background of bare branches and pristine snow they are clad in unreal technicolor, like cartoon creations.

The sun rose at about twenty-to-nine, and the snowflakes turned back to rain and sadly the Christmas landscape gradually dissolved thoughout the day.

We are definitely not yet sick of Europe!

Our family came from Switzerland for Christmas and we were a little worried.

Not because our house is small, with one tiny bathroom on the ground floor.

Not because we have only one bedroom and they all had to sleep in the lounge on one fold out single bed, one 3 seater couch, and one blow up double mattress.

Not because we are all used to very different foods and we certainly are – Our family in Europe consists of two New Zealanders (JJ and Morgan), one Dane (me), one Chilean (Angelica), and 2 Chilean/Swiss (Ruedi and Rolf).

Not because we do not have a TV or any games for boys.

Our worry was that we have no common language and being in our tiny house and all the pressure that Christmas itself can create, things could have been fraught.

Ruedi and Rolf speak Swiss German and Spanish, and Ruedi is learning English and French at school; Morgan speaks Swiss German, High German and English and understands some Spanish; JJ speaks English, some French, some Dutch; Angelica speaks Spanish and Swiss German, and has some English and I speak English and fairly good Danish and very poor Dutch.

Our meal time conversations were all over the place and when we were out trying to show the boys things or alert them to something was great fun, if tiring at times.

JJ, the boys, and I went and fed the birds early in the morning – well at about 9. On the way back I walked arm in arm with Ruedi – and he is 13 and very tall, and I am over sixty and fairly short. He looked down at me and said “lady”, I answered pointing at him “man” and he said “no!” long pause and he said “Gentleman”. JJ was walking/dancing in front of us with Rolf – and I said “Old Man” (he is over 64 after all) and he said “No!”, I said hmmm what about “Funny Man” and he said yes.

We had a great time and the boys were great fun to be with and the language stuff was nothing at all in the end.

Then believe it or not, Best Beloved and I had 12 marvellous days in Denmark, we went everywhere, we were taken everywhere,  and had such a fantastic time.

My Danish family were amazing and gave us a holiday to remember. Some of you will have heard the story that Best Beloved said 44 years ago that we would come to Denmark together, and he has been true to his word – that is 44 years later we finally went together to Denmark and he loved it. Mind you we were spoilt rotten.

We had an overnight train journey to Copenhagen, 1 1/2 days in Copenhagen, 3 days in the north of Jutland, and days in and around Vejle. What a joy it was – speaking and eating and laughing and enjoying the family I do not know nearly well enough. Speaking really means trying to speak in Danish – I did okay, and they were so supportive, all of them. Best Beloved meandered along happily, smoking his pipe and enjoying what he had realistically never expected to see and enjoy.

Much to add – much to say, and much to celebrate.

Danish open sandwiches, Gamle Dansk, the sea, the coast, the land, the birds, the petanque – they all seriously play petanque, and we did as well, Tivoli Gardens, Legoland (2 old kids we are), Den Gamle By, the Eagles, the shifting sand dunes, the buried church, the history, the stories, the family stories …… so much to add. We spent 3  nights in Frederikshavn in a hotel overlooking the harbour which was great, great view, great activity. From there we explored the north of Denmark, the stories will come later. We also spent a day in Ribe, a wonderful wonderful old town, and a very wet day in the Gamle By (the old town).

At the Gamle By I discovered, or rediscovered, the Danish shawl – and I have made 3 so far – just to see how they work. I have played with the shape and increases to see how I can modernise it as the original is wrapped around the body and tied at the front of the waist. It is not a simple triangle – but more of that later – oh and it has a really great edge.

As I said before we have also been to Tivoli, Legoland, driven through Brande (where my mother was born), and Stilling – where I was born and many other places. My father was born in Vejle.

We also drove through a sea of frogs. The saying – raining cats and dogs – well in Denmark it seems to rain frogs. We drove with along a gravel country road on a very very wet night  (yes a gravel road in Denmark) avoiding where possible the frogs, there seemed to be millions. You know that story that if the frogs die in the world – then the world is in trouble. Well in Denmark there is not a shortage of frogs.

and I will tell more of these stories.

And we laughed and laughed

We have had some of my Danish family here for a week – they stayed in Den Helder in the north of the Netherlands, and we visited them and they visited us here in Haarlem. We even took our bikes to Den Helder and across on the ferry to Texel for the day.

That was hard work – riding into the wind – but it was still a great day and a great week.

It was great – but my Danish is so rubbish and I have to do something about that.

lots more to come

We left by train for Munich on the Monday morning after the birthday garden party. Fortunately M had looked up the trip for us on the internet because we had missed the train we had intended to catch and were very surprised at all the changes that we had to make. That is, we had tickets to Zurich to Munich – and it turns out we had to change trains 5 times to get there. We had absolutely no idea. We could still have been sitting on a train somewhere in Switzerland in a yard or something and may never have been seen again.

Our tickets actually said in small print Zurich, Stuttgart, Munich – the first Swiss train conductor took one look and pretended to clip the ticket or so it seemed – because we were  not on the Zurich to Stuttgart train and I guess throwing 2 oldies off the train would not have made his day. We were on the train that we had originally planned to be on – which did not go anywhere near Stuttgart. I will look up the route and add the details of it. That is where an Oldies OE goes awry – one cannot remember all the minute details.

Previously the Amsterdam ticket office had printed out the stops for us to get where we were going – the “lazy” one didn’t do that for us and we could have been sorely embarrassed and lost. And just maybe – because the Dutch do not admit to mistakes – she didn’t print the stops out because she had in fact booked us on the wrong train. Fortunately we hadn’t reserved seats as well.

It was a very interesting trip but bits were quite harrowing. We went to Munich, Rottenburg op de Tauber (a medieval town in all respects except their toilets had reached late 19th century standards and were pretty yuck) and Berlin. We visited the Dachau concentration camp which was the really harrowing one for me. We went there on a tour which did mean we received all sorts of information – but I am a really visual person – and the tour guide led us like lambs into the room where people got undressed to go into the showers – through a narrow door into the shower room and I was out of there so fast. I couldn’t go back because of the crowd so had to go forward through the shower room directly into the crematorium – and then out through the next room (I have no idea of the purpose of that room maybe record keeping).

We also visited the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie as well as the newish Jewish memorial which is a stunning memorial again with a very harrowing journey underground through the stories of the holocaust.

We did drive by Hitler’s bunker area – now a very unassuming car park and walked down the road under the newer Linden trees as Hitler had had the original ancient Linden trees chopped down so he could see his troops march by better – or maybe so they could see him better.

We saw many other wonderful buildings, the Brandenburg gate and more, enjoyed a meal at the original Munich Hofbrauhaus as well as having a meal of pork red cabbage and potatoe in a Munich beer garden. The beer garden was lovely and great fun until an obnoxious American decided to tell us his life story, and how very polite we are – we didn’t tell him to get lost – we just left once we had eaten when he was annoying someone else.

A Birthday in Untersiggenthal or was it a visit to Bad Säckingen?

We have just been to Switzerland for A’s (M’s partner) birthday, followed by a meandering through Germany.

The party was held in their garden, the weather was great and the garden looked absolutely lovely all set up for the day. Lots of tables, umbrellas, a couple of barbeques, food, flowers, live music and great people.

And one of the birthday presents was not an external hard drive as suggested in this picture.

M had set up a volley ball net and the youngsters played volley ball – and one older one did as well. I didn’t see Best Beloved playing volley ball but it seems that he did.

There was a lot of preparation – including creating salads for about 60 people, and there was so much pork to BBQ. All New Zealanders out there can relate well to that. The BBQs were all being used well into the night.

It turns out everyone had been asked to wear a hat – and A and I just had to have new hats – and that was a great experience in itself. The day before the Garden Party we all went from Switzerland to Germany, just across the Rhine, to buy hats at a wonderful hat shop in Bad Säckingen.

New Zealand needs such a wonderful hat shop. There was a hat for everyone, and for every purpose, (hunting, shooting, fishing, garden parties, weddings, summer, winter, fashion, small, large, many colours, many fabrics and many different fibres, terribly English and much much more) and we tried on so many. A and I had wonderful new hats to wear at this birthday garden party – and we were so busy we didn’t take any photos to show the garden, or our hats.

The photo of the boy playing with the water spout on the fountain was taken because he reminded us so much of Tomas – and behind it happened to be the hat shop, still no name but if you find the fountain and you will also find the Hat Shop. It is on the road up from the very old wooden bridge, Holzbrücke, which is the link between Stein in Switzerland, and Bad Säckingen in Germany. We have walked across this bridge many times. I found the video of the bridge on Youtube. It is of a ride through Holzbrücke, which happens to be the longest covered wooden bridge in Europe at 203,7m. It is actually the ride from Germany back to Switzerland.

We did also collect cakes and other bits and pieces for the party while there – so you can see that it wasn’t just a fun hat excursion.

Bad Säckingen seen from the Swiss town of Stein – over the Rhine to Germany. It is a rural town according to Wikipedia – located in the very south of Germany next to the Swiss border and lies on the southern edge of the Black Forest area. It doesn’t seem very rural to us from New Zealand, and it is so beautiful. It has wonderful architecture, history, stories, great urban sculpture, perfect gardens, great cake shops, bars, restaurants, and bargains and every time we have been there – beautiful weather.

Mostly by JJ

There are literally more bicycles than people in Amsterdam, as many people own two or three for different purposes.

They will have a light, fast bike for pleasure and a bike with kiddie carriers for taking their small children. Many bikes have two kiddie pillion seats complete with foot-rests, plus a trailer which has its own pedals so that the child passenger can contribute. Other bikes have an extension on the front – a wooden box with seats. The front wheel is steered by an extended arm from the handlebars. The parent will often have a third bike, a folding one that folds down to hand-luggage size for train journeys, complete with either hub gears or a single derailleur setup for seven gears.

We have noticed that children (and their parents) are very calm. Perhaps that’s a consequence of travelling in families by bicycle. Or maybe it’s just that the Dutch are fantastic parents. One rarely hears a distressed child. Parents ride their bikes along singing and talking with their children and many times we will see kids sitting in the bucket at the front of the bike nattering away to each other. We have never seen a child object to getting into or onto the bike – In New Zealand we see children throwing tantrums because they have to get into the car or into a car seat. Hmmmmmmmmm!!!!

The other day JJ watched a man walking along the street with his little girl, who for some reason begun to throw a tantrum. The man just smiled and kept walking, holding her hand. She carried on for about half a minute and then stopped, as there was no point. It was brilliant.

JJ has been offered a job in the Netherlands and he has accepted it.

This is the man who didn’t want to travel, the one I have been giving heaps to for over 40 years . This is the man who said yes we would travel and live overseas prior to those wedding vows. This is the same man who worked for Air New Zealand and never went anywhere by plane. This same JJ has applied for and got a job in the Netherlands.

On 4 May I sent an email to a friend saying we were still trying to sell our house with the intention of moving to a bit of land where we could grow our own vegetabels, have chickens etc and on the 6 May we were looking at what it takes to be able to accept a position and emigrate to the Netherlands.

Are we crazy????