Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody, I hope you had a great time celebrating the birth of this year's god and weren't hurt by any fireworks! But before telling you about my adventures in the Netherlands, we must first flash back to Christmas, as I still have to tell you about it.

Our dinner on Christmas Day was fantastic! Olaf had spent more than a day in the kitchen preparing nine delicious courses just for the two of us. I especially enjoyed the tuna carpaccio, the artichokes and the salmon tompouces which contributed a lot to making it the romantic dinner it was supposed to be. On Santo Stefano (St. Stephen's Day, Boxing Day or Second Christmas Day) my mother and Rob, her boyfriend, arrived and after a short tour of the Duomo, the Galleria and the Scala the three of us made it was time to go home again, because Olaf had been working his ass off to prepare our ten course dinner. His shrimp cocktails, goat cheese fondue, crab souflés and mint spoom were wonderful and his coffee granita was orgasmic! Obviously we also drank far too much wine - as every course was accompanied by a special kind of wine - and after spending seven hours at the dinner table we weren't able to do anything else and just went straight to bed.

My mother and her boyfriend stayed for a few more days so it was sightseeing time again while Olaf had to work! The Pinacoteca di Brera, Cimitero Monumentale, the inside of the Duomo and the tour of the churches in the Southwest of the city (Santa Maria Maggiore, Sant'Ambrogio, San Lorenzo and Sant'Eustorgio). And we found out that the open-air exhibition Italia, Emozioni dal Cielo is prolonged to February due to enormous popularity! We had two lovely aperitivos at Caffe Formaggio (which is really called Cheese Cafe) and Movida, after which the two of them left to go hiking around Bergamo. On 31st December, the four of us met up at Bergamo Airport and flew back to the Netherlands for the New Year celebrations.

And they were lovely. It was great seeing all my friends and family again, although doing a tour of the Netherlands in five days and telling the same story a couple of times a day was very tiring. But then again, that was to be expected and it was the only way we could actually see as many people as possible. We started with a family dinner at my mother's and Rob's place with my brothers, Rob's children and my cousin. Unfortunately, my mother wasn't able to enjoy this as much as she would have liked because she had a nasty toothache and had to go to the emergency dentist. Mum, I hope you're OK again! After that we went to a New Year's party at Maartje and Edin's, where we met Cobie, Stephanie, Margo and some more friends, acquaintances and random strangers. They live next to a Chinese restaurant and their neighbours' fireworks were lovely - I'm sorry, Edin, I completely forgot to look out your stuff but it just wasn't as cool... Obviously, this became a late night full of champagne, wines and catching up. And Olaf improved his paternal capabilities by playing with Maartje's three year old nephew all night who was running around like a rabbit on crack!

The next day, we visited Maarten and Miriam's new apartment and went to dinner at my father's. Unfortunately, my sister was on holiday so we missed her but she did leave me a very late birthday present: a book on interior design focusing on how to make the most of small apartments - which is very useful, because that means I can now start figuring out ways to store even more shit in our little one-room apartment! Olaf's going to love this... Anyway, after this very relaxing night which included heavy discussions about religion and future plans (as my youngest brother is determined to become a priest and wants to be pope someday), we went home quite early because we were leaving for the North of the country the next morning. On this beautiful Wednesday morning, we first went to Olaf's parents in Drenthe and then on to Groningen to meet some friends and family and we obviously ended up drinking too much in a pub! On Thursday, we passed Utrecht, where we visited Wouter in his new house, while traveling to Rotterdam to have dinner in Cafe Rotterdam on the Kop van Zuid which offers a magnificent view of the Rotterdam skyline with one of Olaf's friends and we spent the night with two dyke friends of Olaf's before returning to Nijmegen on Thursday. In the afternoon, we visited Ilse in her gorgeous new apartment, had dinner at 'De Ontmoeting' with Margo while Steef was working and went to a pub where we met all of my old study mates. This was really great, because it felt exactly the same as when I was still living and studying here. It's good to find out that some things just don't change... And my family being there and getting drunk without me knowing they would be there or the other way around enhanced the enjoyment of the evening immensely!

On Friday, the last day, we slept quite late and went to have lunch with Jolien, my sister-in-law (wet T-shirt girl from a few posts ago), and got a train to Schiphol where we were flying back from. It was a lovely visit but also a quite expensive one, mainly because the Dutch trains are incredibly expensive! I had only had experience with Dutch trains as a student the last few years - and as a student you can travel for free or with large discounts, but I hadn't expected this! In the end it turned out to be cheaper to get a one-year discount card for these five days alone!

Anyway, it was worth the expenses and the fatigue, but I'm just really glad to be home again. Fortunately, we've got a weekend left to recover before we go back to work. When I got home I got another big surprise, though. I received two letters from the Netherlands from companies which still owed me money and they'd both finally decided to pay up! I'm especially happy about my pension money being paid, because according to the letter that's about 2,000 euros gross!!!!!!!! And the Christmas sales have just started...

I just wish you all the best for the new year and hope all your dreams come true. And your resolutions, of course! Mine are eating less, exercising more, drinking less and finally starting a course of Italian so I can start improving effectively!!! What are yours?

Ciao,
Fedor