A slow, wintery December and a rather unwhite Christmas

Helloooooooooooooooo,

December may have been slow and boring but I could not find it in my heart to update this blog. Mainly because there was not much to tell. December was cold and lonely and the temperature went down to -14 C (windchill -19 C!!!!) the week before Christmas. We had lots of rain and snow followed by ice. Needless to say, I decided not to leave the house unless I really had to. I did not have that many lessons to do anyway (see last post) and could not be bothered to visit any more museums.

So, what did I do? Well, fortunately my yoga school and swimming pool are rather close to our house and I have been a rather sporty spice this month - no doubt motivated by the prospect of lying on the beach next month. I also read up about linguistics and have put a that academic subject on my list of things to study for that point in the future when I have an infinite amount of money and no obligations so I will be able to be an eternal student. It joins such worthies as art history, comparative religion, Hebrew, English literature, Sanskrit, Italian literature and the likes. I have not got around to prioritising yet and I will probably save that for the next time I am bored!

We also had a lot of guests over, such as my dear friend Stephanie and her Chris/Cobus...


...who went a little crazy. It was really good to hang out with them again and visit all the christmas markets, and especially with Chris because I did not know him that well. Steef and I have already started planning our next trip, we are going to Barcelona together in March!!

They were followed by Rosie and Vanessa who really came to Berlin for two Rammstein concerts but delighted us with some nights of 'worms' as well


And then it was already time for Christmas. And when I say 'already', I mean 'finally'!! Our weekends had been packed with visitors and lots of fun, but I was somewhat bored during the week when Olaf was at work and I did not have that much to do. Fortunately, we were to spend Christmas with Olaf's brother Lars, his wife Rachel and their two adorable girls, 4-year-old Leah and 2-year-old Hannah!

Although it had been really cold and there was a thick layer of snow and ice covering the city up until basically two days before Christmas, the weatherman suddenly decided we had had enough and raised the temperature to around 0 which caused all the snow to melt and made sure we did NOT have our so longed-for white Christmas in the end. Oh well, good riddens I saw, I do not like snow anyway!

We had an amazing time and Olaf cooked us two wonderful Christmas dinners, although the kids were perhaps still a bit too young to appreciate the finer art of gastronomy. In short, they just wanted 'princess chicken' (aka smoked salmon) and started booing Olaf's cashew nut soup, tuna carpaccio, gazpacho and goat cheese fondue. As would luck would have it though, children need to get to bed at some point and that is when we were able to enjoy Olaf's superb lobster and other lovely dishes, obviously accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol. Here are some pictures of the 5 magnificent days they spent with us:




Present abounded and I believe the kids were happy. As were we. You can see everybody being ecstatic about Rachel's new pink winter hat in the pictures, can't you? I was personally most impressed with my reindeer-shaped lamp...

Well, that is it for 2009, I guess. We are busy packing because it is finally time for our honeymoon. We are going to see Avatar in the cinema tonight and fly to Bangkok tomorrow. We are already quarreling about where to go and what to see because there is simply too much to do in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and we cannot do everything. Oh well, we will see. And if we like it, we can always go back!!

Happy New Year everyone!

Weddings, Le Morte Darthur, Weihnachtsmarkten and a honeymoon

Hi all,

So were you surprised? You really did not see this one coming? Olaf and I had been talking about getting married for years and had decided on how we were going to do it way before he actually asked me. We have always agreed on the fact that a wedding is something you do together and that you do not need an audience for. I mean, a wedding is not about showing other people how much you love each other, the only person you make a promise to and declare to love forever - or as long as it lasts, I am that realistic - is the person you are marrying. And then tell everybody about it afterwards and have a wonderful party! That is why we wanted to do it in secret and why nobody was invited to the ceremony, but trust me, you will have plenty of chances to celebrate with us at the party. In the end, we decided on doing it in Holland for practical reasons and it seemed fitting to ask our parents to be our witness, the four people without whom we would not have been here at all and hence without whom this wedding would not have been conceivable (and yes, the only four people we would have told about our plans anyway!). I really enjoyed all the positively surprised reactions and your sweet messages. Thank you all, hope to see you at the party in June!!

Talking about the asking, several people have asked me how he did it. Well, here goes. When I came to Berlin, I had only seen our new apartment once before when it was still empty. Olaf moved in about a month before I arrived and had already stocked it with furniture from IKEA and all that. So, when I finally arrived on 31st May around midnight after several delays, we popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate and he showed me around our new house. And it was - and is - beautiful. He showed me the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the guestroom and, finally, the master bedroom. He had bought the bed I liked from IKEA but which he had said he did not like as a surprise. While I was looking around the room he did not say anything until something in a frame on the wall caught my eye. It was a photo collage consisting of loads of pictures of us taken over the 4,5 years we had been, grouped around THE QUESTION. I obviously said yes and the rest is history...

So, when we got back we were almost immediately submerged in work. Olaf has been really busy lately and I have also picked up a surprising amount of courses. We were also busy every weekend and did not really have much time to ourselves. The weekend after our wedding, we had a little mini-honeymoon to Trieste, to visit Louisa and Mickael (photos). It was short but good and I really enjoyed seeing them again (as it had been at least six months) and hearing how surprised they had been to hear our news. Trieste's excellent spaghetti allo scoglio was obviously consumed in copious amounts, too much wine was drunk and there was also a scary kind of walk through a suddenly dark forest that I do not care to repeat. We then entertained Jorryt & Lilian (and her pregnant belly), Bard & Suus and Felix and Annaig in subsequent weekends. For pictures, I refer you to Olaf's blog and Facebook. They were all very good weekends, each one different to the other but all exceedingly happy-making. It does mean, however, that we have not really had any time to get used to and celebrate being married - although we did celebrate our first mensiversary last Monday... Fortunately, convention has provided us with the perfect solution to our problem: the honeymoon. On 30 December, we are leaving for 4 weeks of adventure in the inlands of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. I cannot wait!!!

Christmas time is here and that means Christmas markets. The traditional German Weihnachtsmarkten cater to the needs of the young and the old, the male and the female, the gluttonous and the, well, merely fat. One can simply not avoid putting on weight at this time of the year. Besides the fact that it gets colder every day - I am soooooo scared of the coming weeks - there is just too much to eat. There is a cornucopia of Gluehwein, hot chocolate (preferably with a shot of rum), cakes, pretzels and lots and lots of sweet stuff. I even found a stand where they sell curly cale with smoked sausage (boerenkool met worst!!!) which I thought was a typical Dutch delicacy not found anywhere else!

As soon as all my courses started they ended again as well, wherefore I am looking forward to slow December. I am not getting any new courses because I will be away the whole month of January but I do not really care. I still have a lot to do, what with preparing for the trip (MUST read all lonely planets from cover to cover!) and finally finish Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur which I got for Christmas (or my birthday?) last year and which I have been reading for the last couple of months. It is 700 pages of Pre-Shakespearean Middle English, that takes a while. I have now finished the actual book and am have got to the commentary and criticism section where I am reading up about Malory's sources and backgrounds and how he was influenced by The Wars of the Roses. I know, you think I am crazy but hey, this is what I like!!

Olaf and I are also having some trouble deciding what to start watching, now that we have finished all seven seasons of The West Wing and nothing really seems challenging anymore... I am looking forward to our honeymoon but also to some other upcoming events, some of them very mundane like the joys of a weekend to ourselves, the first one in a while and the last one until the end of the year. Oh baby, bring on tomorrow night! The weekend after Stephanie and Cobus are coming to visit, followed by Rosie and Vanessa who are going to be using us to crash in between their Rammstein concerts. And then, to make the yuletide truly gay, we will be celebrating Christmas with Olaf's brother Lars, his wife Rachel and their two daughters, whose visit in August was so awesome that I am sure the sequel is going to simply be blissful!

Now, let me just leave with one of the best ways to get into the Christmas spirit:
the Indian way

Horny Jesus & the hot snowwoman

Ciao tutti,
Mi sono ripreso un po' (that means 'I'm feeling better') and won't be complaining that much in this post. The reason for this sudden change? It's the holiday season, the season to be jolly. Even though I'm not working and hence not earning any money, it does feel good to have some time off - especially because I've managed fairly well not to think about work a lot. I'm also feeling better physically and, most importantly, Christmas is finally over!!!!

In the end, we didn't get to have our Austin Powers movie night with Nissrine but she came over for some drinks and then we unfortunately had to say our final goodbyes. Well, final... For the moment anyway, I'm sure she'll manage to return. And Facebook has already proven to be a great way to stay in touch as she is as addicted as I am.

The last days at work were very stressful but I'm confident that we'll pull through and we should be alright for January. That does mean I haven't been paid yet but, then again, I probably would have spent it all these two weeks if I had been paid yet, so it's actually not such a bad thing. It was great to end the year with my weekly reward, though. Paola and I had another amazing two-hour lesson listening to music and trying to figure the hidden meanings behind the lyrics, while of course incorporating philosophy and our continuous quest for the etymological origins of strange but fascinating words. We're not sure whether we'll be able to continue in January, because they've loaded me up with courses and I won't even have time to have lunch - but there is of course a distinct 'Yeah, money!!!'-feeling behind this small inconvenience. I'm going to try to rearrange my schedule though, because I am absolutely unwilling to give these lessons up. I've come to realise they are very important to satisfy my hunger for knowledge and for my mental sanity. Losing them is just not an option.

We didn't do much the weekend before Christmas. We did a shitload of groceries for our Christmas dinners and I played a lot of Civilization. On Monday, Jorryt and Lilian arrived and we had a great time with them. Olaf was cooking during the day, so Jorryt, Lilian and I went out to walk around town, wonder about the emptiness of the city during the holiday season, and - of course - go to the Christmas market. As Olaf wasn't with us, it was obvious that he would have to suffer for this, so we spent a lot of time looking for the ugliest presents to give him that night. We ended up giving him three almost identical pen holders with babies on them, a candle in the shape of an ugly, slutty, round-breasted mermaid and a fake 18th-century doll with in a hoopskirt that turns slowly and produces a horribly sweet melody. I was extremely satisfied. Santa gave me, among other things, a scented candle, a jigsaw puzzle, vanilla-scented wooden balls (what the hell am I supposed to do with those?!?!) and a book about art history I really wanted to have. Jorryt and Lilian had bought a chocolate fountain which is absolutely amazing!!!

Even though Jorryt did his best to fix my computer, he didn't manage in the end and it's still not working properly. He's going to try to replace the hard disk now, as a last resort, but since my baby is already over 3 years old she might just be beyond repair. Anyway, we'll see. We spent the rest of the holidays playing boonanza (a fantastic game!) and of course eating and drinking. Olaf's Christmas dinners were amazing and the liquid one on St. Stephen's Day came out really well. It's impossible for me to describe them completely but here are some of the courses I really enjoyed: tuna carpaccio, chickpea soup with smoked salmon, gazpacho, chocolate fondue and of course the cheese platter. The food was excellent, the wines were very appropriate and - though I ate way too much - I cannot but say I enjoyed both dinners immensely.

On Christmas Eve, Lilian and I went to mass at the Duomo. Neither of us is very religious but Lilian had never been to a Catholic Christmas Eve mass before and was curious about it. I had enjoyed the Easter mass a lot and was hoping the Christmas Eve mass would be even better, especially because the archbishop of Milan himself was presiding. We were utterly disappointed though. The atmosphere was nothing like the one at Easter. The service was very cold, reserved and recited. All they did was read from the same book they always read, in very monotonous voices, without any emotion or humour and even the choir wasn't that good. The service was being broadcast at the same time and cameraman had difficulties finding interested people in audience to focus on, because nearly everyone on the screen was sleeping, yawning or doing something else. At some point they brought out a horribly painted kitsch statue of the baby Jesus and we were amazed and disgusted to hear that we were supposed to worship it. I mean, worship a little statue with an inappropriately horny smile that's lushly painted red and pink was a little bit too much, even for me. The mass was also way too long and we had to leave early in order not to miss our last tram. You can imagine we were not sorry to have an excuse to go.

The Thursday after Christmas, we rented a car and drove to Valle d'Aosta, a small French-speaking region in the Northwest corner of Italy on the French and Swiss borders. This is a very mountainous region famous for its ski resorts and numerous castles we got to see. We first drove up to Breuil-Cervinia on the slope of the Matterhorn (and could at that moment add another wonder to our lists). We played in the snow and had a mini snowball fight, probably the only one we'll have this winter. I enjoyed the fresh air and snow very much, it was so good to be out of Milan, even for a day. After the Matterhorn we drove to Aosta, where we visited the Roman ruins and Medieval buildings in order to sniff up some culture. We then decided to go home early to eat a lovely home-made pasta and play some more boonanza. Here are some pictures:


Yesterday I slept very late and went out for drinks with Caroline, Veronica and Amanda. It was really nice seeing them outside of the school and I am proud to say that we didn't talk about work at all! I'm a bit worried about what I'm going to do with all the free time I have left, but I'm sure I'll manage to find something to keep me busy. That jigsaw puzzle is not finished yet, after all...

I hope you are all having good, warm and relaxing holidays and are spending them with the people you really want to spend them with. If I don't update my blog before the new year anymore (which, let's face it, is quite likely with my track record), I'd like to end this post by wishing you all a lot of fun on New Year's Eve, no hangovers on New Year's Day and a wonderful 2008! Here are some more pictures of Lilian and me with our life-size snowman named Margaret - so, she's technically a snowwoman, I guess...

Whining around the Christmas tree

Ciao tutti,
I've been a bad boy and am not going swimming because I'm not feeling too good. This doesn't mean I'm really sick, because I never really get sick, but I'm using my feeling a little bit under the weather as a very lame but superficially valid excuse. However, this gives me time to write something before I start doing some exercises on the floor of our lovely little apartment which should compensate for not swimming - but just don't, to be completely honest. Anyway, the point is that I'm lazy and abusing a minor discomfort for the pleasure of whining about my life. If you are still interested in me and my life after this lovely introduction, be my guest and read on!

I'm sorry but I'm a bit frustrated. Work is very slow this month and my pay is going to suck, and not just because this month only has three days. People are always busy finishing things the last weeks before Christmas and the cancellation rate goes up significantly, as it has this year. This means less money, even though December is not cheapest month of the year - and that's making the understatement of the year (and seriously, it was time someone made it because the year is nearly at its end). I have been promised a shitload of courses as of the first week of January though - more than I can handle to be honest - so I'm hoping I'll be able to compensate for my current lack of money and will actually be able to start saving for the summer.

There have been some problems at work lately, some cashflow problems and stress to get a lot of things arranged and underway, which hasn't been having a positive influence on the atmosphere in the office. Veronica, our course manager, is sick quite a lot and completely stressed out and Caroline is stressed out about making sure Veronica's work gets done while at the same time trying to keep the business afloat. I'm trying to help out as much as I can, but it has become blatantly obvious to me how much I still don't know and have to learn about the job. My being completely incapable of understanding how the phone system works so I can't
even help by answering the phone may just be a little problem on the whole, but does remind
me of my utter stupidity on a daily basis. Moreover, my inaccurate use of Italian, which seems to prolong any conversation that should be handled quickly and politely, is contributing as well.

To make matters even worse, our endless listening to Christmas music has finally started taking its toll and I can't stand it anymore. I wish Christmas was already here, so we could just have the bloody dinners, open our gifts and be done with it!!! It does mean that for the first time in weeks we are now both sitting next to each other on the couch enjoying a blissful silence without any bells jingling, reindeer dashing, pop stars desperate to make a comeback singing horribly sweet Christmas songs or 'Santa, baby's hurrying down the chimney tonight!!!! Olé!

OK, that's it for the complaining, I promise. Let's focus on the good things. Olaf's making progress with his research, I only have to work three more days this month, I have been able to increase my number of private students to make some extra cash and we have been doing some pretty cool things. Two weeks ago, Sant'Ambrogio (the religious feast day of St. Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan) was a public holiday (another day without pay this month, but hush, I promised I wouldn't complain anymore), which I spent doing absolutely nothing. I slept late, played Civilization all day and we had dinner with Felix and Annaïg that night to see their new apartment. That Saturday, I did my Christmas shopping and Olaf and I went to the market traditionally held during the weekend around Sant'Ambrogio, although I didn't buy anything. That night, we went to an aperitivo at La Hora Feliz with a lot of my colleagues and some ex colleagues I hadn't seen for along time like Louisa, Amanda and of course Nissrine. That Sunday, we met up with Stefano and Elke to go to the fiera, where there was a big food and hand-crafted objects fair where we drank German beer, ate lovely polenta and I bought loads of fudge and Egyptian candy. That made me very happy.

Last weekend, my study mates Bert and Eefje came to visit and we spent a lovely weekend sightseeing and mainly playing lots of games. They brought us a new addition to our game collection: Boonanza, way cool!!!! Of course we also ate and drank way to much at the usual hangouts like Más and La Padellaccia. It was really good catching up with them after such a long time and gossiping about all the people still in Nijmegen. I also thoroughly enjoyed just acting crazy with them the way we used to in the old days. And our playing games almost felt like the game nights we used to have back then. Oh nostalgia!!!

Tomorrow, Nissrine is coming back for two last days in Milan before she goes back to Canada. She didn't get her permesso and has to start the application process again. I feel so bad for her, because now that she finally has that job she
wanted and is able to start the career she is so ambitiously striving for, the bastard Italians are just
refusing her application - without any good reason. Let's hope things can be arranged fast from Canada and that she'll be back before we know it! Anyway, tomorrow we're going to her goodbye aperitivo at La Hora Feliz which will also serve as a pre-Christmas get-together for all my current and old colleagues. Thursday night will be spent in front of the computer as we are finally going to have our Austin Powers marathon with Nissrine before she has to catch her bus to the airport in the middle of the night. Ironically enough, Friday is my only busy day this week, but I'm sure I will survive one short night, especially because it will be the last day before Christmas break!!!

I suppose one of the other reasons I'm not too happy today is because I am a bit sickly, and so is Olaf. There's a nasty vomiting flu going around and I'm hoping we can avoid catching it. As I don't get sick that easily and infections never last long, I'm sure it will pass soon enough but at least it means I'm in for a few days of headaches and sore throats. Oh well, it is winter after all. It's just that the combination of work stress, worries about not earning enough and my physical state at the moment are trying to defeat my positive attitude. But I am not going to let it and will force myself to be merry. It has to be, after all, a merry fucking Christmas!

Until I have more to whine about, I will leave you with big Christmas kisses for now!

XXX, Fe

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