Bart & Tineke's wedding

The last big thing I need to tell you guys about is the wedding we went to last week. We were honoured to be of the party when Bart promised eternal love and devotion to his amazing Tineke. He could not have a chosen a more beautiful spouse and they both looked brilliant. The got married in a beautiful chamber at the old city hall in The Hague and after that we were swiftly transported by tour bus to a beach club near Scheveningen for the reception and the party. Here are some of the pictures we took of the event:

The bride and groom

Joost and Kim, who are to be wed in August, were nice enough to let us stay

The happy couple about to drive off into the sunset in Bart's personally done up VW beetle cabrio. Quite literally into the sunset, actually, as they are going to be cruising through Italy, the land of sunset, for their honeymoon

After a while, the bride started to announce the less formal part of the wedding, i.e. the party, by messing up her groom's hair

Olaf tried to make a pass at the groom

And I tried to take steal some of the bride's brilliance

But in the end we had to admit they looked too perfect together and we decided to content ourselves with each other

We had taken an extremely early morning flight in and had some time to visit The Hague before the wedding. And where did we accidentally end up? At the gay pride, obviously!

For some pictures click here.

I have now brought you up-to-date of all the great things that have been happening in my life. I have got some more work on as well, which is not bad at all. The one thing I have to get used to is having to start teaching at 7.30am on two consecutive days, which seems to be a lot for my body to be able to cope with and I have not been sleeping well since that started. Oh well, as soon as I get into a rhythm it will be fine.

The sun is out and the temperature has suddenly gone up a bit. It is now 25-30 degrees C on a daily basis and I am actually started to get a summery feeling. No doubt that will all change again very soon, what with the fickle Berlin weather, but one must look at the bright side of life. I did all my summer shopping today and have decided not to wear anything but linen trousers and summer shirts until September, come rain or come shine. Olaf has left for a series of conferences and I have basically got the rest of this month to myself. I am planning to relax, get a tan and work on my social life.

And cycling back through Tiergarten park around noon, looking at all the unemployed Germans showing off their perfect bodies (for unemployed people have far too much time on their hands and all go the gym all day), with my summer playlist at maximum volume on my MP3 player (Taio Cruz' 'Break your Heart', Owl City's 'Fireflies' and Train's 'Hey Soul Sister' stand out this year), I realised I am quite content...

How lovely lazy life can be when all you have to worry about is applying enough suntan lotion...

Ciao tutti,

I am happy to be able to report that the sweating has lessened. And it's high time for another update before I won't get around to doing it because of all the holidays. In between visits from friends and holidays, I must say I haven't been doing anything. I swim, I read and generally relax. Almost everybody has left town now, which kind of sucks because the temperature has finally gone down and I would be up for meeting people, oh well, alas...

The week after we went out with Nina and Anto, I finished my last lessons and was surprised to be offered a couple more in August by CTL, even though my contract with them ended on 31st July and we're not going to renew. It was just a substitution for three lessons, but hey, that's E 50,- more than I expected to earn in August! That Friday, just before Marike and Rosie arrived from London, I went out for an early aperitivo with Bruno who was leaving for Puglia the following day and who I hadn't seen for a long time. We had a very interesting chat and gossiped a bit about his classmates (he is a former student of mine). As he came by car, this gave me the opportunity of looking at Milan from a driver's point of view and I'm telling you, it's not pretty! I'm glad I don't have to drive and find parking space in this city.

And then Marike, my former study mate and flatmate in college, arrived from London where she's doing a PhD at the moment. And she brought a friend we had never met before: enter Rosie. Well, we had sort of already met on Facebook, but that doesn't really count, does it? Anyway, it was lovely. I hadn't seen Marike since last November and we had loads to talk about. You see, Marike likes talking and always incites me to talk a lot more than I usually do - and a lot faster. I'm afraid we may have gone a bit overboard there and I sincerely hope we haven't annoyed Olaf and Rosie too much. We did the usual tour, relaxed a lot and obviously ate and drank too much. Here are some pictures:

Marike & me

Me & Rosie

Marike, Rosie & me at Wasabi (the girls are sushi freaks!)

The weekend Marike and Rosie were there Olaf got an email from his long-lost friend Bart who turned out to be coming over to Italy with his girlfriend Tineke that week. Consequently, we could start entertaining some more guests on Tuesday. It was only a short visit but Olaf of course wanted to do the tour so I had my days to myself. I got really angry because they closed the outdoor pool on Tuesday because of 'maltempo', which is supposed to mean 'bad weather' but in this case it just meant 25 degrees and a bit of rain. Italians are crazy! That evening we experienced a short thunderstorm though, which presented us with some amazing views from our window. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, so it must remain kind of a 'should-have-been-there' moment. Having Bart and Tineke over was of course a perfect excuse to eat and drink well again... Well, it's safe to say that when we got up at 6.30 on Thursday to send Bart and Tineke off to Toscana and to catch our own train there, we weren't as rested as we could have been...

But that was OK, because we had a 5-hour train ride ahead of us, a train ride that would take us to the lovely country town of Castagneto Carducci in Toscana, where were meeting Stefano and Elke who were staying in a house down there. It gave me a lot time to read and that was quite necessary because - and this is a little confession I regret I have to make - even though Harry Potter 7 had already come out, I hadn't even read number 6 yet. Reading HP6 immediately before starting HP7 turned out to be a good idea though, because it had been a long time since HP5 and I couldn't remember who all the characters were anymore. HP6 was wonderful and HP7 was downright amazing, although it did turn into an interesting gorefest at the end which I'm not sure is suitable for young children. Anyway, chapeau J.K. Rowling!

The advantage of leaving Milan really early was that we arrived just after midday and still had a lot of time to spend at the beach, which we obviously did. We worked on our tans, slept a little, read, talked and had a great time in general. The first day the sky was blu dipinto di blu as was to be expected of a Tuscan summer, but Friday was a strange day. In the morning we took a long drive to get to Calaviolina, a very secluded beach they don't allow more than 250 people on and where the sea is as transparent as in the Caribbean. So we parked the car, took a long walk to the beach, spread out our towels on the sand, took off our clothes, lay down and... it started raining and hailing as if the monsoon had arrived. We picked up everything and made a run for the nearest cafe and hid underneath the cover together with many other people.

The rainstorm lasted for about an hour and when it finally seemed dry again we started our ascent towards the car. Once we had passed over the top of the hill, the weather was lovely again with blue skies and small white clouds. We thought it might have been a local thing and decided to drive on to the next beach and have lunch there. On the way there, however, we noticed that the black skies and thunder were following us and we arrived just in time to be able to dive into the sea before the bad weather arrived. Here we are on the beach - and yes, that is a lightning flash behind us!

The rest of the day we spent trying to outrun this stormy weather and we managed to get to one other beach where we could tan for about 10 minutes before all hell broke loose there as well. So we went home, had a shower and waited it out. In about two hours the storm had passed, the plants had been fed and we were ready to go again. That night we went out to Castagneto Carducci, shining on a hilltop after the storm...

in order to do some wine tasting at a local festival. Unfortunately, this event had been cancelled due to the bad weather and we just had some wine outside criticising tourists' outfits and trying to avoid the herds of Dutch people that had seemed to invade this poor, poor little town. The next day we went to the beach in the morning and it was so hot that we got sunburned completely. Well, that was our going home present, I suppose, because I have been as tanned as a Californian bimbo ever since. Here are some more pictures:

We got home again quite late Saturday night and unfortunately I had planned a picnic with one of my students Sunday afternoon so we didn't have a lot of time to rest and regain our strength. It was a nice barbecue (Nissrine was there as well, as it was one of the students who had been in our shared course) and a good opportunity to practise our Italian (as none of the guests spoke English that well), but we were really tired and were home again by 5 pm. Olaf has gone back to work again now and I have gone back to doing virtually nothing the last couple of days. Belinda is in town and we had a girls' night of watching bad videos with beautiful men taking their clothes off (at least we thought we would but were sadly disappointed) and tomorrow we're going to meet her and Enrico at their house on the lake to spend two days there with them. And when we come back, it will be holiday time for real...

XXX, Fe

Sweaty Summer

Ciao tutti,
After Slutty Summer, Naughty Summer and Summer does Sydney, it is now time for a new porn classic: Sweaty Summer. Well... I hope you didn't get your hopes up too much while reading the title of this post, because you're not going to find much porn here, unfortunately... Not that there isn't any, obviously, but well... uhmm... that's private... - I'm beginning to wonder why the hell I started talking about this subject. It must have been my mind running wild randomly associating ideas after writing the title... Oh, whatever, just skip this paragraph, will you?

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that it's still as hot as Satan's fire island paradise in what I have recently seen someone describe as Milano Rock City. That's actually quite a good description. Living in this city makes one feel like one is standing barefoot on a level rocky plain that's been in the sun for hours and hours and is consequently too hot to walk on without being able to see any shade for miles... So we keep sweating, sweating and sweating some more. Every movement is too much and just a slight change of posture can be the source of an unstoppable outburst of sweat from every single pore in my body as if that movement had been the final crack in the Aswan Dam. But then again, I'm not complaining. It's a good reason not to wear clothes that often. I'm not working more than an hour a day anymore, so I've got a lot of time to lie in the park, exercise in the swimming pool and just get a tan - which is coming along nicely by the way.

The week after Werner and Jose left, we went to Marta's goodbye party at Slice Cafe. Marta is one of Olaf's colleagues and a lovely girl. She has been a visiting student for the past two years, but is now going back to her native Portugal to finish her PhD. We're going to miss her terribly as she is always the life at parties, incredibly funny and just fun to hang out with in general. She's one of Olaf's friends I actually like a lot. The party was really nice and at this great bar I had never been before. The aperitivo at Slice Cafe was awesome, the pasta was to die for and there was an enormous choice of side-dishes. So, we lost a friend but gained a new place to take visitors to!

That Thursday I went to a colleague's birthday party somewhere on the outskirts of Milan, literally overlooking the farmland at the edge of the city. It was an Arab/Cypriot themed party and we were supposed to come dressed accordingly, but Stefano, Elke and I decided not to comply. Phaedon (the birthday boy), a Cypriot colleague at CTL, had prepared a wonderful dinner which I enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately it was just too hot. The apartment didn't have air conditioning and we were burning up and left after we had spent two excruciating hours there just out of politeness. We didn't really get to talk to Phaedon because he was in the kitchen all the time, so in the end the party was kind of a disappointment. Well, at least we ate well... And Stefano told me he had read something about a Belgian restaurant in Milan! A Belgian restaurant! Can you imagine? A Belgian restaurant in Milan?! I couldn't even think of any typically Belgian food besides french fries (frietjes!) and chocolate and of course Belgian beers! So we had to check it out that weekend and the four of us went that Saturday. The restaurant turned out to be lovely and Olaf actually overcame his fear of mussels (which are worryingly called 'cozze' in Italian (pronunciation 'kotse')), which was a definite reason for me to opt for something different. I had an enormous 'stinco di maiale' or pig's shin. Well, actually it was more like an entire pig's leg. Oh well, it was very good I enjoyed that immensely - and some bottles of Kriek as well, obviously!

Last Wednesday Olaf and I went to Corporate English's summer celebration at Bar Bianco in the middle of Parco Sempione. It was amazing. After some initial confusion about where our table actually was, we were labelled as VIPs, ushered upstairs and found our table right next to food and the dance floor. As Caroline (the boss) was paying, we obviously drank too much and had loads of fun. I got to dance with all my colleagues who all thought I was looking hot (Yeah! Swimming three times a week is finally paying off!) and hadn't seen me dance before. Most of you have seen me dance before and already know that I've got some actually stunning moves and am admired wherever I go (Oh yeah, I rule!!! ;-) ), but they hadn't yet. And the more booze we had, the sluttier the dancing got, so you can imagine the bacchanal that night ended in - which Olaf didn't get to experience anymore because he went home quite early. All my colleagues are from Britain, Australia, Canada etc so they know how to party and we sort of decided to show those Italians what slutty dancing really is... I'm still waiting for the pictures! Caroline actually got quite excited and suddenly decided that 'my shirt needed ripping' and then proceeded to do exactly that. Something like that had never happened to me before and I was baffled for a couple of moments - apparently with an appalled face because Caroline's face immediately changed as she realised I wasn't amused... Well, I wasn't really angry but just stupefied, but that was enough for her to spend 5 minutes on the floor searching for my buttons and promising to sew them back on again.

Anyway, that sort of marked the end of the evening for me. When I had said my goodbyes and given Paola a big hug as she has just gone on a study trip to Kenya for a month, I had obviously just missed the last tram so I had to walk back. Which was fine because it had cooled down a little bit and gave me chance to sober up a bit, although I was afraid of getting arrested for public nudity or something... So, when I got home I put my shirt and the buttons in a plastic bag and handed them to Caroline the next day declaring with a smile that I hadn't washed it yet and that it might smell a bit dodgy (as I had been dancing in it all night and it was sweaty as hell), but that this was her deserved punishment.

That night Werner and José came back to sleep at our place for another night because they were flying back to Holland from Bergamo last Friday. So, we took them out to our new favourite place, Slice Cafe. We had some lovely cocktails, gorgeous food and a nice discussion about the teacher training programme at Radboud University which Werner has already finished and José is starting in September. After that, we went back home and played an interesting game of macchiavelli. They left Friday morning and we spent our weekend relaxing, not moving more than we had to. Last night, we went to a restaurant we had spotted a couple of days ago with Nina and Antonio who we hadn't seen for a long time. It was a lovely restaurant, the pizzas were nice and it was great to see them again, although we had to wait for an hour to get a table. We slept late this morning and have just finished cleaning our house which has turned me into a splashing sweat monster, so I'm quite happy to just sit here and tell you about my life.

Just two more days of work until my holiday starts on 1st August. What does one do with five weeks off? - Especially, since I've already been having a lot of free time because I haven't been working much lately. I can't remember ever having a holiday as long as that. When I was still in university I always worked during my summer breaks and just took time off to go on holiday abroad. Fortunately, Stefano and Elke have invited us to come and visit them in Toscana for a couple days and Belinda and Enrico want us to come with them to house on Lago Maggiore so our weeks will be quite filled. Which is a good thing, because I was really worried about what I was going to do until 20th August when we leave for Romania. Even my pools are closing, which amazes me. Who has ever heard of swimming pools closing in summer? Apparently, Italians think nobody uses indoor pools in summer are closing them all so I'm forced to swim in outdoor pools. This sucks, because I need the markings on the ceiling to make sure I don't hit my head against the side of the pool and outside pools are mainly play pools. They don't have lanes and there are always people jumping, playing and swimming in directions they shouldn't be swimming in so they're always blocking my passage! And let's not forget about the distraction of beautiful people in sexy swimwear walking around the pool or relaxing in the sun all the time...

As you can see, my life is obviously horrible...

Bacio, Fe

Parties galore

Ciao tutti,

I realise it has been ages since I wrote anything and I apologise. It's not that I haven't had the time or that I've had a lot on my mind, really, at least not all the time, but I just didn't get around to it. Anyway, a lot has happened in the mean time and this mainly consists of guests and parties - aka nice things!

I've worked more than I expected to this month but I still didn't have a full schedule, so I've been getting used to the summer and making plans for July - when I'll only have a few classes and Olaf will obviously still be working. The end of my evening group courses for CTL was a particularly liberating event, because this means I now have my evenings off! I can finally go out for aperitivo during the week or spend my evenings relaxing at home instead of rushing in order to be able to eat, spend some quality time with Olaf, check my emails, maybe watch a short movie and still go to bed at a reasonably early time. To cut a long story short, I'm happy with all the time I've got. The prospect of earning practically nothing next month doesn't make me smiley-faced, however, but I've been trying to anticipate that over the year. I just hope I've saved enough. In order to make a little extra cash I've started a course with a private student (who is paying me considerably more than any of my schools have ever done!) and I'm taking part in Corporate English' new try-out, the English Conversation Special, a short low-intensity five-week course based on conversation. Students can sign up for this in order to playfully improve their English before going on holiday simply by talking to each other under the supervision of a teacher. Unfortunately, not many people have signed up for it so I'm just going to have to see how many classes I'll actually get to teach!

But on to the happier topics mentioned earlier: guests and parties. The weekend after Andrea visited, Olaf's friends Bard and Marlous came to grace us with another visit. This was his fourth and her second time in Milan, so we could relax and didn't have to do the mandatory tour. On Saturday, we went to Monza, a small Medieval town near Milan (it's actually more like a suburb now), a place we had been planning to go to for some time but had never had a chance to actually go and see (yes, that's the Monza where the Formula 1 circuit is). The town was very small, cute and had a lot of fresh air (I just don't realise how heavily polluted the air in Milan really is). We spent a substantial part of the afternoon relaxing in the famous and lovely Parco di Monza, getting a tan and watching babes (male babes, obviously!).

That weekend the party season started. Belinda and Enrico were back in town for a week and that Saturday evening Simona had invited us for an African dinner so we could all meet and catch up, which I enjoyed immensely. That Monday one of my CTL courses finished and my students took me out to a restaurant specialising in Argentinian meat - e mi è piacuto molto!!! On Tuesday, my last CTL course finished and those students also wanted to take me out to dinner but unfortunately we're still discussing a date and I'm not sure we're ever going to find one. Oh well, it's the thought that counts, right?

Last weekend, we finally got to organise a party of our own. We realised we had never had a party at casa nostra before and decided it was time. We called it our 'housewarming party', even though we've already been living here for eleven months - so we subtitled it 'summer celebration'. We invited all our colleagues and friends and prepared a lot of food. We had a great time, although the crowd was a little smaller than expected and got horribly, horribly drunk! We almost forgot to take pictures, here are just a few:

Björn, Idil and Mariangela

Nina and Marta

Paola

We of course enjoyed some lovely voddy melon...

Don't Nina and I look like a couple?!

In the end, drunk as we were, we decided to do something about the constant mosquito attacks we had been suffering all evening. So, the evening ended in a MOSQUITO BLOOD & GOREFEST!!!

... which we didn't appreciate that much the next morning.... but then again we had to clean anyway. Well, at least we didn't have to cook but could eat left-overs from the party for two days!

This week was quite relaxing. I finished some more courses and did a lot of overdue admin. On Monday, some CTL students who hadn't been able to do their tests could come in for make-up appointments and that more or less concluded my year with them. On Thursday, they organised an international aperitivo in English for all our students, but unfortunately only one of mine showed up. I didn't really mind as I wasn't getting paid anyway and I had a lovely chat with some of my colleagues I didn't know very well - while drinking beers of course. I actually found out two of my colleagues are gay (which makes us a very large minority seeing as there are only 8 or so people working there) and another one is actually Dutch - although hearing someone speak Dutch at CTL was a bit disconcerting...

After we had cleaned up, had all said our goodbyes and had wished each other a very good summer, Stefano and I went to Peter's goodbye cocktail party. Peter (former director of studies at Corporate English) hasn't been able to get his permesso di soggiorno renewed and is forced to relocate to London for at least two years. I'm quite sorry to see him go, because I think he was a good manager and we worked well together. Anyway, while having some cocktails I realised I had completely forgotten to have dinner and started worrying about the rest of the night, although nothing happened - to me that is. At some point Veronica started acting weird because she had inadvertently got really drunk while suffering from a broken heart - and alcohol and broken hearts don't really combine very well. Caroline, Paola and I spent about an hour trying to get her into a taxi, but they wouldn't take her because she kept lying down on the pavement and the drivers even suggested to call an ambulance. In the end, we found a taxi that would take her and Caroline took her home. Paola and I didn't really feel like drinking and partying anymore after this and after saying our goodbyes to Pete we went home.

Yesterday, Moniquita (my Mexican colleague Monica, our Spanish teacher) invited us to her husband's birthday party aperitivo where I had some lovely Spanish food (Olaf suffered a little bit because everything contained meat but got by on nibbles with guacamole quite well) and where we met Caroline, Paola and a recovering Veronica (who had stayed home sick all day). After that, we rushed off to meet Olaf's study mates as the first year PhD students had finished their last exam and were celebrating that with lots of booze. We joined them for a little drinky-poo, because most of them are leaving for the rest of the summer quite soon and won't be back until September. We didn't stay out too little though, because we had to get up quite early this morning to clean the house because Stéphanie and Marieke are arriving today. They were supposed to arrive around noon, but unfortunately their plane has been delayed quite a lot. I hope they'll arrive soon because I'm really looking forward to their visit - especially, because summer sales are starting tomorrow and we need to shop till we drop!

I've also taken up swimming again which makes me feel really good. I haven't swum for years, but it's something you just can't unlearn. I still remember almost all the strokes (although I just can't get the hang of butterfly stroke anymore) and it's getting easier to get my breathing right every time I go. This is pretty much what has been going on in my life. As for plans for the summer, we won't go on holiday until 20th August, although we might make a little trip before that. So what am I going to do with my free time? You'll think I'm crazy but I'm actually going to study. I haven't read any Latin or Greek this year and I feel like it's slipping away from me. So, I've decided to start reading Homer's Iliad in Greek. My goal is to read all 24 books from the beginning to the end, we'll see if I make it...

Ciao, Fe