Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Our wedding party
Our wedding party. Where to begin? It was awesome. The weather was amazing, we were so lucky to have planned our party for the first sunny weekend of the year. The garden was beautiful, the guests gorgeous and even the preparations were already so much fun. I could not stop smiling the whole evening, because I simply could not get over how awesome it was to see so many friends and family members again and to be able to celebrate with them all. Thank you all for being there and making this night a night to remember. A proper photo album will be made at some point once I have collected everybody's photos, but here are just a few to give an impression of the night, the people and the atmosphere. For more pictures click here and here.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Dresden with Nicole and Pieter
The weekend before we went to The Netherlands to celebrate our awesome wedding party, we finally made it to Dresden. We had been wanting to do some exploring around Berlin but somehow we have not managed to do much. Besides Lutherstadt Wittenberg and now Dresden, we are still nitwits as it comes to sights outside of the capital. Let us hope this great experience will spark many more similar outings! We had a lot of fun and enjoyed some lovely weather. Oh, and we drank too much, naturally. Check out the pictures:
Dresden's rebuilt Frauenkirche, a symbol of the city which was completely destroyed in WWII. I am not so sure they should have rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. It is very new and shiny and obviously fake right now...
The first of many hilarious photoshoots
What a lovely couple they are!
What a decent, bourgeois, married couple we are!
The Hofkirche
One of the walls of the Schloss (palace)
Another part of the Schloss
The Zwinger, a beautiful baroque complex somehow called 'prison'
The 'terrace of Europe', elevated 14 meters above the Elbe and affords nice views of the Neustadt on the other side and is quite picturesque itself
At the end of the first day of sightseeing, we men felt we had deserved some beers, and Nicole felt she had deserved a lady beer
The inside of the Schloss, all the details pretending to be caryatids, columns and irregular bricks are all painted on. That style was apparently popular in the 1800s and reminded me of Portofino.
Pieter has had enough of me
"Pose for me, darlings". Olaf's favourite phrase.
On top of the Schloss with the Frauenkirche in the distance
The view without the models
Just the two us
On our way back we paid a quick visit to Schloss Pillnitz in the Elbe valley
Clay SuperKitty to the rescue!
Dresden's rebuilt Frauenkirche, a symbol of the city which was completely destroyed in WWII. I am not so sure they should have rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. It is very new and shiny and obviously fake right now...
The first of many hilarious photoshoots
What a lovely couple they are!
What a decent, bourgeois, married couple we are!
The Hofkirche
One of the walls of the Schloss (palace)
Another part of the Schloss
The Zwinger, a beautiful baroque complex somehow called 'prison'
The 'terrace of Europe', elevated 14 meters above the Elbe and affords nice views of the Neustadt on the other side and is quite picturesque itself
At the end of the first day of sightseeing, we men felt we had deserved some beers, and Nicole felt she had deserved a lady beer
The inside of the Schloss, all the details pretending to be caryatids, columns and irregular bricks are all painted on. That style was apparently popular in the 1800s and reminded me of Portofino.
Pieter has had enough of me
"Pose for me, darlings". Olaf's favourite phrase.
On top of the Schloss with the Frauenkirche in the distance
The view without the models
Just the two us
On our way back we paid a quick visit to Schloss Pillnitz in the Elbe valley
Clay SuperKitty to the rescue!
Apart from all the architecture, the beer, the food and the history, we also managed to catch the Eurovision Song Contest finale in one of the local gay bars. When Germany won, we expected massive dancing in the streets but were disappointed. Even the Germans at the bar did not care that much. I do believe we were the happiest people in Dresden at that point, and we were already quite sarcastic about it!
Oh, and we say a cherry pit with 185 faces carved into it. Talk about useless!!
Oh, and we say a cherry pit with 185 faces carved into it. Talk about useless!!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Mignon & Sander's visit
My stepsister Mignon and her boyfriend Sander came by for a visit at the end of May. They had managed to sneak some nice weather into their suitcase and we enjoyed that immensely. It was probably the very first weekend it was sunny enough to put our sunglasses on! Here are some pictures:
Who look like giants compared to me!
At the Karnaval der Kulturen der Welt in Kreuzberg
In Schlosspark Charlottenburg
The traditional shot in front of the Brandenburger Tor
The Karnaval der Kulturen der Welt is a multi-day festival celebrating cultural diversity and includes a parade where different cultures get to showcase their traditional music, dress, dancing skills and political messages if any
For some reason, the country of the trolls was very popular...
VERY popular with the girls...
The lovely couple themselves
Who look like giants compared to me!
At the Karnaval der Kulturen der Welt in Kreuzberg
In Schlosspark Charlottenburg
The traditional shot in front of the Brandenburger Tor
The Karnaval der Kulturen der Welt is a multi-day festival celebrating cultural diversity and includes a parade where different cultures get to showcase their traditional music, dress, dancing skills and political messages if any
For some reason, the country of the trolls was very popular...
VERY popular with the girls...
One of the trolls actually felt me up when I wasn't watching. A sneaky female one...
Thank you Mignon and Sander for a lovely weekend of cultural diversity, beautiful weather, a tan, of course Biergartens, lots of food, games and well-deserved catching up!
Thank you Mignon and Sander for a lovely weekend of cultural diversity, beautiful weather, a tan, of course Biergartens, lots of food, games and well-deserved catching up!
Ancient history
Well, hasn't that month flown by?! It has been a busy one and a lot of things I have to tell you about have happened, not in the least of which our own wedding party. However, due to a heavy workload I haven't had time to tell you about any of the others things yet either, so I have decided to work through everything chronogically. Over the next few days posts about the following topics will miraculously appear and I hope you will enjoy them:
- My stepsister Mignon and her boyfriend Sander's visit
- Our weekend trip to Dresden with Nicole and Pieter
- My new nephew Max
- Our wedding party in Dalen
- Bart & Tineke's wedding
Enjoy the show!
- My stepsister Mignon and her boyfriend Sander's visit
- Our weekend trip to Dresden with Nicole and Pieter
- My new nephew Max
- Our wedding party in Dalen
- Bart & Tineke's wedding
Enjoy the show!
Monday, May 10, 2010
Teaching meme
I cannot believe it has already been a month since I last posted anything. And I thought I was actually doing quite well updating regularly and slacking off too much anymore. Anyhow, April is past, welcome May. It passed quite uneventfully I must say, with a nice balance of work and free time. It is getting easier and easier to find work and my monthly salary is, on average, on the rise. Last week was actually my first week of full-time teaching in over two years and, though it was hard, it was also rather satisfying. The fact that I do not really have anything to do this (very short) week compensates rather well for working 12-hour days last week.
Poor Olaf is also having a hard time, because he has to write a report on the cost of Germany's participation in the Afghanistan war in about two weeks. As the deadline is today, I basically have not seen him much lately. Of course, we did do more than work last month and you can find a short account of the Queen's Day party, Cobie & Peter's visit and last weekend's dinner party on Olaf's website.
What I really wanted to blog about today, however, is a little questionnaire I found through somebody else's blog. It seemed like fun and I wanted to publicly answer it myself as well. Here goes:
1. I am a good teacher because...
I am a good listener and know how to stimulate people and pull them out of their shells. I believe students have to feel they can trust their teachers to really open up and overcome their inhibitions. After all, if one does not try, one does not fail; and if one does not fail, one cannot learn from one's own mistakes by (self-)correction. Having a teacher who is not always talking him/herself but actually induces you to speak, especially when you are a low-level or not confident student, is a big plus. They best lesson I can teach is one where I sit back and listen, not having to correct a single mistake.
2. If I weren’t a teacher, I would be...
teaching people things in some other way. I guess I would be a university researcher focused on uncovering some hidden truth about Greek & Roman culture, the origins of Christianity or the impact of the bronze age Middle Eastern cultures on the rest of the world. I could be debating theological questions or analysing philosophical systems with the idea of writing a book to enlighten others. Or perhaps I would just be a writer, or a poet. Or just drunk all the time.
3. My teaching style is...
a nice mix between presenting myself as one of the group and authoritatively presenting new ideas. Ideally, we are just a group of people trying to tackle a grammatical issue, analysing a text or having a conversation about a certain topic. I try to be as little of a teacher as possible and establish myself on the same level as my students. Obviously, this is not always possible as I do have to explain things and correct people, but I try to do it more in a colloquial hierarchy-free way rather than maintaining the traditional teacher-student relationship. I want to be respected and demand attention when necessary, but no more and no less than any other member of the group is respected and is allowed the floor when wanted and/or necessary.
4. My classroom is...
not a classroom. It is usually a meeting room or someone's office, and every now and then someone's private home or a bar. It it also never mine. Other people decide where I teach and I make do with what is there. I bring my own stuff and try to advocate the placement of a whiteboard an/or flipchart in the room but sometimes resistance is simply futile.
5. My lesson plans are...
either nice, well-prepared, well-thought out, theoretically comprehensive fool-proof plans or just a few key words dribbled on a piece of recyclable paper and usually out of the window in 5 minutes. Groups have their own dynamics and it pays to have more than one thing prepared. In the end, it often does not really matter what you do, as long as you do it in English and everybody practises.
6. One of my teaching goals is...
to make people more confident using the language and get a feel for it. Someone who has done a course with me does not necessarily speak English that much better, but they usually understand the mechanics of the language much better and believe they can use it with some more practice. In the long run, this makes it much easier for them to acquire new vocabulary or grammatical exceptions and it therefore increases both fluency and accuracy at the same time.
7. The toughest part of teaching is...
being informative as well as entertaining all the time. Being a good teacher means always being personally interested, remembering the most insignificant details about your students' lives, making a direct connection, constantly working on gaining and keeping your students' trust, having some jokes ready, keeping eye contact and never ever letting a student feel you are not interested in whoever they are and whatever it is they are talking about. While also making sure they learn something, that is. A good teacher with a lot of work is mentally exhausted when he comes home and never wants to interact with people again. It goes without saying that full-time teaching destroys your social life.
8. The thing I love most about teaching is...
learning so much every single day. I know it is supposed to be all about what other people learn from you and helping them on their way, and it is, but it works both ways. I meet people from all walks of life, from secretaries to general managers to sales executives to car mechanics to lawyers to struggling highschool students. They all have their own lives and interests and know things I would never have guessed could be known. When your students trust you, they trust you with everything. Besides countless whispered secrets of a romantic nature, I know about hostile takeovers being planned, surprises for significant others, as yet unpublicised new marketing strategies, top-secret presentations, future budgets and what people really think about their bosses, colleagues and subordinates. The best way to learn a language is to try to teach native speakers of that language another one, you will not believe how much I pick up from the constructions my students use and the words they ask me the English translation of. But it is not just about knowing other people's secrets and being trusted with them, I am also constantly confronted with knowledge I could use and ideas that make me reflect on my own life. For instance, I learnt the off-side rule from a football reporter in Milan, some ingenious ways to draw attention to one's own product when advertising oneself and several contradicting philosophies on what is really important in life, was taught some time-saving secrets about Excel by a computer whizzkid, a publisher gave me a brilliant idea for a book I want to write, an advertising manager came up with the best graduation present ever and someone (who shall remain anonymous) even suggested interesting ways of holding onto your partner when the sparks do not really fly anymore after several years of marriage.
9. A common misconception about teaching is...
that it is easy and anyone can do it. Simply knowing how to speak a language does not mean you can teach it. You have to understand how it works and find ways of explaining that to others while keeping in my mind that different people need different approaches. When you are just starting out you have to make sure you learn your grammar backwards and you should remember always to read a text thorougly before discussing it with your students. The 'You just say it like this' approach is usually not appreciated and, though there will always be specific things you do not know and need to look up, your grammar and general vocabulary have to be accessible and ready to be spontaneously elicited at all time, even when you have not prepared a lesson on that subject - which, let's face it, happens more often than not.
10. The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching is...
that I am quite good at it and can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. There will be interesting people I can learn things from wherever I go. Oh, and that languages rule. Studying languages is fun and an activity that you could easily centre your life on but, since most people do not get paid just for studying, teaching languages is a good second.
What do you guys think?
Poor Olaf is also having a hard time, because he has to write a report on the cost of Germany's participation in the Afghanistan war in about two weeks. As the deadline is today, I basically have not seen him much lately. Of course, we did do more than work last month and you can find a short account of the Queen's Day party, Cobie & Peter's visit and last weekend's dinner party on Olaf's website.
What I really wanted to blog about today, however, is a little questionnaire I found through somebody else's blog. It seemed like fun and I wanted to publicly answer it myself as well. Here goes:
1. I am a good teacher because...
I am a good listener and know how to stimulate people and pull them out of their shells. I believe students have to feel they can trust their teachers to really open up and overcome their inhibitions. After all, if one does not try, one does not fail; and if one does not fail, one cannot learn from one's own mistakes by (self-)correction. Having a teacher who is not always talking him/herself but actually induces you to speak, especially when you are a low-level or not confident student, is a big plus. They best lesson I can teach is one where I sit back and listen, not having to correct a single mistake.
2. If I weren’t a teacher, I would be...
teaching people things in some other way. I guess I would be a university researcher focused on uncovering some hidden truth about Greek & Roman culture, the origins of Christianity or the impact of the bronze age Middle Eastern cultures on the rest of the world. I could be debating theological questions or analysing philosophical systems with the idea of writing a book to enlighten others. Or perhaps I would just be a writer, or a poet. Or just drunk all the time.
3. My teaching style is...
a nice mix between presenting myself as one of the group and authoritatively presenting new ideas. Ideally, we are just a group of people trying to tackle a grammatical issue, analysing a text or having a conversation about a certain topic. I try to be as little of a teacher as possible and establish myself on the same level as my students. Obviously, this is not always possible as I do have to explain things and correct people, but I try to do it more in a colloquial hierarchy-free way rather than maintaining the traditional teacher-student relationship. I want to be respected and demand attention when necessary, but no more and no less than any other member of the group is respected and is allowed the floor when wanted and/or necessary.
4. My classroom is...
not a classroom. It is usually a meeting room or someone's office, and every now and then someone's private home or a bar. It it also never mine. Other people decide where I teach and I make do with what is there. I bring my own stuff and try to advocate the placement of a whiteboard an/or flipchart in the room but sometimes resistance is simply futile.
5. My lesson plans are...
either nice, well-prepared, well-thought out, theoretically comprehensive fool-proof plans or just a few key words dribbled on a piece of recyclable paper and usually out of the window in 5 minutes. Groups have their own dynamics and it pays to have more than one thing prepared. In the end, it often does not really matter what you do, as long as you do it in English and everybody practises.
6. One of my teaching goals is...
to make people more confident using the language and get a feel for it. Someone who has done a course with me does not necessarily speak English that much better, but they usually understand the mechanics of the language much better and believe they can use it with some more practice. In the long run, this makes it much easier for them to acquire new vocabulary or grammatical exceptions and it therefore increases both fluency and accuracy at the same time.
7. The toughest part of teaching is...
being informative as well as entertaining all the time. Being a good teacher means always being personally interested, remembering the most insignificant details about your students' lives, making a direct connection, constantly working on gaining and keeping your students' trust, having some jokes ready, keeping eye contact and never ever letting a student feel you are not interested in whoever they are and whatever it is they are talking about. While also making sure they learn something, that is. A good teacher with a lot of work is mentally exhausted when he comes home and never wants to interact with people again. It goes without saying that full-time teaching destroys your social life.
8. The thing I love most about teaching is...
learning so much every single day. I know it is supposed to be all about what other people learn from you and helping them on their way, and it is, but it works both ways. I meet people from all walks of life, from secretaries to general managers to sales executives to car mechanics to lawyers to struggling highschool students. They all have their own lives and interests and know things I would never have guessed could be known. When your students trust you, they trust you with everything. Besides countless whispered secrets of a romantic nature, I know about hostile takeovers being planned, surprises for significant others, as yet unpublicised new marketing strategies, top-secret presentations, future budgets and what people really think about their bosses, colleagues and subordinates. The best way to learn a language is to try to teach native speakers of that language another one, you will not believe how much I pick up from the constructions my students use and the words they ask me the English translation of. But it is not just about knowing other people's secrets and being trusted with them, I am also constantly confronted with knowledge I could use and ideas that make me reflect on my own life. For instance, I learnt the off-side rule from a football reporter in Milan, some ingenious ways to draw attention to one's own product when advertising oneself and several contradicting philosophies on what is really important in life, was taught some time-saving secrets about Excel by a computer whizzkid, a publisher gave me a brilliant idea for a book I want to write, an advertising manager came up with the best graduation present ever and someone (who shall remain anonymous) even suggested interesting ways of holding onto your partner when the sparks do not really fly anymore after several years of marriage.
9. A common misconception about teaching is...
that it is easy and anyone can do it. Simply knowing how to speak a language does not mean you can teach it. You have to understand how it works and find ways of explaining that to others while keeping in my mind that different people need different approaches. When you are just starting out you have to make sure you learn your grammar backwards and you should remember always to read a text thorougly before discussing it with your students. The 'You just say it like this' approach is usually not appreciated and, though there will always be specific things you do not know and need to look up, your grammar and general vocabulary have to be accessible and ready to be spontaneously elicited at all time, even when you have not prepared a lesson on that subject - which, let's face it, happens more often than not.
10. The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching is...
that I am quite good at it and can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. There will be interesting people I can learn things from wherever I go. Oh, and that languages rule. Studying languages is fun and an activity that you could easily centre your life on but, since most people do not get paid just for studying, teaching languages is a good second.
What do you guys think?
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Reflections on spring and Easter
In reference to my concerns about a Jane Austen-deprived existence and the dilemma arising from it, as related in my previous post, I am thrilled to share with the world that I am now the proud owner of Wordsworth's The Complete Novels of Jane Austen. Crisis avoided and future secured. I am confident I will still be able to enjoy her books and identify with the main characters just as I did before. After all, all it takes is a little suspension of disbelief. That should put that menacing question to rest, at least for a little while.
April has been treating us rather well. After a fun weekend with my brothers (for pictures click here), during which the weather was alright and we actually had our first beer outside in the sunshine with our coats on and it was still not too warm for my older brother Hascar to run the Berlin half marathon in 1:21:?? without dying from the heat, spring seems to have really set in. We have put our winter clothes in storage and I occasionally do not even need to wear my jacket anymore during the day. Last Friday, I actually spent part of the afternoon in the park enjoying the sunshine, wearing nothing put rolled up jeans and a t-shirt - though I must admit Olaf thought I was rather foolish to do so.
Just yesterday, I was invited by a former student of mine to a lovely lunch outside at a fancy Italian restaurant and the sun was so bright we actually fled into the shade at some point! She was one of my private students who initially contacted me in November to practise some Dutch with her, as her boyfriend was looking for a job in The Netherlands and she was planning to go with him. She had never studied Dutch before and had only recently started using an old Teach-yourself book. She had expected to have at least 6 months or so before anything would happen, but at some point in December her boyfriend suddenly found a job in Amsterdam and our deadline got a lot tighter. She quit her job and decided to devote herself to the study of the Dutch language for three months while looking for a job in The Netherlands. Flash forward three and a half months, 30 hours of conversation with me and a pile of Dutch books read, and she has reached a very high level of Dutch, found a Dutch-speaking job in Amsterdam in her own field, at her own level for an even higher salary than she was earning in Berlin! I believe I may consider her to be a success story, mainly due to her own efforts applying herself relentlessly and only slightly because of my interventions...
And, of course, it was Easter weekend. Not only was this not particularly unwelcome to me, because I have already had so many days off lately, but I have also been substituting a lot of course for colleagues of mine who took advantage of this period to visit their friends and family abroad. Which means that, though I may not have that many courses of my own to teach, I can at least earn some dinero these weeks - but not on public holidays!
Olaf's old studymate Jochen came over for Easter to introduce to his (to us) new girlfriend Viola and we had a very good time though. I even got to practise a little bit of Italian with Viola (who is Venetian) and we got along fine. They mainly did their own thing though, which left a lot of time for Olaf and me to spend together, which is always nice. It also gave my mind the opportunity to wonder about one of those eternal questions of life that surface every now and then. What does Easter mean? And, more importantly, what does it mean to me? Even though I am not religious at all, I suddenly got the strong urge to go to church on Easter Sunday, an urge I was only able to suppress by promising myself time to analyse it quietly. I do not suscribe to many modern-day Christian values nor support the Roman Catholic Church, though I have always been interested in Christianity from a historical point of view. Those of you who remember me from my college days know my fascination with the early church and how it developed into the secular organisation that it is today, which culminated in both my bachelor and my master theses. It has always been a profound theoretical and academic interest though, coupled with a healthy curiosity as to why people choose to believe in something which defies logic and has never been scientifically proven.
So, what was it that I felt the desire to do that Sunday? Though my conscience forbids me to blindly believe in the Christian God, or in any other god(s), goddess(es) or defined or undefined primary mover, I have never excluded the possibility either. I may not be able to distinguish the hands of a primary creator or omniscient driving force behind life, the universe and everything, but that does not mean he/she/it/they do(es)n't exist. My inadequate mind might simply be unable to understand the intricacies of the creation which God (let's call him/her/it/them 'God' for convenience sake, just because it comes naturally to me without any without any bias towards whether this actually is the Christian god) has laid out in his infinite wisdom. Or perhaps, I am not seeing clearly. Or maybe I have not been given the tools to discern the truth with. Or perhaps, I am in possession of these tools but have not learnt how to use them or realised that I could. Whatever the reason, there might just be such a thing as a God and he might just possibly be watching over me. And to tell you the truth, I don't mind that idea at all. Which is why I believe I can honestly call myself agnostic.
I am not going to pretend I will ever resolve this paradox and I certainly will not bore you with it here unless I do or come into some more interesting information. I am just wondering whether what I experienced on Easter Sunday was part of an unconscious desire to figure it all out and decide one way for now and forever. Should I give up completely and declare myself an atheist. Or do I secretly long for an existence on a higher spiritual plane - or at least a spiritual experience? The feeling has passed and I am happily going on with my life but the memory of that moment is still fresh. Does it really all come down to this scary little basic question? Do I want to be a believer?
April has been treating us rather well. After a fun weekend with my brothers (for pictures click here), during which the weather was alright and we actually had our first beer outside in the sunshine with our coats on and it was still not too warm for my older brother Hascar to run the Berlin half marathon in 1:21:?? without dying from the heat, spring seems to have really set in. We have put our winter clothes in storage and I occasionally do not even need to wear my jacket anymore during the day. Last Friday, I actually spent part of the afternoon in the park enjoying the sunshine, wearing nothing put rolled up jeans and a t-shirt - though I must admit Olaf thought I was rather foolish to do so.
Just yesterday, I was invited by a former student of mine to a lovely lunch outside at a fancy Italian restaurant and the sun was so bright we actually fled into the shade at some point! She was one of my private students who initially contacted me in November to practise some Dutch with her, as her boyfriend was looking for a job in The Netherlands and she was planning to go with him. She had never studied Dutch before and had only recently started using an old Teach-yourself book. She had expected to have at least 6 months or so before anything would happen, but at some point in December her boyfriend suddenly found a job in Amsterdam and our deadline got a lot tighter. She quit her job and decided to devote herself to the study of the Dutch language for three months while looking for a job in The Netherlands. Flash forward three and a half months, 30 hours of conversation with me and a pile of Dutch books read, and she has reached a very high level of Dutch, found a Dutch-speaking job in Amsterdam in her own field, at her own level for an even higher salary than she was earning in Berlin! I believe I may consider her to be a success story, mainly due to her own efforts applying herself relentlessly and only slightly because of my interventions...
And, of course, it was Easter weekend. Not only was this not particularly unwelcome to me, because I have already had so many days off lately, but I have also been substituting a lot of course for colleagues of mine who took advantage of this period to visit their friends and family abroad. Which means that, though I may not have that many courses of my own to teach, I can at least earn some dinero these weeks - but not on public holidays!
Olaf's old studymate Jochen came over for Easter to introduce to his (to us) new girlfriend Viola and we had a very good time though. I even got to practise a little bit of Italian with Viola (who is Venetian) and we got along fine. They mainly did their own thing though, which left a lot of time for Olaf and me to spend together, which is always nice. It also gave my mind the opportunity to wonder about one of those eternal questions of life that surface every now and then. What does Easter mean? And, more importantly, what does it mean to me? Even though I am not religious at all, I suddenly got the strong urge to go to church on Easter Sunday, an urge I was only able to suppress by promising myself time to analyse it quietly. I do not suscribe to many modern-day Christian values nor support the Roman Catholic Church, though I have always been interested in Christianity from a historical point of view. Those of you who remember me from my college days know my fascination with the early church and how it developed into the secular organisation that it is today, which culminated in both my bachelor and my master theses. It has always been a profound theoretical and academic interest though, coupled with a healthy curiosity as to why people choose to believe in something which defies logic and has never been scientifically proven.
So, what was it that I felt the desire to do that Sunday? Though my conscience forbids me to blindly believe in the Christian God, or in any other god(s), goddess(es) or defined or undefined primary mover, I have never excluded the possibility either. I may not be able to distinguish the hands of a primary creator or omniscient driving force behind life, the universe and everything, but that does not mean he/she/it/they do(es)n't exist. My inadequate mind might simply be unable to understand the intricacies of the creation which God (let's call him/her/it/them 'God' for convenience sake, just because it comes naturally to me without any without any bias towards whether this actually is the Christian god) has laid out in his infinite wisdom. Or perhaps, I am not seeing clearly. Or maybe I have not been given the tools to discern the truth with. Or perhaps, I am in possession of these tools but have not learnt how to use them or realised that I could. Whatever the reason, there might just be such a thing as a God and he might just possibly be watching over me. And to tell you the truth, I don't mind that idea at all. Which is why I believe I can honestly call myself agnostic.
I am not going to pretend I will ever resolve this paradox and I certainly will not bore you with it here unless I do or come into some more interesting information. I am just wondering whether what I experienced on Easter Sunday was part of an unconscious desire to figure it all out and decide one way for now and forever. Should I give up completely and declare myself an atheist. Or do I secretly long for an existence on a higher spiritual plane - or at least a spiritual experience? The feeling has passed and I am happily going on with my life but the memory of that moment is still fresh. Does it really all come down to this scary little basic question? Do I want to be a believer?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Life after weddings
Well, guess what:
Life does not actually end when you get married, though this may never have occurred to miss Jane Austen. Not that I want to bitch on her, I love her work, but I am slightly out of her range now. Unless, that is, I turn into a Mrs Bennet or Mrs Jennings at some point and happily rejoin the cast of some of the best novels English literature has to offer. But not yet. I pray I will keep my wits for a little bit longer. Perhaps I could go through a Willoughby phase first? Or a Miss Bingley one? I might even settle for a period of mindless Lydia Bennet-style fun and games. After all, one could never believe she gave up her playful ways after marrying Wickham, now could one?!
However, my silence (to which faithful readers of this uninteresting blog should be accustomed by now) might have provoked a contrary view. Olaf and I got married in secret, told everybody, went on our honeymoon, told the world about that and then fell silent. That is what it must have seemed like to you. No more, though, I say, No more. I refuse to sink into the background and resign myself to a life of housework, mindless chatter and ordering the servants around. For one thing, we don't have any servants, not even a cleaner - which annoys the hell out of me. And I do enjoy mindless chatter every once in a while...
After our fabulous - and I do not use the F word lightly - honeymoon, it took us a while to settle back into our lives again. I had not really got used to Berlin in those 7 months I lived here before we left and that became painfully obvious when I got terribly lost on a route I had taken several times before. It also did not help that everything was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice - a layer that would not leave until early March. I had somehow thought winter would be over when we came back and I was exceedingly surprised when we experienced a 50 degree C drop in temperature when we landed in Frankfurt where it was -20 (as opposed to a lovely 30 degrees in Thailand). Our shirts froze to our backs, our flipflops slid down the stairs and I almost immediately went belly-up.
Once we had got over this unpleasant surprise, Olaf went right back to work and I turned out to have very little to do for a month. I had missed the big start-off of courses in January, which had all been given to teachers who had not made the brilliant decision to leave Berlin in the busiest month of the year, and was stuck with the leftovers. I mainly survived on private students that month but it did not really go anywhere.
We had, however, already booked a nice weekend of catching up Milan. Olaf had to go for work - but unfortunately got stuck in a blizzard in Washington and did not make it to Milan until Friday - where I joined him for a weekend with friends. People were hugged and kissed, stories were exchanged, XL cocktails were had at La Hora Feliz and I felt right at home again. We had of course brought several people some presents, a picture of the most awesome of which, snake whiskey from Laos, you can see on Olaf's blog. I do believe we impressed with Massimo, which is exactly what we had sat out to do.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end - and yes, I have recently rewatched the two concluding episodes of Dawson's Creek, which is what reminded me of this quote. As business was very slow, I spent most of my days applying to schools, watching lots of films and doing tons of yoga. I feel I am actually getting somewhere with my routine, although I realise I still have a long way to go until I can myself anything but a beginner. My teacher is satisfied with my progress, even though he casually remarked that if I learnt all the positions I don't know yet and did the whole series of exercises it would take me up to three hours to do the whole set. So much for progress, I am apparently extraordinarily slow!!
We did finally manage to meet up with Nicole and Pieter for a night of traditional Dutch curly cale stew (boerenkoolstamppot), which had been planning since before we left for Southeast Asia. As expected, it was delicious and even seemed to be an incentive for the winter to end once and for all, as the temperature rose and all the snow and ice suddenly melted a few days later. I have never in my life been so thrilled at the sight of pavement as I was that day.
When I finally did get some work in, I was asked to do two different courses for two different schools starting on exactly the same Monday. One was an 8-day intensive course and the other an extensive 200-hour course that had to finish in three months. Unfortunately, they were not only overlapping, but I had organised to go away the weekend before and not to come back until Tuesday. I managed to work something out with my one school and had good hopes to be able to postpone the beginning of the other course at the other school. After all, I had written the course programme that had landed us this course at the owner's request and she had guaranteed me I would get the course. She could not really have expected me to be available as of the next Monday when she called me the Friday before. We agreed she would get a substitute for the first for lessons after which I would take over. When the student was happy enough with the sub teacher, however, she suddenly decided the sub would get to do the rest of the course as well, completely disregarding the guarantee she had given me and the effort I had put into preparing the course. It wasn't the first time she had done something like that and you can imagine I was quite pissed off. Since that school is also relatively far away and they don't pay that well, I am going to give them up as soon as I find something better.
But let's turn to that weekend away. My friend Stephanie and I decided we had not spent enough time together for the last three years and that we needed to be somewhere we could properly catch up, i.e. a place neither of us knew anybody. This was the perfect excuse to visit a city we had never been to before and we settled on Barcelona. And it was exactly what it was supposed to be. We had long talks, good tapas, lovely wine, cheap sangria and not enough sleep. Even the blizzard that suddenly hit us and kept us locked up in a modern art museum filled with videos of men cutting logs while shouting 'I'm making art'$, revolving chandeliers and typewriters being slowly covered in snow wasn't able to change that. Check out my pictures on Facebook. Thank you, popje, for a wonderful weekend. And yes, do let's make this an annual event!
We have had surprisingly few visitors lately, probably due to the unappealing weather we have been having. It gave us time to explore the area around Berlin a little bit on the weekends. We met up with Nicole & Pieter to visit Wittenberg, the town where Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Castle Church's door. Wittenberg's tiny city centre was cute enough and Luther museum very informative, but its location in the middle of some industrial zone did not endear it much to us. Last weekend, Olaf and I finally went to the Bode museum and explored the numismatic collection, the sections on Italian Renaissance sculptures and French and German baroque art as well as the Byzantine collection.
As of this weekend, though, we should have some more visitors. My brothers are flying in tonight and I am looking forward to this very much. As spring is here, I would like to welcome more of my friends to our diverse city, and our lovely apartment of course.
Oh, btw, I was surfing the Internet and I found an article in which someone wanted to 'sunrise' his argument. That made smile. Or bellow with laughter, rather.
Life does not actually end when you get married, though this may never have occurred to miss Jane Austen. Not that I want to bitch on her, I love her work, but I am slightly out of her range now. Unless, that is, I turn into a Mrs Bennet or Mrs Jennings at some point and happily rejoin the cast of some of the best novels English literature has to offer. But not yet. I pray I will keep my wits for a little bit longer. Perhaps I could go through a Willoughby phase first? Or a Miss Bingley one? I might even settle for a period of mindless Lydia Bennet-style fun and games. After all, one could never believe she gave up her playful ways after marrying Wickham, now could one?!
However, my silence (to which faithful readers of this uninteresting blog should be accustomed by now) might have provoked a contrary view. Olaf and I got married in secret, told everybody, went on our honeymoon, told the world about that and then fell silent. That is what it must have seemed like to you. No more, though, I say, No more. I refuse to sink into the background and resign myself to a life of housework, mindless chatter and ordering the servants around. For one thing, we don't have any servants, not even a cleaner - which annoys the hell out of me. And I do enjoy mindless chatter every once in a while...
After our fabulous - and I do not use the F word lightly - honeymoon, it took us a while to settle back into our lives again. I had not really got used to Berlin in those 7 months I lived here before we left and that became painfully obvious when I got terribly lost on a route I had taken several times before. It also did not help that everything was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice - a layer that would not leave until early March. I had somehow thought winter would be over when we came back and I was exceedingly surprised when we experienced a 50 degree C drop in temperature when we landed in Frankfurt where it was -20 (as opposed to a lovely 30 degrees in Thailand). Our shirts froze to our backs, our flipflops slid down the stairs and I almost immediately went belly-up.
Once we had got over this unpleasant surprise, Olaf went right back to work and I turned out to have very little to do for a month. I had missed the big start-off of courses in January, which had all been given to teachers who had not made the brilliant decision to leave Berlin in the busiest month of the year, and was stuck with the leftovers. I mainly survived on private students that month but it did not really go anywhere.
We had, however, already booked a nice weekend of catching up Milan. Olaf had to go for work - but unfortunately got stuck in a blizzard in Washington and did not make it to Milan until Friday - where I joined him for a weekend with friends. People were hugged and kissed, stories were exchanged, XL cocktails were had at La Hora Feliz and I felt right at home again. We had of course brought several people some presents, a picture of the most awesome of which, snake whiskey from Laos, you can see on Olaf's blog. I do believe we impressed with Massimo, which is exactly what we had sat out to do.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end - and yes, I have recently rewatched the two concluding episodes of Dawson's Creek, which is what reminded me of this quote. As business was very slow, I spent most of my days applying to schools, watching lots of films and doing tons of yoga. I feel I am actually getting somewhere with my routine, although I realise I still have a long way to go until I can myself anything but a beginner. My teacher is satisfied with my progress, even though he casually remarked that if I learnt all the positions I don't know yet and did the whole series of exercises it would take me up to three hours to do the whole set. So much for progress, I am apparently extraordinarily slow!!
We did finally manage to meet up with Nicole and Pieter for a night of traditional Dutch curly cale stew (boerenkoolstamppot), which had been planning since before we left for Southeast Asia. As expected, it was delicious and even seemed to be an incentive for the winter to end once and for all, as the temperature rose and all the snow and ice suddenly melted a few days later. I have never in my life been so thrilled at the sight of pavement as I was that day.
When I finally did get some work in, I was asked to do two different courses for two different schools starting on exactly the same Monday. One was an 8-day intensive course and the other an extensive 200-hour course that had to finish in three months. Unfortunately, they were not only overlapping, but I had organised to go away the weekend before and not to come back until Tuesday. I managed to work something out with my one school and had good hopes to be able to postpone the beginning of the other course at the other school. After all, I had written the course programme that had landed us this course at the owner's request and she had guaranteed me I would get the course. She could not really have expected me to be available as of the next Monday when she called me the Friday before. We agreed she would get a substitute for the first for lessons after which I would take over. When the student was happy enough with the sub teacher, however, she suddenly decided the sub would get to do the rest of the course as well, completely disregarding the guarantee she had given me and the effort I had put into preparing the course. It wasn't the first time she had done something like that and you can imagine I was quite pissed off. Since that school is also relatively far away and they don't pay that well, I am going to give them up as soon as I find something better.
But let's turn to that weekend away. My friend Stephanie and I decided we had not spent enough time together for the last three years and that we needed to be somewhere we could properly catch up, i.e. a place neither of us knew anybody. This was the perfect excuse to visit a city we had never been to before and we settled on Barcelona. And it was exactly what it was supposed to be. We had long talks, good tapas, lovely wine, cheap sangria and not enough sleep. Even the blizzard that suddenly hit us and kept us locked up in a modern art museum filled with videos of men cutting logs while shouting 'I'm making art'$, revolving chandeliers and typewriters being slowly covered in snow wasn't able to change that. Check out my pictures on Facebook. Thank you, popje, for a wonderful weekend. And yes, do let's make this an annual event!
We have had surprisingly few visitors lately, probably due to the unappealing weather we have been having. It gave us time to explore the area around Berlin a little bit on the weekends. We met up with Nicole & Pieter to visit Wittenberg, the town where Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Castle Church's door. Wittenberg's tiny city centre was cute enough and Luther museum very informative, but its location in the middle of some industrial zone did not endear it much to us. Last weekend, Olaf and I finally went to the Bode museum and explored the numismatic collection, the sections on Italian Renaissance sculptures and French and German baroque art as well as the Byzantine collection.
As of this weekend, though, we should have some more visitors. My brothers are flying in tonight and I am looking forward to this very much. As spring is here, I would like to welcome more of my friends to our diverse city, and our lovely apartment of course.
Oh, btw, I was surfing the Internet and I found an article in which someone wanted to 'sunrise' his argument. That made smile. Or bellow with laughter, rather.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
A dreamy honeymoon
Hello everybody,
I realise I am a little late but I wanted to take my time to write about our fabulous honeymoon. Note the F word, I do not, I repeat not, use it lightly. Apart from the pictures Olaf already refers to in his blogpost, you can find a more extensive selection with captions in the Picasa web album I have created for anyone who would like to have a look at the things we saw, and most importantly as visual memories to ourselves. Here follows a summary of our trip.
Bangkok
Our first impression of Bangkok was that it is so modern. We had expected a kind of Mumbai (dirt, some skyscrapers, a lot of poverty and pollution) but Bangkok is exceedingly clean, spacious and the air is very fresh. There is modern-style transport (underground railway, skytrain) and though you can get ripped off by tuk-tuks if you feel like it, there is always the option of the super-cheap taxicab. On the other hand, the modern stuff stops when you get to the old city which helps preserve some its historical character. We stayed in a fancy hotel on Khao San Road (backpaper central) the first night and watched the fireworks from the pool on our hotel roof with some beers in our hand. And then, not having slept much on the plane the night before, we went to bed and enjoyed a blissful sleep interrupted a mere 16,000 times by partying tourists. Bangkok's temples are impressive but the famous Emerald Buddha at Wat Phra Kaew (a modern Wonder of the World) was rather dispointing. We spent two days walking around and seeing all the sights and met up with my old boss Caroline at night for food and drinks. The rooftop Vertigo Bar on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel was definitely one of the highlights of this city, the beautiful views and gorgeous sunset most definitely made up for the pricy cocktails!
I took advantage of meeting Caroline to tell her something I had been wanting to tell her for a long time. When I had just arrived in Milan and was looking for a job several years ago, I lied and said I was mothertongue speaker of English because my mother was from South Africa. Almost everybody now knows this not true, but I had never told Caroline the truth. It felt good to finally be able to tell her and come clean, though it obviously hurt her a lot. I hope she will eventually forgive me and that we can perhaps be friends again. The future will tell...
Krong Koh Kong
After a few days in Bangkok we traveled to the Southernmost Cambodian border and crossed into Koh Kong province, home of the only rainforest in Southeast that still stretches from the inland mountains right to the sea. Krong Koh Kong is a small, inconsequential town that is obviously expecting a lot of tourism in the future but was still rather quiet. We had our first taste of Cambodian hospitality, friendliness and cuisine here - and enjoyed all three things thoroughly. If I could eat nothing but rice with shrimp and vegetables for the rest of my life, I would not be sorry for it! Though their country has only been completely war-free since the demise of Pol Pot and the last of the Khmer Rouge in 1998, it was remarkable to see how the Cambodians are rebuilding and how open and happy they are in spite of years of oppression and threat. Everybody smiles, not just at us but at each other as well. Wherever you go in this country, you will find children shouting 'hello' - often the only English they know - and waving at you. When you respond and wave back, they invariably start jumping up and down with excitement, screaming with joy and waving as if their lives depend on it. We rented a motorbike - a first for me! - and learnt a lot about mangroves, how they grow and how important they are for the preservation of the natural environment at the nearby nature preserve. We wanted to go swimming too but unfortunately we were unable to locate the beach... The next day we took a bus that drove us Eastwards through the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, Cambodia largest rainforst preserve.
Kompong Trach
The tiny town of Kompong Trach - or Kompong Trash, as we called it - was a little hamlet near an estuary close to the Vietnamese border consisting of some houses along the main road and two dirt roads. It was a dump. Even the temple had been closed up and a pile of rubbish had formed in front of it. There was only one guesthouse where nobody spoke any English and not a single restaurant. We had come here because he had become intrigued by a Lonely Planet entry stating there was a hidden valley nearby. Imagine our surprise when the countryside turned out to be completely flat!! There happened to be one karst formation not far from the village inside which there were shallow caves leading to a small open-air chamber in the middle of it. It wasn't much but it was worth it. We found some children there who were very excited to be able to practise their English and willing to guide us through the caves for a little tip. Even in this remote place where we were the only foreigners and where people only stop for the night on the way to or from the border, we were once again amazed at the genuine kindness of the people. Food was a different matter though, we finally found a stand that did something with fruit, ice, cacao and condensed milk and decided to go for it. It turned out to be some kind of delicious dessert, which we ate with fervour despite our apprehension of ice cubes in Asian countries (our memories of having a bacterial infection due to infected ice cream in India were still very fresh). As poor as they may be, Cambodians have obviously learnt the trick of keeping ice cubes bacteria-free and we could happily go on to Phnom Penh the next day.
Phnom Penh
Though not the 'ideal South East Asian city it was supposed to be', Phnom Penh was a nice village-like capital with a lot of foreigners. The hotels were overpriced, as were the food and means of transportation, but we knew this would be the case in advance. We visited the National Museum, a quaint modern-art-meets-traditional-Cambodian-style building with a nice collection of Angkorian and Khmer sculptures that gave us a good introduction to the archeological sites in Northern Cambodia we were planning to visit. It also had an interesting section on archeology and excavation techniques. As it was the national 'End of Genocide' day, we unfortunately could not visit the Royal Palace and its famed Silver Pagoda but, on the positive side, we did manage to pick up some illegal copies of the LP's to Cambodia and Laos for a few dollars (we only had the one about the whole region which did not have all the information we needed), which came in handy as we had just decided to forgo Thailand and to go to Northern Laos. Phnom Penh's real attraction, the memorial sites of the Khmer Rouge murderous regime, left us speechless and sickened. Tluol Sleng Museum, a former high school in Phnom Penh, was Prison S-21 during Pol Pot's regime, an imprisonment and torture facility for enemies of the state. We were properly introduced to the horrors of this regime and how it came power in this livid and well-documented museum. One of the most heart-rending room was the one with lines and lines of pictures of the thousands that were detained and tortured here before being deported to the killing fields of Choeung Ek where the bodies were dumped in mass graves. Choeung Ek itself is a seemingly idyllic lawn surrounded by trees, only the holes in the ground and the signs mark out the sights of former mass graves. There is a memorial stupa/chedi here containing the bones of the unidentified victims found here, though it is only a fraction of the millions of Cambodians (one third of the population) murdered or starved to death by the Khmer Rouge.
Kompong Thom
Next up were the Pre-Angkorian temples at Sambor Prei Kuk, near Kompong Thom on the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. Situated in a quiet, remote forest, not much remains of the grandeur that the temples must have been conveyed to the onlookers of yesteryear. Some of the temples are still more or less in tact and most have been reclaimed by nature. Trees have grown on top, inside and through the brick structures and make the building look lost and forlorn. The forest strangely enough looked as if it could have been anywhere in Northern Europe, which made the whole site have an eerie, mystical feel to it, as if something was not right. Oh, and a lot of trees were hometrees!! (For those who have seen Avatar)
Siem Reap & Angkor Wat Archeological Park
What can one say about Angkor Wat and the temples around them? They are amazing, magnificent, baffling, monstrously beautiful, unbelievably intricate, astonishingly carved and induce you to reflect on the marvelous civilisation that created this massive city and temple complexes around 1,000 years ago. Everybody knows pictures of Angkor Wat but have you ever seen the sun rise over it? You may have seen Ta Prohm in the Tombraider movie but have you ever touched tree roots larger than yourself that have enveloped whole buildings? From the frighteningly steep slopes of Ta Keo to the serene faces that the Bayon, from the idyllic waterworld of Preah Neak Pean to the intricately carved city-temple of Banteay Samre, from the seemingly unstoppable force of nature at Ta Prohm and Ta Som (in reality most of the trees have been removed and only those suited for dramatic pictures remain) to the relief elephants on the royal palace in the walled city of Angkor Thom, I could have spent a week there. Check out the pictures.
The boat trip to Battambang
The boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang is promoted as a must-see highlight of Cambodia but it is not worth. The longboat filled with tourists takes 6 hours in the rainy season but 9 in the dry season. Though you pass through some narrow waterways where you to duck in order not to be hit by branches trying to prick your eyes out and you have a nice view of some of the Vietnamese floating villages, you feel like an intruder into someone else's private world. There is something terribly wrong with a bunch of rich Westerners in a luxurious, fast boat taking pictures of the natives who obviously some of the poorest people in the country.
Vientiane
From Battambang we went back to the Thai-Cambodian border and made our way to Saraburi where we tried an interesting form of Chinese hotpot. As the staff did not speak any English and we had no clue what to do - which obviously elicited some well-meant laughs from them - we played around with some fishy things and veggies in the burning oil and had a surprisingly good meal. Afterwards, we caught the overnight sleeper train to Nong Khai in Northeastern Thailand where we changed to a train into Laos. This train only took us a couple of kilometres into Laos and after going through the border formalities we turned out to be in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of some money-hungry minivan drivers. Oh well, what's a holiday without tourist traps? Laos' capital Vientiane was hardly large enough to be called a city and certainly did not seem that way. I though it was generally disappointing, with its famed golden stupa which was really ugly from up close and remained closed even though we had paid to get in and its cloudy sunsets over de muddy sandbanks in the middle of the Mekong river. I did enjoy Patuxai, the local version of the Arc de Triomphe built from cement donated by the Americans to build an airport at Vientiane. Somehow I don't think that improved Lao-American relations. Though the Lonely Planet and the Lao people profess otherwise, Patuxai looks absolutely nothing like the Arc de Triomphe.
Phonsavan
After the first of many looooooooong bus rides (this one took 9 hours) up and down mountain ranges affording us stunning views of gorgeous green valleys and rugged peaks, we arrived in the dusty provincial capital of Phonsavan. There is nothing whatsoever to do in the town itself and we were happy to crash down in our beds at Nice Guesthouse, which turned out to be true to its name. The next day we hired a motorcycle and went to visit the Plain of Jars. The jars at the Plain of Jars are between 3,000 and 1,500 years old and stem from Lao prehistory. Their purpose is unknown, although scientists now think at least some of them were used for funerary purposes. A local legend tells a different story though, they say village hero Khun Jeuam restored peace and prosperity to the region by droving out evil chieftain Angkha in the 6th century AD and ordering the jars to be set up so enough lao-lao (local rice whiskey) could be brewed in huge to keep his soldiers celebrating for six months! Whatever the reasons, the jars still keep their peace on the plain and nearby hills and seem to be happy at the bewilderment of their visitors.
Sam Neua & Vieng Xai
After another day-long bus trip, we arrived in Sam Neua, the tiny, quiet capital of Laos' Northeasternmost province, a place so remote that the only tourists who come here travel across the mountains on the bad road West from Hanoi. We rented another motorcycle and drove around the countryside around the town. We truly felt like we were in the middle of nowhere looking out at rice fields and mountains slopes without a single person in sight for miles. The second day we went to nearby Vieng Xai, the town where the leaders of the Pathet Lao (Communist Lao army) hid during the Vietnam war when the US illegally bombed Laos as well. Laos has received more bombs per inhabitant than any country in Asia - and it wasn't even at war! Because the Lao were suspected (and rightly so) of supplying the Northern Vietnamese with food and weapons - the famous Ho Chi Minh trail - and there was a civil between the old-style post-colonial government and the Communist freedom fighters, the US did not seem to care enough to make this war official. There are still UXO (unexploded ordnance) to be found everywhere in Eastern Laos, a situation that still claims many lives every year.
Luang Prabang
After a 14-hour bus ride, we arrived dead-tired in Luang Prabang, the famous bejewelled temple-city and former capital of Laos. Although the temples were beautiful, the weather was not too great (as Laos is really high up, it was rather cold the whole time) and it was very touristy, it was not my favourite place to be. We visited a lot of temples, did some shopping at a local handicrafts village and feasted on French-style baguettes. We also took a river trip to the Pak Ou caves, which turned to filled with octagenarian Americans with canes walking up stairs and then getting stuck. Here is an impression, imagine all this being said in horrible American accent: Bill: 'I can't get down, Lorna'. Lorna: 'Well, I am gonna try. If I don't make it, it was nice knowin' you!' Just picture 50 people like this in a tiny cave and you get the picture.
Nong Khai
We caught a bus back to Vientiane and crossed the border - avoiding the train this time - back into Thailand. We spent the day in the border town of Nong Khai, which was mainly remarkable for the Sala Kaew Ku sculpture garden filled with surreal statues of Buddhist, Hindu and vague mixed mythological figures towering above us. Another positive experience was the return to sunshine and heat!
Ayutthaya
That night we caught the overnight sleeper train to Ayutthaya and slept like babies. Ayutthaya is the former capital of Thailand and an artificial island where three rivers come together to form the Chao Phraya river that flows down to Bangkok and then to the sea. Historical sources describe its majesty and pomp and Westerners visiting the city for the first time in the 16th century were in awe of its wealth. Today, many temples remain and the city has been inscribed into UNESCO's World Heritage list. Our last dat was a beautiful, sunny day, as we had hoped it would be. To make sure we would be completely watted (templed) out when we went home, we visited about a dozen of them. Some of the sites even inspired me to try some yoga moves (see pictures). It is also the place where I nearly lost my everything. We had rented bicycles and had to cross a river on a boat not meant for bicycles. I got off first a put my bicycle down against a fence to help Olaf off the boat, but unfortunately by bike fell over and my bag - with my passport, my wallet, the Lonely Planet and our tickets! - dropped into the river. Fortunately Cambodian-made bags and real LPs float and after I had swung down into the river holding myself to the untrustworthy fence to get my bag, the boat driver was nice enough to fish our LP out of the water as well. All this gave us quite a scare and made us feel like drinking beer.
So that was that and we made it back safe and sound, back to bleak, grey and icy-cold Berlin. I wish I was still there...
I realise I am a little late but I wanted to take my time to write about our fabulous honeymoon. Note the F word, I do not, I repeat not, use it lightly. Apart from the pictures Olaf already refers to in his blogpost, you can find a more extensive selection with captions in the Picasa web album I have created for anyone who would like to have a look at the things we saw, and most importantly as visual memories to ourselves. Here follows a summary of our trip.
Bangkok
Our first impression of Bangkok was that it is so modern. We had expected a kind of Mumbai (dirt, some skyscrapers, a lot of poverty and pollution) but Bangkok is exceedingly clean, spacious and the air is very fresh. There is modern-style transport (underground railway, skytrain) and though you can get ripped off by tuk-tuks if you feel like it, there is always the option of the super-cheap taxicab. On the other hand, the modern stuff stops when you get to the old city which helps preserve some its historical character. We stayed in a fancy hotel on Khao San Road (backpaper central) the first night and watched the fireworks from the pool on our hotel roof with some beers in our hand. And then, not having slept much on the plane the night before, we went to bed and enjoyed a blissful sleep interrupted a mere 16,000 times by partying tourists. Bangkok's temples are impressive but the famous Emerald Buddha at Wat Phra Kaew (a modern Wonder of the World) was rather dispointing. We spent two days walking around and seeing all the sights and met up with my old boss Caroline at night for food and drinks. The rooftop Vertigo Bar on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel was definitely one of the highlights of this city, the beautiful views and gorgeous sunset most definitely made up for the pricy cocktails!
I took advantage of meeting Caroline to tell her something I had been wanting to tell her for a long time. When I had just arrived in Milan and was looking for a job several years ago, I lied and said I was mothertongue speaker of English because my mother was from South Africa. Almost everybody now knows this not true, but I had never told Caroline the truth. It felt good to finally be able to tell her and come clean, though it obviously hurt her a lot. I hope she will eventually forgive me and that we can perhaps be friends again. The future will tell...
Krong Koh Kong
After a few days in Bangkok we traveled to the Southernmost Cambodian border and crossed into Koh Kong province, home of the only rainforest in Southeast that still stretches from the inland mountains right to the sea. Krong Koh Kong is a small, inconsequential town that is obviously expecting a lot of tourism in the future but was still rather quiet. We had our first taste of Cambodian hospitality, friendliness and cuisine here - and enjoyed all three things thoroughly. If I could eat nothing but rice with shrimp and vegetables for the rest of my life, I would not be sorry for it! Though their country has only been completely war-free since the demise of Pol Pot and the last of the Khmer Rouge in 1998, it was remarkable to see how the Cambodians are rebuilding and how open and happy they are in spite of years of oppression and threat. Everybody smiles, not just at us but at each other as well. Wherever you go in this country, you will find children shouting 'hello' - often the only English they know - and waving at you. When you respond and wave back, they invariably start jumping up and down with excitement, screaming with joy and waving as if their lives depend on it. We rented a motorbike - a first for me! - and learnt a lot about mangroves, how they grow and how important they are for the preservation of the natural environment at the nearby nature preserve. We wanted to go swimming too but unfortunately we were unable to locate the beach... The next day we took a bus that drove us Eastwards through the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, Cambodia largest rainforst preserve.
Kompong Trach
The tiny town of Kompong Trach - or Kompong Trash, as we called it - was a little hamlet near an estuary close to the Vietnamese border consisting of some houses along the main road and two dirt roads. It was a dump. Even the temple had been closed up and a pile of rubbish had formed in front of it. There was only one guesthouse where nobody spoke any English and not a single restaurant. We had come here because he had become intrigued by a Lonely Planet entry stating there was a hidden valley nearby. Imagine our surprise when the countryside turned out to be completely flat!! There happened to be one karst formation not far from the village inside which there were shallow caves leading to a small open-air chamber in the middle of it. It wasn't much but it was worth it. We found some children there who were very excited to be able to practise their English and willing to guide us through the caves for a little tip. Even in this remote place where we were the only foreigners and where people only stop for the night on the way to or from the border, we were once again amazed at the genuine kindness of the people. Food was a different matter though, we finally found a stand that did something with fruit, ice, cacao and condensed milk and decided to go for it. It turned out to be some kind of delicious dessert, which we ate with fervour despite our apprehension of ice cubes in Asian countries (our memories of having a bacterial infection due to infected ice cream in India were still very fresh). As poor as they may be, Cambodians have obviously learnt the trick of keeping ice cubes bacteria-free and we could happily go on to Phnom Penh the next day.
Phnom Penh
Though not the 'ideal South East Asian city it was supposed to be', Phnom Penh was a nice village-like capital with a lot of foreigners. The hotels were overpriced, as were the food and means of transportation, but we knew this would be the case in advance. We visited the National Museum, a quaint modern-art-meets-traditional-Cambodian-style building with a nice collection of Angkorian and Khmer sculptures that gave us a good introduction to the archeological sites in Northern Cambodia we were planning to visit. It also had an interesting section on archeology and excavation techniques. As it was the national 'End of Genocide' day, we unfortunately could not visit the Royal Palace and its famed Silver Pagoda but, on the positive side, we did manage to pick up some illegal copies of the LP's to Cambodia and Laos for a few dollars (we only had the one about the whole region which did not have all the information we needed), which came in handy as we had just decided to forgo Thailand and to go to Northern Laos. Phnom Penh's real attraction, the memorial sites of the Khmer Rouge murderous regime, left us speechless and sickened. Tluol Sleng Museum, a former high school in Phnom Penh, was Prison S-21 during Pol Pot's regime, an imprisonment and torture facility for enemies of the state. We were properly introduced to the horrors of this regime and how it came power in this livid and well-documented museum. One of the most heart-rending room was the one with lines and lines of pictures of the thousands that were detained and tortured here before being deported to the killing fields of Choeung Ek where the bodies were dumped in mass graves. Choeung Ek itself is a seemingly idyllic lawn surrounded by trees, only the holes in the ground and the signs mark out the sights of former mass graves. There is a memorial stupa/chedi here containing the bones of the unidentified victims found here, though it is only a fraction of the millions of Cambodians (one third of the population) murdered or starved to death by the Khmer Rouge.
Kompong Thom
Next up were the Pre-Angkorian temples at Sambor Prei Kuk, near Kompong Thom on the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. Situated in a quiet, remote forest, not much remains of the grandeur that the temples must have been conveyed to the onlookers of yesteryear. Some of the temples are still more or less in tact and most have been reclaimed by nature. Trees have grown on top, inside and through the brick structures and make the building look lost and forlorn. The forest strangely enough looked as if it could have been anywhere in Northern Europe, which made the whole site have an eerie, mystical feel to it, as if something was not right. Oh, and a lot of trees were hometrees!! (For those who have seen Avatar)
Siem Reap & Angkor Wat Archeological Park
What can one say about Angkor Wat and the temples around them? They are amazing, magnificent, baffling, monstrously beautiful, unbelievably intricate, astonishingly carved and induce you to reflect on the marvelous civilisation that created this massive city and temple complexes around 1,000 years ago. Everybody knows pictures of Angkor Wat but have you ever seen the sun rise over it? You may have seen Ta Prohm in the Tombraider movie but have you ever touched tree roots larger than yourself that have enveloped whole buildings? From the frighteningly steep slopes of Ta Keo to the serene faces that the Bayon, from the idyllic waterworld of Preah Neak Pean to the intricately carved city-temple of Banteay Samre, from the seemingly unstoppable force of nature at Ta Prohm and Ta Som (in reality most of the trees have been removed and only those suited for dramatic pictures remain) to the relief elephants on the royal palace in the walled city of Angkor Thom, I could have spent a week there. Check out the pictures.
The boat trip to Battambang
The boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang is promoted as a must-see highlight of Cambodia but it is not worth. The longboat filled with tourists takes 6 hours in the rainy season but 9 in the dry season. Though you pass through some narrow waterways where you to duck in order not to be hit by branches trying to prick your eyes out and you have a nice view of some of the Vietnamese floating villages, you feel like an intruder into someone else's private world. There is something terribly wrong with a bunch of rich Westerners in a luxurious, fast boat taking pictures of the natives who obviously some of the poorest people in the country.
Vientiane
From Battambang we went back to the Thai-Cambodian border and made our way to Saraburi where we tried an interesting form of Chinese hotpot. As the staff did not speak any English and we had no clue what to do - which obviously elicited some well-meant laughs from them - we played around with some fishy things and veggies in the burning oil and had a surprisingly good meal. Afterwards, we caught the overnight sleeper train to Nong Khai in Northeastern Thailand where we changed to a train into Laos. This train only took us a couple of kilometres into Laos and after going through the border formalities we turned out to be in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of some money-hungry minivan drivers. Oh well, what's a holiday without tourist traps? Laos' capital Vientiane was hardly large enough to be called a city and certainly did not seem that way. I though it was generally disappointing, with its famed golden stupa which was really ugly from up close and remained closed even though we had paid to get in and its cloudy sunsets over de muddy sandbanks in the middle of the Mekong river. I did enjoy Patuxai, the local version of the Arc de Triomphe built from cement donated by the Americans to build an airport at Vientiane. Somehow I don't think that improved Lao-American relations. Though the Lonely Planet and the Lao people profess otherwise, Patuxai looks absolutely nothing like the Arc de Triomphe.
Phonsavan
After the first of many looooooooong bus rides (this one took 9 hours) up and down mountain ranges affording us stunning views of gorgeous green valleys and rugged peaks, we arrived in the dusty provincial capital of Phonsavan. There is nothing whatsoever to do in the town itself and we were happy to crash down in our beds at Nice Guesthouse, which turned out to be true to its name. The next day we hired a motorcycle and went to visit the Plain of Jars. The jars at the Plain of Jars are between 3,000 and 1,500 years old and stem from Lao prehistory. Their purpose is unknown, although scientists now think at least some of them were used for funerary purposes. A local legend tells a different story though, they say village hero Khun Jeuam restored peace and prosperity to the region by droving out evil chieftain Angkha in the 6th century AD and ordering the jars to be set up so enough lao-lao (local rice whiskey) could be brewed in huge to keep his soldiers celebrating for six months! Whatever the reasons, the jars still keep their peace on the plain and nearby hills and seem to be happy at the bewilderment of their visitors.
Sam Neua & Vieng Xai
After another day-long bus trip, we arrived in Sam Neua, the tiny, quiet capital of Laos' Northeasternmost province, a place so remote that the only tourists who come here travel across the mountains on the bad road West from Hanoi. We rented another motorcycle and drove around the countryside around the town. We truly felt like we were in the middle of nowhere looking out at rice fields and mountains slopes without a single person in sight for miles. The second day we went to nearby Vieng Xai, the town where the leaders of the Pathet Lao (Communist Lao army) hid during the Vietnam war when the US illegally bombed Laos as well. Laos has received more bombs per inhabitant than any country in Asia - and it wasn't even at war! Because the Lao were suspected (and rightly so) of supplying the Northern Vietnamese with food and weapons - the famous Ho Chi Minh trail - and there was a civil between the old-style post-colonial government and the Communist freedom fighters, the US did not seem to care enough to make this war official. There are still UXO (unexploded ordnance) to be found everywhere in Eastern Laos, a situation that still claims many lives every year.
Luang Prabang
After a 14-hour bus ride, we arrived dead-tired in Luang Prabang, the famous bejewelled temple-city and former capital of Laos. Although the temples were beautiful, the weather was not too great (as Laos is really high up, it was rather cold the whole time) and it was very touristy, it was not my favourite place to be. We visited a lot of temples, did some shopping at a local handicrafts village and feasted on French-style baguettes. We also took a river trip to the Pak Ou caves, which turned to filled with octagenarian Americans with canes walking up stairs and then getting stuck. Here is an impression, imagine all this being said in horrible American accent: Bill: 'I can't get down, Lorna'. Lorna: 'Well, I am gonna try. If I don't make it, it was nice knowin' you!' Just picture 50 people like this in a tiny cave and you get the picture.
Nong Khai
We caught a bus back to Vientiane and crossed the border - avoiding the train this time - back into Thailand. We spent the day in the border town of Nong Khai, which was mainly remarkable for the Sala Kaew Ku sculpture garden filled with surreal statues of Buddhist, Hindu and vague mixed mythological figures towering above us. Another positive experience was the return to sunshine and heat!
Ayutthaya
That night we caught the overnight sleeper train to Ayutthaya and slept like babies. Ayutthaya is the former capital of Thailand and an artificial island where three rivers come together to form the Chao Phraya river that flows down to Bangkok and then to the sea. Historical sources describe its majesty and pomp and Westerners visiting the city for the first time in the 16th century were in awe of its wealth. Today, many temples remain and the city has been inscribed into UNESCO's World Heritage list. Our last dat was a beautiful, sunny day, as we had hoped it would be. To make sure we would be completely watted (templed) out when we went home, we visited about a dozen of them. Some of the sites even inspired me to try some yoga moves (see pictures). It is also the place where I nearly lost my everything. We had rented bicycles and had to cross a river on a boat not meant for bicycles. I got off first a put my bicycle down against a fence to help Olaf off the boat, but unfortunately by bike fell over and my bag - with my passport, my wallet, the Lonely Planet and our tickets! - dropped into the river. Fortunately Cambodian-made bags and real LPs float and after I had swung down into the river holding myself to the untrustworthy fence to get my bag, the boat driver was nice enough to fish our LP out of the water as well. All this gave us quite a scare and made us feel like drinking beer.
So that was that and we made it back safe and sound, back to bleak, grey and icy-cold Berlin. I wish I was still there...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, December 03, 2009
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
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
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