Ciao tutti,
The Andrea Bocelli concert was very nice - and we had the misfortune of being constantly reminded of this by some American bimbo who was standing next to us enveloped in a column of smoke. Seriously, what did she think she had to prove? She was obviously showing off her perceived supreme knowledge of and deep insight in Italian music to her equally stupid friends, but did she HAVE to do it while Bocelli was singing?!?!
Anyway, the rest of the week was as usual. I still have to finish a lot of courses before June, 30th and this is pretty much defining my life. Olaf was in Tunisia last week and spent this week in Turkey so I didn't see him much. Which is good, because I don't have any time for him anyway. He made the mistake of traveling with Alitalia though, and, as expected, the lost his luggage. They delivered his suitcase two days later on Monday night and this was quite inconvenient as he had to leave again Tuesday morning and he needed all his shirts cleaned. But let's be optimistic, at least they found it back.
Paola and I went to an Italian translation of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's 17th-century comedy 'The Changeling'. This was a really weird play (for a description, go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changeling_%28play%29). It was about a woman who wanted to marry her lover but was made to marry another man by her father. In her despair she hires someone to have her prospective husband killed, but this hired hand wants her for himself and forces her to pay him in sex. She then gets to marry the man she wants but has already lost her virginity and makes her chambermaid take her place in the nuptial bed for the prima notte. Afterwards, she has her maid killed by her hired hand who is found by her husband and owns up to everything. The woman and the hired hand then take their lives and the play ends with the husband's appeal for a return to the morals and values of the past and a renunciation of decadence. The execution of the play was nothing special but it was entertaining. The only thing I did not understand - although the authors apparently meant it this way - was the fact that the female lead was played by three different actresses. This was supposed to illustrate the development of her character in three stages, from caprice to guilt to dour amoralism, but in my opinion it just caused confusion over who was who and denied the actresses the chance to develop their performances to a climax.
Last Sunday, when Olaf was back for a couple of days, we went to the Cimitero Monumentale art festival with Stefano and Elke. There were supposed to be musical and theatrical performances, but unfortunately it started raining not long after we got there and everything was cancelled. Our tour guide was amazing though. Instead of cutting the tour short and trying to get inside to escape from the rain, he shepherded us all into one of the bigger monuments and started telling us about all the monuments we hadn't seen yet. He was hoping the rain would end or slow down and wanted to take us to look at the tombs he had just described. But alas, the rain did not end and as a last resort he led the way running past all the tombs we shouldn't miss before taking us back to the main building. This guy was way cool!
I've also had a near-death experience. Someone else's death by my hands, that is. Last Friday, as I was cycling back from the swimming pool through the pouring rain, I had to stop because some guy was trying to get out of a parking space. I was obviously annoyed because I was cold and wet and wanted to go home, but these things happen you know. The guy took his time though, all the while blocking my passage. When he finally got out of the parking space and onto road he pulled up really fast and I was happy I could continue my journey. 20 metres down the road, however, the guy stopped again and started trying to get into another parking space, taking his time again and blocking my way through. Shivering, soaked and really irritated, I did what any decent Italian would do in this situation, I gave him the 'Va fa in culo'-gesture. So, without parking his car well, making sure it was still blocking all the traffic on the street, he got out of his car and asked me with this quasi-innocent, pseudo-shocked, trying-to-look-sweet, arrogant face 'Ma che c'è? Perché fai così?' or something of the sort. I swear, I could have strangled him right then and there...
As you may have noticed, I have been mentioning the word 'rain' quite a lot. I don't really want to talk about this. I'm in Italy and it's June, the weather should be f*cking amazing by now, but it's not and it sucks. As Dennis Quaid said in The Day after Tomorrow: 'I think we're on the verge of a major climate shift.'
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!! The deluge has started and we will soon be living in a new ice age!!!! Does that mean I'll get to snog and cuddle up to Jake Gyllenhaal though??
That would make for a lot... Ciao, Fe
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Monday, June 02, 2008
Trips 'n' Drinks
Ciao tutti,
As announced before, we went to Holland for a family weekend organised by my mum. It was wonderful. The weather was surprisingly good Friday and Saturday and we were able to take a walk through a nearby forest and some fields. We enjoyed the sunshine and each other's companies. Obviously, lots of alcohol was consumed and we also had our (Olaf's and mine anyway) first barbecue of the season. The evenings were spent playing board and card games and I am proud to say I won one of the round of the new trivial pursuit, although the new questions seriously damaged my confidence and made me feel like a complete nitwit for knowing absolutely nothing. Fortunately, the others weren't much better and that helped a little. I still prefer the 1987 version though, at least I know more than 50% of the answers belonging to the questions on that one. Of course, it was great to see everybody again, that goes without saying, and we had some good talks. I particularly enjoyed talking incoherent nonsense with my brothers and making stupid sex jokes. And then, there was Jolien (my soon-to-be sister-in-law), obviously the centre of attention as she is carrying the first scion of the new generation of Van Rijn's inside of her. At five months, her pregnancy is really showing and I am glad to be able to report that all is going extremely well. I can't wait for the baby to be born, and am looking forward to going back for Hascar and Jolien's wedding later this month. For pictures see Olaf's picture website: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ojdegroot/FamilyWeekendEtc/
This week was quite slow, as I had a lot of cancellations. This was just the still before the storm though, as we have been informed by Sky that all our group courses have to be finished by 1st July. At the moment, Sky has got three offices in Milan and as of July they are all moving to one new complex that is nearly ready. In order to prevent mix-ups booking rooms for the lessons, we are just going to have to study much harder. This is more easily said that done. I still have full schedule for a couple of weeks and don't have that much extra time, so it took us a while to figure it all out. So June is going to be very busy, but July will be incredibly slow. Oh well, at least that means I can start getting used to being on holiday somewhat earlier. Today is another one of the random days off that the Italian, la Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day), so I am at home sitting on my couch, writing emails, preparing lessons and relaxing before all hell breaks loose tomorrow. I was a little bit concerned because Olaf is pretty much going to be gone until the beginning of July, as he has got conferences and workshops all over the world, but I guess this is actually a good thing because I wouldn't have a lot of time for him anyway and will be probably be grumpy quite often. There's really just one thing left to do before he leaves tomorrow morning, we have to figure out where to go on holiday and book it!!! And then there is a free Andrea Bocelli concert at Piazza Duomo tonight and I am really looking forward to that.
Last Saturday, we went out for drinks at La Hora Feliz (where else!) with Louisa and Amanda and some other random people. To our surprise, there was a Dutch girl there who turned out to be a lot of fun. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, Irene and I shared loads of cigarettes and the evening progressed nicely to the point where we were all best friends and were discussing the most curious nonsense. On Sunday, we decided to leave Milan for the afternoon and went to Lodi, a small town South of Milan with a cute medieval centre. It was part of the duchy of Sforzas (the dukes of Milan) in the 14th and 15th centuries and city centres shows many examples and traces of typical Sforza architecture. Here are some pictures
We had an interesting experience here. Italian waiters and waitresses, who are not known for their efficiency in general, were brought to a new all-time low. We sat down for lunch at around 2.30 on the central piazza, expecting to pay a little bit more than we would elsewhere but couldn't really be bothered to find another place. There were about 6 people sitting on the terrace and they had 8 people to wait on them, so we thought we would be quite safe.
After 10 to 15 minutes of waiting, we decided to try to get the attention of the waitresses by waving and winking and after about 10 more minutes they finally noticed. When we asked for and got the menu (having been there for about 30 minutes now), it turned out that there were no prices next to the primi. So, we spent another 10 minutes trying to get our waitress' attention and when she finally came we asked her how much having lunch would actually cost. This is what she told us: 'Well, actually, I haven't worked here for that long so I don't know anything about the prices. I'll go and check with my colleague.' Obviously, when you start as a waitress you're instructions are pretty much this: 'Ignore as many customers as you possibly can, discuss the weather and TV programmes with your colleagues, walk around pretending not to see anything, don't smile and, most importantly, don't know anything!'.
After that, she came back with an older colleague who told us in an annoyed voice that the prices were inside the menus. When we showed her that they were not, she was taken aback, sighed deeply and said she didn't know anything about the prices of anything they sold. She would have to go to the cashier, debate with him, find out all the different prices and report back to us. In the end, we told her just to ask about the prices of the two primi we wanted (we were quite hungry by now) and she returned relatively fast after about 5 minutes. As it turned out, all primi were 9 euros - seriously, don't you think it would be useful to know things like this if you are working as a waitress during lunchtime???? Anyway, I ordered a pasta, Olaf had a panino and we decided we had earned ourselves a little prosecco. So, the prosecco and Olaf's panino arrived soon, but I had to wait for my pasta for another 15 minutes. If you ever go to Lodi, I suggest you find another place to have lunch at.
Anyway, the town was cute but nothing special, although I did manage to find the largest part of Ferroni's 'Storia della Letteratura Italiana' (7 volumes for 10 euros). Later that evening, I went running for the first time in ages and I'm still feeling my muscles. We topped the night off with a visit to the Irish pub to have a few beers with Gerry, Domenico, Gunesh and Giovanni.
So, tonight we're to Piazza Duomo for the Andrea Bocelli concert and I'll be working my ass off (and missing Olaf) for the rest of the week. There's one thing I am looking forward to though, Wednesday night Paola and I are going to the opera The Changeling (not at the Scala unfortunately). I'll let you know how it was!
Ciao, Fe
As announced before, we went to Holland for a family weekend organised by my mum. It was wonderful. The weather was surprisingly good Friday and Saturday and we were able to take a walk through a nearby forest and some fields. We enjoyed the sunshine and each other's companies. Obviously, lots of alcohol was consumed and we also had our (Olaf's and mine anyway) first barbecue of the season. The evenings were spent playing board and card games and I am proud to say I won one of the round of the new trivial pursuit, although the new questions seriously damaged my confidence and made me feel like a complete nitwit for knowing absolutely nothing. Fortunately, the others weren't much better and that helped a little. I still prefer the 1987 version though, at least I know more than 50% of the answers belonging to the questions on that one. Of course, it was great to see everybody again, that goes without saying, and we had some good talks. I particularly enjoyed talking incoherent nonsense with my brothers and making stupid sex jokes. And then, there was Jolien (my soon-to-be sister-in-law), obviously the centre of attention as she is carrying the first scion of the new generation of Van Rijn's inside of her. At five months, her pregnancy is really showing and I am glad to be able to report that all is going extremely well. I can't wait for the baby to be born, and am looking forward to going back for Hascar and Jolien's wedding later this month. For pictures see Olaf's picture website: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ojdegroot/FamilyWeekendEtc/
This week was quite slow, as I had a lot of cancellations. This was just the still before the storm though, as we have been informed by Sky that all our group courses have to be finished by 1st July. At the moment, Sky has got three offices in Milan and as of July they are all moving to one new complex that is nearly ready. In order to prevent mix-ups booking rooms for the lessons, we are just going to have to study much harder. This is more easily said that done. I still have full schedule for a couple of weeks and don't have that much extra time, so it took us a while to figure it all out. So June is going to be very busy, but July will be incredibly slow. Oh well, at least that means I can start getting used to being on holiday somewhat earlier. Today is another one of the random days off that the Italian, la Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day), so I am at home sitting on my couch, writing emails, preparing lessons and relaxing before all hell breaks loose tomorrow. I was a little bit concerned because Olaf is pretty much going to be gone until the beginning of July, as he has got conferences and workshops all over the world, but I guess this is actually a good thing because I wouldn't have a lot of time for him anyway and will be probably be grumpy quite often. There's really just one thing left to do before he leaves tomorrow morning, we have to figure out where to go on holiday and book it!!! And then there is a free Andrea Bocelli concert at Piazza Duomo tonight and I am really looking forward to that.
Last Saturday, we went out for drinks at La Hora Feliz (where else!) with Louisa and Amanda and some other random people. To our surprise, there was a Dutch girl there who turned out to be a lot of fun. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, Irene and I shared loads of cigarettes and the evening progressed nicely to the point where we were all best friends and were discussing the most curious nonsense. On Sunday, we decided to leave Milan for the afternoon and went to Lodi, a small town South of Milan with a cute medieval centre. It was part of the duchy of Sforzas (the dukes of Milan) in the 14th and 15th centuries and city centres shows many examples and traces of typical Sforza architecture. Here are some pictures
We had an interesting experience here. Italian waiters and waitresses, who are not known for their efficiency in general, were brought to a new all-time low. We sat down for lunch at around 2.30 on the central piazza, expecting to pay a little bit more than we would elsewhere but couldn't really be bothered to find another place. There were about 6 people sitting on the terrace and they had 8 people to wait on them, so we thought we would be quite safe.
After 10 to 15 minutes of waiting, we decided to try to get the attention of the waitresses by waving and winking and after about 10 more minutes they finally noticed. When we asked for and got the menu (having been there for about 30 minutes now), it turned out that there were no prices next to the primi. So, we spent another 10 minutes trying to get our waitress' attention and when she finally came we asked her how much having lunch would actually cost. This is what she told us: 'Well, actually, I haven't worked here for that long so I don't know anything about the prices. I'll go and check with my colleague.' Obviously, when you start as a waitress you're instructions are pretty much this: 'Ignore as many customers as you possibly can, discuss the weather and TV programmes with your colleagues, walk around pretending not to see anything, don't smile and, most importantly, don't know anything!'.
After that, she came back with an older colleague who told us in an annoyed voice that the prices were inside the menus. When we showed her that they were not, she was taken aback, sighed deeply and said she didn't know anything about the prices of anything they sold. She would have to go to the cashier, debate with him, find out all the different prices and report back to us. In the end, we told her just to ask about the prices of the two primi we wanted (we were quite hungry by now) and she returned relatively fast after about 5 minutes. As it turned out, all primi were 9 euros - seriously, don't you think it would be useful to know things like this if you are working as a waitress during lunchtime???? Anyway, I ordered a pasta, Olaf had a panino and we decided we had earned ourselves a little prosecco. So, the prosecco and Olaf's panino arrived soon, but I had to wait for my pasta for another 15 minutes. If you ever go to Lodi, I suggest you find another place to have lunch at.
Anyway, the town was cute but nothing special, although I did manage to find the largest part of Ferroni's 'Storia della Letteratura Italiana' (7 volumes for 10 euros). Later that evening, I went running for the first time in ages and I'm still feeling my muscles. We topped the night off with a visit to the Irish pub to have a few beers with Gerry, Domenico, Gunesh and Giovanni.
So, tonight we're to Piazza Duomo for the Andrea Bocelli concert and I'll be working my ass off (and missing Olaf) for the rest of the week. There's one thing I am looking forward to though, Wednesday night Paola and I are going to the opera The Changeling (not at the Scala unfortunately). I'll let you know how it was!
Ciao, Fe
Sunday, May 18, 2008
International Stereotypes Party
Ciao tutti,
We had a blast yesterday. It was time for our quasi-annual spring party and obviously it rained cats and dogs. But that did not spoil the fun, oh no!!!! Here are some pics from our International Stereotypes Party, enjoy them!!!
Olaf was amazing as a Palestinian suicide bomber
Look, a real Norwegian viking!!
Martina, the French can-can girl, fell in love with our calendar
I was a Chassidic Jew and Olaf a Palestinian suicide bomber, but we live together in peace. How's that for a message to the world?!?!
Felix was an Indian rose seller (the ones that keep bothering you in Milan) and Annaig was a lovely Chinese girl in a flower dress
This is a difficult one. Niamh was a little, innocent German girl, did you guess?
Latin American guerrilla fighter and cocaine smuggler Flora had had just a little bit too much of the merrymaking powder
And obviously the two guerrilla fighters didn't get along...
Idil was very beautiful as a Spanish flamenco dancer and especially stunning in the picture below
Jorge and Diana came as Australian crocodile hunters
Look, two typical Slovenians! Don't Andreja and Damijan look natural?!?!
Apparently, sweet innocent little Chinese girl also had a dark terrorist side...
Superman, the stereotype for planet Krypton!!
I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did! I had a tiny little headache when I woke up today and cleaning up wasn't much fun, but hey, it was so totally worth it!!! As the Facebook application Vampires would say, "Fun was had, and the funk was brought!"
I'm looking forward to going to Holland next weekend. My mother and her boyfriend are organising a family weekend and we are all going to be there. I have even managed to convince Olaf that family weekends can be fun!
Ciao, Fe
We had a blast yesterday. It was time for our quasi-annual spring party and obviously it rained cats and dogs. But that did not spoil the fun, oh no!!!! Here are some pics from our International Stereotypes Party, enjoy them!!!
Olaf was amazing as a Palestinian suicide bomber
Look, a real Norwegian viking!!
Martina, the French can-can girl, fell in love with our calendar
I was a Chassidic Jew and Olaf a Palestinian suicide bomber, but we live together in peace. How's that for a message to the world?!?!
Felix was an Indian rose seller (the ones that keep bothering you in Milan) and Annaig was a lovely Chinese girl in a flower dress
This is a difficult one. Niamh was a little, innocent German girl, did you guess?
Latin American guerrilla fighter and cocaine smuggler Flora had had just a little bit too much of the merrymaking powder
And obviously the two guerrilla fighters didn't get along...
Idil was very beautiful as a Spanish flamenco dancer and especially stunning in the picture below
Jorge and Diana came as Australian crocodile hunters
Look, two typical Slovenians! Don't Andreja and Damijan look natural?!?!
Apparently, sweet innocent little Chinese girl also had a dark terrorist side...
Superman, the stereotype for planet Krypton!!
I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did! I had a tiny little headache when I woke up today and cleaning up wasn't much fun, but hey, it was so totally worth it!!! As the Facebook application Vampires would say, "Fun was had, and the funk was brought!"
I'm looking forward to going to Holland next weekend. My mother and her boyfriend are organising a family weekend and we are all going to be there. I have even managed to convince Olaf that family weekends can be fun!
Ciao, Fe
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Poetry in the sun
Hey everybody,
It has been a long time since I wrote anything, but this time it was a conscious choice. Well, partly at least. On the one hand, there wasn't much to tell and on the other hand I didn't really want to write down what I had to say. I have been working like crazy and haven't really had time for anything special, but I have just been treasuring the little time to myself that I had and didn't find the little things that happened worthy enough of mentioning here.
The main reason I have been so busy is because there are a lot of changes happening and coming along at work which have not been having a great influence on the atmosphere in the office nor on my performance as a teacher. About a month and a half ago, Caroline, my boss, announced that she had decided she didn't want to be in the commercial teaching business anymore and that she was planning to move to Rome to be with her new boyfriend this summer. This had to remain a secret, but you can imagine it caused some excitement, nervousness and frustration. For a long time, we didn't know what was going to happen. It was unclear whether the school would be sold, there would be a new partner or she was going to hire a new manager and hand him all her tasks. This was especially hard on Veronica (our course manager) and me, because from the moment my boss told us she was going to leave it seemed like she was already half gone. There was trouble in communication, she was out of the office a lot and though she was working out what to do we didn't hear anything for quite a long time which made us feel very insecure.
In the meantime, several of our teachers left, our database was (and still is) down and we had some trouble with our email sever. It also proved quite difficult to find new teachers and to have them take over the courses we needn't to place. As 3 of my colleagues left (among whom Rebecca and Dariush, who will be direly missed not just as colleagues but as friends too), this effectively meant we needed 2,5 full-timers by 1st May. Caroline was busy with other things and subsequently went on holiday, so it was up to Veronica to find new teachers. I tried to help her out as much as I could. On top of this, we (as in the school, not me and Olaf) were having financial problems, as we always seem to be out of money no matter how much we make...
In the end we managed, but it caused a lot of stress and discontent. We decided that it would be better if I cut my office hours by half and started teaching more. This way we could place some more courses and I could earn a little extra money (as teaching pays more than office work). To tell the truth, I was quite happy to be in the office less often, as I didn't like the atmosphere anymore. When my boss came back from her holiday, it was clear to me that things had changed. She really is leaving and is distancing herself from the school more and more, even though she won't leave until July. There is still no manager, but at least now we know that Caroline has interviewed and is interviewing people, so I suppose things will be all right. I feel quite sad about the situation. Even though, I am very happy for Caroline that she has found someone to share her life with, it will cause the end of Corporate English as I know and love it. The one thing that attracted me to CE was its sense of family. When I just got to Milan, I was welcomed with open arms and introduced into a group of lovely people, many of whom became friends of good acquaintances. Most of those people have now left and now it will definitely die with Caroline, the one always kept us together and maintained that sense of family.
Besides all my work problems, there were some parties and a visit. Last weekend, Matt and Ant came over for a visit and we spent almost the whole time outside of Milan. That was very nice. We went to Como on Saturday and rented a pedalo to go out onto the lake. There is really nothing that can beat exercising in the sunshine, is there? And the well-deserved weissbier in the sun afterwards really made my day unforgettable. That Sunday we went to Vigevano and walked around the city enjoying some more warm touches of sunshine. And to end their visit in style, we played uno to our heart's content...
There is one last thing I really must mention, because it was amazing - or well, the concept was anyway. We went to a rubik's cube party, which unfortunately didn't work out very well. A rubik's cube party is a party where you have to come dressed in something blue, something green, something yellow, something red, something white and something orange. Over the course of the evening, you are supposed to swap articles of clothing with the people at the party until you are uni-coloured. How amazing is that?!?! This one was organised by my colleague Antony in honour of his 30th birthday. It was at LoolaPaloosa, a club in Corso Como, Milan's most fancy clubbing area where Olaf used to live and where we - obviously - never go out. As could have been foreseen, LoolaPaloosa's staff was not too happy about the concept (Italians, or at least Milanese, are very style-sensitive, and would rather die than be seen in a ridiculous outfit) and when it started getting late and a lot of serious, trendy people started arriving, we were kindly yet resolutely asked to get changed or leave. Anyway, it was fun for about 30 minutes. Here are some pictures.
I hope you enjoyed that!
So, things are settling down, courses are finishing and I finally feel like I can breathe again. Furthermore, I am quite sure that I will enough courses to live off until the end of the school year. That is a load off my mind. Last Friday, I had several cancellations and lost lessons and you know what I did? I sat in the sun reading poetry. I was reading Oscar Wilde's Complete Poems and it wasn't the best poetry I had ever read, but for the first time in a long, long time I was able to block out the world...
Ciao, Fedor
It has been a long time since I wrote anything, but this time it was a conscious choice. Well, partly at least. On the one hand, there wasn't much to tell and on the other hand I didn't really want to write down what I had to say. I have been working like crazy and haven't really had time for anything special, but I have just been treasuring the little time to myself that I had and didn't find the little things that happened worthy enough of mentioning here.
The main reason I have been so busy is because there are a lot of changes happening and coming along at work which have not been having a great influence on the atmosphere in the office nor on my performance as a teacher. About a month and a half ago, Caroline, my boss, announced that she had decided she didn't want to be in the commercial teaching business anymore and that she was planning to move to Rome to be with her new boyfriend this summer. This had to remain a secret, but you can imagine it caused some excitement, nervousness and frustration. For a long time, we didn't know what was going to happen. It was unclear whether the school would be sold, there would be a new partner or she was going to hire a new manager and hand him all her tasks. This was especially hard on Veronica (our course manager) and me, because from the moment my boss told us she was going to leave it seemed like she was already half gone. There was trouble in communication, she was out of the office a lot and though she was working out what to do we didn't hear anything for quite a long time which made us feel very insecure.
In the meantime, several of our teachers left, our database was (and still is) down and we had some trouble with our email sever. It also proved quite difficult to find new teachers and to have them take over the courses we needn't to place. As 3 of my colleagues left (among whom Rebecca and Dariush, who will be direly missed not just as colleagues but as friends too), this effectively meant we needed 2,5 full-timers by 1st May. Caroline was busy with other things and subsequently went on holiday, so it was up to Veronica to find new teachers. I tried to help her out as much as I could. On top of this, we (as in the school, not me and Olaf) were having financial problems, as we always seem to be out of money no matter how much we make...
In the end we managed, but it caused a lot of stress and discontent. We decided that it would be better if I cut my office hours by half and started teaching more. This way we could place some more courses and I could earn a little extra money (as teaching pays more than office work). To tell the truth, I was quite happy to be in the office less often, as I didn't like the atmosphere anymore. When my boss came back from her holiday, it was clear to me that things had changed. She really is leaving and is distancing herself from the school more and more, even though she won't leave until July. There is still no manager, but at least now we know that Caroline has interviewed and is interviewing people, so I suppose things will be all right. I feel quite sad about the situation. Even though, I am very happy for Caroline that she has found someone to share her life with, it will cause the end of Corporate English as I know and love it. The one thing that attracted me to CE was its sense of family. When I just got to Milan, I was welcomed with open arms and introduced into a group of lovely people, many of whom became friends of good acquaintances. Most of those people have now left and now it will definitely die with Caroline, the one always kept us together and maintained that sense of family.
Besides all my work problems, there were some parties and a visit. Last weekend, Matt and Ant came over for a visit and we spent almost the whole time outside of Milan. That was very nice. We went to Como on Saturday and rented a pedalo to go out onto the lake. There is really nothing that can beat exercising in the sunshine, is there? And the well-deserved weissbier in the sun afterwards really made my day unforgettable. That Sunday we went to Vigevano and walked around the city enjoying some more warm touches of sunshine. And to end their visit in style, we played uno to our heart's content...
There is one last thing I really must mention, because it was amazing - or well, the concept was anyway. We went to a rubik's cube party, which unfortunately didn't work out very well. A rubik's cube party is a party where you have to come dressed in something blue, something green, something yellow, something red, something white and something orange. Over the course of the evening, you are supposed to swap articles of clothing with the people at the party until you are uni-coloured. How amazing is that?!?! This one was organised by my colleague Antony in honour of his 30th birthday. It was at LoolaPaloosa, a club in Corso Como, Milan's most fancy clubbing area where Olaf used to live and where we - obviously - never go out. As could have been foreseen, LoolaPaloosa's staff was not too happy about the concept (Italians, or at least Milanese, are very style-sensitive, and would rather die than be seen in a ridiculous outfit) and when it started getting late and a lot of serious, trendy people started arriving, we were kindly yet resolutely asked to get changed or leave. Anyway, it was fun for about 30 minutes. Here are some pictures.
I hope you enjoyed that!
So, things are settling down, courses are finishing and I finally feel like I can breathe again. Furthermore, I am quite sure that I will enough courses to live off until the end of the school year. That is a load off my mind. Last Friday, I had several cancellations and lost lessons and you know what I did? I sat in the sun reading poetry. I was reading Oscar Wilde's Complete Poems and it wasn't the best poetry I had ever read, but for the first time in a long, long time I was able to block out the world...
Ciao, Fedor
Sunday, March 30, 2008
An adventurous trip
Hey ho, here I am again! I bet you weren't expecting me to post something this soon, now were you?!?! Well, I just have to tell you about my trip to Holland - and more importantly about my adventures on the way back!
I had three days off after Easter and decided to spend them in Holland as it had been a long time since I was there last. So, I left on Easter Sunday and arrived around 2pm. I stepped out of the airplane onto the stairs, took a look around, tried to sniff up the cold Dutch winter air... and got hit by a snowflake. It was a single snowflake that must have wondered off somewhere because there weren't even any clouds in the sky. I was baffled. I had no idea where this snowflake had come from. Welcome to Holland...
I wanted to go to Utrecht to visit Wouter before going to Holland and so I went to Eindhoven train station. Imagine my surprise to see a random woman jumping up and down and flying at me like a frolicking pony while shouting something like 'whoawhooooooowhoaoaoaoaoa', when I was waiting for the train. This bouncy little thing turned out to be my friend Renee, soon followed by her boyfriend Ejal, who would grace me with their presence on the train as they were going to Utrecht as well. Obviously, there were no trains between Den Bosch and Utrecht (once again, 'welcome to Holland') thanks to the Dutch Railways so - even though I had won a lot of time I hadn't expected to have with Ejal and Renee - I unfortunately only had 30 minutes to spend with Wouter. Oh well, at least I got to see him. After this, I took another train to Nijmegen to join my mother's Easter dinner where my brothers, my sister-in-law, my mother's boyfriend and his children were as well. The food was good, although I had to get used to eating a meal consisting of so much meat again (as Olaf is a vegetarian we never eat meat at home). Later that evening, I went to visit Maartje and Edin to catch up, watch their wedding video and admire their wedding album. The pictures were all black and white and combined with their choice of outfits it made them look like a bride and groom from the fifties. I rounded up the night at Café Van Rijn, where Ward, my youngest brother was working (and so he should, I mean, Café Van Rijn just isn't Café Van Rijn without a Van Rijn behind the counter!) to get drunk and smoke to many cigarettes with my big brother, Hascar.
The next day, I could sleep late and had breakfast with my mother and her boyfriend. Afterwards, I went to see Maarten to have lunch and then to my father's for a late lunch. I enjoyed all this eating immensely but it did mean that I had already finished three big meals by 3 pm. As I usually just eat two meals a day, you can imagine how I must have been feeling. That night it was time for the Super-SteMaFeCo, a game night like there had never been a game night before, a game night with a continuing mission to go where no game night had gone before!!! Well, it just meant Stéphanie, Margo, Cobie and I got together to drink a lot of wine, catch up, smoke too much and play board games. Steef just beat me at Risk and Margo won at Koehandel, but I got my revenge in the end after winning two consequent rounds of Boonanza. By this time, Steef had gone home and we had been joined by Margo's girlfriend Marieke who had come home from work. As the girls all had to get up early the next morning, we didn't finish too late which made sure I didn't have a hangover on Tuesday. Oh and I almost forgot one of the most important things, we had loads of fat French fries and other types of Dutch junk food that I had been having a craving for for a long, long time...
Wednesday morning, I had breakfast with Renee and Eefje at uni and it felt great being back there again. It's funny how, even though I don't really miss Nijmegen or my old house that much, being at university made me nostalgic. Apparently, uni was much more my home than my old student room!!! Anyway, after that I had to go to the dentist, followed by lunch with Lisa who I hadn't spoken to for a long time. Later that afternoon, I went for a coffee with Femke and Sebastiaan and then managed to pry my mother away from a meeting for a glass of wine. That night, I had a quick look at Ward's new room and then rushed off to have dinner with Nina and Antonio, our Italian friends who have recently moved to Nijmegen. It was really good to hear how they are enjoying themselves here and have found jobs they like. We were especially worried about Antonio because he doesn't speak any Dutch but as it turned out he actually had a range of jobs to choose from. They like it so much there that they are thinking about buying a house. I ended the night with drinks with some of my study mates like Bert, Eefje, Marianne, Sebas, Erik and Suus. It was nothing the normal drunken debaucheries we usually engage in but we kept it relatively civil this time, but had fun and a lot of opportunities to have some good conversations - and talk humongous nonsense as well of course!!!
The next day, I was due to fly back around 2pm and I obviously arrived at the airport in time. I had just had a relaxing lunch and was looking forward to reading for a couple of hours while waiting for and being on the airplane, when they suddenly announced that my flight was cancelled. Apparently, some farmer had driven a truck into an electricity pole whereby causing a total power failure, so my airplane couldn't land. This put me in a tight spot, because I had to get back to Milan that day in order to be able to teach at a big client Thursday morning. As my school was closed, it would have been very difficult to inform them that I wouldn't be there the next day. Anyway, everybody had to get in the same queue to find out what could be done, and obviously RyanAir could only employ four rather stupid women (who only had two computers to share among them, so there were always two of them helping just one customer) to help us figure out a solution.
Obviously, when it was my turn all RyanAir flights from nearby airports had been booked full for that day and all days up to Friday. The lady was very understanding of my situation and said she would do everything she could to help - except trying to find me another flight with another airline. After assuring me that she didn't work for RyanAir but for the airport and thus worked for all airlines that use Eindhoven Airport, she uttered a completely unintelligible reason why this was simply impossible. If I wanted a flight with another airline she could tell me exactly how expensive that would be (the cheapest one being 450 euros) but that was it. Communicating with Olaf, I finally booked the night train from Amsterdam to Milan but I obviously had to pay for that myself. Well, anyway, I decided not to worry about the money that much but just to enjoy the train ride and the time I now had to read my book. I'm re-reading Tanith Lee's 'The Blood of Roses', for the first time in the original language, and it is amazing...
The train ride, however, would not be as relaxing as I thought it would. I love travelling by train in general because of the comfort, the views and the time you get to read. I have travelled by sleeper trains before and have always been quite happy to. This time, however, it was different. I had to share a cabin with five other people, two Germans, who were quite ok and didn't get on until halfway through Germany, two Greeks, who I didn't see for most of the evening because they were spending their time in another cabin where their friends were, and a young black woman with a newborn baby. A newborn baby with 6 other people in a cabin of 2 square metres?!?!?! When she got on, I realised I wouldn't be sleeping much that night...
Looks deceive, however, and after some initial wails the child went to sleep and didn't disturb anyone for most of the night. The two Greeks however, who came back drunk and stoned from the party in the other cabin, were quite annoying when they went to bed at around 1 pm when everyone else was already sleeping. And as if this wasn't enough, it turned out they were smuggling drugs out of Holland and hadn't taken into account the fact that they would have to travel through Switzerland. So, at around 3 pm, we were violently roused from our beds by grumpy soldiers and barking dogs who wanted to go through the cabin. Their drugs were found, of course, and the customs guards wanted to take them off the train. The Greeks, however, stupid and stoned as they were, started trying to bribe their way out of it. Now, there are lot of countries in the world where this would have a significantly positive chance of success, but NOT IN SWITZERLAND!!
So, after a lot of angry shouting and an unnecessary but provoked violent removal of these dimwits, we could finally continue our journey. Olaf, sweet man as he is, had woken up very early to come to Centrale to bring me my books and my bicycle because I had to go on to work immediately. I just hope my students didn't mind my not having showered, my smelly clothes and my five-day beard. As Caroline (my boss) later said, 'when you travel through Europe by train, strange things always happen...'
I was a little bit tired on Thursday, but not bad enough to really affect my work and Friday was a normal day as well. That night, Bart arrived to pay us a visit, and on Saturday we were joined by his girlfriend Tineke who had been attending conference here (she's doing a PhD in urology). We spent a nice, relaxing and warm weekend with them, which was exactly what I needed. They have just left and I am really looking forward to spending an evening with Olaf on the couch watching a movie...
I hope you are all well and to those of you I met when I was in Holland, thank you for a lovely time!!!
XXX, Fe
I had three days off after Easter and decided to spend them in Holland as it had been a long time since I was there last. So, I left on Easter Sunday and arrived around 2pm. I stepped out of the airplane onto the stairs, took a look around, tried to sniff up the cold Dutch winter air... and got hit by a snowflake. It was a single snowflake that must have wondered off somewhere because there weren't even any clouds in the sky. I was baffled. I had no idea where this snowflake had come from. Welcome to Holland...
I wanted to go to Utrecht to visit Wouter before going to Holland and so I went to Eindhoven train station. Imagine my surprise to see a random woman jumping up and down and flying at me like a frolicking pony while shouting something like 'whoawhooooooowhoaoaoaoaoa', when I was waiting for the train. This bouncy little thing turned out to be my friend Renee, soon followed by her boyfriend Ejal, who would grace me with their presence on the train as they were going to Utrecht as well. Obviously, there were no trains between Den Bosch and Utrecht (once again, 'welcome to Holland') thanks to the Dutch Railways so - even though I had won a lot of time I hadn't expected to have with Ejal and Renee - I unfortunately only had 30 minutes to spend with Wouter. Oh well, at least I got to see him. After this, I took another train to Nijmegen to join my mother's Easter dinner where my brothers, my sister-in-law, my mother's boyfriend and his children were as well. The food was good, although I had to get used to eating a meal consisting of so much meat again (as Olaf is a vegetarian we never eat meat at home). Later that evening, I went to visit Maartje and Edin to catch up, watch their wedding video and admire their wedding album. The pictures were all black and white and combined with their choice of outfits it made them look like a bride and groom from the fifties. I rounded up the night at Café Van Rijn, where Ward, my youngest brother was working (and so he should, I mean, Café Van Rijn just isn't Café Van Rijn without a Van Rijn behind the counter!) to get drunk and smoke to many cigarettes with my big brother, Hascar.
The next day, I could sleep late and had breakfast with my mother and her boyfriend. Afterwards, I went to see Maarten to have lunch and then to my father's for a late lunch. I enjoyed all this eating immensely but it did mean that I had already finished three big meals by 3 pm. As I usually just eat two meals a day, you can imagine how I must have been feeling. That night it was time for the Super-SteMaFeCo, a game night like there had never been a game night before, a game night with a continuing mission to go where no game night had gone before!!! Well, it just meant Stéphanie, Margo, Cobie and I got together to drink a lot of wine, catch up, smoke too much and play board games. Steef just beat me at Risk and Margo won at Koehandel, but I got my revenge in the end after winning two consequent rounds of Boonanza. By this time, Steef had gone home and we had been joined by Margo's girlfriend Marieke who had come home from work. As the girls all had to get up early the next morning, we didn't finish too late which made sure I didn't have a hangover on Tuesday. Oh and I almost forgot one of the most important things, we had loads of fat French fries and other types of Dutch junk food that I had been having a craving for for a long, long time...
Wednesday morning, I had breakfast with Renee and Eefje at uni and it felt great being back there again. It's funny how, even though I don't really miss Nijmegen or my old house that much, being at university made me nostalgic. Apparently, uni was much more my home than my old student room!!! Anyway, after that I had to go to the dentist, followed by lunch with Lisa who I hadn't spoken to for a long time. Later that afternoon, I went for a coffee with Femke and Sebastiaan and then managed to pry my mother away from a meeting for a glass of wine. That night, I had a quick look at Ward's new room and then rushed off to have dinner with Nina and Antonio, our Italian friends who have recently moved to Nijmegen. It was really good to hear how they are enjoying themselves here and have found jobs they like. We were especially worried about Antonio because he doesn't speak any Dutch but as it turned out he actually had a range of jobs to choose from. They like it so much there that they are thinking about buying a house. I ended the night with drinks with some of my study mates like Bert, Eefje, Marianne, Sebas, Erik and Suus. It was nothing the normal drunken debaucheries we usually engage in but we kept it relatively civil this time, but had fun and a lot of opportunities to have some good conversations - and talk humongous nonsense as well of course!!!
The next day, I was due to fly back around 2pm and I obviously arrived at the airport in time. I had just had a relaxing lunch and was looking forward to reading for a couple of hours while waiting for and being on the airplane, when they suddenly announced that my flight was cancelled. Apparently, some farmer had driven a truck into an electricity pole whereby causing a total power failure, so my airplane couldn't land. This put me in a tight spot, because I had to get back to Milan that day in order to be able to teach at a big client Thursday morning. As my school was closed, it would have been very difficult to inform them that I wouldn't be there the next day. Anyway, everybody had to get in the same queue to find out what could be done, and obviously RyanAir could only employ four rather stupid women (who only had two computers to share among them, so there were always two of them helping just one customer) to help us figure out a solution.
Obviously, when it was my turn all RyanAir flights from nearby airports had been booked full for that day and all days up to Friday. The lady was very understanding of my situation and said she would do everything she could to help - except trying to find me another flight with another airline. After assuring me that she didn't work for RyanAir but for the airport and thus worked for all airlines that use Eindhoven Airport, she uttered a completely unintelligible reason why this was simply impossible. If I wanted a flight with another airline she could tell me exactly how expensive that would be (the cheapest one being 450 euros) but that was it. Communicating with Olaf, I finally booked the night train from Amsterdam to Milan but I obviously had to pay for that myself. Well, anyway, I decided not to worry about the money that much but just to enjoy the train ride and the time I now had to read my book. I'm re-reading Tanith Lee's 'The Blood of Roses', for the first time in the original language, and it is amazing...
The train ride, however, would not be as relaxing as I thought it would. I love travelling by train in general because of the comfort, the views and the time you get to read. I have travelled by sleeper trains before and have always been quite happy to. This time, however, it was different. I had to share a cabin with five other people, two Germans, who were quite ok and didn't get on until halfway through Germany, two Greeks, who I didn't see for most of the evening because they were spending their time in another cabin where their friends were, and a young black woman with a newborn baby. A newborn baby with 6 other people in a cabin of 2 square metres?!?!?! When she got on, I realised I wouldn't be sleeping much that night...
Looks deceive, however, and after some initial wails the child went to sleep and didn't disturb anyone for most of the night. The two Greeks however, who came back drunk and stoned from the party in the other cabin, were quite annoying when they went to bed at around 1 pm when everyone else was already sleeping. And as if this wasn't enough, it turned out they were smuggling drugs out of Holland and hadn't taken into account the fact that they would have to travel through Switzerland. So, at around 3 pm, we were violently roused from our beds by grumpy soldiers and barking dogs who wanted to go through the cabin. Their drugs were found, of course, and the customs guards wanted to take them off the train. The Greeks, however, stupid and stoned as they were, started trying to bribe their way out of it. Now, there are lot of countries in the world where this would have a significantly positive chance of success, but NOT IN SWITZERLAND!!
So, after a lot of angry shouting and an unnecessary but provoked violent removal of these dimwits, we could finally continue our journey. Olaf, sweet man as he is, had woken up very early to come to Centrale to bring me my books and my bicycle because I had to go on to work immediately. I just hope my students didn't mind my not having showered, my smelly clothes and my five-day beard. As Caroline (my boss) later said, 'when you travel through Europe by train, strange things always happen...'
I was a little bit tired on Thursday, but not bad enough to really affect my work and Friday was a normal day as well. That night, Bart arrived to pay us a visit, and on Saturday we were joined by his girlfriend Tineke who had been attending conference here (she's doing a PhD in urology). We spent a nice, relaxing and warm weekend with them, which was exactly what I needed. They have just left and I am really looking forward to spending an evening with Olaf on the couch watching a movie...
I hope you are all well and to those of you I met when I was in Holland, thank you for a lovely time!!!
XXX, Fe
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Pictures from Porto!!!!
They're in reverse chronological order...
On a little wall in the gardens
On a little wall in the gardens
Getting crazy
Marta and I felt like kids again... We hadn't had alcohol for at least 16 hours!!
Flower
So not posed...
Beautiful colours
Typical wall decorations made of hundreds of little tiles. It looks a bit like a wall made of 'Delfs Blauwe' dishes
How to build as many apartments as possible on a tiny little piece of ground
A church...
The gardens, which are a miniature copy of the gardens of Versailles
Me!!!
A facade
View from the cathedral which is set on Porto's highest hill
Idem
Idem
See how nice the weather was?!
On top of hill, very tired after a long climb - and perhaps the port tasting had something to do with that too...
Tasting port
Another church
Roarrrrr!!!
Square on the river with typical houses
Square on the river with a typical tourist and guides trying to remain incognito
Porto is known as 'The City of Bridges'
The old town behind boats traditionally used to ship the grapes from the inland valleys to Porto to produce port wine
The old city
The Atlantic Ocean, it had been a long time since I saw it last
Me and Marta
A gigantic park in the middle of the city
Some famous port producers
Random building on top of a hill
Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I certainly enjoyed the trip!!!
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