London's Calling

This past weekend, I ventured to The Island and spent the weekend with Vince and Joanne in London.  It was an interesting journey there, to say the least.  This side of the world was battered with hurricane like winds on Friday morning, making flying...uhhh fun if you like a little thrill.  Taking off from Amsterdam was a bit rough, but once we were above the clouds it was fine.  It was landing in London that was the issue.  We nearly landed twice, but at the last moment the pilot abandoned the idea and took off again.  The first time it happened I was a bit confused, but not all that worried.  The lady in front of me though, my gosh, it was like the world was going to end.  The way she was bawling you would have thought we were plummeting to our death.  Then, shortly after that, the little boy behind me started throwing up.  That was when I hit my limit and just wanted to get off the plane.  Luckily, third time's the charm and we landed safe and sound with no harm done. I've never been so happy to get off a plane.

Friday evening, I met up with Laura and a few of her friends and we had dinner at a really awesome burger place called Byron, and you wouldn't believe what they had...

Yup, that's exactly what it looks like.  A rootbeer float! With A&W Rootbeer! In London!! Crazy or what?

After dinner, I met up with Vince and Joanne at the theater and we enjoyed some Minchiney goodness in the form of the musical Matilda based off of Roald Dahl's book.  It was absolutely fantastic, and Tim Minchin wrote the music so it was bound to be great.  The talent those children have is absolutely mind blowing though.  Man o' man they can sing.  Unfortunately I cannot find any songs that are directly from the musical, but here's a sample of Tim Minchin singing the song "When I Grow Up" which is the main song from the show.

The rest of the weekend was spent mainly visiting and hanging out with Vince and Joanne.  Saturday, Joanne and I did a bit of shopping.  In the evening we had a fantastic BBQ and Vince consumed enough beef to last him a month. 

Unfortunately there's no scale to show how much larger his steak was compared to the rest, but you need to just take my word for it.  We're all Albertan's and even Joanne and I thought it was ginormous.
Case in Point: he cooked his for about 15 minutes before our steaks went on the grill.

Sunday morning before my flight, Joanne and I ventured out to the auction house near their place to check out a few items.  I think we spent a good hour in there browsing through all the neat antique items.  Some were in excellent shape, some not so much.  Some were super cool, some were just plain weird.  We didn't bid on anything, but it was still really fun to look!

I thought this old leather trunk was really cool.  I figured it would be really fun to shove a small child in there and have a fun photo session.  Aside from the fact that I would never manage to get it home, it smelled like something had died inside of it, and was slightly moldy on the edges.  Forcing a child in there for photos would probably violate some health code.  Too bad though.  Other than that, it would have been a diamond mine of photos!

And that's my weekend in a fairly large nutshell.  I had another adventure with flights getting home.  I got stuck on the Tube in Central London and ended up being really really really late for my flight.  It left at 4:20 and I arrived at the airport at 3:55.  By some stroke of luck though, I managed to catch the flight and was let through even though the gate had closed already.  Thank you EasyJet!

Pinkpop!

And now it is time for me to fulfill my promise: a blog post worth reading!

Last Wednesday, I met up with my friend Courtney in Amsterdam.  We met in first year at university and suffered through many classes together.  She ended up moving back to Calgary after that and finished her degree there.  We've been trying to get together ever since, but it has never ever worked out.  Well, more than 3 years later, we finally were able to meet up in the most random place, and we had a lovely time walking around Amsterdam (finding the most amazing ice cream shop), and catching up on life.

This past weekend, Sander and I went to a music festival called Pinkpop (named after Pentecost which is Pinksteren in Dutch and a holiday here in Holland).  To put it simply, it was three days of musical genius' showing off their talent to 61000 people under clear blue summer skies.  If you ask me, that pretty much spells out perfection.

Sander and I at our campsite.  We were extremely happy and relaxed at this point because a) we were finally at pinkpop and b) we had just found our tickets that were lost but found thanks to the good soul who turned them in to security! 

Over the three days we saw around 18 bands perform.  I won't bore you with the details of every concert (because I do remember all of them except for a bit of one where Sander had to pick me up off the ground because I fainted.  Apparently Pinkpop is just too much for me to handle!), but I will go into details of one particular concert: Bruce Springsteen.  

Never ever did I think I would see that man perform live, and he truly blew my mind.  He played an hour over the scheduled time because the audience just kept singing lyrics from his songs.  He went crowd surfing, got a little kid up on stage singing with him, came out into the audience for us people who couldn't squish to the front, two stepped with someone, and was all in all the artist I thought he was...plus a bit extra!

I'll stop ranting about my crush and let you attempt to see the awesomeness of his performance through pictures (though I'm absolutely positive it won't even come close to what we experienced). 

Sander and I waited allllllllllll day saving our spots.  Mumford and Sons and Bruce played on the same stage with an hour between the two.  We got our spots at 1:00 in the afternoon and didn't leave until after Bruce was done at around 11:30pm.  It was totally worth it...even with the sunburns!

Brucey, Bruce!!!  

At one point, he came out into the audience and we were SO close! 

Mumford and Sons came out and sang along for one song!  One of the best moments of the concert!

And now for a video!  The sax solo in Born To Run:

Fun fact: Bruce Springsteen's original saxophone player passed away a few years back.  Last night they did a tribute to him in which I found out that his current sax player is actually Clarence's son! Cool or what? 

And one more.  There's nothin like hearing 61000 people sing along with Bruce Springsteen:

So, moral of the story: Bruce Springsteen absolutely rocks. 

I make it sound like Bruce was the main event.  It's true that he was, but I also saw so many other bands that I wanted to see live (Mumford and Sons, Ben Howard, Keane) and expanded my musical love category to many others (Seasick Steve, Babylon Circus, Major Tom, Raccoon). 

 All in all it was a fantastic weekend of dirty feet,

thousands of people, 

and it finished with  Bruce *ahem* I mean a bang!

Almost summer!

Ignore: Refuse to take notice of or acknowledge; disregard intentionally.


It's true, I've been ignoring the blog, and I'm terribly sorry.  It's been scratching at the back of my mind that I need to update, but there has just been so much going on lately! The sad thing is that even though I've been so busy, I really do not have anything to update on.


I went to De Efteling last week.  You may remember me writing about it before, and that's because I've gone once already but it was just so much fun I had to go embrace my inner child one more time. This time around was a bit more fun because we didn't have to wait 1+ hours for each ride! The longest we waited was 45 minutes and it was a clear blue sky kinda day which was perfect for being outside! 

This is Laura and Linda tormenting the talking garbage can. He normally thanks you for putting garbage in his mouth, but if you put your arm in, he say "HEY! Paper".  

Other than that,I've just been busy hanging out with friends and enjoying the last couple months of my time here in Holland.  June will be full of blog worthy excitement, so I promise you, there will be more exciting updates in the future.  

This is just a random photo I snapped off my friend Pio's deck, and I thought it was a reflection photo worth sharing.  =)

Karaoke, running and Queen's Day

If I had to sum up the last two weekends in one word, it'd definitely be insane. I have been insanely busy and doing insane things like running all night long and wearing more orange than the eyes can tolerate, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last Friday we went to a bar in Utrecht called Stairway to Heaven where they were hosting Rock Karaoke.  Basically, there was a band with a list of songs they could play and no lead singer, and you could sign up to sing on stage.  I'm not nearly brave enough (even after a few drinks) but my dear friends Laura and Linda had enough guts for not only one, but two songs!  Check 'em out!!

Go to 12:53 to see our stars!

This past weekend Sander and I took part in the Batavierenrace.  It's a 185km relay race from Nijmegen to Enschede. Here's the approximate route:

Basically this is how it works: there are three shifts and each shift has 9 or so runners.  There is one person on a bike for the whole shift going alongside each runner and there's someone driving a van carrying the rest of the team.  The van meets up with the runner at the end of each distance to switch runners. Our team had a tandem bike so we could have two runners out a time.  This saved a lot of hassle for our drivers because we only had to stop in at every second checkpoint.  

Our shift started at midnight on Friday and we ran all night long (we even ran through part of Germany at one point).  I completed my leg of the race around 2am, and I was very happy with my time.  I ran 8.5km in 44:08 which works out to about 11.2km/h. We had some really amazing runners on the team who were able to average around 14.5km/h which is absolutely beyond insane.  Needless to say, we kicked some serious ass and at the end of the shift, our team was in 25th place out of 382 teams! 

This was the lovely night team!

Me at the beginning of my distance, though I'm sure you could tell on your own based on the smile I have on my face.  I can tell you for sure, that smile was gone by the end.

All in all, the Batavierenrace was amazing.  I had so much fun and I would jump at the opportunity to do it again.  While training, I vowed to myself that this was my last race of the year because I'm sick of running, but the whole experience has done the opposite.  It has inspired me to keep running and train harder.  I plan on doing at least one more 10km race before snow hits the ground.  

This weekend was also the biggest national holiday in The Netherlands.  On Sunday/Monday we celebrated Queen's Day.  It's really just one giant street party with live music and other entertainment.  Another huge tradition of Queen's Day is the Vrijmarkt (free market).  To sum it up, it's the Dutch version of spring cleaning: you empty your house of all the crap and then set up a stand and sell it on Queen's Day!  It's a brilliant idea, really.  The novelty of rummaging through peoples junk wears off fast though, and after a few hours, Sander and I were happy to meet up with Laura and Pio to go kayaking through the canals in Utrecht.  We had beautiful weather, delicious beer, and overall a really fantastic time.  

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that everyone dresses in bright orange and decorates themselves with the most tacky and ridiculous hats they can find.

Tulips and Bicycles

Those are two very Dutch things: tulips and bicycles.  Combine them together into a one day adventure and you're basically a Dutchie...minus the fact that most Dutch people don't make the trip to see the tulips, but that's besides the point.   That's how I spent my Saturday-- biking through Holland admiring the tulip fields which are in perfect bloom right now-- and it was so much fun.

 We started off by taking the train from Utrecht to Haarlem.  We then biked from Haarlem to Leiden, stopping for lunch in a tulip field near Lisse.  The actual bike route was only about 45km, but add in the trip to and from Zeist, and the extra kilometers we covered while we were temporarily off route (we weren't lost, really, we weren't), and we biked about 80km in total.  Needless to say, my legs were pretty darn tired by the time I got home.

All in all, it was a fantastic day!  The weather was absolutely perfect: not too warm, not too cold, no rain, and not too windy.  We were in good company and good spirits.  I don't have much else to say because simply saying we went and saw some tulip fields doesn't cover it.  Actually, it sounds pretty darn boring when I say it like that, but I assure you, it wasn't.  It was a fantastic day and only pictures can demonstrate. It's a shame I forgot my camera (I'm such a bad photographer), but luckily I have this nifty new smartphone that actually has a decent camera on it.  I managed to get a few nice shots and borrowed a couple pics from Karen to give you all a taste of my flowery day. Enjoy! 

From left to right: Karen, Me, Jorine, Laura. 

This was taken in Leiden.  Apparently there's this "thing" called Wild Knitting and people make stuff to decorate cities.  Basically it's a nicer version of graffiti, and I think it's pretty darn cool.

A weekend in Copenhagen

First off, Happy Easter to everyone! I hope you all enjoyed some family time.

I spent this Easter in Copenhagen with my dear friend Laura.  It was.....well....a bit snowy at first.

However, soon after that, the skies cleared and the sun shone the rest of the day.  We did a beautiful walking tour and got to see many highlights of the city.  One of my favorite spots was Nyhavn.  For me, it's the view that pops in my head when someone says Copenhagen.  Originally, it was a slummy area, and they decided it was time to clean it up and attract a better crowd.  So one really really hot summer day,  the drawbridge lifted and some boats docked for people to go visit.  They were only supposed to be there for 3 days, but the hot weather warped the drawbridge to the point that it wouldn't open again, so to this day, the boats still remain docked there.  

On Saturday night, we went on a pubcrawl with some of the people we met on the walking tour.  It was a wonderful group of people, and we all seemed to just click right off the bat.  We had an absolute blast and got to enjoy the nightlife of Copenhagen and some traditional alcohol like Fisk.  It means fish, and funnily enough, it tastes a lot like Fisherman's Friends throat lozenges.  It wasn't my favorite as I felt like I just did a shot of Listerine, but it was still fun to try it out!  

Another highlight of Copenhagen we visited was Christiania.  I was absolutely intrigued by the concept of it.  Basically, there were a bunch of hippies that took over this old military area of Copenhagen.  They have their own currency, their own laws, the own schools, and a very unique way of life for the modern world.  This is their mission statement: 

"The objective of Christiania is to create a self-governing society whereby each and every individual holds themselves responsible over the well-being of the entire community.  Our society is to be economically self-sustaining and, as such, our aspiration is to be steadfast in our conviction that psychological and physical destitution can be averted." 

I urge you to check out their website, and to check out pictures on google.  I didn't get any pictures of the community because I felt a bit awkward and like I was imposing on their privacy.  Sadly, it reminded me a lot of what a ghetto would be like, as it was very run down in general.  Overall though, it was really neat.  I'm not sure I fully grasp the entire concept yet, but I have to say, it was worth the trip over there, and I'm very curious to learn more about the community.

Another touristy spot we visited was The Little Mermaid Statue.  I'd be lying if I said it was cool.  To be honest, it was a really ugly statue that barely resembled a mermaid and it was created in honor of Hans Christian Andersen-- the writer of the original fairy tale before Disney stole it and warped it into their own more popular version.  I was really hoping that the story was more along the lines that he was inspired to write the story based on the statue, but that's not the case, and that's why it was so uncool that I didn't even take a picture.

I did however, get a ton of random snapshots of the city.  In general, I found Copenhagen to be very picturesque.  It's a large city without the hustle and bustle of one.  It felt like no one was in a real hurry and everyone was so happy to help out the dumb tourists that were lost.  Overall, I'd say Denmark really did fulfill the stereotype of them being one of the happiest countries in the world.  

Making Baba Proud

Hey Baba, this post is for you!

Today, we baked Paska!  For my first time making it on my own, I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself.  Not only did the dough turn out alright, I managed to whip up some gluten free dough so Pippa could have Paska too.  

The really white one is gluten free bread.  It looks horrible, but surprisingly, it tastes like normal bread!  The dough is a bit tough to work with cause it's really sticky and not really the texture of dough at all, but we managed and made a braid and a bird too!  And with the leftovers we made a bread duck to match the ones Kristel bought for Cleo and Pilou.