Wintertime in Holland

I'm aware of the fact that I have only written two entries since I've been back, and one was about my time in Canada.  I apologize, but you must understand that life here, as exotic as it may seem, doesn't contain much blog worthy excitement.  So, as a compromise, I'll offer you this website.  I've linked you to my personal favorite, but I urge you to check out some others, especially hagelslag, and not owning curtains (which happens to be one of my favorite Dutch traits, for it makes going for an evening walk through a rich neighborhood as exciting as sitting down and watching a good TV program).

As you may have heard, a "cold snap" has swept through Europe, and Holland has a whole 7cm of snow!  Honestly, I'd love to see their reaction to a real cold snap of -45 and a real blizzard leaving behind 37cm of snow, but nonetheless, this is a big deal for them, and it has left the entire country in a frenzy.  Aside from the crappy trains that can't handle a single snowflake, the hottest topic right now is The Elfstedentocht.  It's a 200km speed skating race through 11 cities in Northern Holland and it's all done on natural ice.  It's really rare for it to happen because it's not often that it gets cold enough for the ice to be thick enough.  The last race was in 1997, and there has only been 15 races since 1909.  The officials have met this year, and they're pretty tight lipped about whether or not it'll actually happen, but I think we're heading in the right direction.  There is currently 11cm of ice and the cold weather is supposed to stick around until next week sometime.  I'm not going to get my hopes up, but I'm even excited about the prospect of it!

And now for your visual pleasure, here are some snapshots of winter in Holland, and my friend Flores (whose name might actually be spelled Floris, but I'm not really sure....).

(random note: the thumbnails are in nauseatingly poor quality.  Click the pictures to view them all in a decent size and quality.  Please, just do it.)

you're in the loop

If I were to tell you this post is going to be super exciting, I'd be lying.  So here's my disclaimer: this is simply a post to keep everyone in touch with my Holland adventure-- the exciting parts and the boring parts.

Since returning to Holland, I haven't been up to a whole lot.  Actually, I think it's be safe to say I've been bored senseless this last week.  Kristel and Jerry have been very busy with work, so I've been tied to the house all week, often putting the kids to bed.  

Though I'll admit, I had one noteworthy adventure this week, I drove!  It was not only a big deal because it was my first time driving in Holland.  It was a huge deal because it was my first time driving in Holland AND I just happened to be driving a really really really expensive car.  A Jaguar to be more precise.  My job was to get from Central Station to my house, which is one road all the way there.  But crazy traffic circle like intersections combined with rain, darkness, and nerves led to me being in the wrong lane, thus going away from where I wanted to be!  After I found a place to pull over and have my mini panic attack, I turned on the navigation system (had it off because gosh, I only had to go in a straight line, not to mention I bike that route at least twice a week).  Eventually, I got home in one piece via some obscure route I didn't even know existed.  Needless to say, I have gained a whole new appreciation for my bicycle.

Christmas in a Nutshell

Hello from Holland!  I'm back to the land of good cheese and bicycles for part two of my adventure.  Being home for Christmas was one of the greatest gifts ever.  To those of you I didn't have a chance to visit, I'm terribly sorry!  And those of you I had the chance to see, thanks for putting up with my tight schedule.  Two weeks really isn't enough time!

As tradition, we spent Christmas Eve at Baba and Gido's indulging in to-die-for Ukrainian food. 

Baba, the amazing cook who had been slaving away two days prior to the Christmas feast, and Gido getting ready to eat his favorite meal of the year. 

Then, following tradition, Christmas morning started out with all of us in our pyjamas.  This obviously resulted in people being reluctant to being photographed, but I managed to sneak a few.  

And eventually people started to cooperate with my snap happiness.

The rest of Christmas was full of good food, family time and Ukrainian Caroling (thanks Volya for not only one, but two nights of awesomeness!)

New Year's was spent fonduing with this lovely gang.

We brought the New Year in with amazing style and even more amazing hangovers the next day.

The rest of my holiday was spent doing random things like finally towing the Hoff out to the cabin so Hope could have her driveway back.  That adventure ended a bit abruptly when the trusty van decided to gulp up every ounce of gasoline left in his tank.  No injuries this time, but we ended up having to push him into his resting ground.

Sander and I also made a trip to the mountains to try out our new snowshoes.  It was quite the adventure to say the least.  The unseasonably warm winter forced us 50km up icy, windy mountain roads for our snowshoe hike, which normally isn't a big deal unless your car breaks down and you have no cellphone reception to call for help.  So, we hitchhiked our way down with a nice old couple from California, and with a stroke of luck ended up catching Kendel and Katelyn just as they were passing through Banff!  Fortunately, they were able to rescue us.  Unfortunately, that forced us to cancel our second hike, only leaving us with a small taste of this winter in the mountains.  

After a whirlwind of a holiday, Sander and I made our way back to the Netherlands.  We had a wonderful (sarcasm) flight back with the Czech world junior hockey team (they were nursing their bruised egos with a little too much alcohol), and are both ridiculously jetlagged, but it's good to be back in Holland.  I have many adventures to look forward to (including a cruise with Mom!), and hopefully a few visitors too!

Haggis for breakfast

I bet you guys forgot about me, didn't you?  Well, fear not, I'm still around!

I've been a bit busy in the last couple weeks, especially the last weekend for I went to Scotland to visit Mark in Edinburgh!  

Some random things I learned about the city:

- the population is only 500 000 people (that's about half of Edmonton to put things into proportion for you), which I found to be very surprising, it feels much larger

- the city is split into Old Town and New Town.  The old part is well, really really old.  It stems from the Castle, which is perched atop an extinct volcano.  New Town was designed by a young architect in 18th century.  It was created in order to decrease the volume of people living in Old Town.   However, it's modern design was a bit offsetting for some, and it took almost 20 years to fully populate the area.

- J.K. Rowling wrote most of the Harry Potter series while living in Scotland.  There are a few cafe's that she frequented and there are now plaques on the outside...just for tourists like me.  =)

- Rosslyn Chapel is one of the coolest, and probably the oldest church I've ever visited (I urge you to check out the link for more pictures and stories).  It was completed in the 14th century, and in it lies so many different theories, conspiracies, and just plain old stories.  One of my favorites is about the creation of the pillars.  The story says that the master mason took a trip abroad to get some inspiration for the carvings and while he was gone the apprentice carved a magnificent pillar.  The master got so angry he hit the apprentice on the head with his mallet, killing him.  As part of his punishment, his face was carved into the opposite pillar so that he must always look at the apprentices work. The chapel is also featured in the famous book and movie The DaVinci Code.  

-  The town of Roslin (where Rosslyn chapel is) is also the home of The Roslin Institute, which happens to be where Dolly the Sheep was created via cloning techniques.  

Edinburgh Castle in the background.  In front lies a row of pubs.  One of them, Maggie Dicksons, is where I had Haggis for breakfast.  The pub itself has quite the story.  All the pubs face a central square and that is where the hangings used to occur.  Maggie Dickson served her sentence of hanging, but she didn't actually die, so this pub was created in her name.

There was a winter carnival and German Christmas market going on.  I found the contrast between the Gothic architecture and the roll-in ferris wheel was quite hilarious.

We had an amazing view of the sunset on the hill where Edinburgh Castle is.  

A picture of a picture of Rosslyn Chapel minus all the scaffolding that was present when I visited.  

Another picture of a picture to give you an idea of how intricately carved the chapel is.  It's quite amazing considering it was competed in 1440.  It truly is mindblowing and was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. 

So there you go, my trip in a nutshell.  A lot of the weekend was spent hanging out with Mark and meeting all of his friends.  It was his last weekend in Edinburgh, so we had many goodbye festivities and last things to do.  All in all, it was a fabulous weekend and I am so happy I was able to get there in time to have my own personal tour guide.  

Sinterklaas

I've been informed that I've been slacking on the blog lately. Truth is, life here in Holland is like life in Canada, just with warmer weather and older buildings.  The last few weeks haven't really been full of blog-worthy excitement.  I was incapacitated with illness one weekend, and drinking beer the other.  There's your update.

This weekend definitely deserves its own blog post though, for this was the weekend of Sinterklaas.  Sinterklaas is a national holiday in The Netherlands and resembles Christmas in many ways.  I'll give you the stripped down version based on what I've experienced, but if you want more, you can educate yourself here.  Sinterklaas originated as the feast day of Saint Nicolas-- the patron saint of children.  However, as times change, so does the story.  Around the third week of November, Sinterklaas and his helpers Swarte Piet, arrive in The Netherlands in a big boat from Spain. There is usually a parade through the city to welcome them, and the children get to enjoy some festive treats, usually handed out by Swarte Piet. 

Side note, Swarte Piet directly translates to Black Pete, and not so surprisingly, he's black. And also not so surprisingly, this has been turned into a rather controversial issue. Historically Swarte Piet is black because they were the servants of Sinterklaas and come from a geographical location that generally has darker skinned people.  However, to skirt the issue of racism, many children are told that he's black because he goes down the chimney to deliver presents and incidentally is covered in soot.  Embarrassingly though, this wasn't a good enough cover story, and Swarte Piet was banned from Canadian Sinterklaas celebrations this year.  

After Sinterklaas arrives in Holland, children line their shoes up in front of the fire place (or the back door if your house doesn't have a fireplace), and they sing songs and draw pictures for him, and every once and a while they get a small gift in their shoe.  

The main celebration though, occurs on December 5 (or December 4 if the 5th is a Monday and just isn't convenient).  On this evening, Sinterklaas delivers a big sack of presents for the children (or the neighbor is given the presents earlier in the day and he puts the sack by the door, knocks and runs away).   The presents are accompanied with nice poems about the person receiving the gift.  

Here's the poem that came attached to my gift:

Dear Kaylee, 

Every year around the beginning of September,
the Baas family gets a new family member.
They never really know what to expect.
Will she be tall, sweet, dumb, or fat,
will she know how to act?
This year Sint has been very glad to hear,
that it's never been this good of a year!

The new Canadian pedigree,
has filled the Bass' home with glee.
Not only is she sweet as hell,
but she can play the piano as well.
Sint has looked on with admiration,
and admittedly, with some frustration...
How you ran, and ran, and ran,
and only finished after twenty one. 

Your calm and loving personality
must have something to do with your nationality.
That's why Sint has given the Baas family this advice
the next au pair has to be from Canada, then she'll surely be as nice!

Love and hugs from Sint and Piet.

My family celebrated this evening with some amazing food (I could probably write a whole blog post about Sinterklaas food), great songs (lead by Kristel's dad on his guitar), and lot's of presents!  The kids finally got the hamster they've been begging for, along with a whole sack of other toys.  I got some really nice winter running gear, an iTunes giftcard, and some amazing chocolates to feed my addiction.  I also got a beautiful chocolate letter K, which is another tradition of Sinterklaas.  

So there you go, a crash course in the Dutch holiday of Sinterklaas.  It was a fantastic experience, and I'll definitely be incorporating some of their traditions into our holiday celebrations at home.  

Those are for deaf people

Random things I learned on the weekend Mark visited:

- The man that lives in the narrowest house in Amsterdam is taller than his house is wide.  Thus, he cannot lie down across his room. 

- The Red Light District has blue lights too.  They are not men....but they may or may not have been at some point in time. 

- Anne Frank actually started writing a book about her life in hiding before she died.  Her father then published her journals because he read that she wanted to be a famous writer when she got older. 

- The Jewish District of Holland, which at one point had some of the most amazing houses in Amsterdam, is now the most hideous street in the city after its reconstruction by acid tripping hippies in the 60s.
- there are speculaas latte's at Starbucks.
- Despite what people think, the use of marijuana in The Netherlands isn't technically legal.  It is simply tolerated and is not considered a criminal offence.  Instead, the police focus more on hard drugs and since then the use of drugs such as heroin (which used to be a major problem) has dramatically decreased.

Those are just some of the important things we learned as we toured Amsterdam.  After our Amsterdam adventure, we spent the rest of the weekend at Sander's place, partying with his housemates.  I'll leave the story at that to preserve the memories and dignity of all of us that were deathly hungover the next day.  The take home message of the story: epic weekend. 

Standing on the widest bridge in Amsterdam.

My friend, Flores

I have a new friend here in Holland!  He's a bit younger than me, but so much fun to be around.  He has really blond hair and knows English quite well.  We haven't planned it yet, but I think he's gonna be my Dutch running buddy.  He already knows the kids quite well, and lives just down the street, so it's really easy for him to pop by for visits once and a while.  =)

Oops, I forgot to mention that my new friend was of the canine variety, didn't I?

He came over to play the other day.  As you can see, he was more interested in the stick, but nonetheless it was wonderful to have his company.  Oh and that's Cleo's best friend Okki in the pink.

Pilou is a little scared of him (probably because he's twice her size), but Cleo and Pippa love him to pieces!