Tavira, Portugal - Sun, Surf, Sand and a short trip to Spain

boats at the waterfront in Cabanas

Hauke and I took the train from Faro to Tavira, 30km east, around midday. It only cost a couple of euros, so I was expecting the same level of service as I experienced in Sicily, but apart from the trains being several decades older than the majority of others in western europe it was great, having an actual timetable and sticking to it!

Tapas on our balcony in Tavira

Tavira is a smaller town, of around 10 000. Unlike Faro, its a small, sleepy town, with no big office buildings and a smaller amount of tourism. I found it much more beautiful than Faro, with old Moorish architecture and castle ruins perched on a hill that gives an amazing view of the town. After lunch at a cafe, we headed to Viva Rio to check in, a new guesthouse on the riverbank with cheap but really nice rooms with a bathtub that I made the most of, our own balcony, and a bigger rooftop balcony with a great view - I really recommend the place!

Me and Hauke on the beach in Ilha de Tavira

The best beaches near Tavira are located on islands a little out at sea past sea pans, so after dumping our stuff we took the ferry to Ilha de Tavira, which is claimed to be one of the best beaches in the Algarve. There are some tiny houses, built in the early 1940s there, and a bunch of restuarants and bars. It was later in the afternoon when we arrived, and I did have sunscreen on, but I still managed to fall asleep and get badly burnt. After a quick mojito, we headed back to the village and spent the rest of the evening enjoying tapas and wine on the rooftop watching the sun go down. Unfortunately, my level of discomfort increased to the point where sitting was painful and after the sun went down I ended up back inside lying facedown with the airconditioning system pointed at my back begging for more applications of aftersun every ten minutes of so!

Old church in Tavira

The following morning was Hauke's birthday so I headed out early to grab food for breakfast, and after deciding to go to the next town over, Cabanas, to reach the Ilha de Cabanas, we killed some time waiting for the bus by exploring the old section of the town on the hill next to our hotel. There is a couple of beautiful old church, a freshly painted convent and many amazing houses on steep lanes or small plazas, but the most incredible is the castle ruins. There is a section of walls still standing, with a beautiful garden planted inside. From there, you can climb up, walk around the walls and have an amazing view from the towers.

Ilha de Cabanas

After a quick beer, we headed to Cabanas, a small village just 7km away. While originally a tiny fishing village, it has been recently developed for tourism, with a new broad walk along the harbour and big resort hotel buildings along the shore. We took a boat to the Ilha de Cabanas only a couple of hundred metres away. This was one of my favorite beaches in Portugal, with raised wooden bridges leading up to a restaurant perched on the top of the island, and down to the main beach on the other side. I was much more liberal with the sunscreen this day, and we had a great time - I'm jealous that I've never got to spend my own birthday lying on the beach!

Tavira by night

For dinner we headed to A Ver Tavira, an upmarket restaurant next to the castle ruins, where we could again pass the evening sitting on a balcony watching the sun set over Tavira. I attempted to surprize and embarrass Hauke by getting the wait staff to stick a candle in his desert but failed by talking too loudly! But it was a nice meal, and we finished the day off with a walk around the city by night, and a few more glasses of wine back at the hotel. Its definitely convinced me to head away for another trip on my own birthday next year!

Convent in Tavira

After talking to a couple at our guesthouse, we decided to take the train east along the coast to Vila Real de Santo Antonio, a town of about 18 000 on the river that is the border between Portugal and Spain, and cross over by ferry into the spanish town of Ayamonte. They'd assured us that both were beautiful, but I'm not sure what they saw in Vila Real - being founded in the 1700s it doesn't have the amazing architecture that Faro and Tavira possess, and has been in decline for the last 50 years. We walked down the main shopping street of stores selling mass-produced straw hats and baskets and cheap chinese plastic crap and past an uninteresting town square to the harbour without spotting anything worthy of interest, and we both grumbled when we had to wait quite a bit for the next ferry, as there really was nothing more to see to kill time.

Main square in Ayamonte

Ayamonte however, was a different story. This town is a similar size, but is much older and still has a beautiful medieval old town with the narrow alleyways that I love! The town square, and many other areas, are filled with palm trees and seats covered in brightly coloured and intricately designed ceramic tiles. We walked around for a while, checking out some old churches and monuments, and stopped in the city zoo to eat a picnic lunch accompanied by the spanish Shandy beer that I had missed so much! Being able to talk Spanish again for a day was great, it was kind of infuriating listening to Portuguese, as it sounded so similar but I could only understand snatches of what was being said. The whole town was dead during siesta time, so we walked up the hill in the scorching heat to yet another church, and were rewarded by an amazing view over the little town, and across the river to Vila Real and Portugal.

Me in Ayamonte

You can notice the difference between the whitewashed walls of the more moorish-influenced southern Portugal, with the bright colours of southern Spain, although the colours of both countries seemed to stand out a lot more against the amazing blue sky and sunlight of the South compared to back in western Europe, and I took a lot of photos of little architectural details - having not had amazing experiences in Spain before, it was great to visit such a beautiful place and have such a nice day. Finally, after one last beer it was time to take the ferry back to Portugal, grab our things from the hotel in Tavira, and head back to Faro for another two nights.

More photos of Tavira are here, and of Ayamonte here.

I've signed up for Live Below the Line, and will live off €1.40 a day for five days to change the way people think about poverty and raise money for charity. Read more here, and Support me here.

My first foray East - Warsaw, Poland

marker showing the placement of the former Jewish Ghetto Wall

I've always though Eastern Europe was more interesting than the West, but seeing as I prefer crashing with friends over forking out for accomodation, I hadn't yet ventured further east than Berlin. But Doug, a NZer AFS returnee friend headed to Warsaw for a semestre-long university exchange, and I booked tickets to go over and see him for a weekend around May 10th.

Soviet-era buildings lining a wide avenue

I took the night train, at 16 hour journey over about 1300km. Id never taken a night train before, and had heard horror stories about them, of things going wrong, of the dodgy people who take them, and of luggage being stolen while you sleep, but the network is pretty big, you can start at Amsterdam and go all the way to Moscow, or branch off to Copenhagen or Munich, and probably a few others I'm not aware of. Its cheap, and seemed like it would be an interesting experience, but they stories I'd heard seemed true when the train pulled up missing half its carriages, and in typical Dutch problem-solving style, the conductors ordered all of us going to Warsaw (i.e. sitting in the four missing carriages) to cram into one carriage until we would switch in Germany. This led to six very uncomfortable hours with far too many people crammed into a very hot small space with the choice of crap air conditioning or an open window with rain coming in. But, in Dortmund we changed into a really comfortable carriage with reclining sleeper chairs, and I belted my handbag to my middle, popped a sleeping pill, and woke up eight hours later as we neared Warsaw.

Me and Doug at the Warsaw University festival

Then another issue surfaced. Unbeknownst to me, and unlike the half-dozen other European simcards I've owned, my Dutch simcard didn't work outside of the border, and I had stupidly not written down Doug's number, thinking that he would just call me. All I could do was hope that he was waiting for me at the station, but after arriving and walking around for a while, and then sitting in the main hall, I decided I would have to be a bit more proactive about the situation. After failing to find an internet cafe, payphone, or currency exchange in the station, I got directions to a payphone in a nearby shopping mall, and headed there. I withdrew money from a NZ account, and then went to a little kiosk to break the note - the woman was not willing to give me change in coins at all, so I threw another chocolate bar at her with another banknote, waited for my change, threw another chocolate bar and banknote at her...and so on. I managed to get hold of Rogier back in Amsterdam, but had to wait for him to head back to the house, then rang again to instruct him in logging into my computor to find Doug's number...but my change ran out, and I had to go back to the ATM, back to the kiosk, and buy another three chocolate bars...Poland was not proving an easy place, but eventually Doug and I found each other!

Warsaw Old Town

Warsaw was hot! It was around 28 degrees and quite humid when I arrived, definitely a change from grey Amsterdam. Doug is living in a university residence hall, where the majority come from former Soviet block countries, people sleep 2-4 to a room, and students stand around the linoleum hallways smoking ciggarettes well into the night. Not really similar to a NZ hall of residence at all! We dumped my stuff and headed out.

View of Warsaw from the Palace of Sci & Culture

With nearly 2 million inhabitants in the city proper, Warsaw is the 7th biggest city in the EU. We walked down past Doug's university to the centre of the city. It does feel very different to other european cities. 80% of the buildings were destroyed in WWII and had to be rebuilt, and most of this rebuilting was done in the basic blockish style typical of eastern europe. In the centre, the streets are really wide and seem well planned, with huge square apartment buildings and offices. It was also notable how clean Warsaw was - the trash I normally associate with big European cities was absent. Also, people wait for traffic lights even when there's no traffic, apparently you get big fines for jaywalking there! I think both of these differences are a hangover from the Soviet police state.

Warsaw Castle

We walked through a nice shopping district and after stopping in a bar/cafe that was one of Doug's locals for some kind of unmemorable polish dish, we sat in a park to drink a couple of beers and then went to a big free musical festival at Warsaw University. There, we met a bunch of Doug's fellow exchange students, watched a whole heap of random Polish bands perform, and consumed a number of cheap beers and food. After we called it a night, four of us walked into the Old Town for a bit, the historic centre that was razed to the ground during WWII, but meticulously rebuilt afterwards using as many of the original elements as possible.

The next day we headed back to the Old Town, and had a quick look at the Warsaw Castle, which was also totally destroyed and rebuilt. Its a strange building, we didn't go inside, but walked into the central courtyard, which showcases the way the different wings are made in different building materials and styles - it looks at bit like the piecemeal parliament buildings in Wellington. In the centre of the Old Town is the Market Square, one of, if not the most impressive Market Square I've seen in Europe. The reconstructed buildings all around it are based on the 17th century Gothic and Renaissance originals, and look vastly different from the buildings surrounding the main squares in more western countries. Part of the Old Town is lined by a section of the medieval city walls, brick walls that were originally built in the 13th century.

Building in Praga district

We then headed out to the Praga district, on the other side of the river from central Warsaw and the Old Town. Praga was originally an independent town, only being linked by bridge to Warsaw in the 1790s. The buildings there mostly date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, but mostly survived WWII. Now most of those still standing are in a state of disrepair, but the area has been taken over buy young musicians and artists, and it has a really cool feel to it. Several Poles who we spoke to later wondered why we'd been out there - all claimed it was a really dangerous area, and many had never been there themselves despite living in Warsaw, but I really liked seeing a different side to the city. I had hungarian goulash for lunch and fell in love with the dish, and then we popped our heads into a beautiful Orthodox church, watching women in skirts and headscarfs enter for service.

Orthodox church in Praga

Finally, we headed up the Palace of Science and Culture. This 231m skyscraper was build in the 1950s and was a gift from Soviet Russia - Doug said Poland was offered that, or a metro system, but picked the first as they didn't have the money to maintain a metro system once it was build. The building apparently looks like a lot of other Soviet era skyscrapers, and currently is housed by offices, museums, theatres and cinemas, shops, a conference centre, a university, and restaurants and bars. It's a pretty impressive building, as is the view from the terrace! Looking out over Warsaw you can definitely note the difference between the reconstructed old town, the huge Soviet era blocks, and the modern western style towers.

Palace of Science and Culture

After a dinner of polish dumplings back at the hostel, we went to see the Multimedia Fountain, the biggest such display in Europe. It uses water, light and sounds, with fountains shooting 25m high light up by different coloured lights to a soundtrack, and lighted pictures projected onto a screen of fog. It was really cool, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. We then headed to a 'bad taste' themed party hosted by one of the other exchange students, in their tiny one-bedroom apartment. I had to think how many people were crammed into that place, it was so packed that trying to move around felt like being in one of those puzzle games where you can only have space to move one square at a time! Everyone was loud and enthusiastic and consuming a lot of polish vodka, until the rather threatening polish police turned up and gave us five minutes to evacuate the place. We then headed into town, but as it was so late got turned away from all of the clubs, and ended up just going to bed.

Warsaw Old Town Market Square

Sunday saw us head to the former Jewish Ghetto. There, you can trace where the wall once stood - its amazing to see what a small area of Warsaw it occupied, considering the number who lived within it. You can see a memorial representing where the bridge crossed over the tram lines, from the 'big' ghetto to the 'small' ghetto. Most amazing was sections of the wall that still stand, and a ruined apartment building that also survived the war.

Multimedia Fountain

We ended the day at the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. This was one of my favourite experiences in Warsaw. A Fotoplastikon was a viewer for three-dimensional photos, used to show people who could not travel sights of the world before film was invented. This fotoplastikon was installed in about 1905, and has survived ever since, showing shots of Paris, London and prewar Poland throughout the Nazi occupation and Soviet communist era to people from all walks of life, who went to view the photos and listen to jazz music as we go to the movies. People can enter the theatre and sit at one of the viewers around the circular contraption, and the photos flip over as you look in. It makes you really appreciate both how easy it is for us to travel nowdays and see things for ourselves, and how easy it is to immortalize our memories with photography.

Apartment building in the former Ghetto

Then it was time to eat a bit more, blow the last of my polish Zloty currency, and head to the train station. Using the Zloty instead of the Euro was amazing, everything was so much cheaper - I spent about 80euros ($120NZD) over the weekend, impossible to achieve in other european cities, and really felt like I was living it up! It was a great first foray into Eastern Europe, and left me itching to head back  in that direction again soon!

More photos are here.

Freezing February in Luxembourg - Part I

view of Luxembourg from the Mudam

February in Luxembourg has been cold! As you've no doubt seen on the news wherever you are, Europe has been hit by an insane cold snap. While hundreds are dying in temperatures of down to -30degreesC in Eastern Europe, here in Luxembourg throughout the first week of February we've had highs of around -5 or -6 and lows of between -11 and -14degrees. So its still damn cold. No more snow has fallen since that one Sunday in late January, but what did fall has really stuck around, driving me crazy as my winter boots are full of holes.

Pepi, Dante, Ava and Kerli on the train

This first week, I went out a couple of times, to live jazz on Tuesday, to drink with another kiwi au pair here in the Spanish bar on Wednesday, and to see a Portuguese friend on Thursday. Going out, and especially coming home later at night, really requires effort in this weather! I never noticed the cold so bad last winter, but now I'm often wearing both pantyhose and thermals under my jeans! Friday saw me take Pepi out on another adventure, this time accompanied by Kerli and her dutch charges, Ava and Dante. This trip was much more successful than the first, last time Pepi had been really quite and watched everything around him with big eyes, and asked to go home to Mama a lot, this time as soon as we got on the bus he was happily narrating everything around him and I had to drag him home at the end of the day! Much to my embarrassment, his endless chatter saw him ask me both why the really wrinkly old lady sitting by us 'had so many owas (ouchies or boo-boos) on her face, and why another lady had poop on her hat. Fun times.

Pep making music

We took the bus to the train station where we met the others, and then the train to Esch-sur-Alzette to the concert venue the Rockhal, where they had a kind of interactive exhibition of electronic music for kids, with things like microphones that turned your voice into different sounds, collaborative electronic drums, and a disco music room. I found it really cool, and could easily have spent ages with Pep going around the different stations, but unfortunately Pepi is totally in love with Dante, and Dante has the attention span of a gnat, so every minute or so Dante would get up and run to the next station and Pepi would get up, look at Dante and then back at what they had been doing, look wistfully at Dante again and then back to what they'd been doing, and then rush after Dante. He was definitely most into the drums though, he kept heading back to that station, and he wouldn't go near the singing one! So, after a stop at MacDonalds for icecream we headed home, jumping into every pile of snow on the way and arriving freezing cold and very tired!

Dante and Pepi making music

That evening, Pep was complaining of a sore tummy, but I didn't think too much of it until I woke up at 3am in agony myself. After a sleepless night spent puking myself, my plans to take Pepi to play with Dante and Ava the next day so that Rogier and Jacquie could get some pre-moving work done, and to go skiing the following day were promptly scrapped, and I spent the weekend hiding in bed.

By Tuesday, I'd decided that the snow had cleared enough for me to start running again...so naturally we had another snowfall! So instead, I went to drink a few beers and play some pool with Josh. I used to play a lot in NZ, but I've never been very good and he normally always cleans up, although I sunk my first attempt at a jump shot which I was pretty happy about.

Part of the Mudam

Wednesday morning I woke up with big intentions of going to Arlon, a city just over the border in Belgium, but I looked out of the window at snow falling and decided to head back to bed instead! Later that afternoon, I headed out, first lining my boots with plastic bags! These boots were a huge investment before I left New Zealand, and had served me well over the past year, but are now falling to bits and I keep getting wet feet. I went to the Mudam, the museum of modern art up in Kirchberg suburb, where all of the fancy offices and European parliament buildings are. The building was designed by I. M .Pei, the guy who whacked the big glass pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris, and has similar glass artifacts. In the main entrance hall is a cool work, a two-story tall structure that has a machine winding many tiny threads into a massive rope, depicting the nervous system. You can climb up to the top and look out of the windows of the view over Luxembourg, its very cool. Other than that, I picked a bad day to go, as they were setting up all of the new exhibitions and I could only see their standing exhibits.

Thursday was similarly laid back, I spent most of the day in pursuit of new shoes, eventually giving up on finding women's boots that fit my massive feet and just buying mens shoes instead. I was trying on shoes in the mens department and got told by a sales assistant that I was on the wrong floor, and then got told at the cashier that if I didn't take the boxes with me, I couldn't return them if they didn't fit my boyfriend! Way to rub salt into the wound! And now, after a night out on Thursday and a day with the kids today, I'm off to spent the night in Metz, a city about an hours drive into France.

Happy New Years - ending the year in Luxembourg

Christmas Market in Luxembourg Ville

I sit writing this at 11pm, at home alone with the kids and already a bottle of champagne down since they went to bed three hours ago. Christmas and New Years have kind of been a non-event for me this year, but I will get to that after I recap what's been going on in November and December, with links to the other blogs posts I've written about events along the way.

Me and Pepi on the train

After visiting Liege, London and the south of Luxembourg, the second half of November was pretty uneventful really. I managed to make it over to Saarbrucken in Germany to visit the Christmas market, and then the last Tuesday of November I had a 'Big Day Out' with Pepi. He'd visited the train station with me and Rogier when I collected my ticket to Strasbourg, and wanted to go on the train so bad that I promised him I would take him the following week.

Pepi on the playground in Noertzange

So on Tuesday when Ollie had gone for his nap we took off, taking the bus to the station and then the train to...who knows where! Despite trying to plan everything carefully, we pretty much just got on and got off at a stop where I could see a playground within walking distance! Pep didn't mind, he was quite excited about being on the train, we could have stayed on there for much longer than we did but I (correctly) thought that we were pretty close to hitting the French border. We ended up in Noertzange, population less-than 1000, resident ice-cream shops less than 1! After watching some diggers and 'Bob the Builders' at work by the tiny station, we walked down to the playground and I chased him around for awhile. By this stage he was getting quite anxious about missing Mama, so I tried to distract him with icecream, which turned into a huge fail as there isn't a single shop selling icecream in Noertzange. So, back on the train we went, and then it was onto a bus, then onto another bus after the first one crashed with a car (he didn't notice a thing!) and finally we reached the city, where the Luxembourg Christmas Market was in full tilt. A ride on the merry-go-round and miniature train later, we brought a scoop of icecream and finally took the bus home, where I collapsed exhausted - he had fun, but hauling a four-year old around in a push-chair and dragging that thing on and off the train and over the overpass is hard work!

cookie scrabble in my french class

I began December with a trip down to Strasbourg in France to see Hauke, but again, the first couple of weeks of the month were pretty quiet. I baked a cake with the kids, dismally failed an end of year French test (as did the rest of the class, and we can all continue, so not too concerned!) and then celebrated Christmas with my french class two weeks running. The french teacher isn't really a professional french teacher but an economist doing it in his spare time, so I think throwing two parties with us was much more fun than planning two more lessons. The first time, we celebrated 'Belgian Christmas' heaps of different Belgian sweets and a kind of scrabble, making french words with cookie letters. The following week we joined with the advanced class, and everyone had to bring something from their country. My pavlova looked like a cowpat both in size and colour, so I made a last minute dash to the supermarket and doled out marmite on bread instead - and yes, I did notice a few people spitting it out into their napkins!

Josh drinking Gluhwine at the Lux Ville market

December saw me meet Josh, an american accountant who has recently moved out here, and we've become good mates. He's introduced me to egg-nog, and led to me heading out to the Christmas market for Gluhwine and to Liquid for Jazz and Blues night a fair few times this month. Through a friend from the Dominican Republic/Spain, I've also met a big group of latinos, mostly Mexicans, who are living here and all party at the local spanish bar. I don't know how I didn't know that they were here until now, but I've since spent several tequila-fuelled nights dancing salsa with them until the early hours of the morning.

Band at the Christmas Market in Differdange

After developing a compulsion to collect Gluhwine mugs from every Christmas market I go to (these things are hideous and too small for a decent coffee, no idea what I will do with them back in NZ! Gluhwine party anyone?), I jumped at the chance to visit Differdange, a town of about 10 000 close to Esch-Sur-Alzette and Dudelange in the South of Luxembourg with a mate Markus from Austria and his greek neighbour. Turns out Dudelange or it's Christmas Market isn't all that interesting, but I scored a bizarre mug with a old guy sitting on a bench smoking on it, watched Markus do a couple of rounds of a fake ski slope, and had a bit of a day out.

Letting Pepi play with my makeup

The end of December saw snow fall a couple of times, but nothing compared to what I expected. Last year there was about a metre on the ground here and in Germany, but this year it didn't stick around for longer than a day, the snowfields within a couple of hours of here are still closed, and the weather forecast for tomorrow predicts 11degrees. Watching Ollie play in his first snowfall was a highlight of the month, as has him learning how to say my name. He can't quite do the whole 'Claire' thing yet, so I'm now known as 'Car', ever since I woke up one morning to him banging on the door wanting me to come and play, shouting 'Carrr, carr, carr' over and over. He sounds a bit like a crow really, but it's so cute, and it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to know that I mean enough to him for him to learn my name pretty early on in his vocabulary.

I headed back over to Trier in Germany for an afternoon, to pick up a few things in the shops and check out what I'd heard was a great Christmas market, but again I was kind of disappointed. I think once you've seen one Christmas market here in Europe, you've seen them all, and especially after being at the really pretty market of Gottingen with Hauke and all of his friends, others kind of fall flat.

Lena and I drinking peket at the Christmas Market

I also went back to Liege just for an afternoon, to sort out some visa issues. As of late December, my Spanish working holiday visa has expired, and I am kind of an illegal immigrant. I'm exploiting a loophole that allows New Zealanders to have three months in each of a long list of European countries, rather than restricting us to three months in the whole of Schengen like most foreigners are, but this is kind of tricky considering your passport never gets stamped to say when you arrive or leave each of the countries. Normally you can bluff you're way through this kind of thing, but because I want to apply for another European visa at some stage I don't want to risk any issues further down the line. So, I went to Belgium to ask for a piece of paper saying that I had arrived there.

Memorial to victims of the grenade/shooting attack in Liege

Given my experiences in Spain, I was pretty dubious that it would work, but I rocked on up at the Liege Town Hall with Lena to do the translating, and asked for a Declaration of Arrival, normally only given to those on a real long-term visa. She asked "do you have proof of how/when you arrived in Belgium?", "Do you have proof of a visa?", and "Do you have proof of address?", I answered no to all three, and apart from a scary moment when the fake address I gave her turned out to be an apartment building, she just shrugged her shoulders and gave me the paper anyway - totally unlike Spain! Now I see how Belgium managed to survive over a year with no government! So unless they realise I was never at that address and give my name to Interpol, I reckon I'm safe for another three months! Lena and I spent a little while at the Liege Christmas market, where I scored yet another mug but this time shunned Gluhwine in favour of Peket, a kind of hard alcohol made from distilled grain in Liege, and shared the sobering experience of walking past the broken bus shelters and huge memorial to the victims of a grenade and shooting attack in Liege just two days earlier.

Ollie as a fireman/pirate/princess/spartan

And finally, like I said, Christmas and New Years have kind of been non-events for me this year. Christmas in the Netherlands is celebrated quite differently. There, Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus, sails on a boat from Spain on December 5th (Why Spain? Because centuries ago, Spain was the End of the World) accompanied by Zwarten Pieten, or Black Peters, black men with bright red lips and feathers in their caps that help deliver the presents. Sinterklaas leaves children presents and cookies in their shoes after the 5th - along with various small things, he left Pep and Ollie a toy kitchen this year, very cool!

Princess Pepijn

The night before Rogier and the kids went to join Jacquie in the Netherlands for Christmas I gave them my present, a big box full of dress-up clothes. I'd been planning this for ages, but as usual things didn't go quite to plan, and I found it really hard finding articles to put in it - what I did find I collected in the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and mum posted me some from NZ! I also wanted to put it in a wooden chest and paint 'Dress-Up' or something on the side, but Ikea has been sold out of wooden boxes for months, so its in a temporary fabric box for now - as usual, the kids are playing with the box as much as with the present inside, so I doubt it will last long! My attempt to use the present as bribery for good behavior for the day failed dismally, with me hauling a kicking and screaming Pepi out of the doctors office at one point. I had to laugh at all of the mothers with placid babies sitting there glaring at me, I was thinking "just you wait, one day this will be you!". The kids seemed to have settled on 'Fireman Ollie' and 'Policeman Pepi' outfits, but initially they were both into the barbie high heels and girlie necklaces, was very cute!

Christmas Eve at Hardy's

So, they all headed off on Christmas Eve, the day when most Europeans actually celebrate, and I spent the day nursing a hangover and trying to sort myself out to head out for dinner. I had dinner with two strangers via couchsurfing, Hardy from Germany and Nicolas from Brazil. Hardy did a great job of hosting us, making salad followed buy wild pork and vegetables, and I made brownies with strawberries for dessert. It was another late night, followed by a 6am wakeup call to skype family back home, so I was struggling with the idea of heading out again on Christmas Day, but I made it to Markus' house for Christmas lunch, a big affair with ten of us, and a massive collaborative meal of lamb, beef, veges and salad, followed by a couple of different puddings and Austrian Christmas cookies. We represented about eight different countries, so it was quite an interesting day. Hardy and I attempted to go out that night, but there wasn't too much happening and we were both quite tired and called it a night around 2am, and then I rounded off my Christmas holiday by spending the next two days obsessively cleaning the house, even washing all of the kids' armchair covers and the inside of the fridge.

Christmas Day at Markus'

I'm not too upset about spending New Years working, New Years has never been my thing anyway, as I usually find it to be quite disappointing. Jacquie and Rogier went to Maastricht in the Netherlands this afternoon, so I spent the rest of the day with the boys, baking scones and building obstacle courses around the house. The went to bed without any problem, and somehow didn't wake during the tremendous noise of the fireworks half an hour ago (its now 1am!) although Pepi has been up since and is now waiting for me to come and sleep in the big bed with him. At least I'm not spending New Years alone...

So I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years in  whatever shape and form, and all the best for the year to come.

And greetings from Pepi..

Strasbourg at Christmas time

Strasbourg - Capital of Christmas

This weekend past I headed to Strasbourg, France, to catch up with Hauke who is there for a year on a study exchange (between European universities it's called Erasmus). Strasbourg is only about 250km away, so two hours on a direct train. I'd been there for a day trip back in March when I'd been visiting a friend further south, in Mulhouse.

Hauke and I before the ball

I arrived at 3pm, and after dropping my stuff at his place we headed to the mall. Shopping usually isn't on the cards when we get together, but we were going to a ball at the university that night and we needed formal stuff. We were dashing from store to store, and kept bumping into another Erasmus student on a mission to find tights, but finally got everything done and after a few laughs at the awkwardness of Hauke trying to ask the lingerie shop assistant for a backless bra for me in french, we headed home to get dressed and have a few drinks before we went out.

A bunch of the Erasmus students

Rita from Ireland and Majorie from the USA came over, and after we were all dressed up and well-watered and had taken the obligatory prom photos we headed in. A lot of people had paid to go earlier and eat, so we were arriving as everyone was already into the swing of things and lost no time on catching up by drinking the cheap beer. A lot of faces of other Erasmus students became a bit of a blur, and while we had a good time, nothing exceptionally remarkable happened, and then sometime around 4am we toddled home with us girls feeling rather sorry for ourselves after a night in extremely high heels.

One of the many squares in Strasbourg

Saturday got off to a slow start, we didn't make it out the door until after 3pm, but we headed into town to see the Christmas Market. Strasbourg has a really famous and large one, which unlike in most cities, is spread all around the place, with many sections having specific themes. Each year they invite a different country to have their own section as a guest of honour, so this year there was a 'Little Switzerland' section with a lot of cheese and watches, including a fondue stand where instead of dipping things into a pot full of melted cheese they had cut massive wheels of cheese in half and had managed to melt the cheese on the inside, so that the half wheel was working as a kind of bowl that they could dip things into.


Hauke drunk some Gluhwine (mulled wine) but I was doubtful that my stomach was prepared to hold that down after what I'd put it through the previous night, and so I stuck to spiced hot orange juice, a nice alternative that I haven't seen before.

Christmas decorations in a pedestrian alleyway in the centre

The Christmas decorations in Strasbourg are really hard to convey through photos, just the shear volume of stuff decorating each tiny alleyway and each shop made it hard as photos where too noisy for you to be able to recognize individual decorations, and photos can't show the atmosphere or how packed the place was. It really was incredible, I thought the Christmas markets and decorations that I've seen in Germany and here in Luxembourg were amazing, but they have nothing on Strasbourg. One street even had a row of actual chandeliers encased in glass or fabric boxes suspended down the middle. The council's electrical bill must be massive, as would be the amount of money poured into buying and installing the decorations, but I guess they get it back from all of the tourists. I also didn't take so many photos because it was just too damn cold to seriously consider taking my hands out of my pockets!

Woman serving Gluhwine

The sun is currently setting before 5pm here in Europe, and it was really windy in Strasbourg, so while I think it was a lot warmer than Luxembourg, with the wind chill it was really freezing and we ended up sitting inside the massive Cathedral for quite a while just to try and keep warm! We had another quick gluhwine with a guy Hauke knew from highschool and some of his own Erasmus friends, the three of them had come for the weekend too, and then headed back home to warm up again!

Dinner at the Mexican place

We'd planned the night before to go out for dinner with some of the other Erasmus students, so we met them and went to a mexican place that Latin-American-born Majorie insisted was awesome. Unfortunately it was so awesome that it was really full, so we ended up going away for a beer and not getting to eat until 10pm! Luckily it was really worth the wait, everyone enjoyed their quesadillas and fajitas, and Hauke managed to eat his own 'plate full of different meats' (just meat. Big hunks of fried meat. Crazy!) meal and then finish off two of ours' as well!

Wandering around the city

We'd wanted to go out that night, but everyone was so tired from the previous night and so full from dinner that no one was really up for it, and we kept having issues with bouncers and places being full. After one last attempt to go to the University nightclub, a random place above what I think was a small shopping mall in amongst all the uni buildings, we called it a night and went home to bed instead.

We again didn't make it out of bed before lunchtime the next morning, and in the afternoon headed back into town. There probably is more to do in Strasbourg than either of us realise, but with me having been there before and it being so cold and christmas-dominated, we mostly just kept wandering around. We did manage to climb to the top of the Cathedral, which was cool but not as impressive as it once would have been, having climbed up church towers with similar views in most European cities that I've visited!

View of the rooftops from the Cathedral

Finally, we met up with Rita for a little bit, got our photo taken with a random drunk Russian, and headed back to the warmth to watch a movie before I headed to the train station for the evening train back to Luxembourg.


Photos are here, or even better ones from the last time that I was in Strasbourg are here.

Back to Liege in October

Lena standing on the promenade above Liege

I first visited Lena in Liege, Belgium, back in February, and have since dropped by in June and again in July. Here in Luxembourg (and other catholic countries), Tuesday the first of November was a public holiday called All Saints Day (the day after Halloween, it's a day commemorating deceased who have reached heaven, so you go put flowers on graves), and as Jacquie was in the Netherlands for work the weeks before and after, Rogier decided to take Monday off and go up with the kids for a long weekend. So, I decided to hitch a ride with them as far as Liege in Belgium, and then train back to Luxembourg by myself on Monday night.

Liege in Autumn

The trip up was probably the best car ride I've had with the kids, we got organised really quickly in the morning and they were really well behaved. I got there at lunchtime, so we went to a new Pakistani place and had tandoori chicken chapati kebab things, and then whiled away the afternoon drinking tea and hanging out in the park.

View of the Foire from the Ferris wheel

Lena's mum is an awesome cook, so after we had a delicious dinner at home we went to the Foire d'Octobre, or the October Fair. It's a huge carnival that runs from the first weekend in October until 11 November, all spread out along the city's main boulevard, with rides, games, food boothes and stalls selling stuff like crafts and clothing. The one thing I noticed was the lack of ittle wooden sheds selling beer or wine like you get at fairs in Germany or Luxembourg.

Lacquement

We went on what felt like the ferris wheel of death, I'm sure its the tallest one I've ever been on, and the seats were like buckets hanging from one pole, so they could rock and spin around in circles, and there wasn't a cage or anything to hold you in. It scared me more than the bungy ball back at the Schueberfouer in Luxembourg, much to Lena's amusement. I had a huge waffle, dipped in white chocolate and covered in strawberries, cream and more chocolate, and also tried the Liege speciality 'Lacquemant', a wafer dipped in syrup, allegedly invented in 1903. I'm not really a fan, tastes like a war, dry biscuit dipped in maple syrup, the texture really doesn't do it for me.

We'd planned on going out, but as most students in Belgium return from their university city to their home towns and villages on the weekends, and even more so this week with the holiday, the place was pretty dead and we were both really tired, and after a few beers we decided to go home.

Market

On Sunday morning we went with Lena's mum to the weekly riverside market that I'd gone to in February. She brought a few odds and ends, flowers and bread, and I brought a childrens 'my first words' picture book in French! We brought some roasted chestnuts as I'd never tried them before. Apparently these ones weren't very good, but I don't think I'd like them anyway, they are pretty flavourless and have a weird texture too, kind of like a moist scone. We sat at a cafe for coffee, and then headed back for lunch.

Alleyway

That afternoon, Lena and I walked along the promenade of the les Coteaux de la Citadelle, a walk along a ridge in the north of the city, behind the Palace of the Princes in Place St-Lambert and close to Lena's place. We started by walking through some crazy alleyways, with heaps of stairs to go up. It's kind of like Wellington, people live off these tiny alleys with no road access to their houses. At the top of the ridge, we walked through trees until we came out at a spot with a couple of buildings, I think the Citadelle was one of them, and a promenade with a great view over Liege. It was quite an amazing walk.

Lena 'cooked' dinner for us (she's got quite a reputation for not being able to cook anything!), reheating her mum's boulettes a la liegeoise, and frying chips with my help, and then we sat around watching a movie.

me with the speculoos waffle and fries

On Monday we had a couple of beers at one of our favourite bars, and then went back to the Foire so that I could get Belgian fries and another waffle, this time dipped in white chocolate and covered with speculoos cookies, cream and melted speculoos spread. It was heaven, and I expect it's to blame for my pants not fitting so well after the weekend! And then I was off, the train ride home was kind of intense, I ended up on a non-direct train and had to wait around another city quite a bit, and they are doing roadworks near the Belgian-Luxembourgish border, so it took over three hours to get home to the empty dark house. A pretty relaxed weekend, but good to get away for a bit and to see part of Liege that I hadn't been to before.

More photos from this trip to Liege are here.