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..