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.

January in Luxembourg Part II

The Sphere Room at the Trans Ardentes Festival, Liege, Belgium

The second half of January hasn't been particularly interesting, I caught a really terrible cold and spent the better part of two weeks either in bed or moping around the house. I did make it out a couple of times, mostly just to Liquid for live jazz during the week, and once on a Friday I went out with the intention of having a big night out dancing, but I didn't make it further than the free jager party at Scots.

Josh, me and Naz at Jager night at Scots bar, Luxembourg

The highlight of those last couple of weeks was going to Liege, Belgium for the Trans Ardentes electronic music festival. Josh and I drove up on Saturday afternoon, its only a little over an hour away, and after picking up Lena we headed just over the border to Maastricht in the Netherlands for a brief stop to go shopping and get KFC for lunch. I'd been to Maastricht once before, for a day, and it was freezing cold so we didn't stop to look around much.

The ceiling in the Elektropedia room, Les Trans Ardentes festival

Then we just headed home, fluffed around getting ready, and caught the bus to the festival. Having been sick, and being very tired from a couple of sleepless nights with crying children, I wasn't really amped until we got on a packed bus full of young people who were definitely much more in the party mood than we were! The festival is held indoors, at a big kind of hall, with concrete floors and steel sides and roof. It has separate sections, so there were four stages with different DJs performing at different times. Josh and I were both pretty into the Cube Room, which had kind of electro lounge music, more than the others, but the three of us, and Lena's friend Marion (who is awesome, I know her from past visit to Liege and the La Semo festival) and her friends, spent the night moving around quite a bit.

Lena, me and Josh at Les Trans Ardentes festival, Liege, Belgium

Like all the festivals I've been to in Belgium, you have to swap cash for tickets that you then swap for drinks. I guess it seems like a good idea, not having to mess around with money at the bar, but it really just means you have to join another really long line, and you can only get the tickets in preset amounts that aren't divisible by the cost of drinks, grrr. But, being sick (and broke!) I had resolved only to have a few drinks anyway. The other annoyance was having to pay an extra 2euros to be able to use the bathroom - not every time you went, you just had to pay for an armband that allowed you into the toilets all night. How stupid is that? Just raise the ticket price by 2euros! And sexist too, because there were free urinals outside for the guys. And even though it was smokefree, once the crowds built up everyone started smoking inside, so I was constantly afraid of getting burnt in the middle of the dancing crowds.

Boys Noize at les Trans Ardentes festival in Liege, Belgium

But, rant over, the festival was awesome, I'm now totally addicted to electronic music festivals. I don't think New Zealand has anything comparable, not with 12 000 people coming through the doors and with such high standards of DJs, like Birdy Nam Nam, Cassius and Boys Noize. The German DJ Boys Noize was the big drawcard for me, he's been my favourite DJ for about three years, and I was gutted to miss him playing at Rhythm and Vines back in New Zealand just after I'd flown to Germany last year! He played at 1.30am, and by that stage I'd been dancing for over five hours and I was dead tired and aching everywhere, but I stayed on my feet for the whole set, he was really amazing and actually better live than recorded. I couldn't say the same about Birdy Nam Nam, I thought they were terrible live and I didn't stick around! It must have been around 3.30am when we called it a night, Josh was really the worse for wear and Lena and I were both shattered. But, it was an awesome night, and one of my favourite experiences here in Europe.

Lena and Josh at "the cool bar" in Liege, Belgium

We slept quite late the next day, only dragging ourselves out of bed sometime around 1pm to find Lena's mum had laid that table with pastries and fruit for us for breakfast, so cute! We wanted to show Josh around Liege, but we were all so tired and it was absolutely freezing, colder than I've felt all winter so far, so we kind of dashed quickly through the centre into what me and Lena call "the cool bar" where we always go for a drink, and then we ended up playing a couple of games of pool before heading to Quick for dinner and then jumping into the car to head home. It was so cold I couldn't even bear to take my hands out of my pockets to take photos all day. An hour later with the car heating going full bore, I still couldn't feel my hands or feet, and just as we crossed the border into Luxembourg it started to snow.

Ollie playing dress-ups. Girly or what!

The cold weather continued the next couple of days, with highs of about -1 and lows of about -4, so even though more snow didn't fall, what we already had stuck around. I spent Monday recovering from the weekend, and running a ton of errands around the city. I babysat that night, putting the kids to bed myself which is uncommon. Unfortunately, Pepi's 'Baby Mozart' stuffed monkey was forgotten in Rogier's car and went off to him. Trying not to show my panic, I went through the whole bath/bed routine as normal, and it wasn't until he was lying with me in bed that he realised Baby was missing. I told him Baby had wanted to go to work with Papa, and he only cried for a couple of minutes before settling down, a pretty good outcome considering how attached to that thing he has been!

city hall buildings, Thionville, France

Tuesday I was up early and took to the bus to Thionville, 30km away in France. Remembering that international postage from France was quite cheap and knowing that nothing (ciggarettes, alcohol and petrol excluded) can be described as cheap in Luxembourg, I looked into the price difference last year and found that I could post up to 7kg in a pre-paid box from France for 40euros, compared to paying 160euros to post 7kg from Luxembourg. So, before Christmas I lugged 14kg of presents and crap I wanted to ship home over the border on the bus, discovered the handrawn map I copied of Google was useless and wandered aimlessly around town until I found the Tourist Office, and then spent a whole hour in the shop sorting everything out with a english-speaking man who told me that his daughter had gone to New Zealand on exchange, and reported it to be 'boring, with nothing to do'.

Thionville, France

I looked around me at Thionville, a town of 40 000 with nothing special and no exciting nightlife or activities of its own, and had to wonder where in New Zealand she had been living. Thionville was so unexciting, I didn't even mention going there in this blog. This time however, the town was covered in snow, and even the most boring and basic of places look pretty under snow, so I walked around for a hour or so taking photos, until the cold really got to me and I jumped on the bus again. Back in Luxembourg, I walked from the train station into the city centre to photograph the Petrusse Valley in between.

Petrusse Valley, Luxembourg Ville, Luxembourg

Arriving back home, I noticed that some of our neighbours had shoveled the snow of their driveway and the pavement. With it being sunny during the day, but still so cold, it was really icy and Rogier had hit the rubbish bin sliding while backing out the night before, and because I've never shoveled snow before I thought it would be fun to give it a go. I thought wrong! Shoveling snow is hard work, that stuff is damn heavy and it took me forever to work out how to break up the ice, rather than just trying to scrape it off the concrete. I won't even tell you how long it took me, but I was pretty proud of my effort.

So, not a very interesting blog post I know, I'l do my best to get out and about a bit more in February!

Photos from January are here. I've also just gotten into Twitter in a big way, you can follow me here.

January in Luxembourg Part I

Ollie's cake

So, after a pretty uneventful New Years, January is turning out to be a little crazy as I try to jam in as many things on my 'To-do-before-leaving-lux' list as possible.

I spent the first week of January working on a birthday cake for Ollie's second birthday. I made him a train cake, and it took me a bit of planning, three trips to two different supermarkets, several hours spent making three separate cakes, and then a whole afternoon to decorate them. The finished cake was pretty cool though, so now I'm trying to work out what I can make to top it for Pepi's fourth birthday next month.

Vianden

That Friday I headed out for a day trip with Josh, my American friend. He hasn't seen much of Luxembourg beyond the city, so we drove through the Bambesch forest behind my place, through Diekirch and Ettelbruck, up to Vianden on the German border. Our detour through the McDonalds' drivethru for coffee was entertaining, I don't think Josh's american english is easy for people here to understand, so I ended up leaning over ordering in German, and we received two very black, very sugarless coffees at the end.

Ceiling inside Vianden Castle

I had been to Vianden in September, but we didn't really stick around for long. It has the most beautiful and biggest castle in Luxembourg, home of the Counts of Vianden, whose descendents eventually ended up as part of the Dutch Royal Family. It dates back to the 11th century, got trashed over time, was inhabited by Victor Hugo in the 1870s, and was the last place in Luxembourg to be liberated from the Germans after WWII. The castle has been undergoing restoration ever since the 1970s. This time, Josh and I actually went inside the castle and had a look around. The guy selling tickets was funny, he complained that the total was smaller than they usually allow for a credit card sale, allowed it anyway, and then spent ages complaining about it. This seems to be on par for Luxembourgish customer service, they will normally help you, but they will make sure you know they're not happy about it! The castle is pretty cool, but it seemed like we were missing out on some vital information like a map, so we spent a lot of time wandering around trying to work out what things were. Information panels that were only in French and German provided me with a good chance to show off by translating them making shit up for Josh. You can go right down to the foundations of the castle which is kind of cool. We finished off the afternoon having a few beers in a pub out there.

Josh and I went out clubbing on Saturday night, so having a house full of guests and excited kids on Ollie's birthday the next day was interesting. The cake went down well, and Ollie was a real cutie all day - he's just grown tall enough to reach the door handles and has worked out to open them, but mine is a little bit too high, so that afternoon he pushed his little chair underneath it, climbed up and opened the door, and then came and sat on my bed just chilling out with me for quite awhile. We've just begun toilet training him, which has been very cute as well - he's so proud of himself!

Devnull at Rocas

This last weekend has been kind of crazy, Jacquie was away so I spent Saturday helping Rogier with the kids and made a last-minute decision to go skiing the following day, so I ran around like crazy for a couple of hours trying to organize everything for that, tidy the house up a bit and cook dinner for them before I headed off to Josh's to cook dinner for us there. Alex and Steve's band, Devnull, had their first gig that night at Rocas, so we went there. I'd sworn I would be home by midnight but the drinks were free and the night seemed young (and someone thought it would be funny to lock me in the backstage room) and I didn't end up home until 2.30am.

Driving down to La Bresse skifield in France

7am the next morning I was up early to go skiing with Josh. I was not feeling fantastic and Pepi coming downstairs to hang out with me while I was getting ready didn't help, he has just suddenly gotten into the 'but why?' phase and kept asking for an anatomy lesson while I was running around like a hungover headless chicken trying to sort myself out. Eventually I tumbled out of the door into Josh's car, and we were off to Le Brasse, the biggest skifield in North-East France (so still pretty small, bout the same size as Rauris was). It's about two and a half hours drive from Luxembourg, further South than Strasbourg, and Le Brasse is actually only 20km from Le Markstein where I went skiing one day last year.

Me rocking the aviators on the lift with Josh

Rogier had been kind enough to lend me all of his gear, his boots fit my freaky size 45 feet perfectly, although his skis are a little long and heavy for me, and I definitely looked resplendent in his too-big beige colored jacket, oversized mittens and some random aviator sunnies I found in the cupboard! Visibility was a major issue for me all day, so I might invest in some goggles this year, they seem to be the only thing I can never manage to borrow or hire. It took me a hour or so to get really comfortable again, but by the end of the day I think I'd improved marginally on where I was at last year, and the only fall I had was tripping over and whacking my head in the carpark! I really need another day or so this season if I really want to improve my skills, rather than just maintain them.

La Bresse, France

La Bresse is ok, much bigger than Markstein and I think about the same size as Rauris, but the snow isn't great this year and several of the runs were closed due to a lack of snow (not that that stopped us going down them!). I think learning at Rauris really shaped my skiing preferences, I prefer really long runs so that I don't have to get on and off the damn lifts all the time, and I prefer pistes that have sharp curves and drops in them like Rauris did, rather than straight and flat slopes that are only really good for speed like La Bresse has. I should be more sensible with my time and money, but I'm dying to go again this season, so I might see if I can head down that way again, although I'd be keen to check out a different skifield. The region is quite pretty though, its more hilly rather than alpine, and apart from a strong wind at the top the weather was perfect so the snow covered trees were really beautiful glistening in the sun.

Pepi "take a photo of the plane on my shirt!"

I've now only got about seven more weeks left in Luxembourg, and it's starting to scare me a little, as there is still quite a bit I would like to see and do before I leave. On the other hand though, I'm ready to get to Amsterdam, as I'm eager to discover somewhere new and have a change of scenery and lifestyle. Like I've said before, Luxembourg is a hard country to settle down in. Because there is such a large expat community of people who are always coming and going here, Luxembourgers tend to stick to themselves and the expats tend to keep their friendships pretty superficial. I was at an Internations event (for the expat business community) one night and when I told people I was moving to Amsterdam, everyone said it was a good move. Luxembourgers don't have the best reputation among many of the expats I've met here, one said to me that night 'Luxembourgers are like Dementors, they're all gloomy and depressing and if you get to close, they suck the life out of you'. I posted the quote on Facebook and got a pretty angry reply from a Luxembourger, which didn't really do much to prove that they have a sense of humor. On the other hand though, many expats here are so negative about the people and the country that they're hard to be around too! But anyway, seven more weeks...


More photos from this month are here.

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..

It's snowing!

I was excited on Friday to see that the weather report looked like this:

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, rain+snow. Cool.

On Friday night it snowed. I went outside at 2am and then freaked out because something was falling on me, I thought the roof was breaking apart or something. Unfortunately it didn't really stick and when I woke up on Saturday morning the world was still green, although it was freezing cold and smelt like snow.

Stupidly I forgot all of that when getting dressed to go out on Saturday night, and it wasn't until I opened the door wearing high heels, a short skirt and a top that goes see-through when wet that I noticed it was seriously snowing! Knowing I would miss my bus if I changed, I headed out anyway, and 50m down the road decided I was already over the snow!

Sitting in the bus, and later in the bar, listening to the french, german and spanish being spoken around me and watching the snow fall down among the old buildings and christmas decorations was pretty cool though. I think I've never really been out and about while it was snowing, like I've gone out to play in the snow, or ski, or even to walk to school or whatever, but I guess it normally snowed at night, or we thought it was so bad that we stopped everything we were doing and huddled inside. So, it was quite a cool experience to just take the bus into town, spend a few hours drinking and dancing, and then take the late-night bus home while the snow was falling all around me. Have to say though, high heels+snow+cobblestone streets = seriously bad idea. Through in my propensity for general clumsiness and you're in for some real trouble!

I had the kids the following morning and was really hoping that the snow would stick. Luckily it did, and the kids didn't notice it until around 8.30am, and then I managed to drag out us actually getting out of the house until 9am. I threw them in multiple layers of clothing and put my ski pants on myself and out we went.

For two-year old Ollie, this was his first snow, and he walked out of the door and just stopped and stared with this "what the..." look on his face! It took him a bit of persuading to get amongst it. There was no holding Pepi back though, we got straight into making a snowman, which turned into a huge drama as Ollie got really into the 'ball' and got really upset that we were just using him for the snowman. Heaps of tears, so I made him his own snowball. Two seconds later, it was broken on the ground. More tears. Another snowball. More tears. Another snowball. Pepi had commandered my gloves as we couldn't find his, and my hands were freezing, and Ollie was howling so loud I swear the neighbours all hate us now!

Here's the snow from Ollie's perspective:

"Um, Claire, whuck is all this white stuff?"

"It's cold, it's wet. Girl, what are you doing to me!"

"BALL!"

"Baaaaalllllllllll"

"I want a snow ball!!!!!"

"Hmm, this throwing thing looks like fun"

"Ahaha, payback time, nanny"

Finally Pepi and I managed to distract him with snow fights, until Ollie worked out he could actually throw the snow back at us (previously these fights have been pretty one sided!) and I got outnumbered by them, we all got wet and cold, and it really was time to head inside and make hot chocolate. It was so cool though getting to see Ollie really experience the snow for the first time, and I can tell we're going to have a lot of fun out there in it during the next month!

More photos of the snow in Luxembourg Ville and the kids are here.

Mainz, Würzburg, and Mainz again - catching up with the AFS German Interns

Accordian bus!

I know Hauke and Emil as they lived in NZ for a year in 2008-2009 working as interns at the AFS National Office for their German Civilian Service. I landed back at Frankfurt Hann airport on Friday afternoon and caught the bus back to Mainz. Despite Haukes offer to come and meet me at the train station, and despite it being dark and me only having taken 
this tram to the house once during daylight, I had insisted I could catch the tram and find the way myself - luckily I could! We had dinner about 7pm (I wasnt hungry and couldnt eat much) and Hauke went to sleep around 9pm (I wasnt tired and couldnt sleep). 

Roman aquaduct ruins

Around 11pm I got really, really hungry at 2am still couldnt sleep - thanks Spain! Saturday was pretty cruisy, we went for coffee and lunch with some old friends of Hauke from Göttingen who were in town, and then checked out his university - I got to ride on an accordian bus for the first time! Even Haukes embarrassment couldnt dampen my excitement. Haukes university is probably the ugliest I have ever seen, but we made up for that by walking home past some ruins of a old roman aquaduct. 

Raclette

The rest of Saturday night has become a bit of a blur. Hauke works as a bartender and is currently learning cocktails, so we trotted off to the supermarket in search of spirits and fruitjuice that we could mix. Unfortunately, I think mixed far to many spirits and not enough juice! We had dinner with his flatmates, Raclette, which is a method using a electronic thing with a heated stone on top for cooking meat, and a grill directly underneath where you put the cooked meat with cheese and potato and other stuff to melt. Quite cool, and the drinking continued with the flatmates. We played the same game that got me into trouble in Austria, with the dice and the numbers and me not knowing the rules and therefore constantly losing and having to drink, and at some point tumbled out the door with them into a tram to town. Hauke and I headed to the bar he works in again, and from then onwards the night is a bit messy. I know we got home around 6am, so when I woke up four hours later to catch my train I was still in less than perfect condition. I will spare you all of the details, except to say that I missed my train, puked in places I shouldn't have, was miserable all day, and swear that I will never drink the night before I travel to a new location ever again!





I arrived at Würzburg late and still sick but happy to see Emil! We headed back to his and spent the rest of the evening recuperating, going for a really long walk along the riverside and catching up. Monday morning we headed up to the Festung (Fortress) Marienberg, built in the 700s AD, reconstructed in the 1600s and used as a castle for Prince-Bishops and as a fort. There is a really good view of Würzburg from up there. On the way back Emil introduced me to a kind of pancake (sorry I forgot the word!) for lunch at a cafe on the riverside, and then I headed out to a small town, Bad Kissingen, to catch up with Claire, a French girl who had been in NZ on an AFS 2-month exchange in 2009 and is now doing a full-year exchange in Germany. This was an interesting train trip, as I didn't really know where I had to 

Catching up with Claire Chervin

catch connections from and the local trains don't have english translations like the bigger ones do, and it freaked me out a little to arrive in this tiny station and find Claire wasn't already there, but luckily she was just running late! It was really cool to talk about Germany and Germans with someone else who has an outsiders perspective.


Tuesday morning we headed to the Würzburg Residenz, a palace from the 1700s that is now a UNESCO heritage site. I quite like the marble used in it, and the huge stone foyer with a vaulted ceiling, but it made the place really cold! Emil went off to uni and I wandered around exploring and shopping for awhile, I found a New Zealand shop run by a German woman who hasn't lived in NZ but reckons NZers are much sunnier, upbeat and happy than Germans, 

Würzburg Residenz

and is therefore trying to bring a little of NZ into Germany. I have been hanging out for marmite, so I admit to paying 10euro, or about $20 for a jar of vegemite, the closest she had. I also ordered lunch for the first time by myself, admittedly just by pointing at something on a menu and hoping for the best, but I am still quite impressed with myself! Hand gestures also go a long way!


Wednesday morning we woke up to a little bit of snow! I checked out the Kulturspeicher museum, only the art half was open but I really liked that, all artworks done by people who had come from or lived in Würzburg. The smaller works portraying Würzburg itself impressed me more than some of the big, more famous stuff Ive seen here recently. Würzburg 

houses on the riverside in Würzburg

really is quite pretty, the buildings are different to further north, no framework on the houses, but they are all different colours and I like how the line the river. There are also a huge number of churches here that survived or were rebuilt after the war.


After another successful attempt at ordering my own lunch I said goodbye to Emil and headed back to Mainz. My first train was late, so I missed my connection, and as I was standing there searching for the next one on the board some quite scary-looking Germans actually came up to me and asked if I needed help! Made my day! I headed back to Hauke's to dump my stuff and went out to enjoy the snow some more, walking back into town. Hauke is a big patron of the Irish Pub here, and I wanted to see what he is always talking about, so I killed time waiting for him to 

Apparently 1 doesn't mean first...

finish at uni by sitting there chatting away to the owner. I find it weird now to talk to someone who has English as a first language! We finished off the night by going bowling with some friends of his, again our identical shoe sizes caused much disbelief and later a few laughs. My attempt at bowling was no laughing matter! I can't believe how poorly I did, on our third game I actually sat on 1, i.e. 1 pin for three or four rounds. Hauke reckons my arm physically isn't straight!


Tomorrow I am off to Colonge, hopefully our sobriety tonight will mean I have a much mroe succesful departure from Mainz this time around, and can enjoy my night there before I head into Belgium on Friday.


Anyone who wants to check out the video we made of Hauke skiing, its on facebook here although you might have to be friends with him to see it due to his privacy settings.

Würzburg, Festung Marienberg on the hill