The Riviera in NL??

On this, technically the last day of winter, it was announced that our winter this year here in NL has been the warmest since "they" started making weather records! The average temperature this winter, even despite the little bit of snow earlier in the month, was just about double the normal average temperature; and the average temperature throughout the whole of the previous 12 months was comparable to the south of France!!

Who says the Netherlands is a grey, cold, and wet little country???!!

However, there is a downside to all this too! We are suffering from our own mini "potato famine" at the moment. Yep, the potato crop this season is the worst in about 10 years. Considering the amount of potatoes consumed in this country that is almost verging on a national disaster!! The little guy at our local "friettent" has had to put up a notice announcing that he needs to raise the price of friet (hot chips) by 30% or something! What will all those poor students live on now?

Alli xxx

Carnival (carnaval) Dutch style!

It's that time of the year again, when for 4 days the world is turned upside down - Nijmegen becomes "Knotsenburg", and the burgemeester (lord mayor) & local council are replaced by (this year) Prins Johan I & his band of merry makers. Yep, its carnaval, and no, it doesn't only happen in Rio and New Orleans!!

As of yesterday (exactly 40 days - not counting Sundays!) before Easter, especially in the southern areas of the Netherlands, and in some areas of Belgium and Germany (mostly the Catholic areas) the Carnaval Committee does its hardest to prevent anyone being serious. Alot of towns and villages hold parades of strange, grotesque papier-mache figures on floats, brass bands blast out oompah music, songs are sung, congas are danced, and people dressed in outrageous outfits consume copious amounts of beer :-)) Basically the 4 days are designed as one last orgiastic feast before the "fasting" of the 40 day lent period leading up to Easter.

We just got back from the local parade here in Nijmegen and the photos below give you a bit of an idea. Maybe next year we can celebrate in true style by heading a bit further south and getting ourselves some sort of crazy costume!

Alli xxx

Photos of Nijmegen carnavalsoptocht

I've seen it all now!

Jeroen and I spent a fun filled couple of hours yesterday at a "swim paradise" in Eindhoven :-)) Basically it's a swimming complex that has, amongst other things, a large indoor, heated wave pool with a few water slides. We braved the crowds of families with young children and the groups of cool teenagers to slide and swim in the sub tropical warmth of the complex. You can even swim out to an outdoor part of the pool, which makes you REALLY appreciate the warm water when the outside air temperature is hovering around 4 C !! The waterslides were alot of fun, with my favourite being the slowest of the lot and specially equipped with coloured flashing lights inside the tube as you slide down :-)

We also experienced the excitement of something called a "turbotol" (spelling?). It's a waterslide that ends in a spaceship-looking dome (see photo right) in which you slide around a couple of times before being dumped through the hole in the bottom to the swimming pool a couple of metres below!

BUT, the highlight of the day came on the way back home, on the highway somewhere between Eindhoven and Den Bosch. I can now honestly say that I have experienced NL's premier tourist attraction - an 11 m high statue of Michael Jackson. It stands in the car park of a McDonalds - don't ask!!?? And you can see it here in all its glory. Coming from the land that has a love affair with "big" things I could really appreciate the beauty of the MJ statue ;-)))))

Alli xxx

My school building

I know I promised ages ago to post some photos of my school building, not really for any other reason than the fact that it is such a beautiful old building. Well I had nothing much else to do this afternoon - so here they are!! The building was actually completed back in 1899 (not really all that old for European standards), and was once one of THE most prestigious Catholic colleges in the country! Pity I don't have any photos of the library - it looks like something straight out of Harry Potter :-)

Alli xxx

February = winter

Just like last year - it's February, and it's snowing!! It's now almost 3.00pm and it has been snowing non stop since 10.00am this morning. Our back "garden" looks like a winter wonderland and the city is soooooo quiet.Traffic noise really gets deadened by the blanket of snow. Well, to be honest, the roads turn into one big disgusting, slushy mess very quickly.

I just ventured outside for a brisk 30 minute walk to take a few snapshots (see results below) and came back looking like a walking snowman (woman), and the snow makes such a lovely squeaking noise underfoot. I'm very happy that I can appreciate it all from the warmth of home, just looking out the window, and that I don't have to go to school today.

Alli xxx

brrrrrrr...

Remember me?

Sorry, I've been a bit slack lately and just realised I haven't posted anything for a while. Actually not much has happened lately - we have been keeping out of trouble and really just living the quiet life at home!

As usual the weather is a topic of conversation/news here. Not sure if talking about the weather is necessarily just a preoccupation here in NL or if it happens everywhere. I guess when "strange" things happen (ie droughts, bushfires, floods etc) everyone talks about it, but it often seems to be the first thing everyone mentions here! And yep, another record has been broken!!! We have just had the warmest January on record EVER. A coincidence considering that big, scary report released in Paris during the week officially acknowledging that the earth IS warming up! Maybe even guys like Johnny Howard and George W. Bush will now admit climate change is real. Anyway, we had an extremely short taste of what winter is meant to be like a couple of weeks ago - we actually had 4 whole days of minus zero temperatures! Yep, I even had to scrape the ice off my bicycle seat before riding to school in the mornings. That is all over again now, with the average daytime temperature back up to about 8 C

On our never ending quest to get a house/apartment/flat/more than one room (!!) we spent a couple of hours last Thursday on our day off driving around Nijmegen on a bit of a reccie. We checked out a few different neighbourhoods where we have been applying for houses just to make sure they were ok. As a result we have narrowed our areas of preference and have decided we definately don't want to live on the OTHER side of the canal! I have to laugh - since living in a small city of only 160,000 my concept of distance and travel time has really changed. The other side of the canal is probably way closer to the "centre" than say Northcote is to the CBD of Melbourne but there is no way I could live there, it's just too far away :-)) The whole exercise is pretty academic anyway, with only 3 years on the "waiting list" we don't really stand much of a chance at the moment of getting a house. But it made us feel like we have some control over the situation and gave us something to do on a chilly, foggy Thursday!

We had a fun night out Saturday week ago. Our friend Niek sent some kind of broadcast sms to everyone he knows here in Nijmegen and we ended up with about 15 people going out to Merleyn (a bar that reminds me a lot of Fitzroy). Niek came here earlier in the evening to eat dinner with us, and he then slept the night on our lovely air bed :-)

School is going along ok - I moved into another, higher group two weeks ago and it always takes a while to get used to new teachers again. I try my hardest to speak more, but am still getting pretty frustrated at how difficult it is. My reading and writing skills are so far ahead of my speaking skills it's not funny! Oh well, I just have to keep plodding along and hope one day it will all come together.

Alli xxx

PS Happy birthday Dad :-))