When is a city not a city?

Jeroen and I visited the "city" of Maassluis on Saturday. It seems most of his mum's family lives in this quaint little village so we combined a bit of sightseeing with a family visit :-) In the photo here you can see (l-r) me, Jeroen's aunt Wil, Jeroen, and Jeroen's uncle Ben. Wil is the sister of Jeroen's mum Bea, and Ben is Bea's twin brother.

Maassluis is situated in the west of the country, between Rotterdam and the North Sea, and despite it's population of about 32,000 it actually has the right to call itself a city! It is so funny for me (coming from a "real" city of nearly 4 million) to hear that these little settlements call themselves cities :-)) But it seems that "city rights" are some kind of medieval phenomenon unique to this part of the world, with the privileges granted by the local duke/count/lord back in the day. These privileges were usually related to trading and making money (something the Dutch are pretty good at!), and seemingly not related at all to the size of the settlement. That would explain why the smallest "city" here in NL only has 40 residents!!!

Jeroen's aunt and uncle (Wil & Noud) live in an 8th floor apartment right on the river in the west of Maassluis so the view is pretty cool. We spent the afternoon/evening sitting on the balcony watching the ships pass by on their way to the massive harbour of Rotterdam. Across the river, and in the distance in both directions, all you can see are cranes, wind turbines and oil and/or gas tanks. Sounds totally industrial I know, but it is actually an interesting, ever changing view. That combined with the white swans swimming by, the rabbits frolicking on the grass below, and the frogs croaking in the nearby pond made for a relaxed place to sit and watch the world pass by.

Alli xxx

What's black & yellow and furry all over?

A real live bumble bee :-)) I saw one in the back garden this afternoon, and "he" was soooo cute - big, fat, round and VERY furry! It was about twice the size of the normal honey bees I have seen in Oz and didn't have a stinger, so appeared very friendly.

He looked just like a sweet little bee from a cartoon or kid's story book :-D

Alli xxx

I'm excited!

Yay, we finally managed to "crack the code" of the bizarre Ticketmaster UK system last night to buy two tickets for a Prince show at the O2 Arena in London (used to be the Millennium Dome) on 9 September. Ticketmaster has been playing funny buggers and has only been releasing random blocks of tickets every now and then, and you basically had to be lucky and log onto the website at the right time!

Needless to say Jeroen (being the huge Prince fan that he is!) is VERY excited :-) The show is on a Sunday night, but we will fly over Saturday morning and back again on Monday evening. So look out London here we come! Handy having two incomes hey!?

Alli xxx

"The day of the Lifesong"

Here in Nijmegen we are lucky enough to be able to celebrate Mothers' Day with a bizarre, only in NL music festival - De dag van het Levenslied.

I can only describe it as a totally tongue in cheek Eurovision-style music festival. Basically every act (all 28 of them yesterday!) dresses in bizarre outfits, looking like everything from glam rock revival bands to 1960s girl bands. The music is generally tragic, tear jerking schmaltz, with the singers bemoaning their lot ie their girlfriend has just left them, they have become an alcoholic, they will never find love again etc etc The songs are mostly covers of tried and true old time favourites so EVERYONE knows ALL the words and loudly sings along :-))

See pictures below to get a bit of an idea.

Alli xxx

I got it :-)

The job at the travel company that is!!!!

Yep, as of 1 June I'm back in the world of the gainfully employed :-)) I start work at a company called SNP (a bit like Intrepid Travel back in Oz) in the flight reservations section. They have given me an initial contract for 7 months of 32 hours per week. If everything works out they will offer me a permanant fulltime contract, and there is a possibility of working together to develop their Australia program - hahaha! Yay, I'm soooooo excited :-)) And the office is just around the corner from home - a quick 10 minute walk :-)

Check out :

http://www.snp.nl/ProductGroups/invariant/portal/portal.aspx

for a better idea of what they (oops, we!) do.

Alli xxx

It's a conspiracy...

Once again NL has failed to make it to the "final" of the Eurovision Songcontest :-(

Last night 28 countries competed in the semi final for the 10 remaining available spots in Saturday's final. I watched a bit of it - I did see Edsilia Rombley's (NL's entrant) powerful performance (oh oh, starting to sound like Molly Meldrum!) and I liked it! What's not to like about a pop song sung by someone with a powerful voice, looking funky in an orange dress and accompanied by 4 sexy female dancers in white hotpants?

Anyway, rumour has it that the eastern bloc of Europe made deals with each other to get enough points to go through to the final. Not that far fetched considering the countries that progressed to the final are Belarus, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, Georgia, Latvia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Moldavia. I feel a bit bummed that Edsilia didn't make it. I was looking forward to having my adopted country to cheer for on Saturday night. Now I don't think I will even watch it. Hah, that'll teach 'em!

Or maybe "our" entry just wasn't weird enough!

Alli xxx

Still so much of the world to see!

And I thought I had travelled a bit and seen something of the world, but I've only seen 7% (17 countries) so far! See below for a map of "my world", with the countries I have visited in red.

Or, just click on the link below to create your very own map:

http://www.world66.com/myworld66/visitedCountries

Alli xxx

Not much happening here

Things are pretty quiet here at the moment. Although I have had three job interviews in the last 10 days! Two of them were for native English speaking customer service roles (one of which I found out yesterday that I didn't get), and the third is for a flight reservations agent at a travel company here in Nijmegen. Needless to say I've got my hopes pinned on that one! Luckily I won't be required to speak or write fluent Dutch, but it was funny that during my interview (conducted mostly in Dutch I'm proud to say!) I was given a little "test" to determine how well I can read :-)

Monday was Koninginnedag (Queen's Day) and we spent the afternoon at a park here sitting in the sun, listening to free music, and generally enjoying the festive atmosphere. Today is Dodenherdenking (Rememberance Day) and tomorrow is Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day), so there will be a two minute silence this evening at 8.00pm (even the air traffic at Schiphol is stopped for two minutes!), lots of solemn ceremonies involving war veterans, and old war movies & documentaries on television. And tomorrow, yet another free outdoor music festival. Life's just all go, go, go!

We are now at about day 42 without rain, and for Dutch standards that is a drought!! Don't laugh. It's actually quite serious and there is already talk of failing crops, massive price rises on fruit/veg etc and there have been plenty of "bushfires" breaking out all over the country. Sounds strange I know when you compare it to the drought in Oz, but it's all relative I guess.

Alli xxx