Lightning, a new fridge & the Rolling Stones

Yep, it's all happening in little old Nijmegen!! Yesterday, to "celebrate" surviving my first week at work, we became the proud owners of a brand new sexy fridge (see right). It's soooo nice to have a fridge that we can actually fit food in AND a freezer that is not frozen over with the iceberg that sunk the Titanic :-D

And yesterday evening, after our first BBQ of the season, we headed off to the Goffertpark to "see" the Rolling Stones. Yep, they were here, actually here, in Nijmegen! We didn't have tickets for the show, but that never seems to be a problem here. The city tradition is to head on down to the park with kids, dogs, footballs, a comfy seat, a few beers and hang out outside the perimeter fence and watch/listen to the gig. We had a pretty good view of the massive stage and video wall, and the sound was great. Very weird to hear Rolling Stones hits actually performed by THE Rolling Stones and not some dodgy Saturday night pub cover band! Mick Jagger was in fine form, performing all their big hits with his usual crazy energy levels. He even mentioned, in his best Dutch nonetheless, how nice it was to be back in Nijmegen for the third time! He arrived with his private helicopter yesterday afternoon, and landed on the NEC football field; and during their lightning visit, the band also "unveiled" a new street sign (see below).

Speaking of lightning, we had a crazy, intense tropical storm late yesterday afternoon. It was all over just in time for the Stones to come on stage though! At one point during the storm there were 500 lightning strikes in a 50 x 50 km area in the space of just 5 minutes!! Coupled with the biggest raindrops I have seen in a long time bucketing out of the sky, we were very happy to be under the safety of our own roof. Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones support act, did have to cut his act short after just two songs due to lightning striking his equipment; and some enterprising "business" guy with vision made an absolute fortune selling plastic rain ponchos at 5.00 euros a pop!

So, like I said, it's all happening here in Nijmegen :-)

Alli xxx