Christmas 2000 (First xmas in Europe)

I know I couldnt have asked for a better Christmas and the New Year was a whole new experience for me also.

I had a White Christmas and it was soooooo beautiful. The first snow fell on Christmas morning and I watched it for hours. Hans had to work on the mornings of Christmas Day and Boxing Day and when the snow started to fall I immediately rang him at work and screamed “ITS SNOWING”. It was so funny. I had been watching the weather on teletext for the entire week before and knew it was predicted and coming. Also, one of my friends from up near Amsterdam rang about 10pm on Christmas Eve to ask if we had snow yet and she said it was on its way because it started snowing in Eindhoven (about20km away) at dinner time. I was so excited I was almost beside myself and kept looking out the window all night. It was my first snow apart from when the family took a holiday down south when I was 7 and a White Christmas is something I have always dreamed of. Christmas Day the snow was very light and didnt leave that thick a coat but I still went out in it and let some fall on me. The flakes are so beautiful and look just like pictures of snowflakes. Each one is in that intricate circular pattern like a tiny piece of lace. That really surprised me and I loved it. Hans and I exchanged gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve as he was working the next morning and he had given me a camera. I got such a surprise and I love it but you can guess what I did Christmas morning, you got it, I ran around taking heaps of photos of snow. That night we had a lovely and quiet Christmas Dinner at home.

The snow on Boxing Day (or 2nd Christmas Day as it is called here) left a much thicker and wider blanket so once again, out came the camera and I just snapped away happily. I took a whole film of snow pictures on those 2 days. When Hans came home from work at 2pm we went for a drive to the forest and a little walk in the snow in the forest. It was all so pretty.
Christmas Eve we went around to Hans’ parents place for dinner with all the family. It was lovely to see the ways and foods of other customs but I have to admit that I still missed the traditional things from home. Absolutely none of the foods here are the same at Christmas. There are no rum balls, white christmas, fruit cake, christmas pudding, crackers, etc. In fact nothing is similar except the turkey. I had made some rum balls and we managed to find some christmas crackers at a shop in Eindhoven so we took both along on Christmas Eve and it was quite funny as nobody had any idea about either thing. They had never heard of or tasted rum balls and everyone but Esther (Hans sister in law) had never heard of crackers. We cracked the crackers and they wore their silly hats and it was so enjoyable seeing them trying this strange stuff from another country. For dinner we had soup and this stuff like a sausage roll but it is encased in bread and not pastry and I really dont like them, they taste funny. There was also pate and bread and a tradition they have when a baby is born. They put these tiny candy balls a bit like 100’s & 1000’s on buttered mini toasts from the store, blue candies for boys and pink for girls. As Christ was a boy, we had the blue candies. The candies are called mice. They are quite nice but it is all so different and interesting learning all the different customs. I did manage to get a hold of a christmas pudding as an English friend went back to spend christmas with her family and she brought a pudding back to Holland for me. I was on cloud 9 when I heard and I have already been getting into it. We put up a Christmas tree but not a real one. The real trees here are true and beautiful pine trees not like we have over there. They are the real thing J Although not real, the cats sure did love it. By the end of 2 weeks the tree had no decorations on the bottom half and I lost count of how many glass balls had to be vacuumed up. The Dutch dont have light up your house or anything like we do but an awful lot of the houses decorate or put christmas lights on trees in their front yard and that is so pretty when you drive around at night.

New Years Eve was another very different and amazing experience for me. We went to Gerard and Esthers place (Hans’ brother) in Riel which is just outside Tilburg. We had a lovely gourmet dinner which is very popular over here and where you put this grill thing in the middle of the table and everybody has their own plate of little pieces of meat and veges are laid out and you help yourself and sort of BBQ your own dinner as you sit around the dining table. It was very nice and very social and enjoyable. Everybody here stays in and has drinks or watches TV etc until midnight and then the streets come alive. Just about every second household has a stock pile of fireworks and at midnight everybody goes out into the street and sets them off. The sky is literally full of fireworks. The next door neighbour and his 2 young sons were letting off those ones that you call for at the show what colour is coming up next and they were also putting the lovliest fountain fireworks in the middle of the street. However, a bus came along just after one of the fountains was lit and had to sit and wait for it to finish and the bus driver just couldnt stop laughing. He had to stop and wait again at the corner then. A couple of doors down plus at the corner of the street plus the young people across the street were letting off rockets left right and centre. The street behind had some of the most spectacular fireworks as did the house on the corner of our street. I was even pretty scared as I wasnt used to being so close to fireworks going off and I kept waiting for somebody to get hurt. Midnight, though, is only when most of the fireworks go off. They actually started going off at 10am here in Maarheeze and a friend from Hoorn in the north said they woke her at 8am on New Years Eve and they continue here and there all day. At first I couldnt work out what all the loud bangs were at that time of the morning and was looking out the window trying to see what was going on when I realised J Then they continue here and there right up till the afternoon of New Years Day. It was amazing and the Dutch sure know how to celebrate New Years, that is for sure. They also go around wishing everbody in the street Best Wishes or good luck in the New Year. I shook so many hands and people who passed in the street were saying Best Wishes. It was a kind of magical experience apart from being a bit scared. We stayed in Riel the night and when we got back to Maarheeze the following afternoon there were the remains of about ½ dozen rockets sitting on our path and in front of the garage door. This goes on apparently in every single street in every single town, no matter how big or small. The whole nation just celebrates that way. The next day the streets are red from all the paper around the fireworks. I also got to try another Dutch tradition too and that is oliebollen which is eaten on New Years Eve. It is not much different to a small roll with sultanas in it but it is deep fried like a donut.
The week before and week after Christmas, Hans and I did heaps and heaps of shopping. I cant believe how much shopping we did. For me, we got all my winter clothes because I was definitely needing them. We got me a few very thick jumpers, several long sleeve tops and blouses, some long pants, pair of jeans, parka, body warmer (parka without sleeves) more thick socks, scarf, very thick long going out coat, a warm dressy suit (with skirt and not pants), and also 2 warm pairs of black leather boots, one zip up and one lace up, as my white sneakers and Queensland shoes were not doing anything to keep my feet warm. We also got me a pair of winter gloves for the motorbike as the summer leather ones werent keeping my hands warm when on the bike at all. I have, however, been wearing the summer ones when out walking or shopping as they are warm enough for that. Oh and I also had to get some warm night clothes and thick towelling dressing gown. This week the weather has improved and is only getting down to around 3-5 at night and up to 9-12 during the day but it will get really cold again and down to below freezing constantly again. Plus the cold here is different to Queensland and feels much colder than it is. However, nobody can believe how soft a winter it has been so far. If this is soft, I am not sure I want to see hard. January is usually the worst weather so lets see what happens.

They also salt the roads here as that melts the ice and snow. All main roads in the town and the highways are salted. Hans was explaining to me how to drive on the snow/ice roads when we went to the forest and offered me a practice but I chickened out. I think I will definitely give that first hand experience a miss. The salting is only done when the temperatures drop to freezing and below and there is ice expected. Or snow, as the snow compacts and turns to ice from the cars driving over it. The car has been playing up the last week so Hans rang to take it in to the service place but they said they couldnt take it for another week as they were so busy with all the body and paint jobs from Christmas week (laughing). Slippery roads and you know what that means. It is really awful when they salt the roads though and you are driving along but suddenly finding it had to see out of the windscreen because of all the salt on the windscreen. The cars dont seem to get rusty though which I find amazing and Hans says they are pretty protected. They sure must be.

I finally got a hold of some pumpkin here. Only problem is it was a gigantic pumpkin and the smallest they would sell me was ½ pumpkin. I agreed but ½ of the smallest pumpkin still weighed over 7kg. Hans couldnt beleive it when he saw me walking out of the shop with it and he just burst out laughing . Of course it was too huge to fit in the fridge then so we rang mum to see if she knew about freezing pumpkin. She told me you have to blanch vegetables in boiling salted water for a few minutes before freezing them. So Hans cut up the pumpkin and I blanched it. You should have seen the kitchen and it filled 4 big tupperware containers to put in the freezer too…..lol. I really think I should try and get smaller pumpkins if you can buy them..lol. Hans had never even seen the inside of a pumpkin let alone tried it but he doesnt mind it. He reckons it tastes like carrot but I dont know about that J We took some with us on New Years Eve so Gerard and Esther could try some too and they really liked it also but nobody here eats it. It is so strange.

The food here is quite good. I cook every night, 7 nights a week. Take away here is just about unheard of. There is McDonalds here and there in the bigger cities and I do know of a Domino’s Pizza in Tilburg plus I went to Subway in Eindhoven and that is the only take away places we know in Australia that I have seen in the 7 months I have been here. I was told the other day, however, that there is a pizza hut in Amsterdam but I am yet to see it. There is one take away chain but it isnt fast food as we know it. Otherwise, as I have written before, there are plenty of salads and the Dutch sure do seem to have a sweet tooth. They also like chocolate sandwiches for breakfast. Can you imagine it….lol. Their foods also seem to revolve around cheese and potatoes which certainly suits me down to the ground and as for their choice of international foods. They mostly go for just Chinese or Indian. And their favourite snack? That is a sausage called frikendella (probably spelt it wrong) or chips with mayonnaise on them. Not just ordinary mayonnaise though but special fritte sauce (that is the word for chips) that has mustard in it too. I dont like it at all. They also love their satay sauce so I usually stick that on my chips. As for potato crisps, there is no such flavours as salt and vinegar, barbecue, chicken, tomato sauce, etc. They dont exist here and neither does Cadbury. Nestle does but milo doesnt. There is no such thing here as Arnotts or Kraft. And no meat pies, the Dutch have no idea what they are. Shopping is a task and a half. When I have wanted special ingredients for a recipe it has been a matter of trying to translate and hoping they are in the English/Dutch dictionary and then trying to find them at the supermarket. They are not always there. I have been to several supermarkets looking for sesame seeds and am yet to find any. It can definitely be quite frustrating. I will send some lists of all the things you cant get here that I love and you can see how different it must be.