February 2003

One thing we did at the end of the year, was go to see Sinterklaas arrive. That is the Dutch sinter who comes here on December 5th. We went with Tera, Erwin and the boys to see Sinter Klaas arrive in Holland on the boat. That was the first time I had seen it and it was sooooooo much fun. He arrives from Spain on a boat in early to mid November and then rides his white horse through the streets. Although this one got in a horse drawn carriage. And there were Black Piets everwhere. Cant wait to get the pics back for that. And of course, I had my pic taken with a Zwarte Piet ;) Alison was here for December 5th too, so she got to also put her shoe out for Sinter to leave his chocolates and goodies in. She tried to put out both shoes just in the hope she would get double!

We had a lovely Christmas day, just the 4 of us, and on Boxing Day we had Hans' family over for a traditional English/Aussie Christmas dinner. His parents and his brother and sister in law. They had never had most of the foods like plum pudding, cranberry sauce, etc. Even the pre-dinner snacks were English with apricot balls, rum balls, fruit cake, mince pies, scottish shortbread. They really enjoyed it and loved trying all the new foods. It was hard to get some of the things. I couldn’t buy cranberry sauce anywhere but found bags of cranberries and had to make my own. The turkey I managed to get on order from the local butcher but also had to make my own stuffing, and they don’t have whole or half hams here so I had to get about a kilo of sliced ham which cost a fortune! Normally we wouldn’t have been able to have pumpkin either but a friend had one that she grew in her garden and passed it on, I was ever so thankful. It just wouldn’t have been the same without roast pumpkin. The custard here is a bit different too, it is actually a proper dessert on its own but it still went ok with the tinned plum pudding that I had Alison bring all the way from Australia for me ;) I did find some scottish shortbread and bon bons in a little specialty store that has some English products. But the fruit cake wasn’t a proper one. And our friends from England gave us an unexpected package before xmas that had some other goodies in it. I made rum balls and apricot balls but can get copha here so I couldn’t make any white xmas. But I think it was still a pretty traditional dinner for them and that everyone enjoyed it.

Our new years eve was quiet but very good. Hans worked till 10pm and a bit later we went to the market place in Valkenswaard to watch the fireworks go off at midnight. Now that was scary! You would think I would be getting used to them over here by now but silly us stood in the middle of the market place which is surrounded on all sides by cafes so we were trapped in the centre while they went off all around us! Ali was pretty terrified too as she hasnt been that close to fireworks! Her and I spent a lot of time trying to hide beside the parked cars, it was pretty hilarious really. But they sure were fabulous!!! For those of you in Oz, fireworks are legal and big business over here on new years eve. Some start setting them off all week and on new years eve itself, they start early in the morning and you can hear them going ALL day! At midnight, it is a sight to see as nearly every second house in the whole of Holland has fireworks to set off :) I saw a report on the morning of New Years eve that said that a total of 50million euro had been spent this year on fireworks compared to 45 million the year before. That is about 100 million Oz dollars! And they are pretty cheap too, you can get a whole bag of different kinds for about 10 euro. So you can imagine what the skies look like at midnight.
The snow this year has been rather late coming. We didn’t really have much before new years but in the second half of January, we sure did get some . One Thursday morning we had very heavy snow, huge flakes and it was fantastic. But it evaporated really quick. The next Saturday it snowed all afternoon and evening for about 10 hours non stop. However, it was raining and mostly gone by the time I got up Sunday morning. We also had very big and heavy snow another day, but it was melting on touching the ground and not staying. Sure was nice to see though. The skiing and wintersport activities in Belgium have swung into full swing. The first weekend of all the snow, there wasnt a hotel room or anything available in the Ardennes in Belgium (south of us). And they were predicting traffic jams so bad that many people might not even make it to their destination. All because of people heading to the snow. Alison did get to see some snow for the first time in her life while she was here, but it wasn’t real much. But the main reason we havent had much snow is because when we get the northerly winds and real cold snaps, it is usually clear skies. We are having one of them again at the moment. Tonight is supposed to be -8 and tomorrow will be a maximum of 0. We had some days there when it was a maximum of -6 or -7. Yep, that is darn cold!!! But I love it also.