Wild times

We're still here! Yes, I'm still dead tired, but slowly recuperating. And you know why? Because although I actually had 2 weeks off work between Christmas and New Year, I managed not to get much sleep. However, we did have a LOT of fun. A fair compromise, I think. My cousin Rachel came for a 3 week visit from Canada. And by now, you all know that we love partying and Rachel is family, so she does too. So now, you know.

Here are a few things we did during that time in a nutshell.

• Dec. 19: Rachel arrives in Zurich, but her luggage doesn't make it through her tight connection in Frankfurt. Gha! But she does get an overnight bag from Swiss with T-Shirt, sleeping goggles, G'Ma undies, a toothbrush and a couple of other necessities. She sleeps at 6pm, up again from 10pm and we chat until 2 am. Good start.


• Dec. 20: Rachel's luggage arrives and later, she and I are rocking & dancing until 2 am to (too) loud music until our neighbours ring the doorbell. Ooops! But we do stay up and chat until 6am...with wine.
  Dec. 24: We decorate the Chistmas tree (never did it THAT late in my WHOLE life.... EVER!), Pack the presents (never did that this later either!), have a late dinner and unpack presents. Bedtime: Decent (for a day off). 2am, or so.


• Dec. 25/26: We decide to go out after dinner (midnight) for some dancing. Great time! Get home at 5am (?) and decide to stay awake for the next 2.5 hours until we bring Rachel to the train station to catch her TGV to Paris.


• Dec 26: Sleep until 2pm after returning from the train station, miss call from TBFs with invitation to dinner, call back TBFs and accept invite. TBF just recovering from a flu, but doing well. Delicious food, wine & great company, but around 1am, eyes (ours) are twirling in butter and leave for home. Invited TBFs for a New Years' Eve Eve's party.


• Dec. 27: Get a sore throat and hints of a flu (TBF? Rachel? Anonymous Swiss in the tram?)


• Dec 29: 9:15 pm. Flu is real bad. Fever. We're at the station waiting for Rachel's train. Delayed by 30 minutes. OK. Call TBFs. Cancel New Years' Eve Eve's party with TBFs because of my stupid flu. TGV arrives, no Rachel. Did she sleep though it? Wait 30-40 minutes. Drive back home in hopes that she just missed the stop. Rachel arrives around 10:30pm. She got off 1 station early. Yep. That's family all right! Have dinner and wine, hoping the latter will kill the damn bug!
  
• Dec. 30: Rachel goes to visit an aunt near St-Gallen. I'm desperately looking for a hotel in some kind of snowy area to learn snowboarding. No luck with the hotels. All booked out.


• Dec 31: Rachel is back home for dinner and we celebrate New Years' Eve together, and got to bed early (2am). I book snow boarding lessons for OX and me for Jan 2nd in Adelboden.


• Jan 2: Leave at 7am for Adelboden and encounter a massive taffic jam. Arrive 30 minutes late. While Rachel hits the slopes, Ox and I really enjoy our snow boarding lesson. Won't be the last time for sure. Addicted.


• Jan 4: Rachel goes to Barcelona.


• January 5: Back to work for us. Blech!


• Jan. 7: Rachel returns from Bacelona. Dinner & wine. Go to bed at 2:30am (again). Remember, we still have to work. Ugh!


• Jan. 8: Back at work feeling a bit woozie. Rachel goes to Lucerne for the day, also feeling woozie. Good. I'm not the only one. Go to bed at a decent time: before midnight. Really! I swear!


• Jan. 9: OX takes me to work by car before droppig Rachel off at Zurich airport.
  Jan. 10: We get to slep in? No way! We left bright and early (07:15!!...am!) for Amsterdam to celebrate Harry's 44th birthday.
  

Since then, we've been snow boarding again and I've rented myself some equipment for the season. That's how much we're enjoying it! A few bruises here and there and muscle ache from the pull-lifts, but what the hell! The turns are getting easier and we'll soon be ready to hit the real slopes after a warm up run on the "Mickey Mouse" run. Tomorrow's our next trip to Adelboden. Yup. We're getting up at 6:30 and are aiming at getting there around 9:00am.

Here are a few picts of our first attempts (with teacher) that Rachel took of us. OX is in the dark top with light pants, and I'm in the light top with the dark pants.

Can you believe it? I never in my dreams thought that I'd start snow boarding at the age of 43. But hey... Why not? You only live once, right? And we're really improving.

No, it just looks like we're going fast. We're not. Fooled ya!

We still want to go sledging with TBFs, though, but need to find a date before the snow melts ;)

Adelboden anyone?

Holland - Easter weekend!

After meeting Ginnie on the Thursday ,we drove back to Harry and Brenda’s for a nice table grill dinner and a chocolate fondue for dessert. Since we had been up since 4:30 am and our coffee machine had broken down the evening before we left, I was dead tired and went to bed around 11pm. I know! Me? On holidays with friends and family and not partying until the wee hours? Unbelievable, right? Maybe we’re just getting older…, or smarter.

After some coffee and breakfast, we decided to go shopping and since the weather was really crap (again wet snow, rain and lots of cold wind), we opted for covered shopping areas. So off we went to Hoofddorp. The stores were not that exciting there, so we took another drive to Amstelveen, where OX bought himself a pair of really nice brown Van Bommel shoes. Shortly after that, I found a pair of dark brown boots just begging to be purchased. A perfect fit. How could I resist?

After our shopping spree, we had a few drinks at Café Hoevel, one of Amsterdam’s brown bars (usually bars with a lot of dark wood that serve simple dishes and of course, beer) along the Prinsengracht. An hour or so later, Brenda went to pick up Pa, Ma and two very good friends of theirs, Frits and Ria for dinner. We had reserved a table at the *Kelderhof, situated about 3 minutes walk from where we were, to celebrate Pa’s 76th birthday. How convenient… (and well planned for the digestive). Once Bren had parked the car, she gave us a call to go over to the restaurant and met them all. We had an excellent Tapas dinner and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I had not gotten the part about not returning home before dinner, so I didn’t have my camera with me. We tried to take a few shots with our cell phones, but with the dim lighting, the quality of the picts turned out too bad to put up. You’ll just have to take our word for it.

Of course, the evening for us younger folk was not over just yet. Ma, Pa, Fritz and Ria took a taxi home and we walked straight over to the Café Heuvel again. Harry and other regulars there lovingly call it “the office” because many of them are into construction and much of the business is conducted there. It’s really interesting place and fun. The owner, Pierre, is an incredible host and makes anyone that visits feel at home. All of a sudden, he’ll take out a huge sausage and a kilo or so of cheese, cut it all in bite-sized pieces, put it on a plate and walk through the café offering some to all his guests. Anyhow, we met a few more people there, had a few more drinks, and came back home around 1:30am. (Don’t worry, Bren was the designated driver that evening, so we got home safely)

The next day (Saturday), we packed our things to drive southwards to Veenendaal to meet up with Jaap and Patricia. But first, we had to drive by Makro, a whole sale service chain, where Brenda and Harry are registered members. Now THAT, my friends, is a shopping experience non-plus-ultra! We bought too much stuff (mostly things that we can’t find here, or just so freaking cheap) that we had to take our luggage on the back seat in order to stack everything in the back of OX’s Volvo V70! I’m still amazed that we weren’t stopped at the Swiss border the next day. Our front wheels must have barely touched the ground from all that weight in the back. LOL!

We arrived at Jaap’s apartment around lunch time and after taking in our luggage, we drove to downtown Veenendaal to meet up with Patricia who was shopping with Jaap’s older sister. Did anybody mention shopping?? Oh, yes. Jaap and OX did some serious spending (it was all 25% off!) in a very nice local shop: Suits and casuals (only in Dutch). By that time, I was getting kinda edgy and went in to the next Esprit store to buy a few things for moi, too.

That evening, we had a really, really great dinner. Jaap had been talking about the **Royal Mandarin for a few years already, and we knew we wanted to go there. OMG! I cannot begin to tell you a) how good it was, and b) how much we laughed. And in this case, the laughter was NOT caused by an excess of alcohol. You’ll see why… soon.

Once at the restaurant, we were lead to an open fireplace, where we took an aperitif and were given the menu card (also in English) to study. We decided to go for the surprise menu. You then tell your Maître d’H if there is anything that you do not eat or are allergic to, and they arrange the menu accordingly. All are pretty fluent in English and so I wonder why their website isn’t. Anyway, the nicest thing is that once you have enough, you simply say: “Stop the food service here, please.” You can eat from 3 to 6 services, not to mention the 2 offered amuse-bouche. They just go on until you say stop.

After 20 minutes or so were taken to our table, chose a nice bottle of wine and the beautifully presented plates started arriving. Just a few courses to let your mouth water… now.

At the end of the meal (the men had a serving more than we did), Jaap started playing around with our camera and was just taking pictures of me without really looking. Unexpectedly, the Maître was standing behind him making “bunny ears” behind his head. You’ll see my reaction to that in the following film.

Otherwise, we laughed so much because of these two clowns.

And what did Patricia think?

Sorry guys, that’s just the way my Jaapie is (I love this shot).

More laughs followed that evening because, in a nutshell:

- Jaap and Patricia ate the four chocolates that were served with the coffee. They brought more chocolates and OX shoved them all in (except for one that I got) one after the other in intervals of about 3 seconds.
- When the fortune cookies came, and after all of the first load of chocolates were eaten, OX’s read his as last: “Don’t worry, Jaap’s taking the bill.” Of course he made that one up, but it came across so naturally that it baffled us all. It became the running gag of the evening. Oh… and guess who took the bill.

The drive back to Basel the next day went very well and got home in 5 hours. No trucks, very little traffic, good weather. What else could we ask for?

*I can really recommend this restaurant. It is fair priced, the quality of the food is excellent, the service friendly and guaranteed that you will sweat garlic for at least another 24 hours.

**Excellent restaurant/service, quite expensive for Holland, but worth every penny. For Switzerland, quite expensive, but not really over the top.

And finally....

The day before New Year’s Eve, O-X drove to the Basel airport to pick up a second guest for our party. Hans is Ma’s cousin and also a very good friend of the family. Although we have often invited him to come spend a few days with us, he finally decided to do so a few weeks after Ma and Pa returned from their last visit in September.

He arrived at our house in the early afternoon and he was amazed to see Ma and especially Pa looking so healthy and relaxed. We opened a bottle of Champagne for the occasion and while I was preparing the goulash soup, I could hear them laughing and chatting away. Hans is such a great entertainer.

Orange-X walked Hans back to his hotel - only 500 meters away - to freshen up (he says that at his age, he needs a his privacy) and came back about 2 hours later. We went out for dinner at Pa’s favourite restaurant. No, it’s not a 5 star, but a simple Tex-Mex restaurant. They have excellent crispy wings there and that’s HIS dinner. You guys would not believe how he literally attacks those poor wings. Forget even trying to get his attention! There is NO WAY his eyes or hands are going to leave that plate! So what makes him happy makes us happy. After dinner we drove home for a last Irish coffee and then all went to bed.

We had many preparations for the New Year’s Eve Party, so the next day we did a few last minute groceries with Hans, dropped them off at home and took him for a mini shopping tour through Basel. We came back around 4.30pm which just left us enough time for the last minute preps. Thanks goodness it was cold enough outside to keep the drinks cold. Our fridges were busting at the seams already, and we knew that our guest would be bringing even more food, so whatever could go out on the patio, did.

At 7.45 pm, Hans was the first guest to arrive and all the others arrived within 5 minutes after that. O-X cracked open a few bottles of Champagne while we women were warming up food and setting up the buffet table. In the cold food department, we had a lovely cheese-crab ball with crackers, an incredible rocket salad with grilled vegetable, foie gras on fresh baguette and a huzaren (Hussar) salad made of red beet, carrots, potatoes, green beans, peas, beef, apple, pineapple and hard boiled egg in a mayo dressing. In the warm food department, we had the pasteitjes, cocktail wieners, Asian style meatballs, ham croissants and pangsit.

Not to mention the goulash soup and the deserts that never made their appearance that evening (I think we all ate too much). Believe it or not, with all that was going on, I completely forgot to take a picture of the buffet table. Now that I think of it, TBF could have done that instead of taking self-portaits. Or maybe Andy? Nahhh. He was busy enjoying his beer! ;)

It was a fun evening and a very active one, too. TBFeven did a bit of Rammy weight-lifting. And look... even Dale stuck around the whole evening. And I thought he'd go up and hide in the bedroom with so many guests in the house.

Orange had lit the torches in the garden and also made a nice fire in our caminero. Short before midnight, TBF, OX and I started opening the champagne for the New Year’s toast, but some of the corks were really stuck, and I felt a bit of panic. Three minutes to go to fill up 11 glasses? We were all sweating and hoping we’d get all filled and handed out before the stroke of midnight. And we made it.

At midnight, the fireworks went off and the New Year’s wishes were spread about in our little community of family and friends. Diana went to get the kids (only a few houses away) to join the fun. A few minutes later, we were all were standing outside warming up around the caminero to watch the fireworks.

After that, we all went back in for a nightcap. In the bar, I even found a leftover of a very special drink called Sortilege. It’s a whiskey mixed with maple syrup and can only be purchased in Quebec. We wanted to share it with all our friends and poured the last ounce or so into a glass and passed it on to all to have a sip. TBF of course, thought he could have more, but the bottle was empty. Sorry, buddy. Maybe next year?

Christmas 2007 flashback

Ma & Pa arrived on December 21st and while I was preparing dinner, Orange-X drove to the Basel Airport to pick them up. Their flight was delayed by 40 minutes, but they made it safely. I was quite shocked when I saw Pa. He was out of breath and his face and feet were swollen from the medication he has to take. Frankly, it looks pretty scary on a fragile man like he is. Amazingly enough, the swelling disappeared after only 2 days. Ma swears it’s the fresh air here and the exercise he gets from all the stairs in our house.

Orange-X had organized a demo wheelchair from his work so that we could take Pa with us wherever we went. At first, he looked at it reluctantly, but soon discovered that it was a great way to travel and keep up with our fast pace. We had added a lamb skin to keep him warm and taken a blanket to cover his legs, and in the end, he really appreciated the wheelchair. We wheeled Pa through Christmas shopping, the groceries, the Christmas market and much more.


But the shopping was only part of the fun. Now it was time for some serious wrapping. Heat the glue gun, out with the bows, the ribbons and colourful shiny paper, hand me the sticky tape and that ornament, too. Creativity at its best. First the girls wrapped the men's presents, then the men wrapped our presents and the parcels were cafully put under the tree.

And this was the result:

There was one "present" however, that was not wrapped. Our new dishwasher! The old one had broken down just a few days before and I didn’t think that we would get a replacement in time for our upcoming New Year’s Eve party. Ma and I had a lot of cooking ahead of us and I was horrified at the thought of having to wash everything by hand. Believe it or not, the new toy was delivered and installed by noon on Christmas Eve.



We spent a quiet Christmas Eve, just the four of us, had a nice dinner and waited until midnight to open the presents.



Between Chrismas and New Year's Eve, Ma, O-X and I spent much of our time in the kitchen preparing for the party. Ma taught me to make these wonderful pasteitjes. She did the first batch as I watched, taking notes in my head, and a few days later, I did the second batch with Ma looking over my shoulder to make sure that they would come out right. And they did! I even learned how to make the nice rim. It's not as easy as it looks, but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty fast. All in all, we made 58 of these beauties. Serve hot with sweet chilli sauce! YUM!


But we didn't stop there. We also made about 60 Schinkengipfeli (croissants filled with finely chopped ham), a hearty goulash soup, and I even baked chocolate chunck cookies.

Orange made his pangsit (fried wontons) with his home-made sweet-sour ginger sauce.


We really had a good time preparing these dishes. We chatted, enjoyed a glass of wine and laughed a lot, too. I don't know if you see it the same way I do, but I find this kind of activity relaxing and very social.

BTW, I'm glad that I cleaned out the freezers before Ma and Pa came over, because by New Year's Eve, they were both cracking full with goodies for the party. And that, my friends, will be the next post.

Has it been that long? or Writer's block?

I sure haven't been a very active blogger lately, huh? I know, and I’m sorry. It’s not that we don’t have anything to report, but things have generally just not been that rosy lately and I just didn't know where to start (writer's block??).

Anyway, since I have not divulged where I work, I can say that I am absolutely B.O.R.E.D. at my present position. The team itself is great, but my work is just NOT fulfilling. Plus, my boss is on travel right now, so I’ve been leaving the office between 3.00-3.30pm because I had nothing left to do. Furthermore, our move to Canada is stagnating (insert the “F” word repetitively right here).

Brenda and Harry were here and although Bren is still on crutches after a knee operation, she managed pretty well walking through Basel. There was somewhat of a tickle fight...

And later "The boys" prepared us dinner while we chatted away. Aren't we two lucky gals?

I’m also happy to report that Selina (O-X’s daughter) has graduated from high school and has been appointed as “exceptional graduate” (her Mum being ill with cancer). She missed out on many hours of lessons because she wanted to be there when her Mom had treatments. No extra help! She will start her RN (Registered Nurse) school in September and wants to specialize in paediatric nursing. Daddy OX is mighty proud of his little girl. Can you blame him? Just look at them; the first official photo of Daddy and Daughter after their reunion:

Selina signing her diploma:

Signed, sealed, delivered. Is that a happy girl, or what?

Then we finally celebrated Pa’s birthday - since he wasn’t feeling well back in March – and I saw Selina for the first time. In case you want to know, she avoided me, but I can’t expect anything else on a first time meet, can I? Still, we had many laughs. Here's OX trying to "feed" (or was it sharing??) one of the ribs I was having with Pa.

Next weekend, we’ll be visiting Heiko and Nicole close to Hannover. That ought to be fun. The weekend after that, we have invited Paolo and Markus (who have just gotten married, by the way) for a BBQ. Let’s hope the weather is good! Then it’s off to Austria for two days with OX alone, then a few days at Pinki and Andreas’, followed by a weekend at Andreas and Suze’s. Did I ever mention that being a social butterfly is VERY tiring??

Nevertheless, we love it. It’s just that our friends and families are all over Europe, so that we’ll need a few weekends after that to just relax and recover. On August 13th, Ma and Pa are coming over for 3 weeks. Yay!

After that, O-X and I are planning a week just the two of us in the first or second week of September. But where?? Turkey, Spain, Portugal?? We’ll see, but we know we both need to spend time away with each other alone.

Good times coming up

If I look back these past few years, the "social season" for us usually start as soon as the days get longer, sunnier and warmer. I find it so much more fun to entertain outdoors. I've always been a fan of picnics of all sorts, from eating simple sandwiches and potato salad on a blanket to the more exotic foods and wines at a nicely decorated table on the patio. I get some kind of a vacation feeling.

We also enjoy planning short trips during the "season". March/April to June is usually a very good time in Europe because of all the long weekends we enjoy. It starts with Fasnacht (Basel Carnival), followed by Good Friday and Easter Monday, then May 1st (Labour Day), Ascension Day and Whit Monday. Depending on the canton, you'll have a few more after that.

We'll be pretty busy socializing these coming weeks (and you all know how much we love that). Here's a short preview of the coming weeks. We have planned a 5 day trip to Austria the week after next to visit our friends Pinki and Andrea, we'll be meeting up with a U.S. fellow blogger on May 27th (I'm not revealing who, just yet), just before that, Andreas and Suzanne will come from Bavaria to visit us in Basel, a trip to Amsterdam the first weekend of June - where we'll miss meeting up with Ginnie by ONE day! - and then Brenda and Harry will come over for a weekend mid-June.

I don't know what's after that yet, but I'm sure that the good times will not stop there.

Stay tuned and have a great week.

Good news!!

What a week! I’m sorry if I didn’t get around to reading you all on a daily basis, but I’m doing my best to catch up. This job is taking quite a bit out of me, but I like it.

Good news: I finally got my computer installed at work on Wednesday (!!), which somewhat increased my efficiency and therefore also my sense of worth. On the other hand, I feel I spent (too) much of my time looking for things on the local database and had to go through an online test in order to have access to the purchasing processing system. Still so many new things to learn, but I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

More good news: On Monday, my Mom could finally go home again after three weeks in the hospital. She’s doing quite well. She's so happy to be at home and I think this fact alone will speed up her recovery even more. She still wearing the full gear and has a nurse coming in every day. Family, friends and neighbours are also checking-up on her regularly and make sure that her groceries are done, cook for her and help out wherever they can.

At this point, I wish to express my thanks to all of those people. I am deeply touched and grateful that they are there for her, and I will never forget what they are doing. Thank you all for your support, love and friendship. Thank you also to all you readers out there for your positive thoughts.