So…

…here I am and here you are. And they say coincidence doesn’t exist .

I promised some of you a story about a concert we went to, which was about the only blogworthy thing that happened in the past few months. Apart from me breaking my wrist that is of course. Perhaps I’ll tell you all the fun things surrounding that event later.

First the story about the concert. Not an exciting story mind you. I just want to share that wonderful evening with you.

One Friday evening a friend telephoned: ‘we’re going to a concert on the lake tomorrow. We’re sailing the boat to the lake tomorrow morning, will moor it in the harbour near the yacht club and then at around 6 in the evening we’re sailing towards the podium they’ve built on the other side of the lake. Like to join us?’

‘Yeaheah, of course we’re joining you. Thanks for inviting us. Who else is coming?’ She mentioned a couple of people we (hubs and I) knew too. It promised to be an evening to remember.

So well before 6 o’clock that Saturday evening we were at the harbour, found the boat and were greeted by our friends. Everybody had brought a couple of bottles of wine, except for one guy who had brought 4 cases of 6 bottles; 2 cases of red and 2 cases of white wine. He must have been thirsty. It promised to be an evening we wouldn’t remember.

So we set off to the other side of the lake, where a floating podium had been built on the lake and where the Haydn Youth Orchestra would give a concert with guest appearances of students of the local conservatory and singer Izaline Calister (she sings a jazzy kind of South American style of music).

Can’t tell you how lovely that evening was. We drank wine (not the entire shipload mind you), ate quiches, French cheeses and bread, Turkish bread and hummus, salads…

I hadn’t brought my camera because of my physical incapability to shoot photos anyway, but fortunately hubs has an i-Phone (research has been done to find out what people use their phones for and amazingly actually phoning someone was only 5th on the list) and he took some photos I can show you. 

The podium was built on a part of the lake that is surrounded on three sides by apartment buildings and some of the balconies had small groups of conservatory students on them who gave their own mini-concerts, woven into the main musical event.

 

All kinds of small boats (big ones don’t have access to this lake) were still arriving…

The concert was wonderful, the youth orchestra played some really beautiful classical pieces, Izaline sang and had everyone dancing (who knew Dutch hips could swing like that), a really fat bloke who had one drink too many fell from the boat next to us (not in one of the photos sadly) into the fortunately shallow water and kept swinging, hands in the air, up to his armpits in the lake, as if nothing had happened.

It was such a pleasant evening and when the concert ended late that night it was still exceptionally warm and we sailed back to the harbour, looking back to where the concert was…

Sunday Selections #60: The ‘longing for spring’ edition

It’s Sunday again. Time for the Sunday Selections, hosted by Kim from Frogpondsrock. They do, you know.
Anyway, if you have tons of photos hanging around in your computer somewhere, waiting for a reason to be shown to the blogging world, hop over to the rocking frog ponds and follow the almost non-existent rules for joining in.

This Sunday I thought I’d get into spring-mood again and just randomly pick some photos from a folder dated May 2009. Our first foal was born in April 2009 and she, her mom and our other horse stayed for about 6 weeks with the horses and foals of friends in luscious green meadows nearby. The first two photos I shot there. The last three are of our garden and are mainly there to remind me that it will look like that again soon, for it is now in a sorry, muddy state.
Each winter I lose faith and cannot believe that it will ever look pretty, green and flowery again. And each spring I’m proved wrong.
So, this year I’m keeping the faith! And my fingers crossed.

Girl on bicycle

Sorry, my mistake. Meant to publish a photo post on my photoblog and accidentally put it here. If you want to see it, you’ll have to go over to my photoblog (look at earlier posts if you’re there. There are some lovely photos, even if I say so myself).

Picturesque pictures

Yesterday hubs and I went to Groningen city to try and shoot some photos of people ice skating on the canals. The all-knowing weather people had forecasted that thaw would set in later that day (they were right for once), so it was probably the last chance to catch some of the special atmosphere of those wintery days  on camera.
Just last summer we went with friends on their boat through this same canal. The weather then couldn’t have been more different compared to the weather yesterday. As soon as we parked the car it started snowing. I wrapped my camera in plastic and we walked to the A-bridge to take some shots of the people on the ice, the boats in the ice and the beautiful houses along the canal.

Funnily enough there weren’t only people on skates on the ice, but also people simply walking. It’s not like this is a short-cut to somewhere. At least I don’t think so. But perhaps they just wanted to see Groningen from the canals and have no friends who own a boat (like us, the smart ones who choose their friends more carefully.)
Doesn’t it look picturesque? Just like in ‘the olden days’, when winters still were winters and they could have an Elfstedentocht. We won’t mention the Elfstedentocht again. It is a sensitive subject… *sigh*


So Junior can see that winters really were winters when he was just a baby and this was the year that we nearly had an Elfste…. You know.


You have to take off your shoes and put on your skates somewhere.


This poor little boy had a sled, but no one to pull (him).
Aww…
We then decided to take a longer route back to the car, to shoot some more photos of Groningen. The town was very quiet, even for a Sunday. I wonder why…






Pretty little street.

Very thoughtful of the girl to have the colour of her hair and Uggs coordinated with the building.

I love it when people work with me and think about what they are going to wear and where they will be when I take a photo of them. This guy did a good job!

Sunday Selections: The doorknocker edition

First I wanted to call this post ‘Big Knockers’, but then I thought it would probably attract the wrong crowd and I hate to disappoint people.

These doorknockers were on different doors in the same street in a small village called Garnwerd, in the province Groningen, here in the Netherlands. I took these shots in July 2010, when I went on a ‘photohunt’ with two of my friends. We had all just finished a photography course for idiots absolute beginners and wanted to practice what we had learned. Of course I practiced all kinds of different settings on my camera and we compared shots during our walk through the village. Their shots often were much better than mine: nicer colours, better contrast, good lighting. At the end of our ‘hunt’, while enjoying a coffee with apple pie on the terrace of the local cafe, it turned out that they had only taken photographs with their cameras in the idiot-proof automatic setting. Which slightly pissed me off, because that wasn’t the point of our little trip, but it explained why their photos were better than mine. I had hoped that we could have interesting discussions about photography and learn from each other, but they gave up right after we’d finished that first course.

Anyway, I do like these doorknocker-shots.

Sunday Selections is hosted by Kim from Frogpondsrock and is the place to post those photos that have been hanging around for far too long in folders on your computer. If you have poor, unseen photos lurking somewhere in the depths of your computer, join in and hop over to the rocking frog ponds to follow the almost non-existent rules.

Emigration plans

This past night it was –18 Celsius here. MINUS EIGHTEEN! Which is –0.4 Fahrenheit. In Fahrenheit it is much warmer. I’m going to buy a bikini and emigrate to a Fahrenheit-country.

Fever!

…in the morning… fever all throuhough the night…

At the moment the entire Dutch population is suffering from the FEVER! The Elfstedentochtkoorts (Eleven Cities Tour Fever) to be precise. We’ve had what, three days with sub-zero temperatures, and you can’t open a newspaper, watch a TV program or turn on the radio and it is the main subject. “Will it happen this year. Is this the year that the Elfstedentocht will be held again?” The last one was held in 1997 mind you so it isn’t a happening that can be organised very often. Hence the feverish enthusiasm of people who can skate and want to skate the ‘tour of tours’ at least once in their lifetime.

For those of you who don’t know about the Elfstedentocht, it is the world’s largest and longest speed skating competition and leisure skating tour (got that from Wikipedia) and it is held in the province of Friesland. Here in the Netherlands. It is about 200 kilometres in length and takes place on frozen canals, rivers and lakes and between eleven cities in Friesland. From Leeuwarden back to Leeuwarden again. Because of the amount of idiots lunatics fanatics people (about 15,000) who put on their skates to skate the entire 200 kilometres in bitterly cold weather, risking freezing to death breaking arms, legs and whathaveyou on the bumpy icy surface, the ice has to be a minimum thickness of 15 centimetres. And that seldom happens. Which is why the last editions of this tour were in 1985, 1986 and 1997. There’s a whole generation who never experienced the happening that is the Elfstedentocht.

Because it is very unlikely that the entire route has the required 15 centimetres thickness of ice, in places where the ice isn’t thick enough (predominantly under bridges), the skaters have to get off the ice and walk on their skates to a place where it is safe to get back onto the ice again. That is called ‘klunen’. I remember that on Koninginnedag (another typical Dutch event, the celebration of the Queen’s birthday) after the 1985 elfstedentocht you could ‘klunen voor een kwartje’ (‘klunen’ for 25 cents) on the traditional Queen’s day flea market in Amsterdam. Some clever guys built a wooden bridge on the pavement and if you paid 25 cents you could put on skates and stagger to the other side of the bridge. I bet they were rich guys by the end of that day. It was an incredibly popular thing to do then.

The things one remembers…

Anyway…

Another thing some people get very excited about when we’ve had about one night of frost is the first ice skating marathon on natural ice. Where will the first one be held?!?!? Traditionally there are three rivalling places in the race for organising this marathon: Hardenberg, Nieuw-Amsterdam-Veenoord (yep, it is one village with three names) and Noordlaren.

Now, Noordlaren often win, because they are smart farmers with the right equipment to create a great, smooth ice surface. A tractor and a liquid manure tank filled with water. And then they drive around the track, spraying a miniscule layer of water every round. And they do this all night long, taking turns in driving the tractor round the track. The other villages just put a load of water on their track and then go to sleep. Which is why the dedicated people of Noordlaren have deservedly won the race for the first Marathon on natural ice this year once again. It was held last night. Noordlaren is the next village from where we live, and hubs loves to watch marathon ice skating (with the emphasis on watch), so he and a couple of friends defied the cold and went to Noordlaren.

I’ve been to watch the marathon two years ago, when it was held during the day. So I thought: ‘been there, done that’ and stayed at home to poke up the fire and make hot chocolate for when they got back.

They have a novelty Zamboni in Noordlaren:

The cameraman didn’t need a fridge to keep his lunch cold…

which is how you blow your nose when you obviously don’t have pockets for a handkerchief

Such fun.

The weather

Just a short, and very uninspired, weather update:

We’ve had so much rain over the last four days or so, that some dikes (not the lesbians, but the  embankments of earth and rock built to prevent floods) are on the point of breaking through. And since the Netherlands are not called the NETHER lands for nothing, for the most part our country actually lies below sea level and only our dikes (no, not the lesbians, although I’m not saying they won’t come to the rescue if needed) are keeping us from drowning, these are exciting times.

Also, there’s currently a Code Orange in place for our part of the country, because of the North-Westerly storm.
I haven’t had much sleep last night. Our house is surrounded by trees and the wind was blowing so hard that it sounded like we were continuously about to be hit by oncoming trains. Or by falling trees.
When they give us a Code Red, we’re all about to die.

Or maybe not.

Fortunately it looks like the weather will calm down. Apparently we’ll not be getting much more rain and the storm will ease after tonight. Phew.

Hope the weather is better at your end of the world.

A late summer’s evening on the water near Zoutkamp

Here’s some great advice. Again. For free. You can thank me in the comments section.

So, here it is:

If you don’t own a boat, make sure you have friends who do.

As you perhaps know (I’ve posted photos of boat trips before) we have friends who do. And on one of the last beautiful summer’s evenings (although technically it was already autumn, but it felt like summer) in September, we were invited to join them again on said boat. You’ll realize how great my advice was if you see the photos of that trip:

 

Check out some other great shots of this trip on my photoblog.

Braver than you’d think

Unless you thought that I’m extremely brave.

Today is colonoscopy day. After drinking litres of apple juice and laxative concoction and multiple toilet visits, hubs’ bowels were empty and he was ready to be dropped off at the hospital. And that I did. No point in me hanging around there for hours to wait for his return, so I went back home.

On my way home I paid a visit to a supermarket to get some odds and ends. I often joke that the parking lot of this particular supermarket is the most dangerous spot in the whole of the province. Mostly because of the very elderly people who still drive a car. Which is nice. For them. Apparently after hundreds of years of driving a car, one has the right to just back up without looking if there is perhaps another car or a pedestrian coming. They probably can’t turn their heads enough anymore. And mirrors… what? Mirrors? No, one just backs up and everyone else in the parking lot should respect the elderly and give them room to manoeuvre. And boy, do they need room to manoeuvre. Where people like you and me just look if we can back up, back up while turning the car and drive away, these people don’t look, they just back up in a straight line, go forward, back, forward, back, forward, back….each time turning the wheel about an inch at the most.

The other very dangerous drivers are the chic housewives of which there are plenty in our neck of the woods, with no hair out of place and a very shiny car to take the children to school or to hockey in. They think along these lines: “My husband is rich, my children are gorgeous, I never have a bad-hair-day, so even though I should give you right of way, I think you should hit the brakes and let me go my merry way.”

And then there is the third category; the young guys who got their drivers license yesterday and think they are invincible. The usually drive a Peugeot 205 or a VW Golf. They are in a hurry, because they need a bag of crisps/chips and a Coke (I mean the drink. I know you think that we Dutch can get marihuana, coke and other mind blowing stuff in our supermarkets, but no. We have to go to a coffee shop for that.).

When I came out of the supermarket and walked my shopping trolley to my car, a guy from the last category (although he drove a Mini) drove into the parking lot. He had to stop for one of the 150-year olds who had been driving back, forward, back, forward and had almost managed to turn the car enough to drive away. So young guy had to wait for what… 10 seconds at the most. But he was hungry and thirsty and in a hurry, and 10 seconds seem like a lifetime when you are 18, so as soon as he could he put his foot down and speeded up to an empty parking space. At an abnormally high speed, even, or especially, for what is the most dangerous parking lot in the whole of the province anyway. So everyone looked at him with killer looks, but then they all went on with putting their shopping in their car.

And now I’ll tell you why I’m braver than you’d think, unless you thought I’m extremely brave anyway.

The guy parked his car, got out of it and I walked up to him. “Can I tell you something?”, I asked, not waiting for an answer. “Do you realize there are often people with children in this parking lot? And those children could run in front of your car. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to run over a child.”

“No”, he said.

“Okay. That’s what I wanted to say to you and I hope you’ll think about it.”

And then I returned to my car and got in, while he went on his way to the supermarket.

Now, don’t think that I didn’t need a bit of courage to confront this guy with his action. I didn’t know him. I mean, he could have been one of those aggressive guys who carries a knife or something. But it turned out that he carried an MP3-player and a phone. And he listened politely.

Perhaps he’ll think about what I’ve said. Perhaps not. Probably not. Well, he probably thinks of me as an old nag who should mind her own business. And of course on my way back home I thought of lots of cleverer things I could have said to him.

But I feel better for having talked to him. And that is a positive result.

Now I have to wait for a phone call from hubs to tell me that I can pick him up from the hospital. And hopefully there will be a positive result at the end of his examinations and scans too. We’ll see.

UPDATE:
They didn’t find anymore worrying things in his colon, apart from two small polyps which they removed. They marked the malignant tumour with ink, so the surgeon can find it easily. I hope it is long lasting ink, because it might take a while before hubs will be operated on. I wonder if they drew a little face on it. I would have done that. But then again my sense of humour is working overtime at the moment.

They warned hubs not to worry if his poo turns blue. That would be the ink. Good to know.

Tomorrow he’ll have a CT scan and a Thorax photo. Fingers crossed.

Cruising the Reitdiep

Coincidentally the Reitdiep is right deep too.

This follows the previous post about the ‘cruise’ through Groningen city on a boat (full) of friends. The boat had to be sailed back to its original harbour in the north of the province Groningen. Most of the people chose not to stay on board for the whole journey and picked a spot to be dropped off (they really weren’t thrown overboard), but I was persuaded to stay on board. And I’m glad I did. We sailed through beautiful countryside and even though at some point it looked like the weather was turning (we wondered if that was the reason we didn’t see any other ship, apart from the Latvians who were following us, and if perhaps they all knew something we didn’t), it stayed dry and warm and lovely.

 

this friendly bunch were going towards Groningen city

 

the captain

 

this mill in Garnwerd featured in my first post (I think) about the 100 Things I Love About The Netherlands

 

could have Photoshopped this into a straight horizon, but who cares…

 

 

 

couldn’t be more Dutch

 

 

very picturesque

 

apparently the owl is still there, weeks later, which makes me think it might not be a real owl

(duh)

 

what’s left of the on-board-picnic (hiccup… burp)

 

okay…WHO put the horizon on this weird angle?!?!? (hiccup)

 

ahh, that’s better

 

and that’s it for this post

 

I’m trying to keep the jungle surrounding our house under control,
so I’m not as much in Blogworld as I’d like to be. I need a clone. Or a gardener.