Dijkfest

Ten to seven on a Sunday evening.

We should be enjoying the relaxation and quiet of sleepy Eemnes on a Sunday. This is the place where the only thing that is open is the church (at the end of our street). But no. It is Dijkfest here, which is (I think) an event that is unique to Eemnes. Inmates of Eemnes have been encouraged to put up artwork in their front gardens. There are several themes - Dutch flags, orange things, clogs, lots and lots of dairy cows. A welcome delight is the naked (male) garden gnome.
Another part of Dijkfest is musical. This unfortunately occurs in a huge pavilion that has been set up one block from our house, and in the Eemnes Jazz Night Club, which is less than 50 metres away from our house on the same block.

Hence our house is currently being bombarded with the sounds of an atrocious brass band, interspersed with a man bellowing something (in Dutch) on a microphone. This is due to some event being held in the pavilion.

I think this is slightly worse than the "Kinderfest" which was held last Wednesday, starting at 12.30, just when Edward fell asleep for his afternoon nap. Kinderfest consisted of Yelling Microphone Man for 20 seconds or so, followed by the sounds of dozens of screaming, cheering Dutch children, followed by Yelling Microphone Man... and so on for an hour or so. Thankfully once Edward is asleep, he is asleep.

The last two nights we have been subjected to Free Jazz Concerts (starting at 9pm and continuing with no break at all until the early hours of the morning). These are so loud that it sounds like we have the radio on too loudly inside our double glazed house. I am hoping that we don't have a third night of Jazz because my temper is wearing extremely thin. I've spent too many hours in the last 48 hours lying in bed, desparately tired, being subjected to some idiot singing their lungs out, and wondering if it would be possible to take matters into my own hands and cut the electricity supply to the Eemnes Jazz Night Club.

September already!

Happy first of September everyone!

We're in the middle of a very relaxing Saturday. So far we've had 2 big Skype sessions with Adam's family in Newcastle, done the weekend's supermarket shopping and an awful lot of websurfing.

On that note, I think I have developed an internet addiction. I love reading blogs of other expatriate housewives, some of them make great reading. I'm also addicted to looking up recipes as we left all our cooking books in Australia. And we realised last week that the Cook & the Chef can be downloaded and watched on the internet. Fabulous! We were going to have another Cook & Chef episode today, as a Saturday treat, but the ABC website is down. Oh well, I'll try again later.

Now about our internet. Our internet (which is provided 'free' via our neighbours - the "Gs" - who are also the son & daughter-in-law of our extortinate landlord). It managed to be broken all last week. Every time I tried to log on I got an error message (in Dutch) that said there was a security problem.

It's great being married to someone who works in IT. Adam managed to get me into gmail, which was very nice, and he also found a sneaky way to log into his work system but that was for emergencies only.

And we couldn't bother the neighbours about the internet being broken because Mrs G's mother died the week before and I hear her yelling at her children every afternoon. She is wearing full black and it would have been tasteless (and a bit scary) to complain about the internet. So we waited, and waited... and to my delight, yesterday it fixed itself.

Oh dear, Edward has now developed the ability to remove his nappy. He has just trotted over and handed the offending article to me and is running around stark naked. It's good that the house has wooden floors, and that we are only renting it!

Happy September everyone, it feels like a big milestone for me as September is a whole month closer to when we go home.

Bruges

To finish Stephen's visit off in style, Adam took a day's leave and we headed to Bruges for a short holiday. It's a lovely place, full of chocolate shops, beer shops and shops that sell lace. The canals are very peaceful and curve around the city.

Edward developed a bit of an upset tummy and barely ate anything for 24 hours. So much for my fattening him up regime.

Bruges

The Laren Duckpond

Today is Sunday. Having saved various bits of stale bread (and some decaying spinach), we took Edward to feed the ducks at the Laren Duckpond.

The Laren ducks love us!

We were greeted with vigorous quacking as soon as we got out of the car. The ducks were so excited that about 20 of them climbed out of the pond and milled around our feet, while the other 30 or so swam towards us, with great expectations.

I discovered the ducks really don't like spinach. They will eat it if there is nothing else on offer. On the other hand, ducks love to eat stale bread.

Dear Edward is very brave. He didn't really appreciate being put to stand on the ground among 20 hungry, quacking ducks. To his credit he didn't cry (or indeed move). Rather, he stood rooted to the spot in front of Daddy's legs, shaking with fear.

We now realise that hungry ducks are a bit scary for a 16 month old. Don't worry, we rescued him straight away.

A Nice Quiet Week

Today is Friday and the end of a nice quiet week. We were all absolutely exhausted by the end of last weekend and it took until Wednesday to get back to 'normal', whatever normal is for us.
Yesterday my expat friend Copper and her lovely baby Maddox came over for a play. Poor Edward woke from his nap to find visitors in the house. He spent half an hour first hiding behind my legs, clinging to me for dear life, and then quietly hiding behind the large lego box, looking at his feet. Then he recovered and had a very nice play. By the end of their visit he was bringing Maddox toys to look at and thoughtfully putting them in front of M's hands (M is quite young and is just beginning to roll over).

I think the Dutch summer is over as we are having weather slightly like a Canberra Autumn - crisp nights. During the day it is overcast and sometimes rainy. Difficult to dry the washing.
This weekend we plan to relax and do nothing, which will be wonderful.

Hamburg - Miniature Wonderland

Adam's father (aka Grandpop) is a model train enthusiast and for the last few months has been planning to show Edward a very large model train exhibition called Miniature Wonderland, in Hamburg. Last weekend we drove to Hamburg and achieved this dream.

We also had great fun exploring the city centre, which had live music, beer & lots of sausages for Adam and GP, and a great many excellent shops. I enjoyed exploring a city that I know quite well, but had not visited since 1999.

On the way back Adam enjoyed some fun, fun, fun on the autobahn. Edward found the long drive very difficult, especially on the way home.

Hamburg

I don't have anything exciting to write, but thought it would be good to do the first blog entry for August.

So what's been happening over here?
Well, yesterday morning we drove Stephen to Amsterdam Central station and put him on the train to Paris. He was extremely excited (well, who wouldn't be?) and it did look lovely, travelling first class. We had to park the car in the most smelly car-park that I have ever been in so far. It was very close to the station but honestly smelt like a urinal.

Then we drove back to Eemnes had a quiet rest-of-Sunday as it was very hot (30 degrees) and sunny. Highlights were me washing the sheets, all of us falling asleep in the afternoon and Edward having an enormous 2 and a half hour nap.

I managed to rectify a small knitting disaster, which was good because I was becoming quite cross with it.

Oh! I do have something interesting to write. I have a pet. Late Saturday night (or maybe early Sunday morning) Adam discovered that we have a hedgehog living in our garden. Now I have my very own Dutch Pet. I haven't met it yet, but I am happy to say that it does eat sliced steak. We are having some sort of turkish casserole, which has some beef in it tonight, so I will see if hedgehog likes turkish beef as much as it does organic steak. We also have some extremely cute field mice in the garden. Adam is feeding them muesli.

Edward is enjoying running around the back garden. I make sure that he doesn't go out there until the sun is quite low. One thing about this climate is that it produces a very nice and soft lawn. Perfect for a little boy to run around on.