T+251 & 1/2: i'm not dead yet

as some of you may have heard, there have been terrible windstorms in northern europe resulting in several deaths here in the netherlands. fortunately for me, mine was not one of them. i took the solid advice of staying indoors, aside from a brief foray to de poort for an afternoon repast and to yoga, although i must confess that it was quite a bike ride to the yogastudio: one minute, i could hardly pedal going down hill because the wind was against me and the next, i had the wind at my back and was practically putting on the brakes going up hill (and i use 'down hill' and 'up hill' here in the absolute loosest forms. think 'vague inclines' ...), all the while humming the hurricane music from the wizard of oz ...

T+251: good news & bad news

the good news is that i've managed to upload almost 300 more photos to the photo site. the bad news is, you (if you so choose) have to wade through someone else's boring slide show of "what i did last summer" ;p

the good news is that my back seems to have healed nicely. the bad news is that i also had another injury that was somewhat overshadowed by the slipped disc that has not yet healed. it seems that i also a stretched nerve which is causing numbness down my leg. not exactly painful most of the time, but the numbness is highly annoying and every now and then, it shoots out a wee jolt to let me know it's still there. apparently, the only thing for it is time & exercise and try not to make it too angry so i've decided to get back into yoga.

the good news is that i have tracked down a yoga studio that gives classes in english here in utrecht. the bad news is that it is twice as much as the yoga studio around the corner from my house but gives classes only in dutch. another reason to figure out this damn language!! :)

T+245: 2007, here i come! but let's just catch up on the rest of 2006, shall we?

despite the fact that i didn't really do any 'traveling', december was a decidedly eventful month to end a most decidedly eventful year in the life of bk. the normal day-to-day things occurred as usual: dutch lessons continued, cappuccinos & biertjes consumed at de poort and various other locations around utrecht (but mostly de poort) and all of a sudden, the trees were bare owing to a little rain and a lot of wind. the mundane was, of course, spiced up by some significant events, the first being maren.

since arriving in utrecht, i had been looking for a decent french press or stove-top espresso maker. the dutch, it seems, run more to tea grannies than the coffee demons i am used to on the west coast. as such, the proliferation of tea pots, types of tea and various tea paraphernalia is somewhat staggering and far outweighs that of even the most basic of decent coffee requirements. they do have the standard range of electric coffee makers - which i despise - as well as an adequate selection of high-end espresso makers, but hardly anything by way of a good, reasonably-priced french press. at last, however, i managed to track down a proper bialletti stove-top espresso maker that didn't cost a small fortune. joy!

and then, i made the mistake of showing maren how to operate it. she, who had hitherto been used to the gentle caffiene of nescafe instant coffee supplemented by the relatively innocent cappuccinos of utrecht, was presented with an italian-style jet fuel available at all hours of the day and night and completely under her control. oops.

although maren was enjoying utrecht and her time here, she was still homesick and on the morning of 21 november, i awoke to a maren who had been up all night and had consumed 6 POTS of espresso - and would have had more if she had not run out of coffee grounds! please note: each pot is the equivalent of 6 shots of espresso meaning she had consumed 36 shots of espresso in about 9 hours. by the time i woke up, her poor pupils were buzzing around in her irises and she had already booked a flight home departing that evening.

fortunately, she came back on 1 december and shortly after she arrived, her two friends alice and anna also arrived to spend the weekend with us and see kaizer's orchestra (a norwegian band playing at a club just up the street). unfortunately, the trip home didn't make her feel any better about staying in utrecht and on 5 december, she went home for good. that was a very sad day, but a nice one as well. we went to de poort for coffee and tostis and after, finally climbed the dom toren to have a look around utrecht from on high. after the dom, we met up with our friend donna (from dutch class) for a pint and then i went with maren to schiphol to see her off :(

of course, i saw her again only a couple of weeks later when i was in sandnes for christmas. my first christmas in norway was very fun despite the fact that i was in some fairly excrutiating pain owing to a slipped disc that i suffered in my lower back shortly before i left for norway. i could barely walk and of course, i had booked the cheapest fare with klm which was thus non-changeable and non-refundable and although i begged, cried and otherwise pleaded with them, they would not change anything. no way, no how. the one concession they did give was that they had a golf cart waiting for me at schiphol to ferry me through schiphol and a wheelchair - complete with young viking to push it - waiting to receive me in stavanger. needless to say, when she came to pick me up at the airport, kari laughed without mercy as soon as she saw me sitting in the wheelchair. to add insult to injury, i caught a virus from casper on my second day at kari's house and was up all night hobbling between my bed and the bathroom. it was mercifully short-lived and all over within 24-hours but needless to say, i was far from a happy camper being basically confined to bed and having to take painkillers to get through both day and night.

but, i saw a physiotherapist who advised that movement is good and that i should try to get some exercise so i pushed myself to walk and was actually able to get to the mall for the last shopping day before christmas to finish my christmas shopping. it was not my finest hour in a mall though: i plotted my shopping attack based solely on a bench-to-bench strategy rather than a more prudent sale-to-sale or type-of-shop thinking. basically, if a shop had a bench nearby on which i could rest, that's where i would shop. or rather, hobble to the bench first for a short respite, then a brief foray into the shop to snatch at some goods and wait the interminable minutes for the lazy clerk to ring up the sale and wrap the gift, then back to the bench to to rest some more and spy out the next bench. i swear, i was this close to mugging an old dear for her walking frame! pride & vanity, of course, being the only things keeping me from it.

christmas eve - and present opening - was spent at anne-karin's and was extremely festive, as you might imagine. i thought casper would burst with the excitement! we were even blessed with a visit from a julenisse bearing gifts but unfortunately, casper must have been taking a nap or something because he missed the whole thing. maybe next year. [note: a nisse, or julenisse at christmas, is a typically norwegian creature (swedes call them tomtes). please see the wikipedia article for further description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomte ] the visit of the julenisse was followed by yummy food, dancing around the tree and much present opening and general christmassy festiveness.

by the time i left sandnes, i was hobbling around pretty well (albeit with the narcotic assistance) so i flew to oslo to meet jonne and spend a few days driving back to holland for new year's eve. yes, at last, i have gotten to the new boyfriend. saving the best for last and all that. many of you have already heard rumors of him via conversations over the holidays but finally, here is photographic evidence. he may be as tall as bigfoot but he is infinitely more real and able to operate heavy machinery. or at least a volkswagen passat wagon.

we spent one night in oslo and set off for sweden the following morning which just happened to be an incredibly sunny, crispy and frosty day, full of white trees and complete with a thin layer of ice on the sea. unfortunately, no photographic evidence of this because i had stupidly left my camera in sandnes. we spent a couple of nights in southern sweden (gothenburg & växjö) and arrived at his cousin's house in groningen (in northern holland) late on 30 december. new year's eve was a fairly quiet evening in the countryside, peppered with a few explosive blasts of fireworks from the neighbor across the canal. quiet, that is, until midnight when the whole country exploded. greg & saskia had warned me that the dutch are mad for fireworks on new year's eve but even with forewarning, i was still unprepared for the full extent. and this was the quiet, sleepy dutch countryside! the entire sky was filled everywhere you looked and before long, the smoke & smell of fireworks enveloped the whole country. jonne and i took a walk to the end of the street to take a better look towards the town and i was absolutely terrified: drunken revellers all around us had explosive devices in one hand and lit lighters in the other. not exactly a winning combination. i'll admit that i was cowering behind jonne as i limped along the street, petrified that at any moment i would feel the burning sensation of a poorly-aimed roman candle up my backside. or perhaps it was well-aimed? hmmmm ...

i managed to emerge from the event unscathed and we headed back to utrecht the afternoon of new year's day at which time seasonal stress, long nights/short days, and homesickness finally conspired to get the better of me. ah well, nothing that a good cry and some nice chats with everyone back home didn't fix up in short order.

a couple of days later, i was back in oslo for a visit with tante lita who i hadn't seen over christmas because of my back. i also caught up with maren again who very kindly brought my camera with her from sandnes so i was able to take photos once again. i'm now back in utrecht and ready to take on 2007. but more on that later as i must dash to the shops to buy more toothpaste.

fyi, i am also uploading more photos to the photosite so check there soon.

T+235: happy new year!

a very happy new year to everybody and many apologies for not updating the blog during december. very remiss of me to be sure but apparently neither santa claus nor sinter klass were too put out by it as they were both incredibly good to me. or it could be that those photos of them being naughty with the elves actually paid off. either way, it was a very good christmas season despite being so far from home. i'm working on a full update with photos; unfortunately, i left my camera in norway. i'm off to oslo on thursday to retrieve it and will dish the dirt soonest.

in the meantime, i missed everybody terribly and can't find words to express how much the cards and messages really meant to me. love you all tons!! xoxoxox bk :) *sniff*

quebec is a nation?

we take time out from our regularly scheduled pedantic blather for this pseudo political rant from someone who knows virtually nothing about politics (and quite frankly, rather likes it that way) yet feels extremely rankled by the recent declaration by prime minister stephen harper that quebec be accorded nation status.

and here it is:

as you probably know, i am more apathetic (ok, you can delete the "a" ...) than political; however, i was stunned to hear prime minister harper's declaration that the province of quebec be permitted to form a nation. and apparently, there is some confusion whether or not the nation has to be within canada or not. as a westerner, i am constantly astounded by the seemingly preferential treatment quebec receives within this country. and yes, i am fully aware that i myself am not within canada and have not been for some months; however, i am still paying taxes so i feel my constitutional right to rant is not impeded in any way.

i did some extremely cursory statistical investigation and have confirmed what i had hitherto only assumed, that being that quebec enjoys a 20% higher representation level in the house of commons than bc, alberta or even ontario. in fact, the combined populations of bc and alberta are pretty much the same as that of quebec (roughly 7.5 million) and yet quebec has 75 seats and bc & alberta combined have only 64.

i haven't looked into budgetary allotments but i have a sneaking suspicion that quebec enjoys a larger piece of the federal pie percentage-wise than any province. and yet, they never seem to be satisfied with their lot. quebec is like the spoiled teenager who lives in complete luxury having mommy do his laundry and daddy pay for his computer games yet whines and whines and whines.

and don't get me wrong, i have been to quebec and think it's a fantastic place full of great people; however politically, i say: beat it!! you don't like being part of canada then by all means, leave. and no, you do not get your allowance. and no, you can't take your play station. get a job at the canadian tire - oops! i mean, the quebec tire! - and for pity's sake, grow up!!

and now, back to our regularly rant. er ... blog.

T+189: ik spreek geen nederlands. still.

but at least now i can say i don't speak the language in yet another language. i have also learned about the extraordinary delicacy known as 'pataat speciaal' which is all too readily accessible at the cafe downstairs from the apartment and which must be passed enroute to the video store. maren and i have been consumed by 'six feet under' and have been devouring the entire series the last couple of weeks (with more than a few sides of pataat speciaal). in fact, aside from going to dutch classes on wednesday nights and taking time to go out for maren's birthday last weekend, we have done little else. of course, we were physically incapable of anything other than watching tv the day after maren's birthday.

today is an extraordinarily beautiful fall day, sunny and crisp and after almost 4 weeks in one spot, i'm beginning to get a little restless. don't get me wrong, it's not that i'm not enjoying it here because i am. it's just that my pants are starting to get a little tight so i had better get off my incredible expanding arse and do something. hopefully, it will give me something to write about in the blog which it would seem has become quite dull. not even steven comments anymore *sniff* i guess i'll just retire to the pub. and just in time too because the clouds have started to roll in.

37b(k) twijnstraat

the input for the name of urecht blog was shockingly, appallingly poor. yes, i am referring to you! hence, you have no one but yourself to blame for this shameful effort: 37b(k). this being derived from the address of my new abode on twijnstraat in utrecht where my niece maren and i are living for the next few months. perhaps i will become a private detective and 37b twijnstraat will superced that of 22b baker street in the annals of crime. yes, that's it. a private detective. you may henceforth refer to me as shelock. but without the hypodermic. needles make me a wee bit squeamish.

maren and i officially received the keys to the kingdom on the evening of oct 29 but although it is furnished, there were no linens, dishes, etc so couldn't stay that night and had to return to greg & saskia's until we could make a pilgrimage to ikea to kit ourselves out.

after a rough start to the day (almost losing one of the dogs at the park), maren and i headed to ikea to kit out our new pad. i must say, we really got an amazing amount of stuff for very little money. unfortunately, i could not participate in the glorious unpacking of the goods since greg & saskia had gone away for a couple of days leaving me in charge of the dogs so i had to get back for the evening feeding & constitutional. got back a little later than i had anticipated and was greeted by some very excited dogs, and a big pile of sick in the middle of the floor. apparently someone's tripe didn't sit well today ... the job of the babysitter is never an easy one.

since i'm going to be here for the winter, i figured i would head to the nearest gap to fill up on turtlenecks. i could have sworn that i had seen a gap in town but was mistaken. ah well, there must be one in amsterdam. i checked online for the location and indeed, gap.com proclaims that "you'll find gap stores all over the world." apparently, someone at gap needs some geography lessons because 5 countries does not a world make. so the closest european stores are in france (no help there) and gap.com online ordering only delivers to u.s. addresses. was i to be thus thwarted in my quest? not a bit of it!! at the 11th hour, i got an email from richard stewart saying he would be in town so i made an impassioned plea (as well as an offer of alcoholic beverages) and he agreed to be my turtleneck mule. joy! although i turned down his offer to bring a jaunty beret, a cigarette holder, and a copy of "beat poetry for dummies". at last rich arrived with the goods but unfortunately, gap has completely ruined them and they were total shit. so rich had to take them back with him. oops!

dutch lessons have started and i feel confident i'll be fluent in no time. in the meantime, i've bought a bike so at least i can look the part. it's 'sparta' brand so i have christened it 'sparta piet' after zwarte piet, the original dutch 'bad santa.' he's terribly un-pc but ... when in holland!