Canal Cruise Take Two (this time with dinner)

Last night we went on a dinner canal cruise organized by work (no, not the same as the one we missed on Valentine’s day but kind of similar). It was pretty cool, but the moving boat wasn’t exactly conducive to getting good photos.

Here's a couple. At the end of the night, we also nicked off with all the flowers from the boat. Winner.

Best meal I’ve had in ages though. For sure.

More museums and yet more shopping

On Sunday I got up early and headed into town to go to Anne Frank’s house. I’d been told that it can get pretty crowded so you need to be there at opening time to have a good experience there.

Well I arrived at about five past, and had just a short wait on my hands before getting in. A british tourist group was in front of me, and mostly they powered through while I stopped to read things, look at things, etc so it wasn’t too much of a hassle. It was an amazing place! I haven’t actually read the book (or any of the companion books which have been written since) but I definitely want to now!

On the way there, while taking a picture of the road sign to Anne Frank Huis, I got distracted by a sign saying ‘Homomonument’. At first I thought, oh haha, the Dutch have used the wrong English word again, this is funny so I’ll take a picture of it.

So I stopped off there after Anne Frank’s house and found out that they had actually used the exact right word! It was a monument to 'commemorate all women and men ever oppressed and persecuted because of their homosexuality'.

And it’s always full of flowers.


After that I hit the Amsterdam Historic Museum and learned about how they build land rather than having a war about it these days – you just push the sea back further! My manager lives on an island that they only built about 5 years ago. This is space age stuff, really. Amsterdam Historic Museum was great, but I think I’ll go again when I’ve been here a bit longer and know the city better.

In the afternoon, I got the best deal ever on a pair of skechers (half price of half price) and eventually Cherilyn and I had to go home purely to avoid spending any more money!!

What happens when you go to Maastricht

On Saturday Cherilyn and I hit the shops in Maastricht – hard. We got up (kind of) early and drove there (just over 2 hours south).

When we first arrived, we found a parking building that was underground, so we went down the ramp, but then ended up in a massive traffic jam! The park was full, so it wasn’t giving out tickets to any cars unless another car exited the lot! We sat there for a good fifteen minutes, listening to our newly made road trip compilation CDs and getting jealous of the people behind us who were eating chips as they waited. We finally got in and parked my tiny car in the one spot that was open at the time.

We had been told that Maastricht had good shopping, but we weren’t prepared for what we got! While it had all the regular chain shops, they all seemed to have much better stuff in them, and there were also a few one-off shops. We came home laden with bags (and credit card debt). Some massive sales were on, and I found myself with four new pairs of jeans, a pair of boots and a replacement handbag. Whoa!

On the drive home, I stuck my new camera out the window (and felt very nervous about it) to take pictures of the sunset. Here's one:

We stopped off in Utrecht on the way home because it was a town I hadn’t seen yet. We got Burger King for dinner there (the healthy shopper’s obvious choice, haha).

Disposable Holland

Ok… not too sure if these guys have heard about global warming and the impact on the world from all the rubbish we throw out all the time.

Other than the readymade pancakes that you just have to heat up in the microwave (which I love, by the way), there are all sorts of strange things that you can buy here that seem to be a little too far in the direction of convenience.

However….. this latest development is something that we are going to put to good use. At the supermarket, you can buy……. Disposable barbeques!!!!!!!!!!! Yes you buy them, you grill on it once, and then you throw it out! Can you believe it?!!? We are hoping to use them at our farewell party at the end of April.

Woohoo!

Weekend in the Netherlands – Sun 17th

Cherilyn and I decided to go to Zeeland (the province after which our country was named!) and so we set off in the morning. Of course we went via Schiphol to collect a couple of Venti Starbucks lattes.

Now, this is where GPS Bonnie let us down. We weren’t aware that there was both a region called Zeeland and a small town called Zeeland within the Netherlands. Well, now we are. We GPS’d to the small town before realizing that this wasn’t the famous Zeeland after all (and nothing was open since it was Sunday other than this little Chinese restaurant we sat in for an hour and didn’t see a single other customer).








So Cherilyn placed an SOS call to one of the Dutchies she worked with last year (Harry) and he googled a few things for us and gave us advice on what we should do with the remainder of our day. He delighted in informing us that we were over 200km from the sea (despite our intention to visit the Dijks which keep the sea off of the Netherlands) but then did give us a few ideas of towns that were nearby.

First we went to Den Bosch, which is actually called ‘s Hertogenbosch, but is called Den Bosch for obvious reasons. There we saw a big huge cathedral which was beautiful, but we didn’t go in. We took a few photos outside with my new camera (woohoo!) and some of them looked superimposed.

We also found caramel milkshakes!!!!! Quite possibly the only place in the Netherlands to have them – its usually just Strawberry, Banana, Chocolate and Vanilla.

Then we headed back towards home. It was nearing sunset, so we decided to see if we could go somewhere pretty to take some sunset pics (and really test out this new camera). So we input ‘Zaanse Schans’ into the GPS. Cherilyn had been told about this place last time she was here but never went there. So GPS Bonnie instructed us to Zaanse Schans, but unfortunately the route was via an invisible bridge. We arrive at this ‘bridge’ to find that it is still being built (geez, that GPS is really up-to-date!). So we get it to recalculate and it’s a 10k drive to go around! I see why they want this bridge…

So Zaanse Schans is this cute little Dutch village, built for tourists, to give an idea of what the Netherlands was like back in the day when everyone wore clogs. We saw a million clogs, including this really big one.

Zaanse Schans is also the home of this questionable monument – I’m taking submissions/votes on what you think he is doing. Either comment or email me and let me know what you think! Cherilyn and I had our own ideas….. and just note that from front on, it looks a little more questionable than it does from this angle.

I got a heap of sunset pictures which are gorgeous (if I do say so myself) so here is a selection…..

Meanwhile, I signed up for Skype – if you want to skype me then just let me know your skype name!

Weekend in the Netherlands – Sat 16th

This weekend was my ‘do all the museums’ weekend. It didn’t work out exactly as I thought it would. For starters, on Friday night I set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am, so by the time I woke up at 8.10am I was already supposed to have left the house. That put Anne Frank’s House out of the plan for that day, because the lines get really killer if you don’t get there right near opening time. So I plodded into town anyway, and came across the Van Gogh Museum, and went in. There was no line at all, but when I left there was quite a big one! Such good timing.

The museum was absolutely amazing! I can’t say I knew much about Van Gogh beforehand (other than that he was a painter and a little bit crazy). If you’re going, I would fully recommend you indulge and spend the extra 4 euros to get the audio tour (it comes in all sorts of languages). The museum at first seemed really big and I was confused about where I was supposed to be going and in what order, so I got the audio set. It was really informative – for almost every Van Gogh painting there is an audio accompaniment which tells you background to the painting, where he was in his life when he painted it, and sometimes quotes from his letters to his brother when he was talking specifically about this painting. That was great! Plus a lot of the paintings in the museum weren’t painted by him, and you could be easily confused as to why they’re there at all. There sometimes isn’t very much information on the wall next to the painting, so the audio tour definitely came in handy for this reason as well.

Kinga had gone to the Rijksmuseum, so we met in the park between the two for lunch. It was a beautiful day, but it was freezing cold! There’s a temporary ice skating rink set up in front of the Rijksmuseum, which gives a pretty nice photo point – see?

I still have to go to the Rijksmuseum another day.

After lunch we parted ways again and I went to the Diamant Museum!!! It’s such a girly place to go! It tells the whole story of Amsterdam as a Diamond Trading Centre and shows you how a diamond goes from the ground to your finger. They also have movie snippets and a big collection of royal jewels on loan which are displayed on the top floor. Their logo has this white Persian cat wearing a tiara, which is so cute. But I wasn’t feeling well so I accidentally left without buying a postcard of it or anything! Luckily you don’t need a ticket to get into the shop (like you do at Van Gogh) so I can go back and get one later if I want to.

Saturday night I was still feeling rotten, with a headache and just feeling exhausted in general. Most of the others went out for dinner to some restaurant which is on top of the motorway (weird eh) but I stayed home for an early night.

Valentine's Day (aka Day of incredible bad luck)

South African Claire had organised a canal cruise and then a dinner reservation at a Mexican restaurant so that we could have some margaritas!

For starters, half of us were sick. South African Claire (or Saffa Claire) was sick as, but still came. I was pretty sick still, but came too. Kieran pulled out because he was sick. The metros weren't working because of some track malfunction so Cherilyn couldn't make it! Karen, Ashley and Steve were mega late because of the metro issues.

Saffa Claire, Cath and I were all a little bit late to the canal cruise, and so we missed it! Oops! So we (along with Kinga and Ricketts) headed to the restaurant early, in order to get started on the margaritas! Which we did - the first drink was free because of some Valentine's special! After a long wait Karen, Ashe and Steve showed up and we finally ordered our meal (the first lot of us had been at the restaurant for over an hour and a half at this stage! Then, they mixed up our meals and so we didn't get any food for another hour and a half! Just before the food is about to come out, Saffa Claire decides she can't stay out any longer as she's feeling too sick, so tells the guy to cancel her Burrito because she can't wait any longer. He's fine with this, but he cancels BOTH BURRITOS that we had ordered from our table, meaning that 10 minutes later, when the food arrives, Steve gets no burrito! So then they had to make another for him!

Such a debacle. By the end of the night I was shattered and I hadn't really done anything!

At least our canal cruise tickets weren't date specific - we can still go on a cruise at some point!

Brugge and the infamous Belgian Coast

On the Sunday I woke up after 8-9 hours sleep feeling like I’d had 4. This is when I start to realize that my cold is still getting worse and not better – very disappointing! We left at 9 for Brugge, about an hour and a half away from Brussels. Our three-car convoy disbanded early in the trip, and we were left with just GPS Bonnie on our side and the vague goal of finding ‘the church in the middle where you can climb up the stairs to the top of the tower’. We did surprisingly well.

Our first impression of Brugge was pretty hilarious though – while walking from our car to the ‘square in the middle’, Kinga and I found out that there are boy racers in Brugge too. But they play a slightly different kind of music to the hip hop or dance music that you hear blasting from the subs in NZ cars. I am absolutely, 100% serious and not telling a lie at all about it when I say that the boy racer was playing excessively loud….. yodel music. I’m not kidding! Honestly! Kinga will back me up on this. It was the most surreal moment of the entire weekend…


By this time Milli and Kilo were already at the square. Eventually the Saffa-van arrived (Cath, Claire, Cat, Gareth and Jen). They were held up because they were too stingy to pay for parking!

We had a great breakfast, with most of us ordering Belgian waffles (some with ice cream – me!) and a couple of bacon and eggs orders. Kinga ordered a ‘large’ ginger ale and ended up with over a litre of it! He barely made a dent in it.

Brugge is as cute as a button. It is so quaint and pretty.

We walked up 366 steps to get to the top of the bell tower in the centre of the square. At the top you can see for miles. There was a bit of fog (or was it smog) so it wasn’t perfect visibility but it was still an amazing sight to see all of Brugge. It is much bigger than I originally thought. All these little orange houses, stretching out for miles.

Some of the others took a horse carriage ride through the streets. Jen, Gareth and I missed out because we were standing in line to get some fries with mayonnaise (oopsie daisy!). And we saw this giant chocolate stuck to a car! Honestly, it was real chocolate. I touched it. So I hope no one actually eats it - imagine how many hands have touched it!!!



Then Milli proposed a trip to the Belgian coast.... evidently lots of people that she has been working with told her that she absolutely had to go there. So we picked a place that looked like it was on the coast and got GPS Bonnie to guide us there. Unfortunately we picked bad, we got to this port town which had a tiny beach but no restaurants and barely any carparks. None of us could get a carpark so we just called it a day and headed back to our respective homes. The Amsterdam crew stopped off in Eindhoven at my favourite restaurant there, Memories (just for old time’s sake). We finally got back to Amsterdam just in time to pick up Cherilyn from the airport, fresh (haha) back from the London Waitangi Day celebrations.

Germ-infested trip to Belgium

Armed with a head cold each, on Friday night Kinga and I piled into my tiny car (photos to come, seriously give a girl a break!) and drove to Brussels. We avoided traffic by leaving at 7 so we didn’t get to have dinner in Belgium though!

The secret to road tripping in our work cars is that the petrol cards only work within the Netherlands. Outside of the Netherlands our petrol is still paid for by the car lease company (ultimately) but we have to pay the expense ourselves and then claim it back from the company (and given that it’s the Netherlands, who knows how long that will take). So to maximize cash and minimize hassle, the plan is always to fill the car as close to the border as possible and then to make it back over the border again without running out of gas. Now this is trickier than it sounds, for starters neither of us knew how far we would drive before we actually entered Belgium, so as we passed every petrol station it was pretty much a gamble as to whether it was indeed the last station in the Netherlands. We did ok though, and filled up roughly 20 min before entering Belgium. At this point the road was starting to look curly for me (cos I was so exhausted from all the auditing, hehe) so Kinga took over driving detail.

GPS is a funny wee thing. Generally, I’d say that it is great. A million times more reliable than just printing out directions from an internet site (and not just because it recalculates the journey automatically if you take a wrong turn). The instructions it gives you are also usually much more explicit than the internet directions. Sometimes the internet directions say ‘continue along highway A2’ and yet you’re at a fork, and it’s the A2 in both directions and you have to guess which one to take. Our GPS lady, Bonnie, is always saying to us ‘keep left’ or ‘keep right’ or ‘at the fork, veer right’. So helpful. However, upon arrival in Brussels (yes we actually made it and roughly on time too) GPS Bonnie tells us to take a street that has a roadblock. Now the GPS system has a function where you can program this in and they’ll recalculate a different route, but we hadn’t yet found this. So we try to drive around it and end up in the same kind of place on our own, the whole while GPS Bonnie is saying ‘make a U-turn’ and ‘turn around as soon as it is possible’. We muddle our way through, and get to where Bonnie announces ‘you have reached your destination’. Success! And then Kinga says “Uh, this isn’t it”. I’d never been to Milli’s apartment before but he had, so I’m definitely going to believe him on this one. And he’s right. Luckily, we were on the right street, it was just the numbers that Bonnie stuffed up. We were a block away from Milli’s.

Milli had arranged for us to stay in Greg’s apartment while we were there, because the he (and the majority of the other Aucklanders) had gone to London for the Waitangi Day celebrations. Unfortunately for him, he was the only Brussels secondee to not be infected with the head cold we each were carrying into Belgium. Oops! So with no one feeling the best, we had a quiet Belgian beer at the local pub (ok, yeah, I had wine, but the others had Belgian beer) and then headed to bed for an early night (and hopefully some recuperation and regeneration). I had proudly tracked down both Strepsils and the Dutch equivalent of Lemsip lemon drink (Citrosan!) and so was dishing them out to everyone left right and centre.

On Saturday, we went for a walk around the Brussels town centre. Armed with a map, Kilo took us around the city and showed us the sights. We saw the statue of the peeing boy (Manneken Pis):

He's pretty cool. He has over 500 outfits apparently, and they're changed regularly, usually to brass band music!

And we saw some other things - here's Milli and I in Grand Place in the centre of town.

And near the Royal Palace...

Brussels is absolutely beautiful. There are historical monuments all over the place, and the cobblestone streets remind me of the Bourne Identity movie trilogy. And our zippy little car really made me want to get into a high speed chase like they did in the movies. But don’t worry Mum, I didn’t!

The most amazing part of the day was the two churches we saw. Both were really big, and amazingly beautiful. The first one smelt like the catholic incense/smoke stuff (man, I’m a bad catholic for not knowing what this is) and so Milli refused to go into the second one because (and I quote) ‘it will smell like death’ and freak her out. The second one was Saint Michael and Gudula's Cathedral and was incredibly beautiful. It is this huge cathedral, it's bigger and more impressive than any church I’ve ever seen in NZ. It had stained glass windows and monuments all the way up the sides of it and there were at least three different areas where services could be held all in the same cathedral. Although not all at once, because the sound really travels in that place. At the front door there were signs telling visitors to be quiet during services in at least 6 different languages. Down towards the front there was lots of art, all on display. As I was just rounding the last corner and considering leaving, a guy sits down to the organ and starts to play. At this point, I reconsider and sit down in the pews with some other visitors. Then, two girls start to sing with him! They had amazing voices, and the harmonies were so beautiful. The sound carried right up to the stained glass windows at the roof and filled the space. I sat there for ages just listening.

For our last Brussels sight, Milli took us to this great little chocolate shop where we got 500g of handmade Belgian chocolate for just €8.70! Yee-ahhhh!

On the spur of the moment, we went out to Waterloo (where Napoleon was defeated –for further reference see the ABBA song). We saw the battlefield and the Lion Mound, where a monument has been placed and you can get a panoramic view of the battlefield. We were there at sunset and it was absolutely beautiful.

Here's the Lion Mound...

And the view as we were driving away - it was sunset and stunning weather...

And here's me at the Wellington Café! You can see the Lion in the background (very small on the roof)...

We headed back to Brussels to meet up with some of the others – Gareth and Cat came across from Luxembourg and brought with them Jen, a NZer living in Amsterdam, and the South Africans in Amsterdam Cath and Claire came down in their van. We went for Italian (Cath’s third Italian meal in two days) and I ate pizza. Milli and Gaz both ate a whole one. I tried, but failed miserably. Gareth then had this huge crème brulee, which he couldn’t quite handle, so Cath and I finished it off for him.

By this stage I was feeling worse and worse, so was keen for a super early night. So were Kinga and Milli so we all ended up in our respective beds around 11 – on a Saturday night! Pretty poor effort, huh.

Floating Restaurant

Last night we celebrated the Chinese New Year in style – on a floating restaurant! It was this huge four story boat with lights all over it. Ashley, Steve and Karen were the experts and ordered for the whole table. We even had Peking Duck with leek and pancakes! Well, except for Kieran. Kieran ordered just plain chicken, plain rice and plain vegetables. I think he was trying to avoid the possibility of there being some tomatoes in the food (he’s afraid of tomatoes, evidently).

It was a pretty cool experience.

Gebak

On the first Thursday of every month, the Financial Services team put on some Gebak (cakes) and pastries to celebrate all the birthdays of that month. A list goes up on the door of the names of those who are turning a year older with ages and pictures! I am curious to see whether us short-termers get included in the picture thing (given that my birthday will happen while I’m still over here!

The cakes and pastries were amazing, even better than Melody’s leaving morning tea (Sorry Mel!). They’re these huge cakes that are kind of like cheesecake, and little sugar pastries. Everything is also smothered in whipped cream. So good and yet so glad it’s only once a month!

(No piccies as I’m still missing a camera – hoping to purchase soon!)

Cologne Carnival (aka Nuns on the Run)

This weekend was the famous/infamous Cologne Carnival in Germany. Click here to see some info on it from the very reliable source of wikipedia.

Newly equipped with our new car (a tiny Citroen C2 with GPS navigation – woohoo!), Kinga and I set off just after 7am on Saturday. The first thing we realized is that our GPS navigation software didn’t include Germany – doh! Just Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Which is good for other weekends, but mostly useless for this one. Luckily we’d printed out directions from the internet, because we only managed about 20 minutes of following the rest of the crew in the Saffa-van (the van that Catherine and Claire, the South Africans, were issued by KPMG). Andrew R was driving, and it was a bit faster than we were really able to do that early in the morning in our little bug-car. It all worked out well though, and we arrived at our hotel without making a single wrong turn (obviously the combination of great driving and exemplary navigation skills, I say).

The key to Carnival is to get together a big group of people and dress them up in similar costumes. Also handy for trying to keep tabs on the rest of your group. The boys (about 8 of them anyway) stormed the costume shop first, and came across some monk outfits. Executive decision was made, and the boys were all wearing these monk outfits with weapons (swords, battleaxes etc) and later on added some bling (like big plastic medallions, gold coloured of course, with dollar signs). The girls decided to keep in theme, and so we became a group of about 7 nuns. It was kind of appropriate, because one of Cologne’s main attractions is the huge Cathedral in the centre of town. Although I did feel a little blasphemous when we saw a real nun by herself at the train station. Do you think she’s offended by it or do they just think its all a bit of fun? The crew from Belgium had already organized their costumes so we were all anticipating a very interesting clash when the two groups combined.

Cologne being the small town that it is, we ran into the Belgium lot without even meaning to, on a train platform. They were dressed in fluoro colours, the girls with pink and purple sparkly outfits and the boys either in bright pink or orange dress suits, or else in orange inmate style jumpsuits. A few of the boys (actually most of them) had also had a few beers on Thursday night and decided that it was a good idea to shave their heads (or half their heads) in some strange design so were all looking a little worse for wear. When Mike came up to us on the platform at first I didn’t recognize him!

In the afternoon we headed into town to find ourselves a beer tent to call our own. These marquees are just set up around the town. Beer and wine is served inside and they play great german oom-pah-pah music interspersed with regular pop music (though from the 90s). On first arrival, Milli said that she hoped they played Cotton-eye-joe (anyone remember that song?) and then it was about the fourth song after that! Very strange…

Carnival is full of people from almost every corner of the world. I spoke to Germans, Brits, a Greek guy, some French guys dressed like toothpaste and countless other randoms. So many strange outfits, including the chef from the cartoon movie Ratatouille, prisoners, Snow White, superheroes, German villagers, lions, chickens, ballerinas and the scores of men dressed as women (including heaps dressed as nuns!).

About halfway through the night, we were to meet up with the Belgium lot outside the Cathedral and take them to our tent. A few of us went, but first stopped off at a public toilet next to the cathedral (for 50 cents, by the way, pretty much all toilets you have to pay to use and there’s an attendant). While in there, I put down my bag, turned around and it was gone! Camera, all my photos, GONE! Other things, gone too. So upsetting. Luckily no money or credit cards, they were in my back pocket (jeans under a habit, so hot). So we found the Belgium lot then headed back to our tent and proceeded to take a million photos of me with everyone in order to make up for the ones I’d lost!

Eventually as we neared midnight it became apparent that Milli and I weren’t really going to go the distance, and so we snuck off to catch the train home. We stopped off at a kiosk (like a star mart) on the way to buy some water. Unfortunately, we managed to buy sparkling water, not still. Sparkling water is horrible, and German sparkling water was worse than average! So we stopped off at the next kiosk to get some still water, which is where I found out that the change I had been given at the last kiosk was counterfeit!!! Luckily only a five euro but still a big huge pain in the butt.

Milli and I finally made it onto the train with our tails between our legs and were so busy feeling sorry for ourselves that we missed our stop! So we had to get off and get a cab back to our hotel! It was pretty funny when we showed up at the hotel to find Will, Kishan and some of the other boys in the hotel lobby when we had left before them! They were like “Did you walk home?” We probably could have walked in the time it took us to get back, that’s for sure… So I went to my room and hit the pillow and was out cold. When my roommate Cat got back she spent 20 minutes banging on the door trying to wake me so she could get in!

On the Sunday, Kieran and I both wanted to get back to Amsterdam around 3pm-ish, so were going to be leaving a bit earlier than the others. We had a quick look around town (I ate a donut) and then we headed back to the car. We had directions with us and were pretty confident we could do it, because we just had to get back into Holland and then the GPS system would sort the rest out for us. Unfortunately, we got a little engrossed in conversation and missed our exit, which meant that we were on Highway 2 instead of Highway 3, and didn’t realize for roughly 100 kms. When we finally realized we were really low on gas and had no clue where we were. We couldn’t see any petrol stations so we had to pull off into some town and spend 20 minutes driving around looking for one. The one we found had no one who spoke English in it (seriously, Germany are way behind Holland in this respect) and so we had to just fill up and then go on our merry way back in the direction of Cologne! One thing that came out of all of it though is that I accidentally used my fake 5 euro to buy a fridge magnet at the petrol station and he didn’t even look twice at it! So there was definitely a silver lining.

We headed back towards Cologne, now on Highway 1, and ended up coming through some snow and some really gorgeous scenery. Given that my camera had disappeared, unfortunately no photos of that, so you’ll just have to take my word on it. By chance we stumbled across Highway 3 (which we were supposed to be on) and so we got back on it, all the time paying more attention to the directions than before!

All in all, we managed to turn a 2.5 hour trip into a 5 hour trip. We had a bit of a laugh about it on the way though, so it wasn’t too bad. We had to make a few bright side comments along the way, like “Hey, at least we aren’t those people” when we passed some car on the side of the road with a flat tyre.