AMSTERDAM AND LONDON

TUESDAY 6TH JANUARY: AMSTERDAM TO LONDON



We had breakfast at the hotel after a lie-in, then went back to Haarlemmerdijk for more of a look around and a cup of tea at teabar. I had green tea with nuts, vanilla, and spices, and OMG IT WAS SO YUM – I bought some to take away with me.



We saw two sets of cousins along the way, too! On the way back to the hotel, we got slightly lost and somehow ended up walking the wrong way! Luckily we realised pretty quickly and eventually hopped onto the tram back and to the hotel with time to spare.



We sat down for lunch in a lovely café, but ended up having to get the food takeaway so we could catch our bus.





We ate the food in the airport, and it was DELICIOUS. Oh my word, the Brussels sprouts and beans cooked with garlic and onion were superb, and the roast pumpkin was delicious. The risotto was good, with whole cloves of garlic and tender but not overcooked pieces of broccoli, topped with slices of pecorino (I think).

At check-in, the assistant called over another staff member and asked her about the discrepancy between the F on my passport and the Mr on my ticket. I told her it was because I’m trans, and she was very accepting of that. “Don’t they change the passports in Australia?” she asked, and when we told her it wasn’t easy she shook her head and said, “It’s your life, I think.” She was awesome and I loved her. The end.

The flight was half-full and very short – we arrived about 20 minutes early. Despite my worries about my cold and the lack of PROPER decongestant, my ears didn’t get too painful. They popped when they were meant to, and so I counted that as a victory to the nasal spray. We got to watch the sun set from the runway in Amsterdam, and then again just as we were coming in over London. It’s the first time I’ve flown that way – we saw the Channel, and it’s true that England and France are very close together! We flew in to London on the north side of the Thames, so we saw the bridges, the Millennium Dome, and various other landmarks. By that stage it was getting a little dark, though, so we couldn’t make out much detail. However, we could see heaps of ice and white patches in a lot of the parks – it was exciting!



M picked us up from the airport in the pitch black of 5pm and drove us home via the chemist, where I picked up some blessed, blessed sinus tablets with pseudoephedrine! My ears started feeling better within half an hour of taking them. Back at the family K residence, A had heated up some delicious soup, and we sat around and had a chat for a while before D and I fell into bed at some ridiculously early hour and slept and slept and slept.


WEDNESDAY 7TH JANUARY: LONDON

Wednesday was a family day – I hardly have any time in London, I’ve just realised, so it was good to see heaps of people. We have one day in London, then to the Cotswolds from Thursday to Monday, Tuesday in London, Bologna from Wednesday to Friday, the weekend in London, then flying home on Monday.



In the morning D’s sister in law came over with her son T and our newest and snuffliest nephew Y. S, D’s cousin, also dropped in to spend the day – she is here from South Africa. The family is in the process of making a video for E and L’s wedding, so a friend came over with a mini-setup (2 lights, camera and mic, etc) to do some filming. Adam arrived for that, so combined with E (the cleaner) and L (the office assistant), the house was pretty full! I escaped at one point to have a nice long bath, and consequently missed H (D’s grandfather) popping in for a visit. L (D’s grandmother) was quite ill recently and had to go to hospital a couple of days ago. She is feeling much better now, but she and H weren’t able to make it to the Cotswolds after all.

I spent a bit of time fiddling with some chords on the piano, to get a small song out (it’s been simmering in the back of my mind since Ameland, but I needed a piano to write it), and D did some admin stuff. However, D wasn’t feeling very good, so he also had a bit of a nap, and I looked after him before we all piled in the car to go to R & B’s house for dinner. I hadn’t been there before, so that was nice. D’s cousins B & A were also there, and it’s always good to talk to them.

B was telling me about the time he spent on a small island in the middle of a huge lake in Germany one winter – it sounded amazing. There are two islands, one with a monastery and one with a nunnery, and the one he was staying on could be walked around in 15 minutes (I don’t know if that’s an exaggeration). When he was there, a heavy mist surrounded the island for the whole week, so he could only see a few metres in front of him at any time. He was there for an osteopathy conference, and really the only other people on the island were nuns and people visiting the nunnery on a silent retreat. It sounded like an incredible (and slightly eerie) experience!

Dinner was very tasty, and I got to meet the ancient cat, who is 20 years old and quite . . . well, I’d say scrawny, but she is so beautiful despite being decrepit that it hardly seems a suitable word. Aww. I do like cats. There were a few in shop windows in Amsterdam, and I took photos of a couple, but most of the pictures didn’t turn out so well!

AMELAND TO AMSTERDAM

SATURDAY

J woke up feeling rather sick – sore throat, blocked sinuses, yuck. This is probably due to a combination of jetlag and long plane flights, the super cold weather, stuffy and overheated rooms, and being surrounded by sick babies and children. Saturday was family day, and so the place was packed. There was something like 150 people at het Zwanewater for the best part of the day. We don’t have any photos, as there was a professional photographer going around and snapping pics most of the day. Saturday night was party night. Some people went to Nes for a birthday, while others stayed in. Most of the slagroom was asleep by 10pm, but the last person got to bed at about 4am.


SUNDAY

Sunday was verrah cold! We tried to go and get some flu medication – we caught the bus in the freezing wind into Nes, but everything except the restaurants was closed. It was bitterly cold and a bit rainy, so we abandoned our half-arsed plans to go and investigate another village and went home instead.




J spent some quiet time in the corner editing photos and talking to the various people who came along to watch over my shoulder, then we helped S & P make dinner. D had a rest in the slagroom, then we played card games with several cousins before dinner. A lot of people had left during the day, so the evening was a much quieter affair. Later in the night we looked out the window and noticed it was snowing! A couple of us ran outside in our PJs for a minute to watch it come down in soft, silent whirls.



MONDAY

Some of the slagroom party were leaving on the 8:30 ferry, so the room woke up at around 7am. A small amount of snow had fallen overnight, and it was freezing outside – even the Dutchies agreed with us on that! We had a nice relaxed breakfast, then J followed the lead of a couple of cousins and snuck into the good bathrooms in the tower suites (vacated the day before) for a shower that didn’t involved pressing a button every 30 seconds, and which could be adjusted in temperature to decently-hot instead of only-slightly-above-lukewarm. LUXURY! J felt almost human – a sick human, but human nevertheless! We finished packing and took our bags out, then decided at the last minute to make some rolls for lunch, which meant we were a but rushed and didn’t quite get to say goodbye to everyone before we were hurried into the van and driven by Nico to the ferry. Whoops!





We took the ferry and bus with cousin J, aunt and uncle S & P, and E and F’s family. E answered our questions about the island, the surrounding water, and Dutch culture. He actually owns a windmill (wind turbine, rather than an old Dutch windmill!), and was given a grant to construct it, but now apparently the government has decided that the turbines are wrecking the landscape and so they’re not renewing licences. I find this sad and a bit odd. It’s not like there’s much landscape to see, anyway – it’s so flat! (Joking, joking!)



S & P left us at the train station, so we went on our way to Amsterdam (with one transfer) with Julia. We enjoyed the frosty, icy scenery (and found lots of places where we thought wolves might be lurking!), J had a nap, and a few hours later we went to our hotel and J went to hers. We agreed to meet up later that night for a curry – we’d all been hanging out for some spicy food for days!



We were staying at http://www.wotif.com/hotels/hotel-nicolaas-witsen-amsterdam.html Hotel Nicolaas Witsen, which is on Nicolaas Witsenstraat, NOT Nicolaas Witsenkade, as a friendly local pointed out as we were wandering in a slightly lost manner along the canal. It was adequate, but nowhere near as nice as the Lloyd Hotel, and although there were no smoking signs everywhere the place still had the unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke throughout. However, it was a private room at last, and we both showered and had a nap before we set off for the Indian restaurant Balraj, on Haarlemmerdijk. We were joined by J, her sister A, and A’s partner C (all members of the slagroom), and we were all satisfied with our filling meal. It was maybe not as spicy as we would have liked, but delicious nevertheless (we should have asked for hot curries given that we were dining in the land of bland).



We also had the amusing experience of being told that it was illegal to sell pseudoephedrine over the counter – instead, we got a nasal spray, which works in the opposite way as a decongestant, and also received instructions in Dutch-English on how to use said spray. Fun times! Anyway, we were almost herded back into the hotel by various locals, who were very excited by the idea that it was going to be minus 15 degrees during the night. We missed that, instead falling into a lovely NON-BUNK bed and sleeping. Mmmmm, sleep.

AMELAND: FRIDAY 2ND JAN

J woke up very early, and started a load of washing . . . well, got in the queue – it wasn’t finished in the end until midday! It’s amazing that the dishwasher is so speedy (it takes TWO MINUTES!) yet the washing machine takes hours.

The washing meant we were stuck at home all morning, even though a big group of people went to hire bikes and go for a ride around the island. We sat in the relaxing lounge with C, K, M D and sometimes A and M, wrote blogs, listened to music, watched M D be cute, chatted, drank tea . . . It was good.


In the afternoon, D and J walked into Nes with C, did a bit of shopping, got some AMAZING 3D POSTCARDS OF THE GIANT EVIL SEAL OF AMELAND. (We don't have any pictures, but you'll have to take our word for it - they were the best postcards in the history of 4eva!) We also bought some yummy cheese so we could have a quiet little picnic away from the crowd at some point.


Had a 4 o’clock mystery meal at the de Jong restaurant and helped C and A with some shopping, while laughing at more slightly inappropriate Dutch spellings (u kunt apparantly means you can).


Walked home in the dark and watched the stunning sunset.

AMELAND: NEW YEARS DAY

New Years Day, as it always does, started off slowly. We awoke around 9:30 (our biggest sleep-in of the trip so far!) with actual daylight streaming in through the curtains - another first for this trip! The view out of the window was totally different to how it had looked the day before – all the ice had melted and the frost had thawed, and green, lush fields surrounded us.


We spent the morning quietly, mingling with family without any particular plans for the rest of the day, until great aunt H came over to us and offered to take us for a little trip around the island. She drove us, and C, through the sleepy village/town of Nes to the beach, which J declared to look just like Sandy Point. Except colder. Much colder. We went for a short walk along the sand, with C and J bravely putting a hand each into the sea, and both came to the same conclusion. Cold. Very cold.


Clambering back into the car, H drove us to the nearby village of Buren, where we stopped for some refreshments at a beach café, where we were offered complimentary oliebollen! The Dutch do like their oily balls.



Then back to base for lunch, which J was delighted to find was vegetarian.

J, along with A-M and L, spent some of the afternoon helping P and S prepare a delicious dinner of leek and potato soup (more of a broth base, rather than a thick soup), veggies and a shepherds pie. D spent the afternoon relaxing, and editing words and music on his laptop, because he could (ah, the joys of modern technology. How we take thee for granted).

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On a shelf in the fridge in the pantry in the kitchen, there sat a carton of perfectly ordinary pouring cream. This apparently innocent item caused much amusement to most of the native English speakers by whom it had been observed. The reason for this seemingly unsolicited merriment was our discovery of the Dutch name for it, printed in large, clear letters upon the side and the top of the container - a name that we and our roommates (L, J, A and C) promptly adopted as the official name for our dormitory. To certify this, we stuck the label on our door, to proclaim proudly (and not at all immaturely) that we are, were, and will always be…

“SLAGROOM”!!!

AMELAND: NEW YEARS EVE

We woke to a landscape made strange with a heavy frost. The ice grew like stalactites in delicate crystals off the remainder of the frost from the day before. Everything was frozen!





The ice on the irrigation channel, which had cracked under heavy use (bikes, chairs, skates, stomping, kids, adults), had refrozen. I took a few more pictures, and was joined by my aunt A for a bit.







After breakfast, Dan and I walked into the nearest village, Nes, with my aunt C and cousin L. The walk is around 2-3kms, but it took us a while because we kept stopping to take pictures!




We met my . . . great aunt (?) T on the way in, and she pointed out the Southern Wright whale jawbone and translated the information sign. In town it was too cold to do much but peek at the old buildings with dates in wrought iron on the outside (17something, 1625, 2001), laugh at the fact that the name de Jong was on the de Jong restaurant, the de Jong bottleshop, and the de Jong bakery.





We stopped in the bakery for chokalatemelk and olliebollen (Dutch new year ‘oil balls’ – a kind of doughnut), then went to the bottle shop and purchased some new year whisky (a bottle of Oban 14 years).




It seemed to be getting colder and colder, and so we set off home. Once we got out of town, we opened the whisky and had a swig to warm us up.







Just off the road was a paddock that was completely iced over, and people had been skating on it for a couple of days. This is pretty special for Holland, we’ve heard, as people haven’t been able to skate on natural ice for over a decade. We headed over for a look, and I was yet again amazed at how easy the skaters make it seem. Even the kids holding onto chairs look more coordinated than I think I’d ever look! At any rate, we went for a good long skate. C and I posed for a photo as we went around . . . heh.



That afternoon was laid back – Dan had a nap, then played with my cousins A, C and E, and I drank whisky with my cousin C standing around a little bonfire we’d made outside. Later in the afternoon, I helped out with dinner by making golden syrup dumplings (though they didn’t turn out so great because we possibly used half non-self-raising flour – we couldn’t read the packets! – and there weren’t enough eggs). Other people made more olliebollen . . . I ate so many. Erk!



It does amaze me, having lived as a vegetarian for 10 years and having a vegetarian house, that so many people base their meals around a big bit of meat with some veges. I guess it’s easier to make a huge bunch of roast chicken and a huge bunch of boiled vegies than to do a meal with all these things combined. Still, it’s kind of odd – the very different diet played havoc with my skin and gave me headaches for the first couple of days . . . or maybe that was the cold! DID I MENTION IT WAS COLD?!

I was shattered after dinner and fell asleep, but not before making Dan promise to wake me up at 10 so I could meet people and be part of the fireworks at midnight. Waking up and getting up at that time was the most difficult thing I’ve done on this trip (which is a good thing, I suppose!). We had a bit of a whisky-off between the Canadians’ Canadian Club and our Oban, chatted a bit, and then went outside at about 11:50 for a countdown and toast. People had bought masses of fireworks, and we set them off for something like half an hour – fun, and slightly scary being so close, but awesome. I’ve never been directly underneath fireworks going off before, so that was a pretty cool experience!

AMSTERDAM TO AMELAND

After posting the last entry, we slept very well - right up to the alarm! We checked out and then got a free breakfast to take away from one of the kitchen staff who told us to GO AWAY, then winked at us as we left with pocketfuls of bread and boiled eggs to eat at the station.



We arrived at Amsterdam Centraal with plenty of time to spare, and ate our breakfast before we hopped on the train for the 45 minute trip to Lelystad. A bike path travelled alongside the train track most of the way there, sometimes veering off to go through towns or around fields. You really could ride around the Netherlands without much difficulty (though I’d personally avoid doing it in such cold weather!). We saw a little wood with lots of deer, several paddocks of sheep and more of cows – but mostly we saw A LOT of ice. Nix was very excited to see so much whiteness! We were even more excited to see some people ice skating on the wee canals around Lelystad . . . real European winter!



J picked us up at Lelystad ("Are you Australians?"), where S and P got off the same train. It was an hour and a half drive, but we went through a little town where people were skating on a pond (a bit bigger than a football/soccer field), so we had to stop and go and have a look. J was very excited, and insisted that we go out on the ice. We were a bit timid, but it was awesome! Underneath the ice we could see the water still moving and the reeds waving around.



That was a nice break in the drive, and even so we arrived at the ferry terminal in Holwerd with plenty of time to spare. We got our tickets and I had a mocha at the café – this wasn’t entirely intentional, but it was what appeared in my cup after I pressed some random buttons in an attempt to get a hot chocolate. It was quite OK with a couple of sugars in it. We also ate apple cake. Om nom nom nom nom.




The ferry itself was comfortable, cheerful and huge. The population of Ameland is something like 3000, and the ferry is licensed to carry 1200 passengers. Clearly the island was more of a tourist destination than we were lead to believe. We braved the freezingness to go out and have a look at the surrounds as the ferry wove through the shallows (a movement you couldn’t feel at all below deck). The horizon was blurred in the haze, but we could see Ameland approaching in the distance. At one point we went through a patch of ice, and I amused DB by telling him that we were surrounded by icebergs. Apparently because there are no currents in this area, and the sea is so shallow, the only movement is the up and down of the tides, and so ice forms quite easily on the surface.




At the other end, J had arranged for her father to pick us up, and he whisked us away to het Zwanewater, where come the weekend upwards of 120 people would be staying. We were slept about 6 to a room, and the place was very warm, with a few different lounge/common areas and a big kitchen. We put our stuff down and had a cup of tea and a bite to eat while saying hello to people.



In the afternoon we went outside and explored a bit. There is an irrigation channel/ditch running alongside the driveway (it smells of frozen cow dung . . . at least that’s what we’ve been told the smell is!), and it was frozen over, so a bunch of kids (both young and old) were skating and sliding and stomping on it. The sound of ice cracking beneath your feet is quite disconcerting, let me tell you!




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Today (Sunday) is our last full day on the island, and as we both have colds we are going to go hunting for painkillers and decongestant in the village. We’ll upload more pics and stories of our stay in the next few days when internet connections are easier to come by! This family is full of Mac fanatics, and so we have about 34879 computers connected to wireless internet. Heh.