Spring Has Sprung

We never really had a proper winter here in the Netherlands, it has just been perpetually grey and cold. So it came as a big surprise to everyone when we woke up today and all of a sudden there were bright blue skies and toasty warm sunshine.

Arjan and I decided to make the most of the weather and went for a good long walk, it was so warm that I had to take off my jumper after 15 minutes! On the way back we stopped in at Oma's and sat in her garden chatting and soaking up some rays.

Hopefully we will have many more days like it and it would be just perfect if we get similar weather when I go home for my mum's birthday next week. 

I hope the weather is picking up wherever you are in the world! 

Carnaval!

In the UK we celebrate Shrove Tuesday, better known as Pancake Day, the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. In other words, we prepare ourselves for a period of giving something up by stuffing our face-holes with delicious sugary goodness.
In the southern Netherlands they celebrate a little differently. The dutchies drink copious amounts, dance to crazy songs about beer and women and have huge parades with bizarre floats, all while wearing ridiculous costumes. This is called Carnaval.
I have celebrated two Carnavals in my years with Arjan and am about to be dunked head-first into my third. We've been joined by three of our Brighton friends who have come to witness the madness and Arjan was so excited that he couldn't sleep the night before they arrived and got up extra early that morning.

The village I'm currently living in is tiny, but this Saturday it will be filled with thousands of people both watching and participating in a big parade, followed by hours of drinking. I will of course be photographing every second of this as proof and will throw together a post once I've regained the will to live on Sunday or Monday.
In preparation for all of this the village residents have been adorning their homes with flags, banners, balloons and posters in the Carnaval colours red, green and yellow. They flutter in the breeze as though restlessly waiting in the quiet before the storm. I went out and took a few pictures today, I'll maybe do a before and after of the devastation that will occur.

The house of this years elected "Prince Carnaval" and "Youth Prince" of the village

This creepy guy gives you an idea of what some of the parade floats will look like

The tent is going up, on Saturday this will be packed with drunken dutchies dressed to impress

Each village has a Carnaval animal, Meers's is the koelekop (tadpole) 

The butcher has gone all out 

These neighbours have 3 stone pillars in their front garden, purely to drape in the carnaval colours once a year.

Living Abroad

My apologies for not posting in forever, there have been severe problems with our internet. Countless phone calls and several technician visits have still not solved the problem and we still only get a connection every now and then. It's lasting longer now, but still not great.  

I never thought I would find myself living anywhere other than the UK, but when I started dating Arjan I knew there was a chance I would end up in the Netherlands sooner or later.
I also never thought I would be homesick, I occasionally felt it when I was in a bit of a mood slump in Brighton, I would just long for my mum to look after me for a while and not have to think about grown up stuff. But now that I'm in the Netherlands I occasionally find myself homesick for the UK in general. 

Obviously one of the biggest issues is the language. Despite the fact that nearly everyone here speaks close to perfect english, I still find it a little disorientating not being able to understand what is going on around me all the time. I am learning dutch, but right now 'learning' is a little more proactive than the reality of it...
I understand a LOT more than the early days and I can pick up the gist of most conversations now, but I still find myself nervous with replying, I'm a bit of a perfectionist so it can be difficult to get me to try things if I'm not 100% sure I can do it with reasonable accuracy. 
One of the main struggles in the language area is the dialect. My in-laws live in Zuid-Limburg, the southern most province and they have their own dialect, which means some things are just pronounced differently and others they have completely different words for. 
This means that when I occasionally try out a sentence on Arjan I can end up with something half dutch, half dialect which does not work. 

One of the other main 'difficulties' I have is the food! I didn't think it would be that different, what with The Netherlands and UK being separated by such a little bit of water, but there are surprisingly few similarities in cooking styles and 'traditional' meals. Brits are big roasters, they like to use the oven for lots of things and a sunday roast is no-doubt one of the best examples of British cuisine. The Dutch, however, are stampot-ers. Basically, they like to boil, mash and combine things (along with a vast selection of deep-fried 'snacks'). There is also a huge indonesian influence over here because of the historic colonisation of the Dutch East Indies, so you can find 'Chinese' restaurants and takeaways in every town, but all the food is actually Indonesian; bami and nasi goreng, krupuk, loempia etc. Brits wouldn't recognise it as chinese at all and even though all these are nice in their own way, as someone for whom London's Chinatown is holy ground this is tricky. 
This results in me having the strangest of cravings. For instance, today I just HAD to make jacket potatoes (something I was never that enamored with previously) because I got a taste for them yesterday and over the weekend I made a full roast chicken dinner (Yorkshire puddings and all) for 7 people with fresh scones for dessert! It was madness, but by golly, did it taste like home. 

Luckily, the travel expenses aren't too bad and there are a few airports I can choose from within a 2 hour drive/train ride. My parents both work long hours and, with my sister at university and my brothers pretty much un-housetrained, my mum is always more than happy to book me a flight home so I can go play house-slave for a little while, get the house in order and feed them a proper meal or eight. 
I love going home and I can feel a weight instantly lifting off my shoulders when I step off the plane and realise I won't have to worry about getting lost in translation for a while. 

Arjan and I are both applying for jobs at the moment in Maastricht, the closest city, so we can work and commute to save up for our own flat again. Originally we were planning on moving to Amsterdam and even had our perfect place lined up (a friend was moving out of his apartment that he kind of housesat for the owners for a very low rent) but then that fell through and we started looking at costs of other flats and I suppose it's the equivalent of London rates, you pay ridiculous amounts for tiny places just because of the location. It just wasn't feasible, to get the place you need the money, to get the money you need the job, to get the job you need to live in the place! It would have been much easier for me to get a job in Amsterdam, there are so many tourists that a majority of bar and shop staff you come across won't speak any dutch themselves. Although Maastricht does have a large university with lots of international students there are still few english speaking jobs on offer, even Arjan who is fluently bilingual is struggling to find something. It's putting a lot of pressure on us and starts a lot of arguments these days, if it goes on much longer we may need to start thinking up a plan C (change our names and head for Mongolia?). 

I see now that this could all sound rather negative, don't get me wrong, I am loving living in the Netherlands, playing with the band is so fulfilling and I'm sure that once Arjan and I can afford our own place again that will alleviate a lot of stresses. But moving abroad isn't without it's difficulties and you should definitely not go into it unprepared. I never thought about registering or insurance or health care, it never crossed my mind that they didn't have something like the NHS in the Netherlands. It's cost a lot and taken many hours to get documents officially stamped and things signed up for, but I'm lucky to have very caring family and in-laws who have done so much in helping with all of that stuff. 

I have met so many brilliant people and made some fantastic friends and I know it can only get better from here and that's what's keeping me soldiering on, that and I'll have some interesting stories to tell the grandkids 50 years from now!