My Year of Meaningful (2011)

Probably the best thing about coming home from overseas is coming home in the morning. It gives you the whole day to unpack, check email, do laundry, pick up the puppies from the kennel, blah blah blah. And be rested for your first day back at work. DOH!!! WORK!!! But really there's nothing worse than flying into Cork or whatever, at midnight, totally wrecked, and then falling asleep in a pile of dirty laundry only to have to wake up in 7 hours with nothing in the fridge, and feeling completely exhausted, and STILL having to be at the office at 9.

We got back at 11 this morning. While it was no fun to wake up in Amsterdam at friggin 7am to pack and make the airport on time, it's well worth it when you get home.

Everything went brilliantly as far back as last week, seeing as I only had to work 2 days that week. :-) Tuesday the mancakes and I started off our usual holiday ritual as always with our bottle of champagne while packing late at night, instead of well in advance, before we left. This ensures that (a) things get left behind, and (b) it takes 200% longer than it should, but who cares! It's holidays!!! I'm just glad that this time, it wasn't my toothbrush I forgot - rather it was the whole toiletries bag with all our bathroom stuff in it. But luckily, we were only 5 minutes away from home when I realized. So we could turn around and get that. In the end it was really only my double-headphone set for GOD and my sunglasses that ACTUALLY got left behind for real.

Netherlands was it's usual fabulous self. The weather was great, most of the time, we saw nearly everyone we truly WANTED to see, and I got outrageously drunk darn near every single bleedin' day. Typical week in Holland.

This trip was nice because it was a non-inlaw, non-Frisian trip. We divided our time between Nijmegen, The Hague, and Amsterdam. We also segregated our socialising by: Bron & Maurice + Roy; Hannes's Wageningen friends; and Martin & Marjolien + Jéan, respectively.

I think I better break this all into parts. There's a lot to recall. For today I'll leave it at Nijmegen:

Seeing Bron & Maurice for the first time in 4 years was probably the highlight, mostly because this means my reunions with everyone important from my Australian life, is now complete (since leaving in '02). And I love the kind of reunions where you arrange to meet at the train station at say, 2:30, and you just walk around the corner, and see them there for the first time in 4 years, and it's like "hey how's it?" "cool, good to see you! lets rock n roll, what do you wanna do?" . . . . just like that! Like nothing has changed, not even each other's looks (basically), and you pick up exactly where you left off smoooooooooth sailin.

After hanging out in Nijmegen the first night and getting wasted with B&M (just for something different) watching the World Cup matches & catching up, we thought we'd take it easier the 2nd day and rather go to the mommy and daddy's house for lunch and good chin-wagging. Maurice's mommy and daddy are about the cutest little dutch mommy and daddy I have ever seen. They even invited us to stay for dinner too, which was so sweet.




This was well welcome seeing as the mancakes and I had cycled from Nijmegen alllllll the way out to Grave where they live, THE WRONG WAY. It ended up being a 2-and-a-half hour bike ride (not bad for the hangover actually) of around 80 kms. But it was through the Heumense bos (or something like that) forest which was so beautiful and I didnt mind it at all. When we met up with B&M FINALLY at Grave, they came and met us BY BIKE. This must be CAPITALISED considering it is BRONWYN we're talking about here. Never even in my wildest dreams could I have ever seen Bron on a bike. But this is Holland and thats what ye do.


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We all 4 cycled to Ravenstein for a few drinks, which is probably the cutest little old town ever. All cobbles and old buildings and dykes. B hasn't changed a bit-- she's still a white-wine-drinker extraordinaire. And even though her fledgling Dutch makes her sound like the most hilarious assylum seeker on the planet, at least she's trying and she's doing a damn fine job in my opinion. But I have to say, actually BIKING with this girl nearly had me in stitches. Just the surreality of it all. The girl who drives to the corner shop for fags about 200 metres away from her house.




Probably the best thing was seeing how happy she and M. seem to be these days. I felt like they were in a completely different headspace to what I remembered from 4 years ago. It was really sweet. And M. was in really good form - quite social, actually... we had to laugh. It's just weird seeing people in a completely different element. Fun.




Drinks with Roy at night back in Nijmegen again (1st night as well), and not having seen HIM in 4 years was pretty unreal too. He hasnt changed much either, but his english has gotten progressively worse which I had a fun time using against him, Mr. Perfectionist intellectual. He looks great, and is single again, so I've decided to attempt to pimp him off to the highest bidder. As soon as I find a single girlfriend who isn't 10000 miles away.




Next stop, Den Haag.