Long live the Queen!

Well, it's April 30th today and we celebrate our only national holiday! Queen's Day! So, there will be free markets in nearly every village, town and city. There will be music, there will be old fashioned games and there will be an awful lot of orange!

Happy Queen's Day everyone!!!

In honour

Because she's a darling, even when she wakes me up too early in the morning.

Because she's a weirdo, because she'll only sit on my lap if there's a towel on it.

Because she's a beauty, even with that bigger than normal belly.

Because she still loves me, even though I locked her in my bedroom for a whole day.
Because she's the Queen!

Oh no!

I had a hard day at work. The sun shone while we spent a few hours in the most well-known amusement park in the Netherlands (the Efteling). We had breakfast (consisting of a Sprite, french fries with mayonaise, a frikandel and a kroket. In short: junk food) at 11.30am. We went on a small steam train. I had cotton candy. We saw Sleeping Beauty. We got stuck in traffic on our way back to the school.

When I finally got home I heard a faint miaowing. And I realised I had locked Sophie in an upstairs room. Not the bathroom, not the laundry room, but my bedroom. She had been locked in there from 6.30am without food, water and even more important: a litter box!

So, right now, I am trying to get my duvet (kingsize) washed. It doesn't really fit in my washing machine, so I hope it will be allright. Ah well, that'll teach me to check under the bed and on top of the wardrobe when leaving my bedroom in the morning!

O is for...

Oldtimer

I am not particularly bothered by cars. As long as they get me where I want to go I am fine. If they are bright pink, it's even better (I know I know). But seeing a long line of all those oldtimers in the Irish countryside even made my heart flutter a bit!

It was a rally and the cars and their drivers came mostly from Spain and Portugal and they all looked so proud of their vehicles. I was driving my coach at the time and all of a sudden I saw one of them. I stopped the coach and let him pass and just as I was about to continue driving, I saw another one coming and another and another! I motioned them to stop so I could reverse and let them pass me by without problems. My passengers loved it and so did I. Another highlight of Ireland!

For more O words from around the world, please check out ABC Wednesday and join in the fun!

People

I just came back from Just Breathe, the great blog by Debby, and reading her post reminded me of two episodes where I asked perfect (and quite scary looking) strangers the why-question. And I thought I would tell you. For no other reason than it being my day off today...

The first trip of my second season as a proper coach driver found me in Germany, visiting the old East German cities of Dresden, Weimar and Leipzig. On our last day in Germany we visited Leipzig and after a tour of the city in the coach, everybody was free to do what they wanted until I picked them up again to go back to the hotel. The weather was nice and I went out to see a bit of the city as well. I know I have to go back there, because I mainly looked up. But when I didn't look up, I couldn't help but notice a lot of people dressed in black. Heavy make-up for both men and women (black and white), long black leather coats (I love those) and on one occasion even a pair of black crutches!

I got back to the station where my coach was parked and finally decided to ask someone. I approached a woman with the most beautiful black hair and asked her in German: 'Excuse me, can you tell me why everybody is dressed in black.' He turned around and told me he didn't speak German but English. So, I asked again (this time in English of course) why everybody was dressed in black. He told me that ever since the wall fell (the events leading up to that actually started in Leipzig), there had been an annual Gothic festival in Leipzig. He had come all the way from Australia to be a part of it! He was so nice and friendly and willing to tell me all about it. The only thing was: he had better looking hair than I did...

My second outing with strange and possibly even scary looking people came a few years later. Again I was on a trip abroad, this time to Ireland. And while we were waiting for our ferry in Holyhead (Wales), we saw a couple of bikers with the most shocking colour hair: bright green! We (me and my passengers) all had some theories as to why their hair was green, but in the end I just decided to go and ask them. This time I didn't confuse the him for a her and asked the him of the couple in German why their hair was so shockingly green.

Again this gentleman was perfectly nice and friendly. He told me that the first time they had ever travelled to Ireland, they had had their hair dyed. When they went back the year after, they decided to do that again and they had kept doing it every time they went to Ireland. This was their fifth or sixth time and they had had their hair dyed in all different colours, this year it was green. And they hadn't even thought about Ireland at the time (where green is something of the national colour).

I have found that if you have a genuine interest in people and their stories, they will help you out, answer any questions you might have and be perfectly nice and friendly!

Chicken

Last week I made pasta with a salmon and spring onion cream sauce. This week I wanted to make pasta with a chicken and spring onion sauce. So, I had to boil the chicken. Just water and chicken filet and boil away. However, from the past I had learned to set the kitchen alarm. I nearly burned my first place down by forgetting there was something on the stove!

I had put the alarm and after an hour the alarm sounded. A horrible beep beep noise, so I was quick to turn it off. The chicken looked nice and cooked, so no problem there.

A few hours later I could still smell the chicken. And the only thing I thought: great chicken. Until I also started smelling something else. A bit of a burnt smell.

Yes, you've guessed it: I turned off the alarm, but not the fire under the pot! I was just in time though: the chicken is still good and can still be used in my pasta dish...

Award

It's taken a while, also due to my computer problems, but about a week ago I received an award! Debby at Just Breathe was so kind as to give me one, on account of me leaving a lot of comments. Which I haven't done in the last few days (and I am sorry for that Debby, I will try and 'better' my life).

Anyway, there's not much that's attached to this award, I just have to hand it to between five and ten others! Well, if you want it people, come and get it. But that is basically the only condition attached to this award. And that is kind of boring. So, I thought I would tell you a bit about the newest book I bought: The 'Worst Case Scenario' almanac. Here are three facts about bad things from the past.

1. In 1212 the Children's Crusade failed. The children were expecting the Mediterranean to split in two (like Moses split the Red Sea) and when that failed they took to boats. However the boats weren't heading for the Promised Land, but to Algeria where the children were sold into slavery!

2. In 1853 a new law comes into effect in England: the Factory Act. From now on the working week should stay under 72 hours! That would be six days of twelve hours, since Sunday was the day of rest of course.

3. Vlad the Impaler was born in 1431 in the little town of Sighisoara, Romania. He is mostly known for impaling, decapitating, eye gouging, skinning alive, cutting into pieces and mutilating between 40,000 and 100,000 people during his reign. Oh, and then he held garden parties next to the impaled. His reasons? "I did this so nobody in my country would be poor". He died aged 45 on the battlefield in a fight against the Turks.

Warthog

My colleague. Photo taken in the hot and humid part of dessert/ocean/bush part of the zoo.

You might have wondered a bit about that photo of a warthog I put in my post yesterday. After all, warthogs don't usually have much to do with virus scanners and computers. But since my regular computer is in the shop and with it most of my generic photos and pictures, I needed another one. And since I have visited a zoo only a few days ago, I posted a warthog.

I was with a colleague at the time. A nice and friendly man who will do a lot to help me get the best possible pictures. Every time an animal refused to cooperate, he would make funny sounds and call 'here kitty kitty', even if it wasn't a kitty, but for example a warthog! It made for an interesting visit though, since we must have had some strange looks thrown our way! I told him he couldn't just call kitty to a warthog, but then again 'hey warthog warthog' doesn't have the same ring to it! And in Dutch the name of the animal is even longer! Shortening it to warty wasn't an option either: people would then just give you solutions as to how to get rid of warts!

Despite all his best intentions, the funny looks and the occasional cooperation of some of the animals, I didn't manage to get a lot of good photos. And a zoo without any maras: not a proper zoo at all!!!

Conspiracy

It must be a conspiracy. It must be! As soon as my debts were cleared and I could start saving for my emigration to Canada, disaster struck: Sophie had cancer. It cost nearly one thousand euros to get her back to health (something I don't begrudge by the way, I chose to have cats and to me that also implies that I choose to look after them. For better or for worse).

Then early last year I got into a fight with my computer. I hit my laptop. My laptop hit back with a complete breakdown, causing lots of photos to be lost and money needing to be spent to get my laptop up and running again.

And this year? So far a holiday for my parents to Iceland(which I don't begrudge, since I have the bestest parental units in the whole wide world), a holiday with my parents and siblings in Paris for which I need pocket money and to top it all off: another breakdown of my computer. This time not really my fault but that awful McAfee virus thingy! It still means that I need to spend money to get it fixed, because my computer is more or less dead on its feet!

Anyway, I am lucky I have a small notebook which I finally got hooked up to the internet as well. I deleted McAfee from it immediately and installed Norton on it instead!

But it must be a conspiracy thought up by all those people who don't want me to leave: force her to spend money on other things and she will never have enough to spend on emigration!

McAfee

Thanks to McAfee I have some severe problems with my regular computer. Hopefully I will be back properly soon!