Roses & Thorns

When we arrived, not a single rose was blossoming, and now we already have a shower of flowers! The jungle of weeds has been taken out, and in the tiny vegetable patch the beans & other stuff we sowed are popping up. The empty spaces we had after the weeding are filled with nice new plants, thanks to Janny. She took Maud to the nursery to cash the 'Pick Plants next Spring'-present Cees & Janny gave us last autumn.
The garden tells us it's spring; otherwise we wouldn't know. After a first nice warm week the temperature changed, so Maud is walking around wrapped in a blanket like a real Motswana, to survive the overnight frost...


Right now the concrete jungle doesn't pester us too much cause we're buried in work. Maud's glued to her computer day & night, busy with editing and writing. Luckily she's got an extensive cyber social life now that Steven & Richardt told her to take a Facebook account. Add that to gmail & gmail chat, and being online almost always, and your virtual socializing is guaranteed.


There's a lot of real life socializing to do also. Although after our Pentecost weekend we postponed most 'meet & greet' events till after this extremely busy month of May, we had Marjan & Rubel over for an evening do, Charmian for tea & chatting, Bram's tio Haroen & family for boating (the family & Bram) and loitering in the garden (Haroen & Maud), Janny for dinner, Maud's dad for lunch, and Mehmet & Astrid for 'kuierkos'.


Our theme for this summer's guests: kuierkos; a plate of this, and that, and something else, and suddenly you can call it 'dinner'. This is the great part of being in the Low Lands: spending time with friends, having these evenings where you suddenly realize 'mi gado, it is morning already, and I have to work today!'

Bram's Women

Think twice before you put '4 Bitches in my Bed' on your Xxx-mas Wish-list!

Our Folks

Pentecost Sunday the train brings us to Maud's mom. Her one-hectare plot in Vierhouten offers ample opportunities for gardening, especially since a tornado hit it last summer, so it's a huge playground for Maud. Tornados by the way are not supposed to happen in the Netherlands...


There's ample space to make it a playground for others also. The youngest additions are a trampoline, a soccer goal and an outside 'snack' table. After Maud's brother Nils and Bram assembled those, the quality is heavily tested by nephew Marijn and his mother Arna.


To complete this triple festive day - Mother's day, Pentecost, welcome back - Nils produces a stack of special pancakes. One might say we honour our mom's maiden name, Koekebakker; Maud does her share of 'pannenkoeken bakken' in Botswana.


Bacon, ginger & apple, onion & garlic, pepper & cheese - Nils proves you can bake virtually everything into a pancake. After dinner Marijn's party goes on: he'll camp on the lawn with ouma.


Pentecost Monday we are supposed to go to Bram's parents in Wilsum, together with Bram's brothers & sister, and their partners & offspring. Unfortunately the flu hit Ivan & Tineke heavily, so we move the party to Vierhouten. It's another beautiful spring day, perfect weather to enjoy our very Dutch meal of soup & bread & cheeses outside.


A flock of nephews and nieces means more heavy duty testing of the new equipment. Once again the boys have to cope with the fact that Jolin is the best soccer player - how many generations will it take for Dutch males to accept girls can excel in soccer?
At least they recognize Little Linde bossing everyone around as the natural state of things. When asked 'who's the boss' they'll always pick the woman of the household - with a special position for oupa Ivan. Ouma Tineke is of course the boss in general, but 'oupa is his own boss'.


The family bravely endures the usual bombardment with pictures & video out of Africa, and meekly rounds up for the unavoidable group photograph (Maarten, Sandra, bro Henk-i, Maud, Jolin, Harriet, David, Jelle, Marijke, Dick, bro Wanja, sis Christine, Linde).


Beware: there'll be more scary pictures of other bros & sister and etcetera soon...

Maud's Men

God is dead.
Nietzsche is dead.
And I don't feel too good either.
Woody Allen

Socializing

The nice part of being back in the Netherlands is there's loads of socializing to do. Wednesday morning Kristien hopped over from Amsterdam with typical Dutch treats: perentaart en uierkruier. That's also nice, enjoying all the Dutch lekkerkies! This year Kristien & Maud have their 35 Years of Friendship' anniversary - we'll organize a celebration...


Thursday evening our neighbours Winny & Dancker and we stroll across the road to have dinner with Steef & Carien. This will come as a shock to our Botswana & RSA friends: in the Netherlands we don't have a car. Neither do Winny & Dancker. A car is a headache in the Randstad, and Leiden is right in the middle of that big urbanized region. On top of that having a car is expensive tax- and insurance wise. It's much easier to go everywhere by foot, bicycle, boat and train!
We missed the communal New Years eve do, but get that feeling still, cause Winny brought pre-dinner bubbles to accompany the Turkish pre-meal snacks. Don't know whether it's Dutch or (Western or Continental) European, but there're always snacks: sweets until about 17:00, salty stuff before dinner, and either sweet or salty in the evening. We sip our drinks, snack a bit, and talk a lot - super!


This is Holland, so instead of a braai for dinner we get fabulous grilled vegetables & cheese, boeuf Stroganoff (Maud has to get the recipe for Steef's special secret luscious sauce, which he perfected over a 30 years span), white & green asparagus, Kirsch-drenched grilled fruit with cream & mascarpone, and a cheese-platter with port. It's around 1:00 am when we stumble back home...

Potchefstroom, Capital Fun

This one is for our darling Kiwi bro in law: thanks for the vodka-marinated watermelon recipe!!! Poor Max didn’t quite grasp the concept, went straight for the bottle, and then started the Stuffed Animal Rights Committee. We ate Dutch (bacon) pancakes to create a foundation, diluted our dessert with plain watermelon chunks to keep things decent, and had a great time.


Maud’s first two Potch-days are dedicated to ‘girls only’ with Anel. For starters Anel booked us a pedicure. New feet, that makes us so ready for a trip to Parys, to have a look at all the art galleries and antique shops. And of course to sit under a tree and eat delicious Italian style cakes for lunch.
Then Maud moves to Louis for other ‘girls only’ stuff, like talking too much over a yummy fishy dinner, and talk even more while playing couch potatoes. Louis managed to start Maud’s re-integration in the Netherlands by letting her watch Youp 2002. She knows jokes about Bentleys and midget dogs that get physiotherapy are history but still, it brings back the atmosphere.


When Bram arrives from Tshwane the bigger groepswoeps starts; pancakes, vodka-melon, mellow Sunday lunch with Richardt & Steven – everything that makes life great.

Groepswoeps April 2007

Mellow being applicable to the eating & digesting. Steven & Richardt must have had an extremely busy Sunday morning, with an awful lot of shopping & cooking. When we arrive mouth-watering bouquets greet us, and the food certainly lives up to what the scents promise.


After such a heavy Sunday afternoon of eating and exchanging the latest while hanging on the couch, we just have to dedicate the evening to the perfection of couch potatoism. These are the basics: get dvd’s, loads of snacks & drinks, a couch or two and some seasoned potatoes. By now winter is near, so a couple of blankets also come in handy.
In between we manage to get some work done, and prepare for camping. Tuesday we’ll leave for Die Ooskaap – where it snowed a couple of days ago...

Tussen die Riviere

The map shows a couple of nature reserves on the border of Vrystaat en Ooskaap, close to our final destination(s), Smithfield, and maybe Jamestown. The first one we try is a bull’s eye: magnificent, and no other guests.
Once again we experience how incredible friendly and facilitating most people are when you travel around in South Africa. We ask directions to the campsites, and are told we should take a hunter’s shelter because the nights are cold. When we want to buy firewood, we’re told it’s not for sale and we’re not allowed to collect, but they’ll give us some. While we’re making our ‘four layers all around’ bed (the shelter has three whole and one half wall), a bakkie arrives with a huge pile of beautiful, rock-hard firewood.


In the morning the car windows are covered with silvery ice flowers. Until the sun is really out, the fire to cook water and our three layers Lesotho mountain clothing are most welcome! We sip our coffee while enjoying the magnificent view: the veld, the koppies, bokkies, ice-covered grasses, and the magic mists from the two rivers, the Caledon and Oranjerivier.


This place is so nice we decide to really explore it, instead of moving on to one of the other parks. We don’t find the buffalos and the one black rhino, but we do see a lot of Eland, Gemsbok and other antelopes, and we share the jagterskamp with a warthog family. Being spoiled with game in Botswana anyway, our main goals are the stunning views of die veld and autumn in the mountains. We love autumn colours in this climate, with cosy freezing nights and hot sunny days!

10 Years

We commemorate our 10th anniversary in Lady Grey. Maud has visited this wondrous mountain village in April 2006 with Nick & Gerhard, and decided she must show Bram one day.


Actually we’re cashing our rain check; it is ten years and a day, because we typically screwed up our party on The Day itself. We book a night in the nicely renovated old hotel, where every room is different, and the party mood is back.


Lady Grey is surrounded by mountains, like a fortress. When we drive to the top of Joubert Pass to look over the village and into Lesotho, we get really close to the snow – Nick already told us we were camping only 70 k’s away from the real winter.


Connected to the hotel is the local bar & restaurant – one look around and you can’t believe it is run by the same people... For the Dutchies: think ‘skihut’ and you have the picture. Like all the other guests we have our meal at the bar while chatting with each other and the locals, and amazing ourselves about the ambience.

Smithfield

From Lady Grey we drive to Smithfield, a small village along one of the main North-South roads. Main, but it still is a two lanes only road through a stunning landscape. Smithfield became a goal on its own because Nick and Zandre moved there recently, to take over the general store & takeaways of Nick’s uncle. With the house come two sweet boerboels, Meisiekind and Seunkie (girl child and son). Maud's not so secret wish is to add a boerboel or two to our menagerie...


It is one of the two first stores of the village with an old house attached, so renovations are in full progress. Meanwhile business continues, 7 days a week! It's one of the typically old-fashioned general stores you'll find along the road while travelling through rural South Africa. I can't catch the atmosphere in words, like I can't capture the enchantment of South Africa outside the big cities and tourist regions in words.
It is such a pity most tourists only see Kruger Park, Cape Town, the Garden Route, the wine estates, and maybe Joburg & Tshwane. That way they skip the incredible beauty and the astounding friendliness of this fascinating country and people. And they never notice Afrikaans is not just the language of a handful of white farmers. We've travelled through over half of South Africa by now, and in most regions Afrikaans or slow Dutch is far more useful than English. Afrikaans is the native language of almost 90 percent of the 'so called coloureds' for instance. Many people speak Afrikaans and one or more African language(s), but hardly any English.


Sunday afternoon Nick and Zandre free themselves for a braai with Nick's family. There is delicious skaap and chicken sausaties, salads, braai bread, and for dessert tannie Elsa's melktert and pudding. And of course Klippies & Coke. Whoever comes for dinner with us in Leiden this Dutch summer will get 'boerekos'!
Note Nick's blonde niece; she is competing in the World Championship Youth Karate! Al in one we have a fabulous mellow Sunday afternoon, the perfect preparation for the last part of this RSA-expedition.

Clarens

We'll spend our last African night for now in Potch, and we don't want to drive up there in one go, so we study the map again. Clarens, close to the Golden Gate to the Drakensbergen and Lesotho, looks promising.


Driving up, up, up into the mountains we decide we have to come back to this region for a hiking holiday. The highland is wondrous, and there are loads of hiking trails. As usual with our vague vacation plans we didn't book - maybe not smart during this RSA public holiday. We find fabulous accommodation thanks to a helpful cleaning lady - people always help us out, so we can't be bothered with bookings.


Clarens is a real tourist trap, but the mountainous surroundings are breathtaking. When we say 'tourist trap', we mean RSA-tourists, which makes it fascinating for us foreigners anyway. We spend a luxurious night in B&B 'Ongeag' (Whatever), having the whole villa for us because it's supposed to be closed this night. Although luxuries like satellite tele (5 round the click movie channels), a washing machine and a tumble dryer (never seen that piece of equipment in this part of the world before) keep us awake most of the night, we're up early. That gives us time to drive through Golden Gate nature reserve - magnificent surroundings for a future longer camping & hiking stay!

Goodbye, Farewell, C U Soon

To ensure a splendid last night we spend our final 24 hours in our RSA-home, at Louis'. That gives us a homey environment to prepare for take-off, and a merry evening with Louis, Anel, Richardt and Steven. As one thing leads to another, this party leads to us being on Facebook...

Terminal 5

When constructing Heathrow Terminal 5, the builders obviously had the dictionary's meaning 'a section or point that forms the end of something' in mind. We don't know who is more frustrated: people in transit who suddenly realise changing planes at T5 means missing several connections, or people who want to be in England, but not particularly on a runway at T5.
After having ample time to admire the new buildings sitting in a plane stuck on the runway, we are allowed in, but not out again for the time being. Getting booked on an alternate plane to Amsterdam is hampered by the fact that most BA-personal is dedicated to 'go to hell' (thanks, but we are already there) and Heathrow staff is as lost as we are. The signage is useless, and if you ask staff for directions, they'll friendly tell you they don't have a clue also.
Welcome to Europe. In the midst of a power cut, meaning the airfield is pitch dark, computers don't work, etcetera, OR Tambo in Johannesburg is still able to have all planes smoothly checked in and leaving, doing a lot of computer work by hand. The most advanced terminal in the world has planes circling in the air and standing on runways for hours for a number of 'reasons'. 'The firm guiding us over the airport is not available.' 'We found an air marshal, he's getting into his car now.' (From where, Paris, we passengers guess.) 'That small yellow jetty is in our way.' 'It's confirmed that the jetty can't move.' (Any idiot could have pushed it out of the way, we think.)


After a couple of lost hours we finally leave Heath Row, without Maud getting arrested for aggressive behaviour towards useless British No Air personal - that's two miracles in a row. The third wonder is Bram's uncle Haroen is still waiting at Schiphol, to bring us to a delicious Colombian very late lunch and at his house, and than to our Leiden home.

Leiden

Our first days are much more busy than planned. The tenants left the house dirty and messy, so settling in brings a lot of work. The good part is our neighbours Winny & Dancker took care of the survival package: food, toilet paper, beer and flowers. On top of that, it's really spring, and the rental agency kept the deposit, so the tenants will pay for their mess - life isn't all that bad.


In between cleaning & reorganizing we go to the Press Freedom conference in Maastricht - a 3.5 hours journey by train (one way) down south. We're still a bit disoriented - it takes Maud 2 hours to realize the weird autumn colours are normal because it is spring... The conference is interesting, but the best part is seeing everybody, and having drinks and dinner together.

Tlo & Tau

The highlight of our Leiden homecomings is the comeback of Tlo & Tau. Last year cheerful little Tlo was angry for a day or two, and gloomy big Tau lived underneath a bed for a week. This year they settle in immediately, so we're back to sharing our bed with the two hairy beauties.