Tour de Zeist

It's again the time of the year when all the Dutch cycling enthusiasts are glued to the TV (I have one at home also..). Instead of watching Tour de France, we had our own tour today - Tour de Zeist. It consisted of five hours, five restaurants, five portions and glasses of wine and roughly 10 km of cycling. Absolutely excellent way of getting to know the near-by restaurants! I'm sure we add at least few of them to our regular list. And hope of course that this event will be organised also next year!

Our ticket

Really dutch and brilliant - bakfiets to transport your kids/dogs/stuff!

First stop, and definitely in the top 2

I could already see myself lounging there with a mojito..

The restaurants herb garden - I took the photo as a guideline for the Dutch guy to build me one :P

He still doesn't know about the building plans and therefore looks happy.. 

Vitello Tonnato

Salade Caprese

Something with witlof

Indonesian restaurant - reeeeeallly good!!

And these chairs went to our shopping list..

.. even though they are a bit difficult to get up from

Biking after three meals and three glasses of wine, going steady..

.. no problem what so ever ..

.. maybe the photographer had one too many?

Second to last restaurant - there we got some water too!

Wine vines

Salmon with homemade chips

And in the last etappe we got still a fish plate - luckily to share

Beautiful Helsinki

Helsinki has showed it's beautiful side (as it always seems to do nowadays when visiting, strange? ;-) and the week has been filled with midsummer, rock, family, friends and good weather. Here are some pearls from the archives.

I almost melted while sitting in the garden!

Punch, made by a person who doesn't drink

Midsummer crabs

Floating sauna

Lawn mowing

Even one work related meeting was fitted in to the busy holiday schedule.. :P

Rock the Beach, still starting up

Rock the beach - 3 days ticket!

Bare footed listening

Life guard performing his duties

My dad's t-shirt

Old hoods

Cider & beer, 6 eur per glass. I'm getting too dutch for the prices

Sun setting over Helsinki

30 secs to Mars

Helsinki Pride

Peas! Fresh peas! The dutch don't know anything about this delicacy

Lunch back in the NL, some bitter lemon was needed after this week..

Wet hair problems

Hairdresser is one of those things that you'd rather import to your new home country. I've been now twice at the hairdresser in the Netherlands, but whenever given the chance I still visit my "old" one in Finland.

I just had a discussion with another Finnish girl where she asked whether I've also had the wet treatment. It means, that after the cutting/dying/etc is done they don't blow dry unless you pay extra and ask for it. And if you don't know this, and they happen to ask whether you want to have it dried, you say with a dumbstruck look "of course!" and see the min +10 euro extra added to your bill. Apparently it is normal here that you just walk out of the hairdresser with your wet hair. We ended up thinking it must be because the frugal dutch cannot see the benefit of paying extra for the finishing touch. For me the blow dry is like the best part after letting somebody else wash your hair!

I've also seen multiple occasions where women arrive to work in the morning with still wet hair. I've yet to find a Finnish consultancy company where that'd happen :-)

Neighbors

Netherlands is filled with people living on a geographically tine piece of land. While in Finland the amount of people per square km is 16, in the Netherlands the number is a staggering 404. So you really need to learn to live (and love?) your neighbors. 

While in Finland you barely know them, here you are more or less expected to participate to parties, weddings and funerals of your neighbors  While planning our wedding, on our guest list is "buren", because we are not sure of all of their names. 

Yesterday we got a brochure via mail of an instance, that helps settling disputes between the neighbors. Based on a reality program Bonje met de buren, I think this would be on the top of my most-hated-jobs. Phew.. Well, somebody's gotta do it I guess.

Gardening

Summer is here! At least periodically.

The last days have been filled with gardening (or learning how-to). We had some visitor's over who asked what all the herbs are. Mmm.. hmm.. well there is mint.. and.. some salad.. and..

That's what you get when buying 5-in-1 box of herbs and throwing away the leaflets. At least cooking will be exciting from now and with a trial-and-error method :-)

Queen's Day / Vappu

This was the last year that the Finnish Vappu and Queen's Day coincide. So we decided to make it count. On Monday evening we made a visit to the city even though first doubting whether we are too old for it :) The bus was completely packed, so we got out as soon as possible and walked the last bit.

All the squares were full of people and live music. The big vrijmarkt stretched through the narrow streets and many of the houses had their windows and doors open with music from Vivaldi to techno. It was just one big gezellig party. My favorite was a guy with a crate of beer, a chair and a sign saying: "Vertel je sterk verhaal en krijg een biertje" - freely translated tell your extraordinary story and earn a beer. I bet he had one interesting evening listening to people. Glasses of prosecco sold on the streets for 2,50 € ensured that we also didn't get too dehydrated.

On Tuesday we started the day with watching the crowning festivities and after that enjoyed a picnic in Dutch-Finnish company. The day continued with enjoying the sun and listening to saxophone-pop-techno band on Janskerkhof square. After ten hours of enjoying the relaxed atmosphere (and maybe some wine) it was time to bike back home, which went surprisingly well :-)

Ik ben geslaagd!

Two days ago I got the best news for a long time. I passed the dutch exam, all four parts of it! :) I had all kinds of nightmares that I need to do especially the speaking part over and over again. With enrolling that must happen 6 weeks in advance, and 5 weeks of waiting the results, it would have been rather long process.

Since I did the exams on two separate days, I get a certifiace from each part. To get the diploma, I need to send the certifiactes back to DUO (the equivalent of KELA) and then wait for four weeks to get the diploma.. handy :)

What it took to get here?
- one dutch course at the Volksuniversiteit (A1, A2)
- one dutch course at Babel institute (B1)
- private lessons for preparing for the exam (B2)
- 593 days of living in the Netherlands
- lots of frustration but also moments of actually "getting it"

Here are the flowers received from my almost-parents-in-law.

First things first, after celebrations both in Finland since I happened to be there and in the Netherlands, I immediately put on sale my training material for the exams. The sooner I get rid of them, the better :-)