Oops, already a month since my last post, can´t believe that!! Well there was a lot happening since then…. Before Christmas I was of course busy with preparing for my holiday in the Czech Republic and buying Christmas presents Me and Nardo finally managed to finish our long-term project which was completing the album from our stays in Finland and Sweden. We really love this “tradition” of selecting the best pictures from our travels, printing them and then creating a paper album with our comments accompanying the pictures. There is a lot of scissor cutting involved as well as we like to be creative with our pictures

We also had a brief peek into the Ijzicht café at Nieuwendammerdijk, because we were curious to see it for once (we always go to our favourite ´t Sluisje café, so this one was neglected by us for months) and it had such pretty Christmas decorations behind the windows which were luring me each time I was passing by on my bike. Well, the place itself is not bad, but there was thick smoke inside (this is not a non-smoker café…) and a bit “rough” people, many of them drunk or playing on gambling machines :-p Also very poor selection of beers…Ok, this was not the place to spend a nice evening, so we just finished our beers and left Funny to experience a real Dutch pub for the working class though

Shortly before Christmas our Slovenian language book arrived by mail so we started studying together, it´s going really slow though and I realized we started quite late Which is bad cause knowing Slovene will obviously be a necessity once we´re in Slovenia looking for a job…For me it is luckily quite an easy language to learn, but poor Nardo! :-p He´s lucky he has me I suppose, hehe! I think we can´t avoid attending some language courses in Ljubljana anyway…

That´s actually our big news: we already bought our tickets to Slovenia! First we are going there in the second half of February to check out flats (I decided to spend a full week on looking for flats, we just gotta manage in that time!), then we´re going back to Amsterdam to get all our stuff packed and ready, do all the annoying paperwork, meet our local friends for the “last time” and on 7th March our belongings will be moved by a (Czech) moving company and we have to be in Ljubljana to pick them up already the next day! Since we figured out we don´t have much time at all, both the first and the second time we will be travelling, we decided to not go through Prague as we initially planned, as the connections Holland-Czech Republic-Slovenia take too long and most of all it is not possible to do this trip in one go. I am sure I will go to Prague in spring though, as soon as we´re a bit settled…

I enjoyed my Christmas vacation in the Czech Republic greatly, so good to see friends and family again! And of course just being in my home country feels kind of comforting, being surrounded by all the familiar places and things and language and culture…While I have a lot of problems with certain aspects of my native land´s society, there is also a soft spot in my heart for a lot of the features, which I cannot deny. And, I really love the Prague farmer´s market with all the local cheap (!!) vegetables I spent Christmas eve with my mom and granny at my grandma´s place in Písek in the south of the country (having a fully macrobiotic Christmas dinner for the first time, though also introducing back the carp after many years :-p) and then I celebrated Christmas once more with the Prague branch of my family. My little sister is already 10 years old and attends 4th grade, incredible!!

I met many of my friends (though sadly did not manage to see all the people I hoped to see, the time was not sufficient in the end) – I cooked macro dinner for my two university classmates, for my friend Simona from the dog shelter walks(her baby is one year old, also incredible!! :-p), for Hana from one amazing summer camp that took place years ago, and for my Blanka and Ondřej from the Tolkien club (fancy sushi, yay!). With some I had tea in a teahouse (my friend from pagan times, Lorraine, and her boyfriend Ric) or lunch/dinner at some vegan or asian restaurant (my ex-bf Pavel and my friend from a summer job at a folk museum, Pavla). I met up with a bunch of Czech macrobiotics, who I previously knew just through an online forum, we went to my favourite teahouse, and it was fun to see how macrobiotics is “done” in my home country (strangely, I mostly see the macrobiotic movement from a more international perspective thanks to my studies at the Institute). While having lunch with Pavla, I also ran into Ruben, a young Aruban guy who used to volunteer in the Kushi Institute kitchen and who came to the Czech Republic to wwoof at some farms, that was really unbelievable, to accidentally meet him in a restaurant in Prague without planning anything beforehand! :-p

I was still in the Czech Republic during the New Year´s Eve, which at first made me nervous for a long time, since I had no clue where I am going to spend the evening and I reeeally didn´t want to sit at home with my laptop…But my Tolkien club friends Blanka and Ondřej (the couple that I was doing a marriage ceremony for in summer ) invited me over, together with Ondřej´s brother and his girlfriend. We had a quiet but fun evening, watching one of my favourite childhood comedies (Three Amigos for those interested ), playing a drawing-and-guessing game (which is normally just a part of the game called Activities), playing Dance Revolution (dancing on a special “smart” mat on the floor while following a computer programme with songs and prescribed dance schemes), watching fireworks from the balcony and eating ( a LOT :-p). After midnight we even made a little trip across the fields and forests behind Neratovice (a little town where my friends live) to a lake created by rock mining. We had a paper flower-lantern with a candle and our wishes written on the “petals” which we sent to float on the water. Too bad the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and our little lantern ship sunk very quickly

After coming back to Amsterdam I got a wonderful belated Christmas present – our housemate Alessio finally moved out!! It took a couple days longer than planned but in the end it happened! So good not to have to endure all the loud shouting/slamming doors and other things plus the overwhelming smoke and his general behaviour :-p We had a few people coming with our landlord to see the room and at the moment our new South Korean housemate Kim is moving in, transforming the room into a very neat clean place. Today the historical piano arrived (which she plays profesionally) so we are getting free concerts for a couple of hours a day She looks like an easygoing girl so let´s hope it goes fine…

With my job it´s not going well at the moment sadly…Henry´s owners mailed me they found somebody who could walk the dog “permanently” (I did tell them I was leaving for Slovenia, right at the beginning). I also didn´t yet walk Julia´s lovely shepherds this year, still waiting to be called back “to duty”.

We have been very socially active in the first weeks of the new year – we went to a birthday celebration of Nardo´s friend Scott, which was great, because it started with a long stroll through the Amsterdamse bos (the biggest forest/park nearby where we used to often go while living in Amstelveen 3 years ago), visiting shortly the goat farm (too many people, especially kids! :-p) and walking towards the lovely sunset…We had a little snack and drink at the park café and then headed by bike together with the other party attendants to an awesome stylish Ethiopian restaurant. It was fun because you get an enormous metal plate for the whole table with individual portions along the edge of the plate and a big serving of salty pancakes which you use instead of cutlery :-p Well, I had to have rice with my food, as I couldn´t eat the pancake, but all the rest of the people was eating with their hands. It was really yummy and we even tried Ethiopian beer (pretty decent).

It was quite a restaurant spree lately, as we also checked out the Nepalese restaurant just a few minutes biking from our house (nice food but sadly not comparable to the divine Nepalese food in Lisbon!) and with Nardo´s dad we went to an Indonesian restaurant in town where the food was really really tasty – I had a vegetarian rames (which means you get to taste several different little dishes, yay!) and sampled a very good Mexican beer Corona (while Nardo´s dad had Indonesian beer and Nardo had Japanese beer – quite a selection! ).We thought we would also go out for mine and Nardo´s anniversary (4 years, wow!!),  but it was nicer to stay at home and just take it easy – we made pizza in our awesome new oven, too bad I totally screwed mine up this time, hehe!

Last weekend we made a trip to Rotterdam to meet my facebook friend and fellow macrobiotic from Slovenia called Gašper who gave us a lot of advice about living and working in Slovenia, especially in connection with health foods and macrobiotics in particular. It seems that there is a big interest in nutrition in Slovenia but the macrobiotic scene is very, ummm, dead :-p Well, doesn´t that need a change?!? We had lunch with Gašper in a wonderful “health heaven” called Groene Passage which is a huge centre including a vegetarian restaurant, an enormous health shop (I could spend HOURS there!), all kinds of classes (not just cooking but also all kinds of alternative health approaches, exercises, martial arts etc.), massages, a bookshop, a fairtrade gift shop and probably much more which I didn´t have time to notice…Too bad we had so little time to explore this amazing gem! I´d really love to work at such a place…We also wanted to see a bit of the city though before it got dark, so we quickly went to see some of the highlights recommended by my tour guide – the famous cube houses, the pencil-shaped house, the tiny old harbour, a few of the houses that survived the bombing of 1940, a statue commemorating this event, the big church (totally reconstructed after war and they did a really good job, you can´t tell it´s not an old church!). The modern architecture in Rotterdam is definitely worth one´s attention and there´s probably lots of cool events going on in the city, but of course for us, lovers of the old and narrow Amsterdam streets, the city just doesn´t have the spirit we are attracted to… :-p Check out my gallery for pictures though!

Yesterday me and Nar started a 10-day macrobiotic brown rice fast (Nar will probably join just for the first few days) so there´s not much cooking going on, besides the daily huge portion of rice cooked in my pressure cooker It´s supposed to be a very efficient cleanse and I was very much looking forward to it, not a bad idea to start the year with a good detox to purge all the old! You can follow me how I´m doing with the fast on my macrobiotic blog (see links)

Whew, that was a lot of news, I bet you´re just as tired as me right now!! Hopefully I will manage to write a bit more regularly now, at least until my last macro classes start in February

 

 

Two weeks ago I had my (almost) last workshop at the Kushi Institute – a 4-day workshop called Art of Cooking. I already attended Art of Cooking in October, but that was focused on healing and immunity strengthening dishes. This time the topic was very different – festive cooking for family and friends, that means much more sophisticated, indulgent dishes which you can make for parties or any kinds of more special events. It was nice to again see some of my friends from the Art of Life levels or from other smaller workshops.

The workshop was fun, as always, but the atmosphere was not totally joyful as it could be. On Friday evening we had a lecture from the Institute director who revealed to us that his son-in-law and the Institute´s  master chef Lander is in the hospital, in a very serious state, after a brain stroke It was a shock for all of us who were used to regularly seeing this young (32 years old!) cheerful fellow in the restaurant kitchen and occasionally also teaching at our practical cooking workshops. He always made a lot of funny jokes and was like a sunshine everywhere he was present. The next day he had to surrender to his injury…He left behind his young wife, our do-in (exercise) teacher (the same age as me, by the way) and a little daughter. On Wednesday after the workshop me and many other macrobiotic friends attended the memorial service in Driehuis, near the seaside. It was amazing to see so many people coming even from afar to say their last goodbye…I think it really says something about the relationship people had with this great man.

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I have to note that I am not totally done with my studies at the Institute though – I still plan to finish my third level of Art of Life, but that is in February, still quite far ahead… Right now the big task of studying my macrobiotic books lies in front of me, I feel I need to prepare myself very well for the next step in my studies…

In the last weeks I spent a lot of time walking Henry, my doggie client that I mentioned last time, two or three times a week.  He´s a real cutie, though he really doesn´t like small children…Walking with him was good for getting to know new areas in town, such as the surroundings of Nieuwmarkt and Waterlooplein. From next week I have a break from Henry though, as his owners will be working from home and then it is Christmas holidays when they have vacation…hopefully I will be able to walk him again after the new year. But I have two new doggie clients, two beautiful shepherd crossbreeds of my Polish facebook friend Julia. Both of the dogs are rescues from Polish shelters, one is a young Belgian shepherd/whippet mix called Ares and the other is an older and calmer  German shepherd/husky mix called Bosfor. They live with their owners in Amsterdam-Oost (east part of town), in the quarter of Watergraafsmeer, almost an hour biking from our place. It is a thorough exercise for me as well, to go there and back by bike, and walk these energetic dogs for an hour! But I really like walking them, because they are very playful and cuddly, and a big advantage is that they don´t need to be on a leash, as the area there is pretty safe – really a dog heaven! There are several football fields where you can go throw a ball to the dogs, as long as nobody is playing there at the moment…

The weather was for a long time reeeeally rainy, reeeeally windy and pretty damn cold. We also had a couple of days with numerous hailstorms. The temperatures are again close to zero, especially at night…Well, nothing surprising at this time of the year, I wonder whether we will get some snow…Better snow than all the rain we were getting.

Some time ago we again visited Nardo´s family´s friend Colette, who gave us several valuable items when we moved in in summer (such as a table, cupboard and a lot of kitchenware), we had dinner at her place and had a look at her photographs, as she is now a photography student. Nardo once had a big photo session with her in the polder and she made some really good shots of him

Yesterday we spent half of the day in the Tropenmuseum, which is a very large, old, beautiful anthropological museum. There are permanent exhibitions about the world cultures, but we only had time to visit the temporary exhibitions – there was a really interesting (though arguably a bit grim..) exhibition about death and its perception in different cultures of the past and present (plus some contemporary art connected to this topic), it was a really large exhibition with a lot of items and accompanying texts. We also saw Man and Environment (an exhibition about the interaction of humans and the environments of the tropical rain forest, savannah, coasts and the city) and a small but nice exhibition about a photographer who portrayed the Dutch East Indies as an idyllic tropical paradise…

In the eve Nardo organized his (very belated ) birthday party at ´t Sluisje, our favourite local café at the Nieuwendammerdijk, it was really cozy there, with all the christmas lights! There came some of Nar´s ex-flatmates and also former classmates, we had nice chats…and nice beers…almost until midnight. Too bad there was just 7 of us in total, though Nar invited about 16 people…

And one last exciting thing : my friend from the studies, Sonya, lent us her portable oven, so we now have a beautiful big oven where we can set time and temperature!! Our previous ultrasmall oven was really a bit of a pain because it only had a timer of 15 minutes and no temperature regulation so I ended up burning a lot of stuff. Well, now we can bake as much as we want, yay!

It´s true – Level 2 of Art of Life, my macrobiotic study programme, is over, and now I am basically “free” until February, when Level 3 takes place.  I only have one shorter workshop – Art of Cooking – from tomorrow (Thursday) evening until Sunday afternoon, this time with the topic of festive (read: fancy) cooking, that is cooking for holidays, for guests and all those people who are not really (yet) macrobiotic I got used to being in the Institute pretty often in the last month, so it´s gonna be really strange to not be there for a few months, or better to say, to go there only for a lunch/snack or to do my shopping in the shop downstairs. But no lectures, cooking classes and cooking workshops, no do-in exercises and shiatsu massage trainings. I have to now study all this on my own, which is quite a challenge, because then I have to fight my inner laziness, lack of time (perceived or real) and my schedule, which I tend to fill way too much, with too many things. But at the same time I am really looking forward to reading my study notes, and mostly all those books that I ordered in the last weeks and months – I have a whole shelf in my bookcase full just of macrobiotic literature!! The Level 2 was much more difficult than the first level – we went into more depth in all classes, in philosophy, health (learning all the organ systems and the whole body´s physiology), diagnostics and shiatsu (now we really have to know where the meridians are and how they work :-p). Also our cooking workshops got more difficult, with more meals to cook for dinner each time, and most of all, more complicated and sophisticated meals. Actually we made such culinary menus that most of us felt that we need less oil and less desserts, not more!! At home I cook much more simple…

I was looking forward to cooking together with those of my classmates who live in Amsterdam (either permanently or temporarily), but so far we managed that only once, with my Level 1 friend Sonya. But it was very enjoyable to make a dinner together at her place, feeding not only the two of us, but also Sonya´s partner and her 1,5 year old daughter (well, or at least – we tried to feed her!).

Besides trying to dedicate my time to self-study and cooking practice I also walk Henry. I mentioned Henry last time – a French bulldog/Boston terrier mix owned by an American couple who live in the city centre. I walk him three times a week in the area of Waterlooplein. He´s really sweet and cute and we get a lot of looks and remarks from passing by people, who usually think he´s adorable and want to play with him – so does Henry!  He´s sometimes hilarious when he tries to scare pigeons or when he gets a hysterical attack when we pass a baby stroller, wheelchair or a person on roller skates – for some reason little rolling wheels make him totally ecstatic and he tries to free himself from the leash! :-p I am also trying to teach him to catch his doggie treats when thrown in the air – it´s trial and error, but we´re getting there

Unfortunately, my other dog client (the shepherd mix) was cancelled because the lady was looking for someone permanent, which I cannot offer…same problem with my babysitting – also cancelled because I was not available during my busy study times and it was just easier for the lady to find somebody who can come anytime without so many restrictions I am a bit sad about this, but there is nothing I can do – my studies are a priority, and I really plan to leave Holland in March and I am honest about this…

Some days ago Nardo´s dad paid us a visit for the first time in our little nest – we showed him Nieuwendammerdijk, our biggest pride, luckily the weather was great that day, cold but bright, and the sun was just setting, I enjoyed the walk very much, because normally I just bike through there quickly and don´t have time to pay attention to all the details of the beautiful old houses and their gardens…For dinner we went to our local Indonesians, where Lambert was talking to the owners in Indonesian, which of course made them happy

Last weekend me and Nar decided to make a little bus trip to the nearby towns of Edam and Monnickendam, as our friend Marco told us they´re one of the most beautiful Dutch towns, and I think he was right! Both were very old-fashioned, very tranquil and especially Monnickendam had an authentic atmosphere of an old harbour – I made plenty of pics, so check them out. Unfortunately, as it is almost winter and it was weekend, almost all the shops and attractions (such as museums and churches) were closed In Edam there is a famous cheese market once a week, but only in the summer months, this time the whole town was like a ghost town…We at least visited the tourist information centre in the building of the baroque town hall and got a bunch of leaflets and chatted to the talkative old man who volunteers there…I also had soup at a local restaurant, while Nar had a hot chocolate drink. Since it was still quite early afternoon, we decided to still see also Monnickendam, which is a smaller town, but it was much more busy, because there was an outdoor market that day (unfortunately, they were packing up by the time we arrived) and also a Sinterklaas celebration with a parade of people in costumes. I must say that I am confused, because in the last two weeks there is a lot of stuff going on with Sinterklaas (the Dutch Saint Nicholas), it´s such a huge event for the Dutch! He “arrived” to Holland and is now travelling around the country, that´s what I heard, but the actual Sinterklaas evening (which is more important than Christmas here) is on December 5th…oh well, maybe I should read up on this…Anyway, all the shops are full of Sinterklaas treats (gingerbread “speculaas”, often filled with almond marzipan/paste, tiny round gingerbread cookies “pepernoten”, chocolate alphabet letters of the first letter in your name, and other stuff) and not only shops but also peoples´ windows have a lot of decorations with Nicholas and his black helpers “Zwarte Pieten” (yes, black slaves! ).

The weather lately really feels like winter – we had some freezing nights already, and in the last week we experienced a loooot of thick white mist when you literally can´t see almost anything around you. Quite adventurous to go with the ferry in such conditions, I always hope that they have really good navigation skills because sometimes you can´t see the ships which are just a few metres away from you…

Oh and I have to share with you something I encountered a few days ago while biking home on Nieuwendammerdijk – a man biking with an enormous axe resting on his shoulder – everything is possible here when you´re on a bike!! I am used to people biking with large bags and chairs on their bikes, but sometimes I DO still get surprised, yes…

 

In my last post I announced that I will soon be starting the level 1 of the Art of Life macrobiotic training. Right now the first level is behind me and at the end of this week I am starting level 2, hard to believe!! It was incredibly intense 13 days (11 full days, one evening and one morning) I must say. I was reeeally tired every evening when I came home (usually around 8:30 p.m.), after our dinner meal. There was not much energy left to interact with Nardo – so maybe it was a good thing that he was gone for a week, visiting his family in France When you are doing this training, everything else has to go aside for a while, because it keeps you fully occupied…you get up at 6 in the morning, at 6:40 you ride your bike to the ferry across the IJ bay and then further into the town centre (very very quiet in the early morn), at 7:30 your morning do-in exercises start, at 8:30 you eat breakfast prepared by the cooks of the Deshima restaurant (unless you have a breakfast “service”, then you are in the kitchen from 7 helping to prepare breakfast under the leadership of the experienced cooks). At 9:30 your first class starts, another class takes place at 11:15. From 12:45 you have lunch (unless your teacher is one that doesn´t look at the clock and keeps on talking for many minutes over time ), usually in the Deshima restaurant together with the daily customers. At 2:30 in the afternoon you start another class, and one more at 4:30 and at 6:30 you have dinner, either prepared by the cooks or by yourself and your classmates in case you just had a cooking workshop where you were practising dish preparation. After breakfast, lunch and dinner there is dishwashing, which you do in teams of 4 or 5 people, taking turns with other teams. The free time is almost non-existent, so you have to keep fresh using a sweet vegetable drink (great against sugar level drops!), walks from one building of the Institute to the other and perhaps some stretching exercises. We had lectures on the topics of the Order of the Universe (that is general macrobiotic philosophy), Visual Diagnosis, Macrobiotic healing and health care, Shiatsu massages, Ginger compresses and then, of course, there were practical cooking classes (more like demonstrations done by teachers) and workshops (where we participate actively). This time we were a group of 13 people, nobody from the previous workshops, but luckily a couple of us are continuing to level 2, so it will not be all new faces. I felt a bit like in a monestary, with all the regular exercises, meals and classes, how simplified life became! Not easy with the lack of free time for yourself and your partner and friends, but in a way really stripped to the basics in a good comforting way…I am very curious to deepen my knowledge in level 2, I feel there is so so much I have to study, and study hard!! Now I have a free week during which I am relaxing, but also going through my notes and doing a loooot of cooking to practice what we learnt. I got a new pressure cooker recently, ordered through internet for a very nice price, so now I am using it very regularly! It was a bit of a fight in the beginning to learn to use it properly, but I won in the end! The rice tastes so much better now…and it saves a load of time too!

The night before my training started we met up with our couchsurfing friend Marco, at our local Indonesian restaurant Puspita – a really cozy place with great food and nice people. We know Marco already for a few years, since my last long stay in Holland, and good we got to meet him – just a week or two later he left for Mexico for a couple of months!! I also got to babysit my little client for the second time, but now we are having a looong break…But I actually found two new jobs, or actually two clients for my dogwalking – I met up with one lady on Saturday, in the Slotervaart area (very far from where I live, so I will need to use public transport in this case) and agreed to walk her German/Belgian shepherd mix, four times a week. And tomorrow I am meeting another potential client, who is from the central area and has a French bulldog/Boston terrier mix. So I might be pretty busy after my level 2 ends!! It´s really funny, because I had ZERO replies for my dogwalking ads, for several weeks, and then in one day I get two replies!! How odd….But well, I will need some income after the courses, so it´s good news and I hope it works out…

We managed to quite nicely decorate our room – thanks to our friends who keep sending us beautiful postcards as we requested!! Really cool that this idea turned into a real thing, I like it very much! Every time we look at the walls we are reminded of each of those people…sweet! I really like this room more and more – it is not as large as I thought it would be, but I love love love the big windows…something I apparently need for my life. These days I look out of the window and often see a bunch of very bright green parrots with red beaks. One day some must have escaped from their owners and founded a family, or maybe a whole clan They are very pretty, and keep stealing little apples from one of the neighbours

Yesterday it was Nardo´s birthday so we planned to have a special day – we went by train to Baarn, near Hilversum, south from Amsterdam and from there we took a 13 km trip through the wonderful autumn forests and heather fields, it was so magical!! We took plenty of pics, so be sure to check my gallery and Nar´s blog…The last weekend of October is always the prettiest…I must admit though that it seemed that half of Holland decided to make the same trip! It was very crowded, something I am definitely not used to in the forests of Czech Republic. But well, this is a popular area (as there are very few such pretty natural areas in the whole country…), it was Sunday, and this specific route was recommended on a website for tourists…The weather was gloomy and we didn´t see the sun at all, but it actually gave the whole scenery a tranquil peaceful autumn atmosphere, not bad at all…We took lunch with us – sushi in my case From Baarn we went to Hollandsche Rading where we took the train via Utrecht to Amsterdam.

From Central station we went straight to the Indonesian restaurant near our house Nardo had his favourite meal (yes, he is very conservative! ) and I tried a new vegetarian dish, was nice! After dinner we had a little Samhain celebration, contemplating the past year and the change of seasons, and remembering our beloved ones…It was a very full day, with a lot of beauty. I realized how important it is (and I realized this many times, but need constant reminders!) to get regularly out of the city, into the green (or red/orange/yellow/brown now ).

 

 

 

 

Wow, it takes a lot of determination to still update this blog! My life just got too busy lately, with the start of my macrobiotic studies at the Institute. I already have two shorter workshops behind me – the weekend workshop called”The Way to Health, Vitality and Strength”, and the 4-day Art of Cooking school ” Cooking for Vitality and Stronger Immunity”. While the first workshop had more theoretical lectures on health and disease and a bit less cooking (and we also did a basic shiatsu massage introduction), the second one was really hands-on with looots of practical cooking classes and only one theoretical lecture. During both of the workshops we started every day early in the morning with do-in exercises, which are exercises that promote the activation of ki (or in Chinese “chi”), the life force channeling throughout our body. It´s a bit tough to bike 30-45 minutes to the Institute (usually around 7 a.m.) and then exercise for an hour before having any breakfast, but I actually feel amazingly well after doing the exercises, so I got quite hooked! I definitely enjoy my studies, but they are also demanding as they take a lot of time and focus. And I enjoy meeting new macrobiotic friends at the workshops! This Saturday I start my 12-day intense Art of Life Level 1 program, so I will sure not have any time to blog during that time period…but you can be assured that I will be having a good though very busy time!

I did have some time for meetings with old friends in between my workshops – with Nardo we met up with Lisa and her bf Sytse (Lisa used to be our flatmate back in Uilenstede 2 years ago), we had a light snack at Spui (while I ate my homemade sushi ) and then went to Tara, the stylish Irish pub. I even had two beers – Hertog Jan and Black Velvet (which I discovered is Guinness mixed with either champagne or cider in order to create two distinct colour levels). So nice to meet these guys after a long time of no see! We also had a visit from Denise and Diego, who came to cook with us at our place and to inspect our new room It´s really great that in this room we have enough space to put the table in the middle of the room and actually seat 4 people there!

That´s actually one of the biggest recent events – we left our cute but a bit less practical attic room and moved one floor down to the room of one of our (now former) housemates, which is a bit bigger (or at least has bigger storage facilities), has straight walls, and a big window with a nice view (the biggest advantage I think – I really missed looking out of a window!). We just need to decorate this room still, as there are too many plain white walls with some holes left from drilling…I asked my friends to send me postcards, and so did Nardo, so we are hoping for some to arrive

In the attic room we now have Tina, our new 17-year-old housemate, who is luckily a very quiet person, to my big surprise And downstairs there is still Alessio, the Italian housemate, who unfortunately is hard to get along with, but that´s a whole long story I´m not going to get into here

I am very happy to have my bike back after its repair!! It cost a lot of money and I was without a bike for a couple of days, but now I have a pretty new wheel. Biking in Amsterdam is the best thing about the whole city, I think…yes, I am addicted…but it gives a distinct feeling of freedom and self-sufficiency which I really love.

I also started my “career” as a babysitter – unfortunately I cannot babysit too often due to my study schedule, but I already did go once, and tomorrow will be my second time. Dafni, an 11 year old Dutch-Greek girl is extremely sweet and easygoing, so it´s not at all hard to watch over her. Especially since she often goes out to play with her friends, so then I just wait for her at her home and check on her by phone And she also gives me some Dutch language practice, as I try to speak only Dutch with her (she understands English, but she doesn´t like to talk in English ). It´s not always easy but I´m pleased that I´m able to have a simple communication with an 11 year old!

Otherwise, I am now really enjoying the few peaceful days without school, before my long programme starts :-p The weather is awful lately, very cold, windy and lots of rain, so it´s nice to be inside…I spend a lot of time cooking (=practicing what I learn at school, haha). I even ordered a pressure cooker through amazon, because that´s one essential macrobiotic tool that I was really missing!! Can´t wait to have it here! It would just be soooo nice to have my own kitchen ( Well, hopefully in Slovenia we will have that – we´re already planning our spring journey there a bit… need to find a job still, and learn the language, but otherwise we´re almost ready!

Last time I was mentioning that our landlord Jurgen still had to come to finish the work on the gas pipes while I went to a vegan dinner in a squat for the evening. The dinner was held at a place called Joe´s Garage in Amsterdam-Oost, a nice cozy place which doesn´t even look like a squat from the inside. The kitchen was well equipped and clean, and when I arrived there, Diego, my macrobiotic friend and Denise´s boyfriend, was already there cooking with his 2 German friends. I said I would help them prepare the dinner (which was even macrobiotic, yay!), so I quickly picked up a task and started working. I had no idea I would actually spend the whole evening working in the kitchen pretty much non-stop There were about fifty (maybe even more) people coming for the dinner, which is a regular event twice a week there. No wonder there are many people coming, since the dinner costs only 3 euros and is a big culinary event! It´s not always macrobiotic (basically anybody can come and cook there), but they are always vegan, I heard. Later Denise came from work and helped us too – we needed every hand! Everything was running a bit late, so it was rather chaotic, but fun at the same time, because it was all nice enthusiastic people and I got to chat to them quite a bit, while working We made a delicious pumpkin soup, a red lentil stew with fried aubergines and some other vegetables, lightly blanched cauliflower and broccoli, brown rice/oat balls filled with two types of red beet filling and covered in seeds/herbs, and Denise even baked a carrot/coconut pie! What a feast! I helped with cooking, serving, doing the dishes and cleaning up. At least I could eat the dinner for free, and I got to bring home a few vegetables that were left (a lot was scored for free at organic shops, amazing!).

During the evening Nardo texted me that Jurgen managed to damage one of the gas pipes, so we would be without gas for one day and two nights Not nice…That meant no showering and no possibility to cook at home. Luckily Denise and Diego invited me over for dinner at their place for the following day, that was awesome! I really like cooking with them! And I finally got to meet their Slovak flatmates and speak a little bit of Czech with them We had to eat out twice with Nardo because of the shut down gas – once we went to the kebab place (where I got fries and falafel, but it felt really unhealthy, ick!) and the next day we went to our favourite café ´t Sluisje, where we had soup and fries again (pumpkin soup, quite nice!). I even tried their “karnemelk”, a drink I haven´t seen anywhere else – sour milk with orange juice. Sounds freaky, but actually tastes nice! This time the weather was not nice enough to sit outside, so we went indoors, where it´s very stylish and “gezellig” (a Dutch word with no English equivalent…it means basically cute/friendly/cozy…kinda ). Oh, and once we also ordered from a Thai delivery place, that was actually delicious! Anyway, it was nice to get our gas back again, there was a professional worker coming, it even looks nice! Now there are still some holes in the walls/floors/ceilings that need to be covered up by Jurgen, but that is not done yet…hopefully today it will be…not really bothering us though.

I reconciled myself with the fact that I am not going to have any proper job here in Holland. I looked at my study schedule and found out that I have almost zero time to work…don´t know if that´s good news or bad news, I guess both But it seems I have at least a very little part-time job for the moment. I was hired as a babysitter of two Greek-Dutch children, a 11-year-old girl (every Thursday) and a 5-year-old boy (once a month only). Today is my first day of picking up the girl at her school and then watching her for 3 hours until her mom comes home. The kids don´t really speak English much, but the girl at least understands pretty well, so hope it´s ok! Unfortunately, due to my studies I can´t babysit too often

One great thing about Amsterdam is that you can get a free haircut here, that´s just what I did! Nardo goes there for years already – it´s a hairdresser school where they need to constantly practise on live people and they´re happy when you come and become a “model” :-p It´s actually really good, because the teacher is there supervising and sometimes she does a lot of the actual cutting herself, like in the case of my fringe. Great and free!

We made another trip to the Waterland countryside a week or two ago, it´s always so beautiful! This time we went to the village of Zunderdorp which is another cute quiet village with white bridges and neat gardens We were surprised to find a table in front of one of the houses with a sign saying that they sell homemade jams – that of course woke my curiosity We rang the bell and ended up buying three lovely jams from the lady – blackberry jam, quince “cheese” (reminder of Portugal!) and a pumpkin/ginger jam for me. Just a few minutes from Zunderdorp there is the organic farm Ons Verlangen, where they sell a lot of their own produce, including homemade icecream! Well, you can imagine what happened next…the icecream was indeed divine, eaten in a sunny farmyard, with the smell of animals around So cool to examine the local foods!! At the farm they even have a “milk tap”, with raw milk, where Nardo is planning to get his milk some day, it´s even quite cheap. From Zunderdorp we continued to the small town of Broek in Waterland, which is incredibly charming!! We spent quite a long time walking through its streets, even visiting the local cemetery (always interesting from an anthropological point of view!). There are little canals in the town and a lot of old fancy houses, and a small harbour…lovely!

A few days ago we went again to the Ons Verlangen farm for some more icecream (my last maybe, as I´m trying to go full macro! :-p) and we even got to see their bunny hotel (yes, they take care of your bunny while you´re on holiday!) and a couple of totally adorable baby calves….I rather don´t want to know if they will get a chance to grow up, or if they will be slaughtered for meat They were really craving our attention and licking our hands with their huge tongues…

A few days ago I visited Nardo for the first time at his job at Starbucks in Beethovenstraat in the Oud-Zuid quarter. It´s extremely busy there! I came when Nardo was almost done with his shift, so that we could sit together at a table. I first ordered a caramel frappucino because it was very warm outside, but I really disliked the crushed ice (a thing I generally don´t like in drinks), so I gave the rest of it to Nardo and had a warm caramel macchiato, which was much nicer. Anyway, incredibly sweet!! My macro tastebuds can´t take so much sugar :-p and caffeine – coffee makes me always sick. I thought this time I would get away with it, but nope, sick again Good lesson, no more coffee for me, especially not with sugar and/or milk!!

Last weekend we decided to join our Scottish friend Malcolm who organizes power-off weekends several times a year. We never joined before, but this time I really wanted to try it. It´s kind of a fun experiment, spending your weekend without using electricity and finding creative ways how to have fun! Unfortunately, as we don´t live alone in this house, we couldn´t turn off the electricity in the whole house, but at least we didn´t use it at all in our two rooms! We did still use the gas cooker (which has an electric spark) and the shower (with its electric boiler), but it was nice lighting candles in the evening, instead of the big light…And also – no computers for two whole days!! How peaceful and relaxed Too bad Nardo fell sick during the weekend and we couldn´t do many fun activities. I spent a looot of time reading (which was great!) and I also went on Saturday on my own to read to our little park nearby, sitting on benches, and later on the wooden board on the water, sooooo nice. The weather was luckily beautiful the whole weekend! The next day Nardo was able to go to the park with me for a while, and we played some games on paper…Overall, it was a nice experience and I´d like to do it some day again!

Tomorrow I am finally starting my macrobiotic studies at the Kushi Institute, yay!! Really looking forward to that. But it means, I will be very very busy until December! Hopefully there will be some time to write blogposts, but don´t expect too much from me On Sunday we are also moving one floor down as I have mentioned before, that should not be too difficult, we don´t have that much stuff. I am very curious how I will like living in that room! It does seem like a nicer bigger room. Even though I got a bit emotionally attached to our attic “nest” :-p silly me…And the 17-year-old girl actually IS after all coming to live in our room. Hope that goes well…lately we are having quite big communication trouble with one of our Italian housemates So we really want somebody nice here…let´s see…

 

In my last post I was mentioning that I finally got in contact with my boss (who left me two weeks without work, not really communicating about the issue) and was going to walk my “own” stable group of dogs near Central Station. Well, let´s say that didn´t go too well.. My boss was walking with me, but I had to manage all the dogs (a group of five) myself, that means five dogs on five separate leashes. Luckily they were all medium size or small, so there wasn´t any 80 kg newfoundlander or such, but still it was quite some force and each of the dogs had a different pace, different ability to walk nicely at the leg, and one of the dogs was stopping every few seconds to sniff/lick and had to be pulled constantly from places. We walked through the centre for a few hours, picking up the dogs at several locations quite far apart, and just in the end we managed to get to Westerpark, where the dogs spent about five minutes…the rest of the time we were walking on the busy crowded streets with traffic coming from all sides – bikes, trams, cars…I really didn´t feel safe and I had a bad feeling I can´t protect the dogs well enough from the traffic. Needless to say I was utterly physically exhausted, because with five dogs you can´t just take a break to take a sip of water or anything…After this first real trial walk I decided to quit the job, because (besides my boss being one of the worst cases of poor communication I´ve encountered so far) I didn´t want to be involved in walking a way too big group of dogs in a way too busy part of town, where the dogs don´t even have a chance to play around or run without a leash in the green…

That left me jobless – familiar feeling…I posted a couple of adverts online for private dog walking, but that is quite hopeless I believe, as there are soooo many dogwalking companies in this city. I visited some “uitzendbureaus” (job agencies), but they always require knowledge of Dutch. Another big irony was applying once more for the callcentre job (where they were urgently looking for Czech speakers for several weeks) just to be told that they actually hired some Czech speakers YESTERDAY. Now I really wonder what fate has in store for me, maybe something I am meant to do…? Tomorrow I have one appointment for a job, but more about that next time…I am a bit superstitious already! Meanwhile Nardo finished his training at Starbucks and this week is working for real, at the café locations…some days he already starts at 6 a.m., poor guy Of course, that means getting up at 4:30, can´t say I´m thrilled about that either even though I can still sleep after he leaves :-p

We are still looking for somebody to live in our room, because the 17 year old girl that was supposed to rent it, is not to be heard of…so back to couchsurfers…would so like to find somebody nice!! Jurgen, our landlord, also started the project of putting in new pipes for the gas so we had a lot of drilling going in, it took many hours and still it´s not completely done, as we need the pipes to be a bit covered and not sticking out everywhere :-p Hopefully he will finish this tonight (while I go hide away from the house, to a vegan dinner at a squat, where my friends are gonna be cooking). There was so much dust everywhere after the works! Well, at least it made me finally go to the Blokker to fetch a proper bucket for our mop…

A few days ago me and Nar met up in town with Renate, our former flatmate from Uilenstede, who now lives with her boyfriend in Den Haag, she told us a lot about her trip to Tibet, where her boyfriend is putting together a documentary film about the Tibetan people. It was quite sad to hear how life there is for the locals, being ruled by the Chinese who try to totally remove their cultural identity Sadly, Renate is moving soon for half a year to Hamburg to work there, so meeting her is a rare occasion…Yesterday I visited Nancy from the children´s farm (“kinderboerderij”) where I used to volunteer 2 years ago, helping out with the animal care. There are still many animals there (and even a new Shetland pony, goats, cats and rats), but it was upsetting to hear Nancy´s story about the farm desperately needing money to keep going and not getting any from the city The farm is only open until 1 p.m. because there are not people who would go there in the afternoon to keep it open. Overall, it was quite a depressive visit, even though it was nice to see my old friend again, and the animals. There´s definitely many children that love to go visit the place, to get the contact with the furries…

Last Friday we went with Nar to a CouchJam at the Amsterdam Couchsurfing Zone in Talia, which is a shop with Italian specialties, where you can also eat, but which is more famous for being the heart of the local couchsurfing community. The couchjams are regular meetings where people (usually couchsurfers living in Amsterdam or just travelling through here) get together to play some music (depends who brings which instruments plus the café has some of their own), sing, drink and eat Italian food. You only pay for the drinks and the food comes with it – that´s an Italian “apperitivo”. It was quite nice to meet some couchsurfers again, unfortunately there was hardly any glutenfree food (often the case with Italian cuisine ) and there were not too many songs that I would know or want to play, we were a bit in need of lyrics and chords both…

I am happy to announce that I recently purchased a great, supercheap “fietstas” – a Dutch double bag to put on your bike, behind your saddle, and where you can place pretty much anything, but it´s made especially for groceries. Helps my back a lot, since I don´t have to carry all the heavy stuff in my backpack now! Brilliant…Last weekend we chose to go to the organic market at Nieuwmarkt instead of Noordermarkt, which was a nice change (they also have a lot of great food), we bought some fruit and veggies (the first kale – or boerenkool – of the season!!) and also some items at the macrobiotic stand (yes, you heard right!). I also got slightly addicted to the Amsterdam “toko´s”, the shops with Asian food items(and not only food, in some cases). Especially the biggest and oldest toko in the centre in Zeedijk is luring me whenever I am there, you can get a lot of hard-to-find Asian ingredients at good prices, even some macrobiotic ones…a bit hard to find healthy food, not speaking of organic, but…can´t afford having all I buy the most expensive!

This brings me to an important information: I launched my new macrobiotic blog, where you can track my progress and look for some inspiring recipes (hopefully). Check the links on the right sidebar…

In the last let´s say two weeks the weather had been truly awful – cold, windy and very very rainy. Seeing the face of the sun was really rare and my mood started getting low due to so little sunlight. Well, the last few days we got our dose of sun, finally! Today it´s kind of rainy again, but I am still holding inside the precious sun energy…

We were putting off visiting the cute old ´t Sluisje café at Nieuwendammerdijk because of the weather (since we wanted to sit on the outdoor terrace near the water), but then the sun arrived and we went for a lunch, it was truly awesome, such a positive place, with great food (we had their homemade yummy tomato soup, yummy thick french fries and Nardo was happy to score a beer from his favourite local brewery – unpasteurised and organic!). Also the people working there are nice and we enjoyed watching a group of old men fishing on the pier and chatting. We sure will visit again to experience the tranquility and beauty of this place!

On Saturday the weather was really hot and sunny, so first we went in  the early morning to Noordermarkt to the organic market (and had this tiny and expensive but oh so good rawfood chocolate cake) and in the afternoon we went for a long biking trip into the Waterland area which surrounds Amsterdam-Noord. It´s a pretty rural landscape with lots of little canals and wetlands and a neat network of bikepaths which take you to the charming old villages – we visited Durgerdam (once an important harbour on the IJ shore, today very attractive for tourists), Ransdorp (with a beautiful 16th century church) and Holysloot (probably the cutest of the villages). All these places still belong to Amsterdam, which is hard to believe! I am happy that we live close to such a beautiful area with lots of old farmhouses, gardens and animals (we saw many horses, cows and even a camel! :-p). In Holysloot we rested in a pub which used to be a school, and we enjoyed a nearly-free snack and drink, since I found a 10 euro banknote lying under the table, what odd luck

Some days ago we became friends of the local goose colony at Schellingwouderbreek lake by feeding them old bread :-p You can even feed them straight from your hand! But then I read geese should not really eat bread, so I plan to save some veggie scraps for them!

We spent some time lately searching for housemates on Couchsurfing – we had a very nice girl from Belgium visiting us (we even had dinner together and we showed her Nieuwendammerdijk), unfortunately she got an offer for a room where she could move in straight away Then we had a Dutch guy coming for the viewing, but the room was too small for him. So most likely we will be living with a 17 year old girl, an acquaintance of our landlord, I´m curious to see how that goes! :-p In about a month we will be moving all our stuff downstairs…

Last time I wrote about the bike that Nardo could use, since it was standing in front of the house for weeks and our landlord gave Nar the permission to take it…well, it turned out that the owner of the bike (the guy who used to live in our room before us) was just on vacation and came back to pick up the bike (which our landlord seemed to not know about). Needless to say, he was very angry So, no free nice bike anymore…we´re gonna have to find a secondhand bike in a shop now…

We had another meeting with Denise last week, this time she came to cook dinner with us at our place. I still need to find some friends to meet up with here in Amsterdam, so I´m having a look at Couchsurfing, which is a great place to find people with whom I share interests! Well, and I´m sure to find more during my studies at the Institute…I recently got a list of recommended literature for the studies, so I am again on a book-ordering spree on the internet! Kind of fun looking for the cheapest books online, but also a loooot of work! I´ll be VERY busy reading all that!

I am also greatly enjoying my new blender (from Blokker, great deal!) and trying all kinds of dressings, sauces etc. My so far biggest success is homemade pesto (cheesefree and from organic basil from the market),mmmmm!! And it´s even cheaper than the storebought one…

As for our jobs, Nardo had his ING callcentre appointment last week, but so far no news from them…So he decided to just take the job at Starbucks, where he´s having his first training day today (and for the rest of this week). The times of the shifts are really not nice, so we´re still hoping for something else, but anyway…hope he likes it! I didn´t work at all for about two weeks as there were not enough clients Today I am going back to work because apparently people are back from vacation…really wonder how it goes…I´m supposed to have my own stable group of dogs around Central Station, that would be great indeed, since it´s closer than  around Museumplein where I was working last time. More about that in my next post…

Oh and I finally am now officially registered at this address SO I could finally open up a bank account, yay! No more “we don´t accept visa cards” at almost all shops

Although I thought I would finally have more time to update my blog, another week has passed and it was busy busy busy!! We sort of finalized our household arrangements by transporting the fridge from the Kringloop shop to our storage room (with the help of Colette and her car, we could also finally show her our place while having a lunch together). Aaaaah, it´s so great to have a fridge just for ourselves where I can store loads of veggies without worrying about the very limited space, hihi :-p

I am still waiting for the confirmation letter about my registration – last week we went with Jurgen, our landlord, to the special office in town which does registration for foreigners. Luckily it was very quick and smooth, probably thanks to the fact that I have already registered in Holland two years ago so I already had a tax number and my data was verified by the town hall in Renkum…Now I can also finally set up a Dutch bank account and get the damned “pinpas” (locally issued credit card), as they often don´t accept Visa in shops, for some odd reason!!

Nardo is currently working on cutting the lock of his “new” bike, a bike that was standing in front of our house for several weeks already before our arrival without being claimed by anybody (the old inhabitants apparently left it here). We were allowed to take it for ourselves, but it had a chain on, so Nar had to get a tiny saw for metal, cut the chain, and now is working on cutting the bikelock itself…tough job! BUT he will have a great bike for free, a much better one than he has right now, with a much better saddle and pedals…

Last weekend we made an awesome bike trip along the Nieuwendammerdijk taking plenty of pictures (check my gallery), there was a canal festival at the café ´t Sluisje (so we didn´t manage to sit down at its lovely terrace yet!). We also biked around the Schellingwouderbreek lake which lies just about 200 m from our house and where several fishermen gather and where there is a large duck and goose colony often fed by the locals. We biked around Vliegenbos, the little forest/park nearby, we yet have to explore the inside of the forest though. There are still so many places we want to discover on our bike trips, unfortunately the weather is not cooperating lately with a lot of heavy rainfall and unpredictable changes! I really like the area of Nieuwendam where we live, it used to be a fishing and shipbuilding village separate from Amsterdam until 1921 when it was connected with the city. The colourful wooden houses along the harbour and  the narrow cobbled streets going down from Nieuwendammerdijk with houses covered in wild vegetation of old gardens make up for a very special atmosphere of good old times…

In about a month Dario, our housemate, is leaving for Italy, so we are looking for somebody to come live in our attic room while we will move into his room one floor down. Tomorrow a Belgian girl (who we know through couchsurfing) is coming to meet us, and on Monday she will meet up with Jurgen, as well as another girl whom Jurgen invited. Really curious to meet both! And I reeeeally want a girl coming here to keep the place tidy and give me some female company

In town I´ve already twice visited the Kushi Institute and its shop called Deshima – I like it there, the shop and the cafeteria! Both times I had a lunch of soup and ohagi (rice balls with different fillings and coatings). A purely macrobiotic shop is something we don´t have back in CZ…so cool!

Last week we had several meetings with both friends and family. We met up with Denise, who we got to know through couchsurfing (for some time we were planning to rent a flat with her and her bf Diego) and had a yummy macro dinner at her place together with her new housemate Toni. Denise worked and studied at the Kushi Institute, so I can learn a lot from her, especially practical stuff about cooking We planned to meet up next week to cook at our place. We also had a big meeting with the old 228 crew from Uilenstede, where we lived with Nardo two years back (and where Nardo spent several years during his studies), so nice to reunite with all of them and hear more about their current lives! We were lucky to meet even Barend, who came with his girlfriend all the way from Singapore, which he does only maybe twice a year. We first went for some drinks to a pub at Nieuwmarkt and then moved to an Italian restaurant which I found online, supposedly one of the best pizza places in town…of course, I could NOT have any pizza :-p On Thursday we went to Zwolle to a big family dinner of Nardo´s family – his dad and sister with her bf Guillaume, Nar´s grandparents (who organized the whole event), his uncle and aunt, and 3 cousins, one of them had her 2 year-old girl with her. The dinner was at an awesome oriental restaurant where you could eat unlimited, scoop several different ingredients on your plate (and there was a huge variety, even for me!) and they either prepared your meal in front of you on a wok or on a hot plate. Some people had even 4 plates of food for dinner, I was full even after 2, but I probably had more rice than anybody else :-p We also had a starter included in the price and unlimited drinks, and of couse then there were salads, and soup, and fruit, and desserts…I had a créme brulée and icecream, which I didn´t do (and won´t do!) for months…a big dose of sugar for me, but hey, I need to break my rules at times! :-p It was very nice to meet people from Nar´s family I didn´t get to know before and talk to those I already did know! After the dinner we went back to Amsterdam by train, but luckily travelling by train in Holland is always so quick and easy…we just picked up our bikes at the ferry and biked home at midnight, through the quiet Nieuwendammerdijk…

The next day Tami and Guillaume arrived to Amsterdam to do some walking and shopping in town and to see our place. We went to town with them and saw some of our favourite shops again, for dinner they and Nardo ordered food from a grill/fast food place, and we watched “9″, an odd but quite nice movie :-p

Last Monday I had my first (and so far last…) job experience at the dog-walking service. The day before I biked to town to Museumplein with Nardo to memorize the route I needed to take the next day, it´s actually pretty easy though of course biking through Amsterdam is always an adventure. On Monday Nar biked there with me once more in the morning to make sure I get there ok :-p At Museumplein I met with my boss Philip and colleague Barry and we went to pick up the dog-clients at their houses, mostly in the fancy neighbourhood of Oud-Zuid and in the inner canals area in the centre. That itself took about and hour and a half and actually is already counted in the time of the paid walk. We picked up two little terrier female dogs who weighed almost nothing, and then a German shepherd and a gigantic fluffy Newfoundlander (who weighs 80 kg!!). We spread them out between me, Philip, Barry and a new girl called Esther who came to try the job for the first time as well. When we had them all we took them to nearby Vondelpark where they could play with some toys and swim in a pond (especially the Newfoundlander who really loves water!). A lot of tourists came to watch us and take pictures :-p Then we took the dogs back to their owners, the whole thing took about 3 hours, but it was pretty exhausting, because it was hot weather that day, a lot of walking through the streets (I got a map for myself!) and two of the dogs are really strong…I wondered how I would manage to have 5 of them on leashes, which is what you are supposed to do when you´re walking without the other people assisting you…Unfortunately, in the next days I couldn´t try, because there were not enough clients for me and Philip didn´t need me…I hope next week I can work and see if this is the right job for me! Walking dogs is great, but I have to see whether I am physically capable of this…

Exactly a week has passed since our arrival to Amsterdam and I can tell you I was helluva lot busy until now!! Well, actually I still am, but it´s getting much more bearable. We have spent the week in a chaotic race to get all the furniture and other items we need, obtain the necessary documentation, get back our old bikes, explore our surroundings, look for suitable jobs, clean the house and probably a lot more still.

To be a bit more specific…When we arrived to the house in Nieuwendam (a cute quiet middle-class neighbourhood in Amsterdam-Noord), I was not thrilled. The communal places (especially the kitchen and the bathroom) looked shabby as if they were not cleaned for quite some time and there was a lot of clutter left in our attic room after the previous inhabitant (random things like a blanket, sheets and pillows, a half-broken Ikea cupboard, parts of a bed, two cheap mattresses, cds and dvds, toilet paper rolls etc.). Not the best welcome to the new home. We started working straight away on turning this place into something pleasant, tidy and cozy. In the kitchen we had to throw away some old food and very thoroughly scrub the inside and outside of the fridge/freezer. We found out that we really need a fridge of our own, as the one here cannot accommodate food of four people, one of them a wacko vegetable-hoarding passionate cook Even a bigger task was scrubbing the bathroom – getting rid of all the calcium on the shower, cleaning the hard-to-see-through mirror and especially the mold hosting shelves (after getting rid of a load of ancient shampoo/shower gel/shaving cream etc. bottles). Nardo showed some courage to scrub the above mentioned locations. It took a couple of days to get rid of the junk taking up space in our room, we decided to keep the two mattresses for guests, but almost all the rest went into a nearby shed belonging to the house owner – we gained so much more space this way!! For those who don´t know – we are renting one attic room and one small room in the first floor of the house which we are using as a storage room. The two rooms are connected by a flight of stairs from our room and a hallway. The shared bathroom is next to this little room. The shared kitchen and toilet are in the ground floor, so when we go there we have to go down two staircases :-p Of course, very narrow Dutch stairs…We walk a LOT up and down every day!

A couple of days after our arrival I got the three boxes delivered from Prague through the Toptrans company (or actually, their partner company). I was getting a bit nervous waiting for the boxes to arrive but then one day when I was shopping nearby I got a phonecall from this Czech dude who was already waiting in front of our house, so I quickly hurried to our place to pick up the boxes. So cool this service really works and is not even awfully expensive! So good to also have all (well, a lot) of my stuff here!

Our housemates are both Italian guys – in the groundfloor Alessio (who is now looking for a job, a guy with true Italian temperament :-p) and in the room above, Dario (a student soon to graduate, a more quiet lad). Unfortunately there is no living room where we could hang out with the guys (or just ourselves), so we mostly meet in the kitchen, from time to time :-p As Dario will be leaving end of September, we decided to rent out his room in the first floor instead of our two rooms, because his is nicer, bigger, with a pretty view, and a bit cheaper to top it. Hope it´s a good decision, but we really liked his room and he will be leaving some furniture there…

The hunt for furniture was also a bit exhausting to say the least…We were very very lucky to find an ad on Marktplaats (the most popular ad site in Holland) of a German girl leaving Holland and selling her basically new expensive latex Ikea mattress for incredible 50 euros! We went to pick it up the next day after our arrival and we had to hire a moving company to transport it to our place, still even with that it was a great bargain. It´s a better mattress than the one we used to have two years ago and which is now in France…More luck came in the form of Nardo´s family friend Colette who invited us for dinner and gave us a load of kitchenware (including a cast iron wok!), a large table and a very handy cupboard with shelves for books and other stuff. It was amazing to see all that (and my bunch of macrobiotic books which she kindly took for me from France) fit in the regular size car, just with one removed back seat. We were looking at Marktplaats and other places on the internet for chairs and a fridge, unfortunately we didn´t manage, but today we decided to go to the secondhand Kringloop shop and there we purchased two chairs (finally we can sit at the table like normal people and not on our bed!) and also a small but nice Zanussi fridge which will be transported tomorrow to our place again with Colette´s help. Brilliant! We had to pay a bit more than we aimed for, but it is worth it and we can sell the stuff again later…Through Marktplaats we found a guy selling a toaster (very good one) and a tiny oven/grill thingy which we still have to test out (Nardo really misses an oven here…) and Nar also brought his “tosti machine” (grilling machine for bread with cheese) from his previous place in  Amstelveen. We also made the obnoxious trip to Ikea (very bad idea to go there on a Sunday!!) where we got some much needed household items and also a pretty good pillow (two pillows in one, ha! :-p). My favourite thing though is the large supersharp knife for cutting vegetables, yeeeeeah! It´s really so important to have good tools, also in the kitchen, especially when you´re a cooking freak like me. One “bad” thing we did at Ikea was buying the Swedish Almondy cake (the dark chocolate one), those of you who read my blog in Sweden know which one I mean…the supersweet but oh so good glutenfree almond-based cake…well, that was one step aside from my otherwise strict candida macro diet :-p Now back on track after suffering the consequences of dairy and sugar…

Since the beginning we made very many trips to two shopping areas in the vicinity – the huge shopping centre of Buikslotermeerplein, where you can find basically any shop you need (think of all the brand stores) and an Albert Heijn (the largest Dutch grocery chain), and the small shopping area of Waterlandplein (with a Super de Boer, a nicer grocery chain which we used a lot back in Amstelveen, and with a lot of ethnic groceries). I must say I am partial to the latter one, as I love love love the colourful Arabic, Indonesian, Surinami etc. shops where you get to know the people selling there, and where you can find food in bulk for amazing prices, beautiful cheap vegetables and a lot of exotic yumminess (gotta try the cassava root soon!). Of course, we also went to the centre to visit Nardo´s favourite organic market at Noordermarkt where we bought a load of food, especially veggies (and Nar´s favourite old cheese, finally :-p). They have awesome food, but it´s really expensive :-s and it was very very crowded there – next time we must go earlier!! I think we will keep it as a special treat, buying food at this market…We also had lunch in the centre, fries with sauce at our favourite stand, but they were more oily than usually and I am sooo used to eating healthy now, that I didn´t even feel the satisfaction of having these fries I used to love so much Funny how tastebuds change over time…

Finding jobs was (and still is) a big theme here too…I was really hoping I could get a job at a market research company which was looking for Czech natives, that sounded great, and it seemed to be a flexible job. They also called me soon after my application was sent and obviously wanted me…But then…I had the idea to check out Amsterdam based dogwalking services and found one which had a vacancy that seemed really cool…I mailed, got a positive reply, then went to an appointment, and now I have a job from Monday! The company is owned by a young guy who inherited it after his mother and they walk about 30 dogs weekly, in central Amsterdam, mostly dogs of expats, so actually my English is a big pro…I should be working 15-20 hours a week (more than I planned), pay seems good, so let´s see how it goes…I will have to be biking to the centre every day there and back (plenty of exercise) and walking groups of dogs for a couple of hours every day (even more exercise!), I hope I am physically prepared for this Meanwhile Nardo is applying for several positions too and hopefully will succeed soon too. I am also in the middle of the registration process at the municipality which is not so easy as I thought it would be…Nardo registered within five minutes at the Amsterdam-Noord town hall, but I have to go to an office in the centre which is for foreigners, and I had to get a new contract from the house owner (as I wasn´t included in the previous one) and will need a copy of his id :-s They make it so complicated and also give so much contradictory advice it´s hard to find what´s the truth! Hopefully next week this can be done…At least my tax number is probably still valid since two years ago as I have learned…

We don´t have much time for fun things (yet), but we did already go to a little goodbye party of Yvette, Nar´s friend, who is going to be studying in Sweden for a year. It was actually quite fun even though most people spoke Dutch, but we played a very fun game called Rainworms Next week we will hopefully meet Barend, Nar´s former flatmate from Amstelveen who is coming for a visit from Singapore. Today I had a wonderful trip by bike through Nieuwendam (Nardo picked up both mine and his old bike from another former flatmate who still lives at the place and was storing our bikes, luckily!). I went from our house to the spot where the ferry leaves from to go across the IJ bay to the other shore (it goes every few minutes and for free!). The street of Nieuwendammerdijk is so gorgeous, with many old wooden houses, it looks like time stood still here for two centuries or so! I promise to make plenty of pics soon…It was bright sunny weather so it made the whole trip even more enjoyable, I really missed biking…Well, tomorrow another trip around here planned and on Sunday we have to practise going into town so I can go on my own on Monday to my work :-p