Our first week of living in Ljubljana was so concentrated and packed full that it seems that at least two or three weeks have passed! What a busy time!

Of course, right the second day we met up with our landlady Ana, a 30 year old yoga teacher living in a village near Kranj, north of Ljubljana, and signed the contract with her and asked her a million questions. Her dad used to be a policeman so he brought us to the police station in the Vič district where we registered as tourists staying at her place, for 90 days (within this time frame you need to register for a temporary residence or leave the country). We thought registering for a temporary residence would be quite a  quick and easy process requiring just our ID info and our contract, but nope…a few days later we went to the “upravna enota”, something like a city hall, where we waited for about an hour (it was incredibly busy!) and the lady at the desk told us that we cannot register at our apartment unless we are registered first at the foreigners´ department…so we went there, and after a bit shorter wait, we were told that we cannot register with them unless we have a proof that we are (going to be) employed in Slovenia…oops…so technically, now we have 90 days to find a job and bring them a job contract so they let us stay here, officially register us and then we can register for a temporary residence in the apartment where we are actually living….They don´t make it nice and easy for foreigners 😦 The pressure to find a job as quick as possible is uncomfortable(you can´t even open a bank account without a legal address – and paying bills at the post office costs quite a lot extra as we found out…), but I suppose it will motivate us to really find something soon…

Everybody keeps telling us that getting a job without Slovene will be very difficult and so far this seems to be totally true. Next week we really have to look more into this, contact some more companies and do some more brainstorming. I´m lately thinking of setting up my own little dogwalking company but have to look into the whole legal process and whether I could actually afford it because you can´t do it without submitting money to the state…I also have to find out whether there is sufficient interest in this service here (I am supposed to meet up with a girl who used to have a company like that).

Meanwhile we spent a lot of time at Ljubljana´s enormous BTC shopping centre located in the suburbs, shopping for some necessary household items (such as curtains or a vacuum cleaner…), and especially kitchen utensils which were lacking here except for some two pots or so. It´s always such a draining experience, these crowded unnaturally-lit and unnaturally air-conditioned places…so the first two times we always ended up having a rather late dinner at the food court, like real consumers 😀 Once we went to this really great Thai place (where we also ordered from the first day we arrived here), they even have a recommendation from the Thai embassy that it´s authentic food! It sure is spicy as hell 😀 But by now our place looks really like “ours”, I am absolutely in love with it! Every day I enjoy the gorgeous view of the castle hilltop! And I can´t even describe how excited my own kitchen space makes me! 😀 It´s really luxury I haven´t experienced before…Nardo is now planning how to get some plants indoors 😀 And today we will also put some herb seeds into flowerpots as we have a balcony where we can hopefully grow them…it is very shaded though…

The only downside is the bed – our mattress is 200 cm, while the bed here is 190 cm long, so we put our mattress on top of the original mattress here…not a good idea (for our backs). So we might get either a secondhand bed we found online or a rather cheap bed from one of the BTC shops…

Every Saturday we go to the wonderful central market, which on this day includes also a rather large organic section, a great place to get veggies, even though I must say they certainly are not cheap! But you can see the people who grow your food, talk with them, and the market has such a charming atmosphere of old times…today there was a regional presentation of the Kras region there, with old people in traditional costumes, very cute.  And you can find such cool stuff here at the market – such as dandelion leaves, wow! Or wild garlic! Today we even purchased a fish at the fish market (a local rainbow trout), nice and fresh! And next to this market there is a specialized fish restaurant which we tried once, nothing better than food cooked from ingredients straight from the marketplace.

We haven´t been too social yet, as we´ve been so busy, but we already met our Serbian friend Jelena at Kalček, the health food shop, where she works as a shop assistant, and also Goran, who we knew before just from facebook as a friend of a friend, and who took us for a stroll from our place to the centre and told us a bunch of useful things about the city and country. It´s such fun getting to know the city from an insider´s status…We also already bike to most places, which is not as smooth as in Holland (there aren´t bike paths everywhere, which means that on some streets you are not allowed to go with a bike at all, or you can bike on the sidewalk, which is kind of semi-legal I suppose). People here still don´t know that much how to react when they meet bikers, either, and the bike paths are often bumpy and cracked. But hey, we are immensely happy that we can actually bike here AT ALL! And most roads have traffic lights for bikes. Plus the terrain is flat (Ljubljana lies on a former marshland).

Last Monday we started our intense two-week course of Slovene at the Centre for Slovene of the faculty of arts. We go every day, from Monday to Friday, to this place about 15-20 minutes by bike, at a youth culture centre called “pionirski dom” 😀 There we spend three and a half hours (half an hour is a break) learning the language. INTENSE. There´s just four of us students (me, Nar, an almost 50 year old German lady whose husband works here, and a 17 year old student girl from Colombia). We have two teachers – young ladies, who are both really terrific teachers. It´s actually a lot of fun, we play plenty of games and it´s very interactive and dynamic, because we are such a small group. For me the course is not so demanding as knowing Czech is a large advantage, but for the rest it´s really tough. We also have homework to do every day…I sure have never experienced such a speed-learning of a language before, but I think it´s pretty cool 😀 After these two weeks though I wonder how we will manage to keep up with what we´ve learnt and to further develop our skills…self-study, or a tutor perhaps?

One day we did our homework at the Ljubljana castle, where we sat in an alley on a bench, in the late afternoon sunshine, with the view of the whole city beneath us and the Alps encompassing it…wow, what a wonderful spot to go for a walk and relax!

Last week I also started a new dietary regime, according to recommendations of my macro teacher – my energy levels are definitely going up, though I´m also going through some detox. But spring is a great time to clean your body (and consequently, your mind) 😀 Hopefully soon we will also manage to integrate more here and find ourselves jobs!!

Between our arrival to Amsterdam and our final departure to Ljubljana we had a very busy week, full of organizing, packing, selling things, arranging legal and financial matters and most of all, meeting our friends and family.

We tried to sell our tiny oven which we got I believe just a few days after moving to Amsterdam back in August, but we didn´t manage, even though it was on offer just for 5 euros. The poor little thing apparently looks too used and is also not too useful, as it is really too small for anything else than a sandwich…Well, the person who will rent our room will find it as a present…We also tried to sell the two wooden chairs that we bought in a secondhand shop, but that didn´t work out either 😦 We only managed to sell our fridge, through an online advert site, and the big portable oven from our friend Sonya, who didn´t want to take it back anymore. We found a buyer for the oven through an expat group on facebook and we also gave the people one of the chairs for free to get rid of it :-p The second chair we are actually moving with us, which might not be a bad idea… Our friend Colette allowed us to keep her big ikea bookcase, that might come handy too at our new place, if it fits there :-p

I had to cancel my Dutch bank account and we both had to unregister at the Amsterdam Noord city hall. But since Nardo wouldn´t have any permanent address he had to figure out where else to register in the Netherlands, in the end we made a trip to Tubbergen in the east of Holland, where he could register with the parents of his old childhood friend Alein. Thanks to this necessary legal matter I got a chance to finally meet up with her and we had a very pleasant stroll in the misty but nice weather in a forest just out of the village, very near the German border. It was an amazingly pretty forest for Dutch standards, quite wild looking, with some pretty lakes and heather fields. We followed a path with markers, got lost, had to ask an elderly lady for help and then managed to find the right path again, so in the end it was quite a long walk, but a really beautiful one.

The other day I also got to meet another “old” friend of Nar´s, Sophie, who came over for dinner from Utrecht. I also still very much wanted to meet the girls from the Kushi Institute before I leave. It was actually the first time I saw the KI student house, where most of the students usually live during their stay and where several of the employees and volunteers live too. It was very nice to meet up with the girls and we had a wonderful dinner with several courses which we cooked all together, some of it more traditional macrobiotic and some more Mexican style for a change. I will for sure be missing having macro friends so close…

I did however make a large order of macro food at Deshima, the KI store, altogether about 30 kilos, as some of the food is not easily accessible in Slovenia or not for a customer-friendly price. And yes, I totally confess that I am a stockpiler and I like to be well stocked when it comes to food in my pantry 😀 Not having to buy certain items for a long time puts a spark in my eyes too, I think…

Nardo and I were certain that we would throw a goodbye party for our mutual friends at our favourite café ´t Sluisje at Nieuwendammerdijk, which we arranged on a Saturday evening and actually had quite many people attending, to our pleasant surprise. This place with a stylish old-fashioned interior, picturesque location above the harbour and canal lock, and a big variety of beers, will also be dearly missed…

The last day before our departure day we met up with Nar´s dad for a dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in town, one where we haven´t been before. The meal was very nice and also the place itself was quite pretty and rather fancy. But the best culinary surprise came the next day – we had all our cooking utensils and food packed, so we chose to go to ´t Sluisje for lunch and to order food in the evening. We had dinner from a Thai place which was rated as the best Thai delivery service. It was honestly one of the best Thai meals I ever had, with fresh crispy vegetables, lovely marinated and crunchy tofu and a very balanced ginger sauce, even their white rice was yummy!

The packing took us about two days, it was much more exhausting than I expected. I realized we really have a lot of stuff – we packed about 20 boxes, 4 large plastic bags, our mattress, bikes and some lose items. The driver of the moving company arrived in the early afternoon and helped us carry all the stuff into the truck in pouring rain. It was a dreadful day when it comes to weather – heavy steady rain and very strong wind. Well, Dutch weather certainly wanted to say goodbye in a proper way! The poor guy was very tired after driving for days in western Europe – he told us normally he drives only around Prague with another company… We offered him a shower and a cup of tea and he was really happy. But from what he told us the company was not too organized, there was quite some confusion whether he is supposed to be moving some palettes the next day or not, the communication among him, the boss of the company and us was not so smooth…

Anyway, in the evening, after the delicious dinner, we boarded “our” train to Munich once again, and again there were the same uncomfortable seats, but this time we were armed with quite nice inflatable pillows 😀 We got a bit of a delay because at night there was some conflict between one non-European guy and the German police, and the guy literally lost his nerves and started shouting and shrieking as a lunatic and I think he had to be taken off the train, very unpleasant scene… But the German police is lately very tough and checking almost everybody very thoroughly 😦

In the morning we had breakfast in the waiting area of the Munich train station (which is most of all a big shopping centre and it took us long to find a place where you can sit down for free). The following train had a delay as well but luckily the connecting train in Villach waited for us. At first the weather in the Alps was very gray, but then it became wonderfully sunny, there was much less snow than last time. Ljubljana greeted us with a lot of sun, how nice! From the train station we took a bus and then we waited for about an hour, first on the river bank and then on a bench behind our block of flats, as we didn´t have the keys from the building and apartment yet. We had to receive them from our landlord´s friend, as the landlord girl was busy that day. That worked out well and shortly afterwards our truck driver arrived and helped us carry all the loads upstairs, to our new place on the 2nd floor. We still couldn´t believe it when we saw all our boxes, safely there, undamaged! The poor driver was again very exhausted, but this time he was in a hurry, so we couldn´t even offer him a shower or tea :-p As we didn´t know what time the guy would arrive we ordered food from a local delivery service, which was a good idea because we were really busy with all the truck unloading and later unpacking, plus the food was very nice, and we got a little soup and dessert for free because we ordered early.

We were deeply grateful for being in our own place when we went to bed that night. Unfortunately, our mattress doesn´t fit into the bed frame (which is too short), but we will manage to somehow fix that :-p What truly matters is that we made it all the way here with all our belongings and now we can enjoy our new place and new life…

 

We thought we would be able to easily get a Slovene phone number once we arrive, but we found out that to be able to have anything else than prepaid, you have to either be a permanent resident of Slovenia (which only happens after living there continuously for 5 years) or you have to bring along a friend who actually is a permanent resident and has a job, who signs a paper for you in case you flee the country without paying the provider your bills, extravagant! So we just looked into the local prices a bit and still need to sign this strange agreement with the help of one of our friends…

At first I was a bit shocked to find out that food items in Slovenia (and especially organic ones) are actually in most cases MORE expensive than in Holland, which already is (compared to the Czech Republic) an expensive country foodwise. It is a bit of a mystery how Slovene people, with their not too high salary (compared to Holland) can buy food that is actually the same or higher price. On the other hand, rent and transport, for example, are less expensive, so I guess it kind of evens out. Still, it was not good news for me, as I generálky spend so much every month on high quality food. With Nardo we went to the biggest health food store in Ljubljana, which indeed is huge and has a very decent variety (not so many macrobiotic goods, but it´s well stocked in veggies and also the grains and flours aisles are very impressive). Anyway, I decided to transport quite many specific macrobiotic food items from the Kushi Institute shop, as getting them here would be difficult if not impossible, or at least much more costly. Slovenia´s largest grocery chain Mercator also carries organic food, at least you can find it in their bigger supermarkets. We visited the largest one in the Šiška district which was really enormous and had pretty much anything you could dream of, even quite many special international items I would not expect (such as some of the Indonesian products you can find in the Dutch tokos). At first I was pretty sad about the limited accessibility of fresh vegetables in town, but then I discovered the small but cute marketplace in Bežigrad (the area where Petra lives), and on a Saturday we visited the main central market of Ljubljana, which is the biggest food market I´ve EVER seen. Mostly fruit and veggies, but also a lot of dairy products, meat products, honey products etc. This central market, with its amazing variety, is there actually every day, which is really great since we´ll be living pretty close. Plus every Saturday morning there is a quite large organic market, just as big as Amsterdam´s splendid Noordermarkt! Discovering this really made my heart jump with joy. The markets here are even more traditional and old-fashioned, with grannies selling herbs, wild mushrooms, vegetables long forgotten in the West (and a looooot of pickled cabbage and turnip), there´s even a stand where they bake wholegrain pizzas and pies in a wood oven. Near the organic market there´s also a covered fish market with fish coming mostly from the local Adriatic coast, the selection is also outstanding, and next to this market there´s a specialized fish restaurant with very cheap lunch dishes.

That actually is worth mentioning – while groceries in Slovenia are a costly matter, going out to eat is amazingly cheap, which is a mathematical enigma. While you can easily spend 6 euros on just a very few vegetables, you can spend just slightly more on a regular restaurant meal! And you´re not even expected to tip here, people somehow don´t normally do that here. The cheap meals seduced us in Ljubljana to try out a few places – once we ended up in a Chinese restaurant with an extra greasy dinner (not recommended…we were originally looking for a vegetarian restaurant, but it was not where it was supposed to be, so we needed a quick fix…), another time we had lunch in an outstanding (and the only local) Indian restaurant, and last but not least we went to check out the Georgian restaurant near Petra´s place, which was really a bizarre experience.The place was very stylish, with Georgian music playing in the background and lots of ethnographical decorations, nevertheless we were the ONLY guests there, which felt awkward, Nardo got a very tiny portion (of a meat dish) and I got an even smaller one (which was more of a cold appetizer without the option to have any sort of side dish with it). It was the first time I came home from a restaurant and actually ate still quite some food 😀

 

While the beginning of our stay the weather was kind of grey and cold, the other half of the week was absolutely wonderful weather with temperatures climbing up to 20 degrees! Since we had already found an apartment and couldn´t do that much in terms of job hunting (aside from building up our network), we also had time to do some sightseeing. In Ljubljana we visited an antique market (very near our future place) with some very precious old collector items and also some strange junk. You can definitely get a lot of unique stuff there! We also took a stroll through the Tivoli park, the biggest park in town, which neighbours with a forested hilly recreational area with a labyrinth of tourist routes. It´s dogwalking paradise! At the beginning of the park we saw an interesting photographic exhibition documenting the traditional Slovene carnival. I think this festivity is still very popular here and people make incredibly rich costumes.

One day we decided to get out of the city, just a short train ride to the nearby little town of Kamnik, with a charming medieval centre. The biggest attraction is the town´s “little castle” sitting on a hilltop, with a beautiful chapel next to it. We thought we would climb up another hill where there were supposed to be some castle ruins and a marvelous view, but the little forest path was so icy that we had to give up. The views were wonderful anyway, even from other places. Kamnik lies just beneath the snowy Alps. We also had a totally awesome lunch – the great thing about Slovenes is that they like whole grains and especially buckwheat, so I could enjoy a (nearly macrobiotic) lunch of buckwheat with mushrooms and roasted apples.

Now we´re back in Holland, where it´s grey, cold, misty and rainy, what a welcome 😀 It feels very strange to be here after the very intense week in Slovenia, where we already started absorbing the local culture and language and getting used to the idea of living there for a long term. But well, we have to do a lot of things before we leave in about a week – get boxes for packing, sell some stuff, meet a lot of people etc. But I can´t describe enough how happy I am to be finally soon getting a place of our own, or at least, a place without housemates! My own kitchen, yay! 🙂

 

Our trip to Ljubljana started at Amsterdam central station in the evening hours when we got on the train to Munich. In the beginning it looked quite comfy but soon we found out that it´s gonna be a tough sleepless night. Our seats were not in a closed off compartment as they usually are, but it was just two very stiff seats in a long row, just like in an airplane, so we couldn´t lie down for the night and got almost no sleep. Early morning we changed in Munich to a nicer train. Munich has probably the largest variety of food I´ve ever seen at a train station! We had our own homemade breakfast of course :-p Near Munich the Alps started to rise and for the rest of the journey we enjoyed breathtaking snowy alpine sceneries. Unfortunately the weather was very grey but later on in Austria it was sunny at places. Around noon we changed once more in Villach to a smaller train that took us to Ljubljana. The first impression was not so great as the weather was really sad and depressive – what a contrast to sunny warm Ljubljana of our memories from our summer vacation 3 years ago!

We had drawn a little map of how to get from the station to our host´s Petra´s place, which we found very easily, it took us just about 5 or 10 minutes from the station. Petra gave us a warm welcome in her spacious apartment where we could occupy one small room with a bed prepared for us and where I could cook in the kitchen (on 2 gas and 2 electric burners), pretty important feature for me…The next day we already had a meeting scheduled with one of the real estate agency ladies, called Julija. We met up with her at one of the apartments we were supposed to view, we could luckily walk there from our flat in about half an hour. The location was near a busy road, and the surroudings were generally not too inviting. The flat itself was quite ok, but pretty dark, and the kitchen was not nice, with only two gas burners (in Slovenia practically all stoves have at least 1 or more electric burners even if the rest of the stove has gas, for a good reason, as last year the Russians cut off the gas for two weeks…). Julija then took us by car to the other place, which was in a more quiet neighbourhood, but the buildings themselves looked really ruined, apparently they were not renovated since the sixties…Also the flat was very basic, with almost no furniture or equipment, we would need to buy even a laundry machine. But most of all I really didn´t like the socialistic architecture of the whole area. Finally the third place where Julija took us, was in a very pretty area with neat family houses and the flat itself was in the attic of one of such houses, nearby a popular recreational area for the city dwellers. It was very pretty and cozy, but very very small, especially the kitchen. Plus the owner didn´t speak any English, quite essential…The previous day we scheduled also a meeting with the owner of an apartment that we really liked based on the pictures in the online advert, which was an offer without an agency. Everybody told us not to look for flats through an agency, because every agency takes a commission, here in Slovenia it equals one monthly rent, which is not little…So we really hoped it would work out!

After saying bye to Julija, we went for a viewing of this flat, which was indeed really pretty, with a novely arranged kitchen, and most of all an amazing view of the old part of Ljubljana and the castle on the hilltop! Yes, the flat was in the centre, just about ten minutes walk from the most central square, and near the bank of the Ljubljanica river. There was also a balcony where you could sit and eat your meal or drink your tea while enjoying the beauty of the area. Also the girl who was renting the flat seemed nice and spoke very well English…The only downside was the relatively high price…In the next days we still tried to find some other options online and with the help of agencies, not actually visiting any places physically, but in our mind we basically both knew: we really want to live in the place we visited on Monday, just one day after our arrival. And finally we decided to accept the offer. That means it was really really quick for us to find an apartment in Ljubljana! Of course, I must note here that I spent many many hours online going through adverts and contacting agencies…

 

 

 

We had a lot of social activities during our week long stay in Ljubljana. On Tuesday our host Petra had her birthday party, which basically took place the whole day with people coming and leaving. In the evening we also joined in and met two of her friends. We also met up with our “old” friend Eva, who we know already for three years, since our last stay in Slovenia. We went to a teahouse where we talked over tea about life in Slovenia and about Eva´s planned trip to Sri Lanka (she left just two days after meeting us). So good to meet people you haven´t seen for years! But we also met more new people – we went to a café for a chat with Nardo´s facebook friend, a Dutch guy called Jeroen, who shared his experience of living in Ljubljana as an expat. Everybody,including him, keeps telling us that finding a job in Ljubljana is very very hard, even more if you don´t speak fluent Slovene, on the other hand, if one is creative enough, there are always some options…I do have some ideas brewing in my head for sure… But teaching macrobiotics or doing cooking workshops might have to wait for a while, before that I really need to get myself some steady income and create a bigger network, then I can venture into the field which is closer to my heart (and unfortunately here in Slovenia people don´t know almost anything about macrobiotics). I did meet one “sort of” macrobiotic lady though, Petra´s friend (and the woman who helped us find Petra), Jelena from Serbia. First we met up with her at Petra´s place and a few days later we accepted her lunch invitation and went to her house together with Petra. Jelena cooked an amazing macrobiotic lunch with several courses (including some divine glutenfree muffins filled with 85% dark chocolate!). We got lots of help and advice both from her and her husband Dejan. We must say that Slovene people (and obviously also Serbian people living in Slovenia) are extremely friendly and hospitable, trying to help as much as they can, we keep seeing that more and more every day and it´s very encouraging, especially in our situation, when we are a bit desperate to find jobs. I did leave my phone number and e-mail address at the local vegetarian cafeteria-style restaurant, but that is pretty much the only vegetarian place in town, besides the Hare Krishna affiliated ones, and they told me they´re not really looking for anybody right now. There is also one job offer we got through a facebook group, but let´s not talk about that right now, I am too superstitious 😀

 

Every Thursday evening the Language exchange club of Ljubljana organizes a meeting for foreigners who want to practice their Slovene language skills or who have some questions about Slovene. The meetings are held in the café of the Ljubljana art cinema and are organized by (another) superfriendly Slovene guy called Igor, who has a pretty impressive knowledge of the grammar and history of his mother tongue. Besides the three of us there was a French girl and guy and a Finnish girl. We talked a bit about expat life and job opportunities, but we also dived into the mysteries of Slovene language. We hope to attend more of these regular meetings in the future and hopefully we will get to know more local people as well as foreigners that way. During our stay we registered for a Slovene language course – first at one of the cheaper schools, where we had to go personally to pay for the course in cash. When we came there, we discussed what would be the best thing to do, since we would meet the first two weeks of the classes. The girl working there showed us the book they use for the class and we found out that the Level 1 course we signed up for (and which takes two months to complete, while attending it twice a week) is really really basic. On our way back home we kept thinking about it, whether it´s really the right option for us since we need to learn the language quite quickly and we need to be able to communicate with the people, not just to say a few easy sentences. At home we looked up the Centre for Slovene (part of the philosophical faculty), the biggest institution for teaching Slovene to foreigners, and although they first seemed a bit too pricey, we concluded that their two-week intense morning course is the thing we need. Forty lessons in two weeks, Monday to Friday, over three hours every day, that should give us a better start than the other course. So last minute (it was literally the last day to sign up) we enrolled and called to cancel the other classes (and the next day we had to go pick up our money, at a different office location…but well, they returned it to us). Now we are waiting for a confirmation from the Centre for Slovene that there is still space for us….

 

Yep, that´s right, my macrobiotic studies at the Kushi Institute in Amsterdam are over, after completing the Level 3 of the Art of Life programme a few days ago. It´s really hard to believe it´s finished, because in total I spent SO many hours in those two institute buildings, living my dream of devoting myself to studying the ancient oriental philosophy of the laws of the universe. It was a great though demanding study, I met many very interesting people, and ate many, many, many delicious healthy meals prepared by some outstanding cooks (and also by myself and my classmates during workshops).

The Level 3 started with a Nine Star Ki weekend workshop (a branch of astrology which is, unfortunately, very little known outside of the macrobiotic circles, yet it´s truly fascinating and complex). It adds a whole new dimension to the more popular astrological systems of the West and of China (or better to say, the modern Chinese astrology). I attended the workshop together with my Slovene friend Gašper (we met up with him in Rotterdam a few weeks ago, as you might remember), but then he had to go back to his job, while most of the attendants of the workshop continued further, into the “real” Level 3 programme, which took place after this astrology weekend. Most of my classmates were the same people who studied Level 1 or 2 (or both) together with me, plus there were a few new faces, and also many of the Kushi Institute employees joined us this time.

During the programme we experienced a massive cold weather wave, not typical for this part of the world, where the winters are mild and rainy. It was really really freezing, especially when you consider the omnipresent Dutch wind and humidity, which makes the temperatures seem much lower. It was deep below zero and one day there was a little snowstorm which brought a pretty thick layer of snow for local standards. It was so cold and there was so much snow and ice on the streets that I gave up biking for several days, as my fingers would probably fall off…So I had to take the bus and tram to get to school, which was annoying (and in the first snowy days the public transport was quite paralysed…), and as soon as it got warmer and safer, I returned back to my dear bike. The canals of Amsterdam froze enough so that it was possible to walk on the ice and many people found their old skates (or bought new ones) and entertained themselves with the Dutch national sport. There was a reeeeal frenzy going on when the people were anxiously expecting the legendary Elfstedentocht (200 km skating race on the Frisian canals) to happen, but unfortunately the ice was not thick enough for this sport event to take place. So the people of Amsterdam at least organized a skating sprint race on the Keizersgracht canal, which we went to see after class, but we couldn´t see almost any of it, because there were such crowds everywhere – literally like on Queensday! As for me, I only once went for a few minutes on the ice, but we didn´t really have much free time during our school…

Before the Level 3 we went with Nar and his dad to Zwolle for the birthday party of Nardo´s grandpa, who turned 94. It was a big family event, with all the siblings of Nar´s dad and their children and grandchildren… 😀 The party dinner took place at a Chinese wok/tepanyaki grill restaurant. These restaurants are always fun. because the cooks prepare all the wok and grill dishes right in front of you, extremely fast and precise, on very very high flame, quite spectacular.

We also visited our macro friends Denise and Diego at their place, for the last time, as they are also soon leaving the country…I will miss them very much, as well as the awesome dinners 😀

Yesterday we finally used the restaurant voucher that Nar got as a birthday present from his ex-flatmate Tom and his girlfriend, I really like that sort of gift, nothing better than a yummy AND free dinner 😀 We went to our favourite Indonesian restaurant Betawi, which could easily win an award in most friendly service. Another place we´ll miss, though we managed to dine there only twice during our stay!

On Saturday we are already leaving for Slovenia, this time just for one week, with the sole purpose of finding an apartment. We have no other option than to manage, because after we come back, we just have to pack our stuff and on 7th March give the moving company an address in Ljubljana where to deliver it :-p We´ll be staying at a “friend of a friend”  next week, at a convenient location near the central station, with a possibility to cook our meals. So now I´m veeeery busy with e-mailing real estate agents and also individuals to meet up with. It´s pretty stressful I must say, but at the same time exciting – sooooo nice to finally have our own place, without any housemates!! 😀

 

Not so much going on lately, most of our focus goes into the future, which is approaching very fast!! 😀 Ummm, yes, technically future approaches steadily with an unchanging speed, but somehow often it seems like this is not true, such as now in our case. In other words – my third level of the Art of Life programme at the Kushi Institute is almost here (in a few days I start the “routine” again, for two weeks!) and just a couple of days after the end of my classes we are leaving for Slovenia (18th February to be precise). Incredible, that´s very soon! First we are going just for a week to view apartments and decide which one is the right one for us (please, everybody, wish us good luck!), then we´re coming back for a week to Holland to pack our stuff, sell some of it, have an awesome goodbye party, and on 7th March we´re moving out of the lowlands for good, with a Czech moving company transporting our belongings and a train transporting us.

So right now we are in the process of 1) reading my macro books and my notes from previous classes (umm, yes, just me, not Nardo…), 2) going through many ads on the internet searching for a nice cheap apartment (we are most likely going to use the service of a real estate agency as it´s less stressful and risky), 3) looking into jobs in Ljubljana, which looks very grim at the moment (downside of a population of only about 250.000 in the capital city?), but let´s not lose hope, and finally 4) trying to get as much of Slovene vocabulary and grammar into our heads, using our lovely book called “Colloquial Slovene” from the Routledge series. I am a bit baffled how different Slovene can be from Czech…definitely there are many many similarities which make it quite easy for me, but on the other hand, there is a lot of “false friends” (when you think: sure, I know this word! and then you find out it´s totally NOT what you would have thought, dammit!). Especially the word order in Slovene is very peculiar and hard for me to comprehend. But well, poor Nardo is definitely in a more difficult position even though he doesn´t have to fight with all these false friends as us Slavs…

In my last post I was mentioning our rice fast – I managed to complete the whole 10-day fast as planned, and Nardo did a fast of 4 days (as he planned). I´m not going to write about the fast experience here, but go over to my macro blog (see links) if interested 😉 It was definitely an interesting time, though not very easy! Now I am back eating “normal” macro food and enjoying that very very much!!

Yesterday we met up with Nardo´s friend Scott and after a very long time we visited the beautiful Noordermarkt, Amsterdam´s biggest organic market. We bought a bunch of lovely veggies and also treated ourselves to some awesome rawfood cakes (not that I advocate rawfood, but I must admit that these guys are really skilled and create great tasting desserts! luckily they´re very small…).

During the rice fast we finally made a trip to Gouda where our friend Linda lives. The last time we saw her was in Finland, as she was working as a dog handler and tour guide at the FinnJann husky farm, which was the kennel that we shared our dog-sledding routes with. It was very cool to see her again, after chatting on facebook for about a year and planning to see each other one day 😀 Too bad the weather was very ugly, cold, windy and rainy, but even then we enjoyed the beauty of the historical centre of Gouda (we really should come back one day when it´s sunny and enjoy the beauty more!). Linda also took us to the animal farm (something like a petting zoo) where she volunteers for several years and we got to snuggle with some goats, cows, horses, donkeys, bunnies (also newborn!) and even pigs. At Linda´s place we played a lot with her dachshund puppy Zorro (who never ever gets tired of playing fetch…), her budgie who enjoyed standing on our heads, and her incredibly beautiful owl Focus. We tried to make him fly using some meat to lure him but he was really lazy that day and didn´t want to fly much 😀 But it was nice to have him sit on our hands (on leather falconry gloves), so close! Plus Linda showed us her picture book from Finland (she printed hundreds of photos from her stay in a book format!), a calendar she made using her pics (and one we got as a gift, yay!) and some videos as well.

There was one more trip we made during the fast, and that was to the natural park Twiske just a few kilometres from our home, north from Amsterdam. We went there by bike but then left our bikes at a parking lot and continued on foot on a marked path which led through marshlands with many different bird species, across small wooden bridges, along a lake and even through some forested parts. It was magnificent though cold weather and I really enjoyed the area – check out for yourself in my gallery.

Well, today is the last day of my last quiet weekend spent (mostly) at home, because the next two weekends I will be busy studying and the weekend after that we are already going by train to Ljubljana!

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! :-D).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 :-D) 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! :-D).

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 :-D), 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! :-D) 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 :-D).