adventures and ramblings of a girl on the continent
This year is going by far too fast for my liking. Is it seriously 9th February already??
I am also very ready for winter to be over. Saturday was glorious here – sunny, mild, a few whispy clouds in the sky. And I was fooled into thinking “yes! spring is coming”. Oh the meanness of it all. Today there is a icing-sugar dusting of snow on the rooves and the heater is turned right up high again.
But in defiance to the gloomy soul-sucking month that is February, I am wearing a skirt. :)
Possibly the strangest title of any book I have read.
Mum and I both had this book on our Christmas lists this year, and conveniently both bought it for each other :)
Last week I had to make an overnight trip to Germany for some meetings so had around seven hours of train journey to fill, without the luxury of being able to watch the changing landscapes because I was travelling both ways in the evening. (I love watching out of train windows… the route between Liege and Aachen that I took is particularly beautiful as the train goes through steep green valleys following the river)
So I grabbed this book as I quickly packed that morning (last minute of course) and had finished it by the time I got home the next night.
I really enjoyed this book! It’s the post-war story of a women writer called Julia living in London, who by chance starts corresponding with the members of a book club on Guernsey. The entire book is written in the form of letters – between Julia and her editor, her friends, the man courting her, and of course with the quirky and captivating islanders.
It’s a book about the occupation and is quite often serious and moving, but without feeling heavy. It is immensly readable and the characters wonderfully likable. The main character Julia has a wonderful dry humour which made me feel like I would get along with her very well in real life!
I often find myself reading books which, although I love, leave me feeling a bit emotionally washed out, I think because I get so absorbed in them. This one was nice because it was light without being vapid, and the ending seriously made me want to clap my hands.
I didn’t, because I was on a crowded train, but I did set it down with a big smile on my face, only to pick it up again three minutes later to re-read the last five pages…
So now I need a new reading recommendation. I’ve got a few non-fictions lined up to read, and I’m currently dipping in and out of the fascinating auto-biography of Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices, which my friend Linda at church gave me, but I need a new fiction book to get inspired by.
Read any good books recently?
(even better if you want to lend me your used copy so I don’t have to pay the exorbitant prices at one of the two English book shops in the city… :)
The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.
And I’m back!
After just over an hour sitting on my countertop, the nanaimo bars finally thawed enough to cut through the base. unfortunately the chocolate was still very brittle so broke into a thousand pieces as I cut. I managed to salvage a couple of normal-looking pieces to take photos of…
I have never heard of Nanaimo bars before. They are a Canadian treat and incredibly sweet but yummy. The base is like tiffin (hag and mag for any of my family reading) with extras: coconut and almonds. (Note to self: remember that husband does not like coconut in cakes or bars in future…) The middle bit is like a custardy layer – and it does in fact have Birds custard powder in it. The top is just melted chocolate, but don’t even get me started on how much I miss having a microwave to melt chocolate in.
I like them. I like the base the most though. The custard layer I could take or leave. Maybe these would be yummy turned into some kind of millionaire shortbread instead? Hmm….
I should make clear I cheated a bit in this challenge. We were supposed to first make the gluten free graham crackers to use in the recipe. But I started too late and could not on short notice find most of the ingredients I needed in the local GB supermarket. So I just used digestive biscuits instead. I like to see it as easing back in to the challenges :)
One of the most original wedding presents we received was from one of Rasmus’ colleagues and his wife. They gifted us a night in a hotel in the east of Belgium, a hotel that they had been to a few months before when grandparents had taken their cute french-speaking son off their hands and they had escaped for the night, a hotel that they had been in raptures about the next time we went round.
I am so not kidding about the raptures.
Carbon Hotel is a very modern designer hotel in Genk (not to be confused with Ghent), which is in eastern Belgium and which if I am completely honest I had not heard of before the gift voucher arrived. And I can’t really tell you much about it either since we spent no time outside of the hotel…
We left on Friday after leaving work early and thanked God every 100m of traffic that we do not have to commute to work through that chaos.
And then we arrived and walked up to our room on the second floor and in to this:
Wow. This is the kind of hotel I stay in in my dreams. You seriously have no idea how much I have daydreamed and longed to sleep in a bedroom that has a bath in it. A BATH! IN THE BEDROOM! I cannot describe its awesomeness.
The room had a gorgeously comfy king size bed – complete with artfully arranged throw blanket – a flat screen tv, ipod dock, dimmer lights, a FREE minibar (FREE!), towelling robes, a photo book on cool furniture.
And did I mention the bath was in the bedroom??
Oh, and the lights behind the bed changed colour. Which I tried to take photos of but you don’t really get the full effect. Maybe some clever photographer person can tell me what I did wrong?
They bought us prosecco when we arrived. And then MORE prosecco and olives and parma ham just half an hour before we had booked dinner. (we drank a lot of prosecco)
And there was a rain shower. It is also my dream to one day have one of these. Only without the shower tray. I will have one of those awesome shower rooms where the floor sloops just ever so slightly, so all the water runs away into the corner. It will come to pass, I am sure.
And everything was dark and classy and incredibly sexy.
For dinner we ate in their award-winning restaurant downstairs (the awards were for the design, but the food was pretty good too) and chose their six course taster menu. And more prosecco of course.
It was such a wonderfully amazing night. I think I finally passed out at 3am. But that was fine because breakfast went on until 11.30 – 11.30! – and check out was not until midday. Which we took full advantage of, you can be sure. I had a bath, of course.
So I can’t really say I recommend Genk as the up and coming destination. But if you ever find yourself here for the night, or you decide to take the train from Brussels for the night, you should make a booking at Carbon.
Also: night in a fancy hotel as a wedding gift? Truly wonderful idea.
I did take part in the daring bakers challege this month. I know, I know, it’s been ages. But I blame it on getting married, and then Christmas came along so unexpectedly…
The thing is, this one was indeed a challenge for me, which I wasn’t really expecting. But that might be because I bought cheap chocolate (shame on me!) and then sulked for half an hour when it didn’t do what I was asking of it.
Tonight I am finally nearly finished. BUT I had put it in the freezer to keep fresh as I was away for work two nights, and it’s kinda still frozen. Which means it looks rubbish and is too hard to cut out of the tin. I’m hoping it doesn’t taste as not-quite-right as I am expecting it to.
I’m hoping a few hours out on our counter will make it soft enough to cut through, but probably I won’t get round to posting until tomorrow. Sorry! But please come back… :)
Photos taken by my talented Uncle Neil.
Facial expressions blamed fully on my mum’s genes. For evidence, see here.
We are fickle people indeed.
Praying devoutly every autumn for a white Christmas and then moaning without cease as soon as the snow arrives. Still, this was one of the longest seasons I can remember when the snow never melted. From the week before Christmas all the way through till last week. Yes, I realise that most of Scandinavia and Canada are shaking their heads at us in shame right now, but it was a big deal for us start buying bottled water and candles at the first sign of a frost western Europeans.
And of course we were thoroughly unprepared which made it a month’s worth of walking like penguins to avoid slipping on the layers of treacherous ice on every pavement. And also meant I was very relieved when it melted last week.
Still. I look back at our photos from Christmas at my Grandpa’s in the heart of Scotland and kind of miss it…
So some of you might remember that startling revelation a while back that my husband had forced me to sign up to a gym.
That’s not exactly the true story. I might not have been forced. Although I may have looked a wee bit grumpy at the suggestion.
But it is true that in all twenty five years of un-married life I had never so much as flirted with the idea of joining a gym. The word was only ever spat, not said, because in my vocabulary gym was a very dirty word.
Which is why the first words out of my mum’s mouth anytime since that someone has asked how her daughter’s marriage is going are:
Well, listen to this! He actually got her to to join a gym! A GYM!
Last night I went to the gym. This was the first time I have been since the Christmas holidays and those five course dinners I had at that lovely hotel and all my mums scrummy food at my Grandpas. And why had I not been in all the 15 days since I got back?
I lost my gym card.
Don’t look at me like that. I know what’s you’re thinking. But I honestly truthfully sincerely lost it. No hiding was attempted.
But then my lovely husband paid the €5 and got me a new one last week after convincing the gym staff that yes, probably if there are two people in their database with that surname, they are probably married. Because google it and the only other K-Js live on his home island. Which is over 800km away so they are probably not commuting to this gym.
Since last night was my first visit since Christmas and, as mentioned, I have never been a gym member before, last night was the first time I experienced the January rush. Lots of people waiting to sign up, four staff members on reception, all the running machines occupied (oh right, they’re called treadmills, oui?). And I actually counted five women there yesterday. Which for our gym is startling high.
Which actually I think I like. There is a woman-only gym close to us which I considered, but then I remembered how competitive women are and after that recalled how insecure I am liable to become when faced with a slim athletic woman doing sit ups on the cycling machine (what’s that one called?), and suddenly the option of being surrounded by macho weight-lifting men who either showed off or laughed at me sounded quite appealing.
The other plus side to being one of the few women is that there are always showers available and I usually have the whole fake-wood-pannelled changing room to myself, cheesy pop music and all.
Anyone else getting back in to the gym this week?
time is flying…
Having this many cute babies all around is bad for a young woman’s emotional state, I tell you.
I just want to snuggle them all… :)
