Tour de France - Post Deux

These first pics are of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile. The street leading to it is the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Take a look at the one with the people milling around to get some idea of the scale of this thing.

And of course, the Eiffel Tower. Talk about SCALE. This thing is HUGE!

In front of the Louvre. It was closed on Christmas Day so I guess that means we'll have to go back :)

More to come!

Tour de France - Post Un

What can I say? This place is amazing and pictures truly cannot do it justice. If you've ever been to Paris you will recognize the landmarks in the pictures. If you haven't . . . Paris is only a few hours away from us so "come see us" and we'll show you in person!

These pictures of the city are taken from the ferris wheel (pictured below). It's not too far from the Louvre. This ride was a Christmas gift from the Andersons and it was wonderful.

More to come!

... we're not in Kansas anymore

Vrolijk Kerstfeest en Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar! Even if je spreekt geen Vlaams, I bet you know what that says. And we are wishing that for everyone who stops by this blog and for all those who don't.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb2YSAVHmIE

Can you define bittersweet?

I can.

Zaventem

That's where I'm headed this morning.

Because that's where the Brussels airport is.

And that's where we're picking ROSS up to spend Christmas with us! :)

UPDATE

He's here! And luckily, so is his luggage :)

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Let it Snow!

From our 3rd floor balcony yesterday. Zero celsius!

Welcome Home

We received this beautiful floral arrangement from Norbord on the day we moved into our house.

And then the next day our landlord/neighbor/pharmacist and her family brought this gorgeous plant. They actually grew these in their own yard!

It really is incredible how nice people have been to us. We have not encountered one person at a store or a restaurant or a public office who wasn't willing and happy to speak English and assist us in any way they could.

I ask myself - would I be this nice to a foreigner?

I will be if I ever get the chance.

Xmas decor

I was anxious to purchase a few ornaments for our little artificial Christmas tree we bought on sale, but I have to admit. . . it's been quite a challenge. I've looked at hundreds of ornaments and various other decorations and have only purchased 3 ornaments. And even these leave a little to be desired.

I'm not sure what's up with the decor choices, but pink, purple, black, and swans are just not typically what comes to my mind at Christmas. Am I missing something here?

Legend has it that green represents evergreen and red represent apples. Pink? Purple? Black? Swans? I just don't get it.

Ikeadom

We've made 4 (?) 5 (?) trips to an Ikea store in the last month and we ain't done yet! But, hey, we're furnishing an entire house so it's the only way to go. These stores are amazing, but there is so much stuff that it simply can't be done in one trip.

Naturally "some assembly is required", but as Jim noted, they've overcome the language barrier by using only pictures for instruction manuals. Seriously, there are no words. Just pictures. And lots and lots of little parts. They thought of everything.

These are the nuts and bolts for one chest of drawers. And we used every one of them. And no, it's not 9 feet tall. Just 121.92 cm. Quick, do the math on that.

Okay, it's 4 feet.

We also received a toy with our lunch. No, we didn't have any children with us so . . . . well, I don't know. Toys for everyone!

"She" originally came with TWO arms, TWO ears, and a purse, of course. Winslow has thoroughly enjoyed "her".

We moved the coffeemaker

.... so you know what that means.

It's official - we have a new address!

And we're pooped :)

Define neutral

Our landlord had the walls of our entire house freshly painted in a nice neutral color. Sort of light taupe and/or white everywhere. I define that as neutral.

Last week, we left a note, in Dutch, for the painters ( who speak Dutch) asking if they could paint the upstairs bathroom door because it was green. OBVIOUSLY not matching the new neutral paint scheme we had going on. We said in our note "een neutrale kleur is prima" (any neutral color is fine).

I kid you not, when I went back the following day, the bathroom door was THIS neutral color.

All I can say is that it's definitely not green any more.

They say it's your birthday . . .

it's my birthday too!

And I wish.

Just for today.

That I was right here again.

And right here.

De Post & De Square Cards

I took my Christmas cards to De Post this week. I was lucky enough to have the employee in #5 call my number. He speaks good Engels and as you might guess, that's VERY important to me. I asked how much it would cost to mail my Christmas cards. He immediately confirmed I'd made the critical error of buying SQUARE cards. Naturally, these cost 3x as much to mail as standard envelopes. Well, duh.

Okay, the squares were addressed, I was determined to send them, so I ask "how much?". Reply: 3 euro 15 each. Hmmmm, okay, I can live with that.

I also REALLY wanted to put Belgium postage stamps rather than the printed sticker. So I tell him this. He says my choices are limited to a stamp with ornaments or the King. I went with the ornaments. Surprised, huh.

Of course, the ornament stamps were only worth ,59 Euro so it would take . . . that's right 6 stamps. And yep, you guessed it. Not enough room on the "mistake-of-a-square" envelope for 6 Belgian ornament stamps (assuming you want the address to remain visible). And I did.

Soooo, the nice De Post employee in #5 suggested I put 2 - ,59 Euro Belgian ornament stamps and a sticker for the rest. Brilliant!! Sold!!

This guy actually helped me put 2 stamps on every square envelope and then printed separate stickers for every card.

Thank you. Thank you, De Post employee in #5. You made spending 44 Euro to mail 14 Kerstmis cards totally worth it!

Prettige Feesten!

Buurtfeest

We met our landlord last week. Her name is Annamie and she invited us right away to a neighborhood holiday party. Of course, we accepted and attended. It was last night. It was FREEZING! Wind chill of -2C (28F)!

There were many nice people and many of them spoke Engels so we got to meet several of our new buren (neighbors). I notice people are intrigued by what brings Americans to Hasselt and they want to know all about us. I am humbled by the fact that these people are no different than us. They go to work, have fun when they can, and love their family.

I failed to take any pictures despite taking my camera! We met our landlord's husband Jan, their other son Peter (had already met one son, Bert), another guy named Peter, another guy named Jan. Very popular names here. A couple expecting a baby boy next week! I can't remember their names, but do remember their friend's name - Elke. The baby has no name yet. They did like the name of our grandson :)

Still sometimes seems surreal that we are here, but I'm glad we went to the buurtfeest. We appreciated the invitation and the warm welcome to the buurt.

Remember that milk?

From a post in October?

It's STILL good. And it WILL be for another 5 weeks!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

. . . everywhere you go.

It gets more and more festive every time we walk around town, but here's a look at a few decorations.

This is the street that connects the street we live onwith downtown.

It's called Kapelstraat and there are quite a few ritzy stores on it.

This is the Grote Markt (aka town centre).

It's surrounded by restaurants.

Most of the streets downtown are lined with red

carpet for the season. Isn't that pretty?

This is a public office building.

This is a home interior store. I went in just to look around

and actually bought an ornament for less than 5 Euro :)

"Winterland Hasselt" from a distance. It's a little Christmas

village right in town with shops and an ice skating rink.

A carousel in the Grote Markt.

Professional Pressers

Things in Belgium ARE expensive. How could you forget, right? But this is downright ridiculous.

When we were shopping for our washer/dryer combo and our new dorm refrigerator, we ran across this thing. A bargain at 899 Euro.

In US$, that's $1,354.61! For an ironing board! There must be a box somewhere in the back with the rest of whatever could possibly make this thing worth 899 Euro.

And there must be some serious ironers over here.

Pieceacake

The furniture we purchased for our house was delivered and it was . . . well, somewhat of an ordeal - sorta like most everything else.

Ikea (where we made our purchase) instructed us to have a 15 meter space available for the truck and furthermore if there was no space to pull up in front of the house, they would return to Brussels with our furniture and we could offer another 125 Euro for them to come back and try again.

We decided we'd do our best to make sure it happened the first time. So our nice realtor told us how to get the city to post signs stating that the parking spaces in front of our house were not available on that day.

We completed an application and returned it within the 10 days prior to delivery requirement and received the permit in the mail and all this for only 30 Euro! Well, sure enough, the day before our delivery there were signs instructing those who usually park there to look elsewhere.

Of course on delivery day, I walk (in the pouring rain) over to the house to meet Ikea (sometime between Noon and 16 uur). As I approach, I say to myself "surely those aren't cars in our 15 meter space". But indeed there are cars in our 15 meter space!

Now what? Track down a Dutch speaker and ask them to call the politie? Then sometime in the next decade these cars might be ticketed or towed? That shouldn't be a problem. And all this before Ikea drives by headed back to Brussels?

So I go (in the pouring rain, remember) in search of the car owners. As luck would have it, one showed up and apologized that he was from Antwerp, didn't know the city and would move right away. All in perfect English, I might add.

Then, shortly thereafter the owner of the other car showed up appearing apologetic, but speaking Dutch so I guess she said something like "I'm moving my car right now" and did.

Our landlord (aka pharmacist next door) had the foresight to ask the painters for buckets to place along our 15 meters and lo and behold Ikea pulled up within minutes.

Thankfully the landlord's son appeared and was able to communicate with the French-speaking Ikea delivery guys and then tell us in English just what they said. Then later we "talked" to the Dutch-speaking painters with his help.

We Americans are so not equipped to live here :)

Anyway, here's what we got. So this shouldn't take long to become a place to sit, sleep, and eat, right? Pieceacake!

Proud Parents

Ross graduates from La. Tech in March and I decided this deserved it's own post. We are very proud!

http://business.latech.edu/oss/rFrazier.htm

Define art

There are statues and other art forms all over Hasselt and these are just a few of them.

They are . . . well, you be the judge.

We walk by this one in the video two or three times a week and when Winslow first arrived in Hasselt he would get as far away as he could when we walked by them.

Now - well, I guess he's okay with it now.

Black Pete

When we were at Ikea in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago, Sinterklaas and his companion Zwarte Piet (for the record - black because he climbs down chimneys) were there too. Obviously not shopping for Swedish furniture, but handing out candy to the kinderen. Every time I tried to take their picture, they would turn so this is the best I could do. Camera shy, I guess.

And these I saw window shopping in Hasselt.

However, on Wikipedia, there is a much better view.

According to legend, both here and in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas, along with Zwarte Piet, give presents to all good children on the eve of Dec 5 (Netherlands) and Dec 6 (Flanders - where we live).

BTW, that's today!

What's in a name?

The names of cars I've seen is interesting. I'm not really up on car names anymore, but I don't think many of these are sold in the States and with these names, should be a tough sell anywhere.

There's room for improvement in the photography since some of these vehicles were moving while we were moving.

That says Renault KANGOO

The Fiat PUNTO

(bring back bad memories for you former Pinto owners?)

Nissan BLUEBIRD ??

Suzuki SWIFT

(I think this may soon be available in case you're interested)

That says CARISMA

The Peugot PARTNER

The Peugeot TEPEE

and this has to be my favorite - the Toyota PICNIC :)