Death of a photographer

Every now and then it really stinks to live abroad. Today I got word that a dear friend of mine has passed away. Of course I am flying home to attend his funeral, but I should have been there three weeks, a month or a year ago, when I could have still looked him in the eye.

He would have liked that, allthough he would not have told me so. He was not the man to show his feelings, other than in a really subtle way. You had to know him really well, to be able to read the signs.
Allthough we did not see much of each other in recent years, me living abroad and all, it did not matter. We had so much history together, enough to last us for a lifetime of friendship, or so I thought.
We met, sixteen years ago, when working for the same newspaper. It was my first real expat experience, albeit within the borders of my own country. It was a small newspaper, in a rural part of the Netherlands, that I only vaguely knew from childhood holidays. My friend, the newspaper photographer, observed me - this strange city girl - for a couple of weeks, decided I was good folk and turned himself into a very loyal friend. He and his lovely girlfriend invited me to dinner on a regular basis. They later welcomed my then boyfriend W. with open arms, made the best pictures ever at our wedding and showered our children with lovely exotic gifts, brought back from the faraway places where they liked to spend their summer holidays.
Friend  M. dilligently kept me up to date with my friend's life and him with what was happening in mine, as neither of us were very good at picking up the phone. It did not matter. At some point, I knew, I would move back to the Netherlands and he would live to be eighty. At least. That was the deal. I kept my side of the bargain. I am moving back to the Netherlands this summer, but my dear friend went twenty or so years too early.
I finally picked up the phone, three weeks ago, as I knew he wanted to say his farewells. It was weird, but at the same time strangely comforting. He talked about how he was arranging his own funeral and how his GP was going to look after him till the end. I told him I would miss him. And I will.

What I ate, Italy (3)

Food, glorious food! How can you write about Italy and not write about food, you might ask. And you are absolutely right; it is impossible.

So, I will tell you what I ate, now that I can still taste my dear friend M's freshly made pesto. On our way home from Bologna, we drive into the hills surrounding Modena to visit her. Seeing M's gorgeous house again brings back many happy memories of large gatherings, tables laden with food and a very memorable summer party where we danced and drank under a starlit skye.
For our first meal, back on our old stomping ground, we go to a tiny Osteria, off Via San Vitale. It is one of those places where there is no menu, just plenty of freshly prepared, seasonal food, that the chef fancied cooking. As soon as you sit down the waiter will start bringing you the daily choice of antipasti: huge dishes filled with ricotta and honey, a delicious courgette souffle, chunks of mortadella, ruccola salad, freshly baked bread and polenta with fresh peas and carrots. You take as much or as little as you like, before the waiter takes the platters over to another table. After this feast arrives the pasta. I eat large tortelloni, stuffed with green asparagus and floating in a sauce consisting of potatoes, butter and saffron.
I do not feel that I can manage dessert after this, but before I can politely decline, the waiter starts putting down bowls with fresh strawberries, mascarpone, chocolate mouse and creme caramel. To resist this temptation clearly takes more self control and inner strenght than I posess.
The short time that we have to spare to wander around Bologna is filled with endless cappucino's and macchiato's for husband W. and me and fior di latte, crema and banana flavoured ice cream for the children. We meet up with our favourite French couple in Teresina, an old favourite of W. and myself. It is a bizar horseshoe shaped restaurant. To get from one end of the dining room to another you either have to walk through the kitchen, or step outside again in search of an obscure little extra door, that disguises like a shop window. The evening passes in a pleasant haze of sparkling conversation, pumpkin filled ravioli, beautifully carved mature beef and semifreddo made with fresh almond paste.
Our last night we decide to spend in Parma, in Palazzo dalla Rosa Prati, a beautiful house right next to the Duomo, divided in gorgeous appartments that you can rent for a night as well as for a month, or a year. Another great reccomandation brings us to La Forchetta where we enjoy an ecclectic mix of antipasti, some more pasta, a great local red wine and the best Tiramisu ever. To help our bodies digest all this the four of us play tag and hide and seek on the courtyard of the colossal 16th century Palazzo della Pilotta. It is a balmy night, the chidren run around like maniacs, W. and I hold hands and I wish I could savour this moment for ever.

Sweet home Bologna, Italy (2)

You do not know what you have got until it is gone. I have been so frustrated at times with daily life in Bologna, that I did not always appreciate the upside of it. But now, after walking around Bologna these past few days, I have completely and utterly fallen in love with the city all over again.


Walking through the centre of Bologna is like walking through a museum. Everywhere you look there are beautiful medieval buildings, awe inspiring towers and countless century old churches. The sun glows warm on the ochre and terracotta coloured facades. Traffic is roaring, people are shouting and nobody seems to be following any rule. It does not matter one bit that you have to be on your guard for dog turds, thiefs and busses trying to run you over. The sun is shining and the cappucino tastes heavenly wherever you go!
Five years ago, I was heartbroken to leave my beloved English friends and my perfect English life behind to start afresh in Italy. It took me a while to come to terms with my loss and start again. I struggled with the noise level, was easily frightened by people shouting and terrified my children would be run over. The fact that I found myself in a city where I could not make myself understood made me feel very isolated.
Until -and is that not always the case? - I met this wonderful French girl R. who was much braver than Me, throwing herself at learning to speak Italian and making it work. Together we found a wonderful Italian teacher who took it upon herself to teach us. And Slowly, very slowly I did learn Italian, at least enough to get by.
I saw her again, my French friend and it was wonderful. She still lives in Bologna, speaks fluent Italian, makes her girls join in with local after school activities and feels completely at home in Italy.
Four years ago I chose to work fulltime at the International School of Bologna, which made my life less Italian than it could have been. Working five days a week, did not leave me much time to enjoy Bologna, or to perfect my Italian. I loved the little school though and being around my own children as well as teaching others, turned out to be very fullfilling.
It came at a cost though. Having to queue endlessy at the post office, or the bank in my short lunch breaks, having to drive to a megastore every single Saturday for the weekly shop, or having to take the day off work to battle with Italian bureacracy were the unpleasant side effects. Never having enough time to laugh about such matters made life a bit of an uphill struggle at times.
Now though that I have a few days to rediscover Bologna at a leisurely pace, I feel oddly at peace with noisy Bolognese life.  So much so that it makes me want to freshen up my Italian and come out here more often.
I share some wonderful laughs with my Italian friend E., who very kindly invited my daughter for a sleepover and a dinner with all the girls from her old class. Around midnight E. sends me pictures of four rosie cheeked Italian girls and one Dutch one, giggling and dancing. It almost makes me cry.
Both the children, my husband and I all feel like we are coming home. Or, more to the point, like we never left. How lovely it is to discover how Bologna has crept under our skin, without us even noticing it. It has been lying in wait, ready to be released in these few precious days. What a great privilige it has been to have lived in Bologna and forever hold a piece of it in our hearts.

Driving like a maniac, Italy (1)

We are back in Italy! Loving every minute of our whirlwind visit. Soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying the vibe.

The difference between Switzerland and Italy is like day and night. As soon as we cross the border, we are on new but oddly familiar territory. Not only do we have to stop every four kilometers or so to pay two euro's for the privilige of driving in Italy, our fellow road users drive like suicidal maniacs.
When we hit an exeptionally busy toll station it almost feels as if we are in Mumbai. With this exeption that noone drives a Tuk-Tuk. Youngsters in shabby cars cut in ajacent lanes without even so much as a glance over their shoulder,  bus drivers leave only a finger space between their vehicles and the cars that are in the way, a woman, completely oblivious to the racket around her, reapplies her lipstick. Everyone else is either busy text messaging, or shouting, or showing their middle finger. Marvellous!
And yet, I can not stop smiling. Unafraid and honking my horn like the best of them, I cut a path through traffic. I use the emergency lane and negotiate roundabouts three, four cars abreast. Let us see who blinks first.
It is not me. I can drive as an Italian if needs be. During the three years that we lived in Bolgna  I would face crazy rush hour traffic on a daily basis. Witnessing the scraps of metal on the roads after yet another accident was sadly enough also part of daily life. And yet, there is something about the noise and unrulyness that is so much fun. Especially after quiet, quiet Switzerland where noone ever so much as raises his voice.
Long after we have comfortably installed ourselves in a hotel on the borders of lake Garda, I can still feel the adrenaline. It makes me want to go out and eat and drink like there is no tomorrow. Luckily it is completely normal to go out for dinner at ten o clock, even with children. Naturally the local gelateria is also still open and ready for business close to midnight. What a perfect ending to a petfect day spend on the Italian motorway.

Slow bathing

After slow food and slow living, I am now a convert of slow bathing. Allthough I absolutely hated the idea of filling up one's bathtub with slow boiled water from various pots and kettles, it actually proofed to be oddly relaxing.

Therapeutical almost. My quest for a better quality procedure of getting myself clean only started last Thursday, when someone put up a notice on the door of my appartment building stating there was not going to be any hot water from Monday 8.00 till Wednesday 17.00. Our communal heater apparantly needed something done to it. And since we have not had any snow for at least ten days, this was as a good a time as any to turn it off. The Swiss, being send to forest nursery's from a very young age, probably do not mind jumping under a cold shower in the morning, before tucking into their bircher muesli.
I guess I just have not been living here long enough to toughen up. So after coming home from a bike ride all grubby and sweaty, I really did not know what to do. And being expected for a very sophisticated lunch later in the day, I really felt that I could not get away with soaking myself in perfume.
Instead I set about boiling water. In every pot and kettle that I can find. In the meantime I make myself comfortable on the sofa, put the telly on and have a lovely time watching 'Homes under the Hammer'. While I was sitting there in my bathrobe the most miraculous thing happened: I did not feel guilty at all. While I would normally never allow myself to watch daytime telly, unless may be when I am ironing - something that try to avoid at all cost -  I now very contentedly sat there. Boiling enormous quantities of water takes a lovely long time.
Only after boiling and pouring and some more boiling and pouring was I finally able to sit myself down in about a foot of tepid water. Luckily I am still quite flexible, otherwise I do not think that I would have managed to wash my hair. Within minutes or sitting down, I was towelling myself dry again, feeling very satisfied, like I really accomplished something.
My son, never keen to maintain even the lowest level of personal hygiene, announces after school that he wants to see for himself what the slow bathing thing is all about. He even offers to fill the kettle. Of course he and I can watch an Idian premier league cricket match, after he is finished. After all the traipsing up and down with hot water, we really deserve a rest.
Needless to say I can not do much else today. I really need to safe my strenght for when my daughter comes home. Then I need to go to the proces of boiling water all over again. With all the available  pots and kettles used to full capacity, I think it probably is a good idea to have a pizza delivered tonight. Preferably one that is made by hand by some lovely old Italian guy, who grows his own tomatoes, and mills his own flour, before spending hours fiddling with my pizza he then delivers personally to my doorstep. Because by now I even want my fast food to slow down.

Shopping

Since my daughter is an official teenager - she turned ten last January - she likes to go shopping. Allthough she would much prefer to go alone, she grudgingly lets me tag along. That way at least I can pay.


It is Saturday morning, five to eight and I am barely awake, when my daughter tells me to hurry up (!). She has obviously decided to reverse rolls. She is allready fully dressed and ready to go into Zurich. The long awaited day that she and I go shopping together has finally dawned and there is not a moment to loose.
She is wearing her much loved two sizes too small jeans jacket, silver shimmering eye shadow, lip gloss and a shoulder bag containing her i-pod and pocket money.
My daughter knows exactly what she wants: ,,A pair of really short jeans with fraying edges and one of those tops that leave one of your shoulders bare." Oh dear. I have finally gotten used to her wearing black zip off hiking trousers and hiking boots seven days a week and now she all of a sudden wants to look 'cool'.
Clothing has always been a subject of fierce disagreement between my daughter and me. I like her to wear little cardigans and pretty skirts, retro dresses and well cut trousers, whereas she likes anything but the afore mentioned items of clothing. Ever since she could speak in whole sentences she vetoed skirts and dresses in any shape or form. Instead she would always try and wear jogging bottoms and hooded sweatshirts, or t-shirts with ghastly prints on them. She does not like anything frilly, or remotely pretty. She considers wearing clothing made out of flowery fabric a mortal sin.
And now that I have finally grown to like my daughter in het ubiquitous jeans, trainers and t-shirts and have started to like the fact that she does not dress like any of the other girls in school, she wants to look, well, like all the other girls in the school. How interesting.
I honestly can not remember ever having had a discussion about clothes with my own mother. Largely because there was not so much choice in childrens clothes 35 years ago. And I do not think we went shopping for clothes all that often. When I was ten, my mum made most of my clothes herself. Instead of clothes shopping we went to the market to buy fabric. More often than not, we would wear the same skirt, or blouse. I was - in fact - a mini me for a long time.
Not my daughter however. As soon as I hold something up for her to see, she can not tell me quickly enough, how ugly she finds it. The feeling is quite mutual, allthough I do not tell her that.
Zara, for my daughter, provides a rich hunting ground. She finds a tiny (but still expensive) pair of jeans shorts and a couple of neon coloured t-shirts adorned with flamingo's, palm trees and tiny gemstones spelling the words 'Miami', or 'beach babe'. Clothes that I should wear too, according to her. The jeans, she thinks, would look lovely on me. I do not thinks so, but I do not tell her that either.
I make her try on one dress for good measure. It looks hideous on her. Mainly because she pulls such a miserable face. Later on, when we scour the grown up section of Zara to see if there is something that I would like, she makes me try on a maxi dress with batwing sleeves in a fake silk. Good on her. Needless to say I do not buy it.
In short we have a whale of a time. It is so wonderful to see her grow up. I try to savour every moment of the  trip, now that I still get to go with her. If all it takes is to buy her a neon coloured too flimsy too see through sleeveless top, so be it. It is a small price to pay for a few precious hours of her confiding in me. Now I just to need to hide this treasure at the bottom of our laundry bin for as long as I possibly can.

Being Dutch (2)

I do not remember ever having felt more Dutch than yesterday, watching the inauguration of our new king. Not physically being in the Netherlands, also made me feel distinctly melancholy. A curious reaction, considering the joyful nature of the event I was watching.

I started out by being my usual cynical self, ready to ridicule all that was being televised. I must admit that I absolutely to watch and to listen to commentators whose impossible job it is to fill the endless hours spend waiting for events to actually take place. I watched orange-clad people arriving at central station and making their way over to Dam Square. Surprisingly enough they were all dressed in orange, were all very much looking forward to it and had for most part set their alarm clocks at four in the morning, or camped out all night.
I was being told about possible designers  - noone really knew at that stage what she was going to wear - of the Queens various dresses, was given a lecture in constitutional law and saw some thrilling upclose footage of the flower arrangements in the New Church where events were about to unfold. I put a load of washing on, made another cup of tea, checked my emails, without missing very much. Marvellous.
But it all goes terribly pear shaped when I watch Queen Beatrix signing the deed of abdication at the Royal Palace in Ansterdam. She looks at her son with such pride and even grabs his hand. Willem-Alexander is looking unusually stern and determined into the camera, but not before he sends out a loving and reassuring smile to his three little blond princesses. It all sends shivers down my spine.
I have hardly recoverd when out they come onto the balcony. Beatrix tries to speak, but is forced to stop several times, because she can not make herself be heard over the loud 'Thank you Bea', that is resonating around the square. I am so overwhelmed by emotion, that for the first time in eight years, really all I want to do is to go home.
Home to my country, where on Queens/Kingsday day everybody as young as 3 and as old as 99 can be a street vendor or busker, where people, without batting an eyelid,  hop on the train with an orange toilet seat strapped to their head, where Marocan  girls wear orange headscarfs to signal that they are proud to be Dutc, and where even the most inhibited people dress themselves from head to toe in orange. It all makes me feel terribly homescik.
My youngest brother sending me hourly updates -pictures included - of my two young nieces selling their homemade cupcakes, does not help. Nor do the Dutch mums in orange t-shirts, wearing crowns, that I see standing around on the playground later that day. I keep my distance.  I am just not in the mood.
I fare slightly better during the evening, when my children and I watch the celebrationary boat tour of the new royal family together. They all - princesses included - look and act very graceful and regal.
Our very sportminded new king gets to be shown a very nice film concerning Dutch football successes and olympic medals. He also gets a quick update on succesful Dutch fils, musicals, ballets and opera's. It is all so predictable and patriotic that I am almost getting a bit of the old sarcasm back, when I am completely thrown of course by an enthralling performance of Holland's best known export product - DJ Armin van Buuren - who is accompanied for the occasion by a full orchestra.
The king and Queen love this guy so much that they spontaneously get off their boat and climb onto the podium to shake his hand. It is over in a second. Before we know it, the king and his family are jumping back on board and are speeding off in the distance. But not before Armin and Willem-Alexander give each other a big thumbs up. Two kings in their own right, acknowleging each other. It is goose bumps all over again for me. Tomorrow, I promiss, I will be cynical again. But not today. Today I let my orange heart dictate my mood. Long life the king!