After some well-deserved sleep at my parents’ house, I woke up in Wijchen on the 21st of December as opposed to waking up in room C-11 at University Halls. Even though I still felt pretty tired, I got out of bed (it was about 11:30) and had some breakfast downstairs. Thereafter, I put on my coat and gloves and helped my brother with building an igloo in the garden. After a while, my girlfriend invited me for a trip to the shop, since we had to buy presents for the Christmas celebrations. We had to make a so-called ‘surprise’ for my brother and his girlfriend and for this we had to buy paper, metal and other materials so we could craft something by hand. In the afternoon, we worked on this surprise and after a nice meal prepared by my mother, my girlfriend and I went back to ‘our’ city: Tilburg. When I was still in England, I had already planned many appointments with my friends in Tilburg and hence we had to go there on Tuesday.
The next day, we again slept late and we again went to the shopping mall in order to buy a present for Christmas. Unfortunately, we did not find what we were looking for. Next to that, we also went to the supermarket to buy food for the upcoming days. On Thursday night, we would have a Christmas dinner together with four other students and we had to arrange the main course. I decided we should cook something typically English and we found the recipe for Sunday Roast on the internet. This recipe boiled down to (funny word joke) the following: a lot of meat and vegetables. However, we also bought food for Wednesday night as two friends would come to visit us. We made pasta and after our stomachs were filled, we played an interesting game in which you had to build your own farm. It might sound like Farmville, but it was much more fun and without a computer. As I had never lost this game before (we played it once), I took all the time I needed to come up with a winning strategy. Nevertheless, I lost the game and was ridiculed by my opponents. Perhaps I will have more luck next year.
On Thursday, I originally planned to spend my time useful, but I ended up cycling around town in search for the best roast beef. Eventually, I found a very nice butcher who helped me out of the fire (Dutch word joke because I talk about cooking) and he even suggested a nice wine for our dinner. Later that afternoon, I browsed the internet with my girlfriend in order to find the Christmas present we had been looking for the last couple of days. We finally found the present (a blanket) on the IKEA website and immediately called a friend who works there. We asked him whether he would be able to buy this blanket for us and take it with him that same night. To be honest, we actually forced him to do this. At 19:00, he and the other guests arrived and we could begin with the Christmas dinner. As a starter, we had a delicious cocktail with shrimps. Thereafter, we served the Sunday Roast (Thursday Roast in this case) and I think everyone enjoyed it, since nothing (especially the meat) was left at the end of the night. As a dessert, we had a very interesting cake, which I cannot describe very well. The recipe was based on apple crumble, but it tasted a bit different. After we did the dishes (I did not help, since I considered myself an honorary guest), we went to the city centre for a great party at one of my favourite clubs.
On Friday, I took my time to relax and kissed my girlfriend goodbye in the afternoon, since we would be with our own families on Christmas Eve. After dinner, we went to a ceremony at a local hospital with the whole family. In this hospital, a priest preached the Christmas story in close connection to health issues as this Christmas may be the last for some of the patients in the hospital. You could sense the intense emotions in the room, but luckily everybody in my family was healthy. After the ceremony, we enjoyed some chocolate and glühwein while my brother’s girlfriend was having a chat with the priest, who turned out to be from Poland just like her. Upon return home, we were introduced to a Polish tradition of my brother’s girlfriend and then everybody went to bed for a good start of the Christmas weekend.
On Saturday morning, I got up early as I was going to organise a surprise for the whole family. One week earlier, I bought presents at various locations in England and now I put these presents under the Christmas tree for my relatives. Not much later, everybody was downstairs and they opened their presents. Of course they knew that I bought the presents, since most of the presents were typically English (e.g. cookies and a wooden sheep). Thereafter, I picked up my girlfriend at the railway station and with most of the children we helped my brother finishing the igloo he had been working on for several days now. Later that afternoon, we also played a game of Monopoly, which I fortunately (or was it no accident?) won. Our Christmas dinner consisted mostly of meat and I am proud to say that I was the lucky son to distribute the meat to the rest of the family. I am afraid, however, that someone else will do the job next year, since I tend to give bigger pieces of meat to the people I like more and this did not stay unnoticed.
On Sunday, my girlfriend and I went to another town to celebrate the second day of Christmas with her family. We had a nice chat with her cousins, but the competitive element is also manifested within this family and soon we were playing a game similar to Trivial Pursuit. We had fun though, since there was a CD linked with the game such that some of the questions could be asked by a Dutch comedian. He is not particularly funny or so, but still… When dinner was served, I noticed that everybody was more politely and appropriately sharing the food than I was doing the day before. Nevertheless, my girlfriend’s mother had made some delicious pears and the plate containing these was empty so miraculously quickly that I did not get the chance to satisfy my pear-appetite on time. After dinner, I went back to Tilburg with my girlfriend.
On December 27, I got up very late as I was not feeling very well. Nevertheless, I had an appointment with a friend of mine and I did not want to cancel it, since she would go to Africa just before I was supposed to get home from my exchange (i.e. at the end of January). We had an interesting chat about our studies and future plans, but I was glad I could stay at home the rest of the day as I had a lot of pain in my head. And no, it was not a headache: it felt different and I suspected that there might be some kind of problem with the fluid in my brains. The next day, I felt so bad that I asked my father to pick me up and bring me back to my parents’ house so I could visit my GP. The doctor told me that it was probably a harmless ache in my muscles and that I should take some rest and constantly keep my head in an upright position. That was of course an easy task if I would make use of my laptop the rest of the day (although my father doubted that this was really what the doctor meant when he gave me his counsel).
The day after, I was feeling a bit better and decided to go to the city centre to get my hair cut. In the evening, we exchanged Christmas gifts with the whole family (we always exchange gifts after the real Christmas days as not everybody can be at home during those days). My brother and his girlfriend were happy with the gift we bought them and my girlfriend and I also liked what we received: two tickets for an ice skating rink in London. We received this gift from my sister and her boyfriend and they obviously knew what we wanted as we were going to visit them in London the upcoming weekend. Indeed, the next morning we had to pack our bags and in the afternoon we waved my parents farewell and got onto the train with the four of us to arrive in Brussels a few hours later. As the Eurostar train to London would not leave until half past eight, we still had some time to get dinner at a restaurant in town. We hurried past the tourist attractions, my sister and I showing and telling about them because this was my girlfriend’s first time in Brussels. We enjoyed a quick but delicious meal at a restaurant where they refused to talk Dutch and hence we desperately tried to talk French with them whereas they spoke a mixture of French and English. All went well with the train journey and just after midnight we could finally stretch out on a mattress at my sister’s apartment.
On our first day in London, my girlfriend and I decided to do some shopping in one of Europe’s most famous shopping streets: Oxford Street. My goal was to buy a new leather belt and although most of them looked quite similar in every shop, I could still not find the belt that fulfilled all of my requirements that day. Perhaps I should also have reserved a bigger budget for my new purchase, since most items in this shopping street are just way too expensive for an average student like me. Nevertheless, we also saw many other nice products for a reasonable price, but unfortunately we could not buy everything we spotted as we would stay in the city centre till the end of the year. If you have paid attention to the time I am telling about, then we are indeed approaching the end of 2010. My girlfriend and I first went to McDonald’s for a quick meal. The restaurant we visited that night proved that McDonald’s is able to speed up its processes even more if required. Admittedly, your fries will not be successfully fried, but it is great if you are in a hurry. And so we were. We planned to watch the fireworks at the London Eye and therefore we had to be at the River Banks of the Thames at about 21:00. When we got there, it was already pretty crowded. And it only got busier and busier until no more people were allowed into our ‘area’ after 23:00. Thanks to the BBC Radio, we did not get bored while waiting and we had a great time partying with the Brits who were (again) mostly drunk. The fireworks were marvellous and after Katy Perry assured us once more that “baby, you’re a firework”, we went home by taking the subway. Obviously, the streets were extremely crowded and we had a hard time finding a subway station which we could access to get back home. Eventually, we found the start (!) of a queue and at 2:00 am we were finally back at my sister’s apartment.
On the first day of the new year, we went to the National History Museum and I insisted on visiting the dinosaur exhibition despite the fact that we already saw this part of the museum when we went to London two years ago. As my girlfriend already predicted, the exhibition was hardly different from last time and therefore we went on to another exhibition about plants and bugs: definitely interesting, but not as exciting as the dinosaurs. In the evening, we went to a Thai restaurant and I found out that I was getting quite used to spicy food whereas my girlfriend was having substantial issues with the digestion of her curry. That same night we used our tickets for the ice skating rink and enjoyed one hour of ice skating outdoors in London. The ice rink was decorated in Christmas style and it was certainly more a romantic than a sportive night out.
On our last day in London, we again did some shopping in the city centre; this time we went to the big Harrods store to buy a present for my sister and her boyfriend. We kept going up and down the escalators in order to find a nice board game, but we could not find a game they would both like and hence we eventually decided to buy them a jigsaw puzzle. Before leaving central London for the final time, we took the subway to the Tower Bridge and although it was getting a bit too late to walk over the bridge, we enjoyed the view together. Later that night, we played a game of Monopoly at my sister’s apartment and without a doubt there was no game that would better fit the interests of my sister and boyfriend: have fun and annoy each other constantly. Well… basically just have fun.
On the 3rd of January, I took the train back to the place where I belonged those months and the same applied to my girlfriend: I went back to Bradford and she took the train back to Tilburg. We would be separated for almost one month again. On the other hand, I could also see my friends in Bradford again. There are pros and cons to everything, as long as you choose the right balance. The next post will probably be my last, so please come back and read about the end of my exchange.
Yours truly,
Frans
TILBURG
WIJCHEN
NEW YEAR IN LONDON
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