Julia's Journical

Home Time.

January 31, 2010 – 2:29 pm

We woke up very early, and sadly had a rushed goodbye with Maarten and Yvonne who had been so lovely to get up with us before the crack of dawn. Lindsay and I caught a train to Arnhem, and from Arnhem a train to Frankfurt. From the train we could see snow on the fields in a random German town.

We got to Frankfurt 8 hours before our flight due to train dumbness. Long story short, there were no seats available for later trains.
On our last day of backpacking I realised we had no photos of me with my backpack on!

so here you go, me, the half asleep packhorse.

We got on the plane at Frankfurt and pretty much went straight to sleep. We woke up in Seoul, South Korea. The first thing on the agenda was Sushi.

Yum and only about $15!

Seoul is the best airport I have ever been to. They have free wifi, benches that are comfortable and you can stretch out on and free cultural activities. I made lanterns, did screen printing and watched cultural performances!

We got on another plane after 8 hours in Seoul. I was having so much fun the 8 hours whizzed by.
It was quite exciting as the little map told us we were getting closer to Australia. We watched the sun start to come up.

The sky started out pitch black, and then colours started appearing. At first you would wonder if you imagined it. It was stunning watching the sky evolve into colours. I might have cried…. I was so sad to be leaving my wonderful relatives in Holland and yet happy to be going home.

Walking out of immigration and customs into the arrivals hall is always so exciting. Seeing our parents for the first time in months was great. It felt so normal. It felt like we had only been gone 2 days.
Then the jet-lag kicked in. We had gone back to Berowra for a BBQ. I was lying on the ground hugging Sasha laughing hysterically telling everyone I wanted their attention. I think I made everyone a little nervous.

In the afternoon Lindsay went for an hour long nap. I went to wake him and somehow managed to fall asleep next to him. A very nervous Jacob woke us up a few hours later.

And so. The End of our backpacking adventure. It took we a while but its all here for you to enjoy. And for Lindsay and I its back to normal* life.

*not normal people’s normal.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Comments (0)

Last Days in Holland.

January 31, 2010 – 2:21 pm

Our last weekend was spent in Oss, Elke and I decorated the Christmas tree.

After forcing the lights into submission Lindsay lay under the tree.

He lay there taking awesome photos while Elke and I had a lovely time decorating the tree.

Yvonne has some of the most beautiful Christmas decorations.

Stunning!

The next day was Castle day. After 1 false start a few months earlier we finally managed to get to Castle Denneweg with Oma, Opa and Elke.

They were holding an open day, and we were able to walk around the castle. It was set up how the last family to live in the castle would have lived. It was luxurious yet cosy.

Oma was great and asked some of the guides to talk to Lindsay and I in English about some details in the rooms. Such as the full service laid out on the table. It was so beautiful and in such good condition the lady said the family probably never used it!

Oma was taught dinner party etiquette from the 1700s by a man in a wig who put a feather boa on her. She doesn’t normally wear a pink feather boa.

After seeing the castle and looking at the markets we went into the cafe for Hot Chocomelk met Slagroom (hot chocolate with whipped cream) and apple crumble. Opa was hilarious, every few minutes he would threaten to play his flute in front of everyone. This would make Elke and I freak out and he would laugh… a lot. Rinse and repeat 6-10 times.

We got home to Maarten and Yvonne’s house where Yvonne had prepared an afternoon tea feast. Jur, Marleen, Vince and Mick, Oma and Opa, Michiel, Maarten, Yvonne and Elke were there to have a little farewell party for Lindsay and I.

Mick spent ages decorating squares for Quilt Pauline is making for Lindsay and I.

they have Pikachus on them and funny in house jokes. They are probably my favourite squares for the quilt.

Then came the worst part of our entire trip. Worst that ending up in Croatia with no money, worse than walking in the pouring rain in Madrid, worse than being really sick in Vienna…. Saying goodbye.

Jur, Marleen, Vince and Mick. got up to say goodbye. I fell apart. I held onto each of the. Begging them to move to Australia. I cried. A lot. Mick, the sweetie, said he was sorry for making me cry, causing me to cry and laugh at the same time and squeeze even more air out of him.

We walked them to their car, while I tried to stop crying. We waved goodbye.

It was time for dinner after that. We had Chinese/Indonesian food. It was very yummy.

After dinner it was time to say goodbye to Oma and Opa. I fell apart again. Crying, hugging and crying.
I was just catching my breath after waving off Oma and Opa when Elke announced that she too was leaving. I said “not you too” and burst into tears… again. My own victory was that she started to cry as well, not just tears in her eyes like the others.

After that I collapsed into bed. We had an early start the next day.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Comments (0)

Mook Hei

January 31, 2010 – 1:32 pm

The Monday after Sinterklaas my uncle, Jur, offered to take us out for the day. I told him I wanted to see a lock. So he drove us out to the Grave Lock, which is in a town called Grave…its not a Grave.

It was awesome watching the water go up and down delivering boats from one canal to another.

It was freezing cold however and after about 30mins we all hopped into the car for part 2 of our adventure.
We drove past this village which I was shocked to discover belonged to Beer! He never told us he owned a village.

Jur drove us to a place called the Mook Hei. Mook is an area and hei means heath or moor.

Its one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Holland.
There are highland cows living wild on the moor

During WWII there was an allied camp on this more, there are still craters from the bombs that were dropped on the camp.

Jur scared me by telling me the cow would try and attack us as we walked past, thus I made him go first.

The cow couldn’t care less

We walked to the lookout and watched the sun start to set

It was breathtaking.

It was such a wonderful afternoon. A great way to spend one of our last days in Holland. And that we got to spend it with one of my favourite people.

On the way back to the car we talked about ninja sheep.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Sinterklaas

January 17, 2010 – 5:56 pm

Eeek so behind, I doubt I will ever catch up on all this blogging. But I will try!

So… Sinterklaas!

We had Sinterklaas with my Uncle, Aunt and cousins, Jur, Marleen, Vince and Mick. It was a really lovely weekend.

Our first night we had homemade Pizza

Cooked in Jur and Marleen’s sexy new oven

Then we spent the rest of the evening just hanging out

And having lots of fun talking and joking around.

The Sinterklaas evening started out with us all working together making hapjes (nibbles) for dinner. Mick put on his Zwarte Pete hat and we got the party started!

Everyone had poems written for them by their gift givers

Lindsay and I had a poem written for us by Vince which included the most difficult words in the Dutch language. Thanks Vince! We opened the big box and inside were 2 pineapple cutters we had bought and left at their house for safe keeping!

Everyone got lots of presents

Lindsay and I were sent on a wild scavenger hunt through the house searching for clues, while Mick did the photographing for us.

Lindsay got a pair of oven mitts and there high fives all round as Jur got oven mitts too!

Lindsay then wore the oven mitts for the rest of the night wearing them while he opened his beer.

while he unwrapped presents

and even while he ate speckulaas biscuits!

We were all really spoilt and had a really nice night

Sinterklaas delivers presents by leaving them at the door or in the garden. We were made aware of presents via sms. I decided I wanted to have a chat to Sinterklaas about making us walk into the freezing garden every hour. So I opened up the text messages from Sint and phoned him! Sadly he didn’t answer… but my cousin Mick’s voicemail kicked in… how strange

The next day we held a party for Mick’s Birthday.
All the grandparents and some aunties and uncles came over.

In Holland its tradition for a birthday you set up all your furniture in a big circle

you serve all your guests coffee/tea and cake
>
Sometimes there is not enough chairs for everyone and you need to double up

Mick and I had spent the whole morning making an apple crumble/tart combination. I wore my Dutch apron and he wore his Australian apron while we combined Australian apple crumble with dutch apple tart.

It went down a treat and there was none left by the end of the afternoon.

That night we played games until late

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Comments (0)

Antwerp

January 11, 2010 – 11:23 am

One night we were sitting at Beer’s house with Katherine and decided… lets go Belgium tomorrow. We chose Antwerp. Within an hour we had booked trains and accommodation. Early the next morning we were on the train to Belgium. One and a half hours later we were there.

We arrived at the beautiful Antwerp station and walked to our first museum… which was closed. We discovered that museums are closed on Mondays in Antwerp. So we spent the day walking around just looking at things.

It was bitter cold and we are all wearing about 6 layers of jumpers.
with leggings under our pants…. which was good padding for when Katherine ran and jumped on this giant hand.
High Five!

We walked to the harbour and found this old boat shed.

Up the road was the meat market. The brickwork was designed to look like piles of meat.
We tried to get in.
But decided we had better things to do.

Katherine was thrilled to find more hands!

A beautiful old Cathedral as seen from the Grote Markt (big market…. which was market-less)

A beautiful old building…. not sure what species of building though, sorry!

We then went and checked out a park full of graffiti that wiki-travel had recommended.

We walked and found our hotel which was a little self contained apartment with a bed each. It was very comfortable. For dinner we met up with a friend of Lindsay’s Patrick, he took us to a nice place serving traditional food. I had witlof with cheese and bacon. I don’t know what witlof is in english…but it looks like a small skinny cabbage.

The next day we went out to find some museums. The part of town we were staying in the Jewish Orthodox district. So all the men we walked past were dressed like this:

We walked through a park which was full of rabbits! Tame rabbits too!

The first museum we went to the was the Ruben House. It was fantastic! Photos are somewhere…. on one of 3 laptops and 1 hard drive…. but I will find them!

Then Katherine went shopping while Lindsay and I went to the printing museum which was also brilliant. Did I mention that because we were under 26 admission prices to the museums was only 1 Euro each!

I want to live here, I think I will make this room the dining room.

The museum was set up in the old family home and workshop of ones of Antwerp’s first printers.
The first exhibits were hand written books. They were old and huge.

And they were beautifully ornate.

As you walked through the house you got to see how the Printer’s family would have lived and worked. Including their teeny tiny doorways.

Our favourite room was where they kept the type and printing presses. It was fascinating to look at how they developed pages of books.

We walked back through the Christmasy streets of Antwerp, found Katherine at the train station and hopped on a train back to Den Haag.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged Add new tag, antwerp, belgium, ruben house | Comments (0)

Den Haag wit Kat

January 2, 2010 – 6:35 pm

Yikes! I am so behind in my blogging (how unusual, I know).

Anyway… where were we?

While we were still in Den Haag, Beer went to Kenya for a week. Katherine, our friend from high school, who had just moved to London came to visit us for a while. She stayed with us at Beer’s house.

Her first day with us we took her to Heesch to visit my Oma for her birthday. The train trip took 2 hours and we crossed the country! It was a really lovely day.

One day with Katherine we took her to our favourite pancake house in Scheveningen.
It was freezing cold and really windy. Lindsay braved the cold to take some amazing photos while we watched from the safety of the pier.

Sadly most of the photos were lost when Lindsay’s laptop died

Katherine had her first Dutch Pancake.

She really loved it, but was quite sick and pretty much collapsed after eating.

Once Katherine had recovered from her flu we walked with her to Madurodam.

Madurodam is where everything is in miniature

except for the clogs

they have really big clogs!

As you enter the park a man takes your photo and tries to sell it back to you as you leave. So I dared Kat to have her photo taken with the photographer!

This was not Lindsay’s idea.

This photo

is because of this photo

They were both taken on the bridge over the same canal in Amsterdam. Can you work out which is the real canal?

We hung around until the sun went down and everything was prettily lit up

We then walked home to Beer’s house

with Kat…the crazy cat lady.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged denhaag, holland, juliaholmwood, katherine, lindsayholmwood, madurodam, netherlands, scheveningen | Comments (0)

A Year Ago Today…

December 29, 2009 – 7:17 pm

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

December 27, 2009 – 2:53 pm

I interrupt the usual blogging for the traditionally late, Decates family Christmas card.

We all embarked on new adventures this year. Jacob started university in Canberra where he met his lovely girlfriend Geraldine. Julia and her brand new husband Lindsay spent most of the year travelling around Europe. (Read all about their adventures on this blog). Margi and Jeroen celebrated their empty nest by taking trips to Adelaide, Victoria and New Zealand.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Scheveningen *now with added cold!

December 12, 2009 – 7:36 pm

Lindsay and I spent some days at Scheveningen.

We spent a few evenings walking on the beach

It was really cold.

So cold in fact that we found some ice bergs.

We spotted a jelly fish. Thats how cold it was even the jelly fish turned blue.

It was very beautiful despite the cold.

And during the day the sunshine was lovely and warm

especially when we were tucked up cosy and warm at the end of the pier in the pancake restaurant drinking hot chocolates and eating pancakes!

*yes that is a lump of butter.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged beach, cold, foam, holland, horses, jellyfish, ocean, pancakes, pier, sand, scheveningen, walk | Comments (0)

The Beginning of the End.

December 10, 2009 – 4:21 am

While Lindsay was in Ghent, I stayed in Oss with Elke.

My first night back in Holland Oma and Opa took us out to a lovely posh restaurant in Oss.

Again Oma was the only one to behave like a lady.

Opa and Elke ordered Dam Blanche for dessert.

Dame Blanche is vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce on top!

That night Elke and I stayed up very late packing her room into boxes. She was moving the next day into her student room in Nijmegen.

We found a nativity scene missing Jesus - baby Jesus had been sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

I modeled Elke’s many sunglasses for her.

The next day Tom and Michiel, 2 of Elke’s brothers, came to help out.

Building Elke’s new wardrobe was a big job!

After the boys left, Elke and I unpacked everything, I coloured coded her dressed for her. We then walked the 2 minute walk to town for shoarma and ice tea. After unpacking everything we caught the train back to Oss and walked home from the station. As we neared the park a witch rode out of the woods on a bicycle! We were really shocked… before remembering it was Halloween!

Lindsay arrived back in Oss the next day. It was very exciting to see him. A few days later we went with Yvonne to visit Elke in her new room.

Elke’s kitchen:

Couch, TV and sink:

and big green bed:

After a few day in Oss we made our way to Den Haag.

Avi and Beer arrived a day after us from their vacation in Italy and brought with them lots of yummy food.

Lindsay and I joined them for a second breakfast, where we had poppers!

I haven’t had a popper since I was in primary school!

Avi had bought some yummy bread rolls from Germany to share with us.

Lindsay and I spent many days walking around the streets near Beer’s house taking photos of the area. We felt it was about time that we showed everyone the beautiful streets we were walking in everyday.

Tightrope walking statue

The street full of buildings owned by Shell, parallel to the street Beer lives on.

A street full of embassies and a stormy sky.

Me waiting for Lindsay.

Here I am another day walking back from Alber Heijn (the supermarket) after buying eggs and yoghurt! Excitement.

Here is the Irish Embassy

Up next:
Kat arrives and we go to the beach.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged cousin grandparents, denhaag, moving, oss, the hague | Comments (0)

Julia’s Journical

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Categories

Home Time.

Last Days in Holland.

Mook Hei

Sinterklaas

Antwerp

Den Haag wit Kat

A Year Ago Today…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Scheveningen *now with added cold!

The Beginning of the End.