autumn in ticino

today was one of these days why people from north of the alps move down south. i woke up after a long night to a splendid sun. a day when you can concur everything. waking up to see light in winter is amazing. no dull mornings, no fog, no rain. i sometimes do miss the rain, but today sun for me was perfect. hubbydear took care of the garden, getting everything winter-ready. i was not able to help outside, but enjoyed the beautiful weather when i went out for a run late afternoon. no sweaters, no rain jacket, just 2 t's and i was off. i wish for loads of snow at christmas, because christmas should not be without that. but for now i felt blessed. now i am sitting here in winterstyle, with joggingpants and uggs on my feet, but that is more to keep up the winter feeling.

nature in tegna

i am small but very strong

any obstacle in the path of life is there for a reason, 

find the reason and the obstacle can be overcome.

(l.f. bottema)

silhouette in nature

walk and don't think

the flowers of the dead

we dutch people like to bring the outside inside our homes, as in having flowers standing around to give a nice touch to the living surroundings. days are getting shorter, the weather is changing and we need some warmth in our family space. it is time to bring autumn in. i have done that for ages as my mother did, by buying chrysanthemums. a nice big, really big potplant with lots of flowers and that will last until we bring in the poinsetta's for christmas. when i moved in with hubby dear, he was shocked when i went out and bought one of these monsters the month of october. "these don't come into houses, these belong on cemeteries". it is a big business chrysanthemums here in ticino, together with the red devotional candles. hubby dear had a small construction job to do in the next village last week, the week before 'all saints'. and he had to put a waste container next to the flower shop, where the outside exposition stands. the owner came out screaming. "what are you thinking, putting that container in front of my flowers. this is the only week of the year that i really have something to do!" poor lady. so he said ok i will to the job next week. yes, the day of november 1st arrived, 'all saints'. people get busy to get together graves of forgotten and not-forgotten  relatives. important that the others see that graves are kept, at least for this moment. the cemetery never looks as nice, and in order, and loved like these days. never mind if you have thought about these family members in the last year or not. that is not the point. it is all about show. on the day itself, there will be a ceremony where a clergyman will pray and spread the holy water with his toilet brush all around. this is one of these days where one is to be seen. whisper goes around about the lost souls(aka us!), who do not turn up, thus have not any respect for the dead. i do have respect for the dead. i dust my parents on a regular basis since they have been taking up space in my living room. that is not just a once in a year job, but at least once a month i have a go at them. having the chrysanthemums is the ultimate solution to for graveyard, they last for ages. can even withstand freezing temperatures. so if you are lucky, you will only have to turn up again in spring to clear out the putrefied plant and than wait for next fall to arrive.

the culinary aspects of the ticino apple pie

just put my 'chocolate dream' cheesecake in the oven. i rarely bake because my kids hardly ever eat cakes, cookies or pies. and if you look at my butt, you can imagine where the leftovers went. but i love baking. when i started living with hubbydear, i would bake every friday afternoon. every week something new. when we were last time in florida, we gotten into 'the cheesecake factory', food and pies. daniël loved the different sorts of cheesecake, so i thought today 'what the heck, i'll bake a pie'. a couple of weeks ago we had a bake sale for the footballteam. i made chocolate chip muffins and a pumpkin pie. when i went to drop of my baking goods, the only thing i saw, were apple pies and maybe a chocolate cake or two. it is incredible, the culinary capabilities of baking are reduced to apple pie here in the south of switzerland. if you ask people over for diner, they will offer to bring dessert. great! until you see what it is. you can be darn sure it's another apple pie. and it is not like the pies i know from holland, an outer crust filled to the rim with cut up pieces of apple spiced with cinnamon and some brown sugar and a top layer of dough again. i am licking my lips by the thought. the procedure here down south is very easy. slices of apple on top of a bought pastry dough, over it will be poured a mixture of egg, milk and sugar. i even talked to an old lady whoes husband was a baker here. until somewhere in the eighties, he baked pies for campsite stores. they only did fruit pies. a bottom of dough, a layer of vanilla pudding, a layer of fruit and then a topping of gelatine. what a pity, there are so many great recipies out there. back to the bake sale. when i came to pick up the remnants, the muffins where sold, but the pumpkin pie was still there. only a small piece sold. what we say in holland "what the farmer does not know, he will not stuff down his throat".

have a great weekend, and take care!

MIERENNEUKERIJ - fucking ants

MIERENNEUKERIJ is a word which is only know in the dutch language because only the dutch (mostly the goverment) can be that irritating in their ways that one would say "oh my god, what  a MIERENNEUKERIJ". it means fucking ants, which you can understand would be very difficult for a man. this time i am so upset because little boy needs a new pasport. he has been getting a new pasport every five years since he was born. when we were still able to get our pasport thru the consulat of lugano there was never a problem. i do not know if that counts and because we go to italy now where there are also numerable complications in government offices and dutch who live there got influenced by the manners of grandeur of the italian, or if the dutch laws have changed. anyway, the dutch are very good at making a simple task very complicated. so complicated that you do not understand shit. for a new pasport one needs a photo. too complicted to explain so here is the link! http://www.paspoortinformatie.nl/dsresource?objectid=5126&type=pdf.
the consulate of milan states: we need a legalized birthcertificate, not older than six months. why isn't the original good enough. as if the information on the fucking piece of paper changed since the kid was born! we need a legal piece of paper where it is written that little boy lives with big boy and mommy and daddy in the same household. should i also have mentioned the dog, three cats, two degu's and numerous illegal mite? what if i would kick out his father, or he would die? when i go to the consulate in milan for my pasport, i will ask them if they need the ashes form my parents and do some dna testing to see if i was really there child. up to now i have spent 45 euro's and that little booklet will set me back another 42,50. it makes me definity think about becoming swiss. on this matter they are very relaxed. anyway, i am looking on the official website from the dutch government now, and there is written "only if the child has never had it's own pasport, one needs to bring a legalized birthcertificate". well, it seems that in milan they do not know that! no need for a paper that states the family composition either. but i can see some hope for the future. but i hope they 'don't make me happy with a dead sparrow'. they are trying out a new service at schiphol airport so that can one can make a new one there. and some cities are also giving that possibility to abroadies. just one catch. in the hague they promised that already a year ago. but the pasport making would take six to eight weeks. hello, which abroadie would have the possibility to stay in NL for that long a period? last time i went to milan with big boy, one year ago, we had no trouble at all. we'll see what happens. maybe i am making an anthill out of a molehill;)

off to another part of CH

for little boy's 15th birthday we had chosen a destination outside of our little canton of ticino, laax. going to an inside adventure activity(freestyle academy laax by the way). i loaded my car up with all foreigners. we live in a multiculti society eventhough it is a small place. us three dutchies, my danish friend an her two boys and a cute little scotsman, redheaded and full of freckles. we had a lovely drive over the lucomagno pass. stopped on top, in the middle of fog and the three younger boys had a run around on the stony hills. an atmosphere like in the lord of the rings. anything could break loose at any moment. we drove on down to disentis entering the famous skiing region of graubünden. what a change of surroundings compared to ticino. a wide open valley, with rather hills than mountains, and hardly any forests. all of us were amazed by the beauty of the to us unknown. laax, as a village, is nothing special. not a characteristic village centre, no nothing. just a place to start from for going skiing or hiking. the boys had a great time at the academy and showed off their international heritage by choosing english as the language in which they would get the introduction of the day. my friend and i went on a hiking trip over falera. it was so beautiful. what a view. rows and rows of mountians around us. i can remember that i went to ilanz, near laax, when i just came to CH in 1993, to look for a job. and i was so impressed by the stony walls that surrounded me, i went slightly claustrofobic. what i saw then, i saw with different eyes now. compared to ticino, this is wide open space. i hope i will have chance to visit this region again.

driving 1028 km

had to drive to holland again. house not sold yet.....if you are interested let me know. house will be rented out, so i had to drive up to get things ready. get my car loaded with personal belongings to take back to ticino. it is a long drive, not something i am looking forward to. i like to get  over it as quick as possibile. 1028 km if i choose the fastest road and do not get lost. then i always hope that there will be no traffic jams or roadworks. so now, i leave at 4.30 am, that seems the best hour, workdays or weekends. people will ask me if i do not think it is a nuisance driving all that way by myself. i have had enough time to think about that. this time i had 9.55 hrs, including 1.10 hrs of gas- and pee breaks. never been this fast i think. if i drive with my boys, it would be who can be the loudest during the trip, aka arguing about anything imaginable. and that is not a fuss for me. it took me 16 yrs to get used to;) what would it be like to have along someone i would have to make polite conversation with, who would maybe like to stop and eat, or has different pee times as i do? with my sons i stop and eat driving up north, so the trip takes 1,5 hrs more. we have our favorite places along the road. when we drive back home no one wants to stop, we just keep trucking. i have considered to take a long a friend, but upto now that has not happened. no one needed to go up there. bringing along somebody would be quite an assignement for me. i am very pushed by the clock. not that i will speed, but i have my schedule from which i will not budge. get to destination asap. it is such a drag sitting there and concentrate. there will be a break every 2 hrs, my bladder can not hold out much longer. a friend of mine would like to come along one day, but she said that on a long trip like that she would also like to visit some towns. oh my lordie! to see the sights because she cannot stand sitting in a car for a very long time. well, that would make the trip at least 10 hrs longer. and that is not what i am waiting for. my conclusion is driving and having someone yapping away, is not what makes me happy. so all things considered, i am very happy to be alone. my mind goes 200 km a minute. luckily i do not tweet, because that would be a disaster. so much comes to my mind and so much happens on the road, that i could tweet continiously. and i would surely not reach my destination;) dutch friend d. said that maybe one day she and other dutch friend d. and i could drive to holland all together to share gas and whatever. nice proposition. but ladies let me get one thing straight. you two will be sitting in the back of the car, doing whatever you want to do. but as the rule goes ' to not talk to the driver while the car is in motion'!

life after kids

we still have our sons, we did not give them up for adoption or anything, but i finally was able to cut the umbilical cord. i have been saying for years, i will leave them home alone only when big boy is 18 so he will be an adult and can be responsible for his little brother. but this year i was so gung ho on going to our house in the mountains for a night, and the boys do not want to come along, and hubby dear is not happy to be there always by himself, that i started questioning my vision of how to take care of my sons. and i said to myself 'at 15 years of age, you would be home alone for two weeks in a row. get a life girl and see if they can take care of themselves a bit. you have tought them everything they need to know!'. so i left the boys alone with three friends one night, and hubby and i had a great time at the village feast of niva. and i was hooked;). since everything had worked out so well the first time, little boy had asked me if he could have another sleepover with some friends before the end of summervacation. so that was last night. ofcourse i threathened with grounding if the house would be a mess on our arrival, things would be broke, ecc. i knew there would be more than the four friends announced, but the other ones left at a reasonable hour. they did a great job at getting everything in order. last night sitting there on our porch, with a great view of mountain tops, i was thinking 'now our lives after kids starts'. if children leave the home, it must be not easy to find a balance in the relationship again. i think that hubby dear buying that old house, did one of the best things ever. instead of not knowing what to do together, we bond to create something that is ours again. we did the family, we did the  all year round house, and now we start a new life up there at 1200 meter. we work side by side, we meet new people, and we are very happy also just to sit there with a glass of wine and enjoy our surroundings. it does not mean that i will leave my two boys alone every weekend, but once in a while i will give myself the privilege to do what i enjoy very much.

the good life in ticino

the good life in ticino......, let's not think about financial troubles, today was one of the best. hefty temperatures, 27 degrees at 18.30. big boy on top of a mountain at linescio. little boy on top of a mountain at arcegno(accompanied by trustworthy parents, that is to be said). and mom and dad free to do what ever they want. so dad proposed....insisted, to take mom on a spin on the bike(the beautiful pearl white yamaha she gave him on a whim). off to palagnedra for a drink at maria's. turns and twists. it has been 18 years or so ago that i fell asleep on the back of a motorcycle, today i am all uptight, not going with the flow as the driver wishes. after seeing the beautiful mountains, lush and green, where you could get lost and not find your way back, we roarded up the engine and went to the lake at ascona to have a drink at a friends beachbar. mojito and strawberry daiquiri's gogo(sorry linda, i went a bit off track). what else could be better in life than enjoying a warm evening on a lakefront in good company. after reminiscing the good old days of having a ball with the kids at the beach, back to our house. our little paradise, when you are off of work, it is 20 something degrees and do not have troubles with teenage sons, i did the thing i appreciate the most, dive into my pool. we have a second hand kitchen, but we have the ultimate dream, a swimmingpool in the backyard. while i was having a dip in the perfect temperatured water, hubby dear threw some shrimp on the grill and with a glass of wine or two, we ended the evening in bliss. i wish for more days of these to come.  

the swiss and their payments

you would think that switzerland is a relative modern nation. well, that is so, but not when it comes to payments. people use the 'yellow giant' aka 'the post' aka the monopole on sending mail and money handling. instead of e-banking one goes to the post office to pay. that is not so strange i can hear someone say. i think otherwise. one has this little yellow book. one has to transcribe all the recipients and amounts from the cheques you have received. so in a family that might be over 20 payments per months. no easy automatic payments from your account. no! you copy everything in the little book and also have to be sure that if you have to fill out the checque yourself that you copy the right amounts from the invoice, the right name and all be written in blu ink, and only blu ink. all that done, then you get out your calculator w/paper, and make an addition. you rip off the paper with your addition. you clip this with a paperclip to your checques and/or little yellow book. you go to the bank!!!! and then you will take out the amount of money you need to have to make the payments. then you drive to the post office to get your duty done. this would probably be between the 27 th and the 3rd of the month.(the right moment to make a good robbery on all those persons;). in switzerland one only pays once a month! and we are not talking about carrying around 300 swiss francs or so. it might be upto 15000 CHF or even more. i am not kidding. the teller in the office will take all you stuff. register the checks with a machine which will also give the total amount of what you have to pay. stamp all the checques twice. stamp your book. and sign each payment in the book and the cheque twice. then will rip off the small  of the cheques and give them back to you. then you will be asked to tell the amount that you thought should be the outcome of the calculation. if those figures even than you can pay. if the figures are not the same the teller will count the cheques again on a separate calculator. and in the mean time ofcourse you have asked back your little piece of paper and cheques and you check if you have typed every sum of each cheque. the only thing why paying this way is very good, it because it makes it very easy to do some money laundrying. a number of people wil be paid in cash, p.e. in construction work. and no one knows where the money comes from. the payment will cost the recipient about 2,35 CHF or more. if i ask my patients to pay directly at the bank they say it is very inconvenient and difficult because they have to fill out a form on which the have to write the recipients name, IBAN and amount to be paid. they will go to the post because it is so much easier.

the cheque, w/stub

the little yellow book

i have never been so exhausted writing a piece on my blog! and i hope you all got it and are not too confused.  

vitrage curtains

yesterday, while riding my bike, i got the idea for another bit to write. driving by houses, i thought why the heck do you have windows if you always have the vitrage curtains drawn? wouldn't it be easier to have a house without glass that you are going to cover anyway? cleaning windows is a big nuisance to get them clean without wiping signs, so you would not have to do that anymore. taking down vitrage curtains and bring them to the dryers costs time and money, so you could save. the whole building project would cost you loads less. they just have to lay bricks without a care and put in one hole for the door to be placed! why would you want to shut out your surroundings? don't you want to see your garden and don't you want sunlight to enter your home? ticino is sooooo different from holland. one day a patient of mine said she went to amsterdam and she was so suprised to see furniture stores everywhere. she did not understand she was looking into our homes. in holland we do not draw curtains, although in the last couple of years, people who live on very busy streets have started to put sticky fancy plastic on their windows to keep glares out. you can look in but then you would have to bend over or stand tiptoed and that would be a bit obvious. per se dutch people do not look into the houses of others, so why should we put up vitrage curtains? we might have curtains to be drawn in winter to keep out the cold and to make the house more cosy. and the foremost important thing about dutch having no vitrage curtains, is that we say "look into my house, we don't have anything to hide". here in my new homestead people have windows no one ever could look into because the house is surrounded by a garden with a very high hedge, so why hide? then we also have the electric blinds which will come down on the push of a button. every night, even in summer, at about 7 pm you will  hear the first ones go down, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. my god, they are sitting in the dark, and might have to turn on a light! i can tell, i think we dutch are healthyminded;) all the rest has an edge;)

home for the last time?

sitting here in zoetermeer. i have been here for 3 days, and i can say i feel very 'senang'(an indonesian word, look it up!) the weather has been as april will give you, sun, some rain and wind. i walk every evening a little round thru the neighborhood, this time accompanied by my dog. just walk past houses and look at the way they are done up, asking myself what it would be like living in them. as my sons always say to me, there is always so much to see around here, it makes you want to go out of the house and walkabout. my walkabout days could be over soon. it would be better because that would mean that the house i inherited, is sold. eventhough it is not what my innerself wants. came to holland to do some more clearing out of the house of my deceased parents. there was not that much to do, but still, the booth of my car is filled. looked thru about 20 photoalbums, choosing which ones to keep. got the good crockery together and will be giving that to an aunt. looking at all the photos, what happy times there were. ofcourse in photos you only see smiling persons, so it does not give a correct view of what might have been. but still, there were great moments. seeing my sons on pictures in this house from the moment they were born until about two years ago. these boys had a great life here visting the old country. hope they will come again with me. being in puberty does not help. what will i do, if this is not more? i will keep my happy memories embraced. and that will have to do.

dutchwomanabroad@gmail.com

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, it's easter again.

rrrrr,rrrrr,rrrrr,rrrrr.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqT5TVU313A&feature=relmfu..it has started again. this tells me what time of the year it is....time to go up to your mountain house. the sky has been a busy place today. they come and they go, they go up and they go down. their good season has started. people are excited that the weather has been getting better and they are preparing to stay at their house up in the middle of nowhere for easter. they pack and pack, not only for this weekend, but they will take up stuff to last them all summer. people are standing in line at landing spaces like waiting in line for a cab. my big boy daniël, he just flew off somewhere with a friend and his parents. why walk with a heavy backpack for 45 minutes if you can fly up in 40 seconds?! ofcourse it is not very ecological, but it gives work to some people and houses way up are not abandoned. i won't be flying up somewhere for a while, but next month or so, we will need the service again for flying up material to our shack at 1200 meters. we are close to the street, but those few steps and rocky path, make that we choose to have lots of things flown in. it will save hubbies back and my knees. and we just love the excitement when http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHUvGvFY7I!

comments can also be send to : dutchwomanabroad@gmail.com

summer has come early!

it has been a great couple of days. ticino can still be full of surprises. it has been 7 days that i have been able to sit outside in the evening, with a light sweater, until 10 pm. sadly the wind has arrived today, but i will be out there again tonight and enjoy sitting beneath a sky full of stars. my sons and their friends organized their first BBQ of the year, down by the river. luckily their mother is a wise one, and bought some sausages the other day. it is way to early for this kind of weather, 24 degrees during the daytime. people already start to moan "this good weather, we will have to pay for that". sad thing they cannot keep their mouths shut and just enjoy for once. yes, ticino is still a place for moaners. the other day i read that in holland it was 'skirt day', a lovely tradition. lots of skirts and white legs. well, what other way to get them tanned? what am i still doing here at my computer.....i am off to get some rays of sun!

carnival in a small village, why i hate these events.

today was carnival in our tiny town of tegna. i hate going. on these occasions, the foreigner still stands out, even if he or she is integrated. integrated, well, so so. people will talk to you when you are one-on-one. but when there is an event like this, no one will come up to you. not to me anyway. this year hubby dear was not in the kitchen helping out to cook risotto, he was just there as a visitor. so i promised i would go and i did dragging the moment of going as far out as i could. there was still some laundry to hang up, the kitchen had to be cleared. i explained to him in the morning why this for me is such a terrible occasion. i feel left out, so i rather stay home. and people are there to look and judge, not in a nice way. in the course of the day he had to agree that it might be better to stay home. we were confronted with a family who always tries to make other people black. it was so sickening to see people not saying hello when they usally do, whispering behind the backs of others. persons prying to know what is going on in others' home. next year at least i do not have to explain why i am not going anymore. i am done with this kind of small town life.

iceskating

watching the news on dutch tv tonight. oh dear, there is a fever going on in holland. with the biggest concentration up north, in friesland. people are getting ready to go. sitting at kitchentables covered with newspapers, a rag in hand and some grease in a tin. preparations. this time it is true. there will be iceskating on natural ice. the best thing there can be. so get your skates ready, we are off. something i so miss where i live. i recall my childhood, outside the hague. after elementary school, in the months of december and january, we would run home and pick up our skates and go out as fast as possibile. we would be skating on small ditches and man made lakes until after dark. never wanting to go home, even with feet frozen off. it was the best time of the year. growing older, we would skate where ever the frozen water would bring us and at the end of the day we would catch a bus or train to take us back home. it was always a big adventure. where would we go, and the most important question...would the ice hold us? we were used to listen to the ice to squeak. we would know how fast a tear would rip thru the ice from the rumble and know if we would be safe. stamping on the solid floor "clonk, clonk" ... yes, this is thick enough. riding against the wind, in a geese mars, so the first would become the last every so often to have a break . with a newspaper under your sweater to keep in the heat and the cold out. there would be stalls with 'koek en zopie' in strategic points, where you could heat up a bit with some hot chocolate and cookies. i was so lucky to grow up in a time where there was no doubt about it that one could skate every winter. the last years i have been following what is going on in holland. happy people, sad people, waiting, measuring, ice thick enough, ice not thick enough, elfstedentocht(11-city tour 220 km in friesland) or an alternative somewhere in sweden. i wish the old days with cold weather would come back, it was so great. no one should miss out on this experience.

last day of xmas vacation

what a pity, it is over. the days of lounging around and bringing kids to the slopes. got most of the xmas deco down. not all, that hurts too much. was on the phone the other day with a dutch guy. the dutch are crazy....... about skiing. the ones that like to ski, do it all year round. the town where my mother used to live, zoetermeer, has its own indoor skiing paradise. so even in summer you see people going in, dragging ski's and snowboards along. when i was small, before these indoor ski domes, people used to practice skiing on pine needles in the dunes. can you imagine that?! so the guy i was talking to, said he was going to austria for a week of skiing. leaving at 11 pm, after a day of working, driving all night, and then he would expect to be at the point of destination at 8am. then they would go for a little breakfast and then off hitting the slopes. and this is a story you hear from almost everyone. the last day they will ski until about 4 pm, pack and drive back and go to work the day they arrive. no relaxing at all. can you understand now why there are so many 'plaster flights' going from all places back to holland?!

dutchwomanabroad@gmail.com

new year 2012

last night i was really missing the dutch tradional treats we eat on new years eve. our famous oilballs and applejacks. my family members will say 'yuk' and my thighs would balloon up even more if i had to eat all i would make. but one or two wouldn't have been misplaced. is it a good thing or a bad thing that i can go to bed at 11 pm and can sleep thru until the next morning? lordie, lordie, it seems like we live in a resort for the elderly. no fireworks starting at 4 pm and going on until 4 am the next day. no neighbors walking the streets with a bottle of champagne at midnight kissing and  maybe a bit of brawling. i, ahum, we, usually, the last 5 years or so, spend the 31st at home alone. it is not my night of the year, i get a bit depressed, another year full of sh.. gone, and i hate all agitation about 'the new year', that everything will be different. i think 'new year, same sh..'. hubby falls asleep at his usual 7.50 pm and i will sit under the hood in the kitchen with a book, smoking and drinking by myself. boys went off to locarno this year with friends. and if you sit at home alone, as i do, and eventhough it is not my evening, it still would be nice to go out the door at midnight and see some people. a no-go around here. but then going to bed early gives you a great start in the new year with no hangover and the 1st of january is not a wasted day.

wishing you all a great 2012. x