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!

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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.