More landscape!

and some farms close to our place in groningen. ah well, tims place.... but i bake the bread, also here! :)

today it was just rainy and cold, no snow at all!

Winter view

this was yesterday, somewhere around groningen. we had a teeny tiny bit of snow...... the roads were terribly slippery, with a layer of ice. but today the lower part of the country had some real snow, and here in groningen we got nothing at all!! so i was a bit disappointed.....

tim had to work (again!) and i went for a bit of shopping. but so did everyone else here. it was crazy crowded..... at least i got some christmas ornaments for almost nothing, for next year... :)

Morning ride

here most of the fog hd gone already, but saturday morning it was very foggy! as often these days (sometimes leading to terrible accidents on the road, like last week....). i was in the place with no internet for the weekend (i.e. groningen), so no posts... i had planned to post from the train on friday, but then the internet was not working... now im back in the train to work, and i do have a connection (but who knows for how long!!). its 6.45 and still very quiet, although crowded... last time i took this train it was filled with young kids, making so much noise!! ugh... hopefully they wont come today, i am really enjoying this quiet.

its still dark out (in the evenings its getting dark so early again too. buuuhhh), so i wont be able to enjoy the foggy fields for the coming hour or so... time to see check what i missed because of a weekend without internet (not that much, probably...)

Dark cloud

ok, another picture from last saturday. this was the scene when we arrived at the balloon festival. despite the really dark cloud there, we were hopeful it would not be too bad.....

i guess it was just 5 minutes later when rain came pouring down and the entire event was cancelled.....  it is interesting though that hundreds of people can disappear in no time when its suddenly starts to rain... so why are people often so slow in supermarkets, or in train stations (on the stairs, not moving aside, etc etc).... ? :)

House boats

these boats are not for sailing (anymore), they are for living!! some used to be real boats, others arent, and a few still can be used to get around..... this is in a canal in the city center of groningen.

tim also lives in a boat now. but not here! its a bit more outside the center, and there is a real garden, and more privacy.... ever since i visited a boat a few years back, i have wanted to live on one at least once... now i sort of do. in the weekends... :) for poor people like us its perfect; a free standing house!!! who can get something like that in the netherlands?! it moves too, gently (and sometimes a bit more, when large ships are passing through the large canal nearby... or because of the weather). its really a totally different experience, living on the water. its cute to see the ducks all assemble when you get into the kitchen. i guess they want food. and indeed, its very tempting to just throw whatever food you dont want into the water (that actually happens a lot, quite often an onion comes by, or an apple, or a piece of... etc etc). and its fun to see boats come by while you are having breakfast.... its not too big, but big enough (as most of the stuff is still here in amsterdam), and the kitchen is actually bigger than the one in amsterdam. or rather, its square instead of a long, narrow hallway, so 2 people can move around in it..... i should take some pics... next time im there! (this weekend tim is coming to amsterdam...)

Summer weather?!

the weather?! rain. and rain. some more rain. ah, and rain. by the way, its cold too. summer? noooo, not at all. feels more like autumn. buuuhhhh. i cannot remember for how long the weather is really crappy now, but its been quite a while. and its still raining. the past week we mostly had rain. and this weekend we had some. we were in Groningen, as i really wanted to go to a special happening on saturday evening. despite the forecasts, the weather was actually not too bad on saturday. we went shopping a bit in the city center. then we quickly went home, had a small dinner and rushed out again for the main event of the weekend, and something i seriously had looked forward too. not in the least as i would finally take some pictures again...

we biked 10 kms to a pasture somewhere outside groningen. there it would happend; the hot-air balloon festival. last year it was so crowded that police at some point asked people not to come anymore. in the morning we had read that despite the rain, the event would take place. and well, during the day we hardly had any rain, so we just went. the maximum-allowable-number-of-hot-air-balloons-in-the-netherlands would fill the air. and some would have funny shapes. jeeejjjj!! when we arrived (a bit late, we were worried it had already started), quite some people were about to leave. why? we asked. look, they said, and pointed to the sky (it might be that people from groningen speak less than people from amsterdam). oopps, it was indeed quite dark suddenly... but... the organizers announced that there was a chance it would still happen, so we waited. walked around a bit. and then... at the moment the organizers announced the entire thing was blown off because of bad weather and thunderstorms and what not, rain came indeed down like crazy. luckily we had one small umbrella and just stood there, like many others, waiting for it to stop..... (some people even found shelter in the dixies standing around, ugh....) while waiting i took this picture, as you can see the sky doesnt look too bad, but right behind and above us was quite a different story. and well.... merely 45 minutes after we arrived we biked back again, no hot air balloons for us.... just a little more rain while biking... :(