Real swimmers!

here are some real swimmers in the swedish sea!! it was 2 days ago, somewhere around 6 in the evening. it was not cold, but not warm either, some 20 degrees C at most... i had some time to observe them and it was so different from what you would see in the us! firstly, people arrived by bike, alone or together. just left their bike unlocked and walked to the water, undressed and went in. no toe dipping, not scared of the cold! hoppa! no lifeguard either, and no millions signs saying that you can or cannot swim, or when the "water closes" (in the us the water or the forest or the park or whatever usually closes after sunset). after swimming people just dried themselves and took off their swimsuits, something you also would never see in the us, as ofcourse you cannot show any skin...

im at the airport now. i enjoyed my practical baby-course... yesterday i got to feed the baby, and saw how she was bathed... im fully prepared now... ;)  but as i think its sometimes already a burden to carry my camera everywhere, i think its still too early for babies...

Some sightseeing

its not too cold here, but often quite windy, and then its suddenly chilly! many clouds make it very pretty... here we were at the sea side, where many people were still swimming...! i didnt try, seemed so cold.....

In Sweden

sorry for the lack of updates! sometimes there is no internet, then im at the airport and its not working, or i am too tired. or too lazy. or whatever...

but now im in sweden for a few days... without tim, so the above sign was funny! im visiting a friend who got a baby last november. she says im here for a practical baby course... they also have other friends over with a baby of the same age.... so i can practice, she says... hahahahaha.

Very american

this sign is so american! must look nice when its dark...

even after more than 2.5 years, i still cannot get used to having to buy alcohol in a separate store. in the netherlands you can buy your wine and beer in the supermarket, only for hard liquor you will have to go to a liquor store. and ofcourse, having to prove that you are over 21 while 30 is very weird too. or that it can only be a passport, or an ID from the state you are in... leading to sometimes complicated situations or not being able to buy any alcohol at all...

Fancy chairs

saw these colorful chairs in the mc donalds! looked really new... too bad only that you cannot swirl around on them, they are fixed....

Dog days...

dog days of summer are supposed to be over! its september now.... :) (but its still hot!) i knew this expression, and that it has to do with the hottest days/weeks of summer, but until i asked wikipedia i never knew why...! well, it comes from the ancient belief that sirius (the dog star) in proximity to the sun was responsible for the hot weather...

we are having a long weekend (monday is labor day), and i think i september dogs are allowed on the beaches again.... but not their sh*t, as you can see here, you will need to bag that and take trash it properly. i always find it a funny sight.... here they are very strict, and everyone indeed picks up after their dog (unlike the netherlands, at least the last time i was there..). i wonder what the dog thinks, sometimes, of this practice... :D

Ready to...

.... shoot!

this was at the cliff diving event last saturday. everyone was ready to take that one shot. except me... :)

i think its interesting that on the one hand there are all these fancy cameras, and on the other the phones. not much in between anymore, it seems!

Fresh veggies!

veggies for sale, just along the road somewhere in vermont. isnt that cool? we stopped, just to take a picture (our fridge at home still full with vegetables that needed to be eaten...). to the right on the stand you see a small white box, on it was written "donations". on the other side a list with the names of all the vegetables present, and that they were dusted, but still needed to be washed. for you to take, and for you to determine how much you pay for it! amazing, no? i wonder how much money comes in that way!

i would like to seel stuff too... pastries and bread... anyone interested? :) 

Local eatery

we had "dinner" in vermont. after the cemetery, we walked further on the main street until we hit this eatery a little before the center of the town. we had seen it already when driving by, and i had decided we should eat there... it seemed well visited, and eating was outside. could it be more american?! the other option was a bit further down the road; some posh looking house and a sign "fine dining". well, i preferred the eatery! 

moreover, i was extremely interested in the locals. but i was afraid taking pictures too obviously, and thus had put my camera on the table (the unsharp lower part of the picture). 

the food? we had burgers, shared one order of fries and a drink; it was 20 dollars!! i somehow really thought it would be good, and then it wasnt.... :( the fries looked like they had been fried already 7 times. at least. we didnt finish them....

ah well, i enjoyed observing the locals.... ;)

Restland, Vermont

this weekend we drove to vermont. from boston its approximately a 3 hour drive, but i had never been to this state! we stayed 1 night in a motel in wilmington. it was called "the vintage motel". i just wonder what came first, the vintage or the motel.... it wasnt very crowded, i guess this town is more alive when winter comes and snow covers all the mountains... (wikipedia tells me wilmington is in the heart of the "snowbelt")

even so it was a 3 hour drive, we ofcourse took a bit longer as we avoided the highway, stopped here and there, took some photos, etc etc... in the evening we walked a bit around in wilmington, and accidentally found the cemetery just behind the church on the main street of this tiny town. i just loved the name of this cemetery. restland. ofcourse, restland!! why have i never seen a cemetery before called like that? how else should a cemetery be named, anyways? restland seems just the perfect name to me! we walked around a bit, and although all stones seemed intact, many were hardly readable, due to dirt and erosion. but well, i actually just wanted a picture of the gate with the name of the cemetery anyways....

there were some 500 graves, and i guess it was established somewhere after the town itself was established, which was in 1751. it didnt seem to be in use anymore, but as you can see, still well maintained...

more taphophiles can be found here!

Somewhere along...

the road from massachusetts to vermont, yesterday! i guess it was at the border with new hampshire, still in massachusetts... 

i took many crappy pics but i hope to find some nice ones in the coming days. we had fun driving, anyways!! and saw a lot of beautiful/interesting/weird/ugly/very very american sights...

I'm lazy!

today we saw some guys jumping off the roof of the ICA (institute of contemporary art) into the boston harbor. some 90 feet if i remember correctly. before they were down in the water, they did some nice turns and flips and what-not. but it went so very fast i missed many of the jumps (i guess a jump took 3 seconds?). also, i did not want to sit ready with my camera, until they would finally make the jump. and the few times i did, i didnt see anything of the jump as i was too busy clicking..., or seeing that i held my camera wrong and he jumped a little to the right, or left... most shots that i did manage to take were blurry, or just empty... 

i guess this is the only one that worked out... :)

it was super- supercrowded! but the weather was nice, and we had a good spot (thanks to our friends who were there much earlier than us; we somehow managed to miss the stop while on the subway, and had to go back, and it all took forever and ever). ah well... i dont think i want to become a cliff diver (they were all wearing tiny speedos), and before people realize what you are doing is amazing, its already over. besides, i prefer to be in the water, rather than jumping into it all the time....

Orange line

this is the train i take everyday to get into boston. bostons skyline you can see in the background!

it is a few stations after the one i get on, where they store all the orange trains that are not in use.... you walk above them when you leave this particular station (you can see the reflection of the glass, unfortunately).

its so hot here! usually im ok with it, but at this very moment... beeehhh.. maybe its also my hote computer, and we were using the oven quite a bit this evening (making dinner, baking bread, etc etc). but as usual, i get cold just a few minutes after we turn on the airconditioning....

good night!

Sun rays

this was at our campsite in new hampshire, 2 weeks back. in the morning we saw the most gorgeous sun rays on the river... :) most likely because there was a lot of smoke in the air from all the BBQ fires at many sites, people start them up early in the morning already! 

building a fired was really nice (or rather, tim did that, i just commented, so i should say, having a fire in the evening is really nice, but i didnt like smelling like it. everything smelled like campfire when we got back.... so even for just 2 nights, i had a huge amount of laundry to do....

Purple flowers

i like purple... :)
and im lazy today... so enjoy the flowers!

Flower mass

i saw this grave back in april, at the holy cross cemetery in malden. we biked there as it is not too far from our house. the cemetery seemed mainly italian, as judged by the names on the graves. and, like biebkriebels showed before, some graves had a photo of the deceased. here i was mostly amazed by the amount of fake flowers. there were a lot of fake flowers on this cemetery, but this one had one of the most. many graves also had the flower holder as you see above, that you can put atop a grave. a little too much for me. i found it funny that her name is "mazza", as it is almost the dutch word "massa", which, indeed, means "mass". but... if im correct, it means "bat" or "sledge hammer" in italian. haha...

a future request; please no fake plastic flowers for me.....

for more taphophilia, go here!

Some shopping

this is the "gateway center", a place with some shops not too far from our house. there is a huge, gigantic parking lot, and several shops. every so many miles, you find such a shopping center here in the us. often you can only get to them by car. the shops are more or less the same, and they are huge. i always wonder how so many shops, the same shops, can coexist so close to each other. usually there is a "home depot", which sells everything for your do it yourself (DIY as they call that here) home improvement and construction (like a dutch "gamma", but then 10 times bigger). there is a paper store, for all your office needs, also enormous, an enormous toy store, a crafts store (we were there this weekend for the first time; my goodness, i didnt know that they could fill such an enormous store with... well... that kind of stuff), and usually there is a target, a retail store. perhaps comparable to the dutch "V&D", but ofcourse much bigger. then there are some (cheaper) shoe/sport or clothing stores. and i really cannot stop wondering how this is sustainable. within a not too big radius we have a few of these malls, all with the same stores. especially their size is very weird for a dutch... :) even our supermarkets arent this big, or numerous (i also imagine that the tiny size of all stores in the netherlands must be a shock for americans! haha.... also, dont expect to buy your stuff in as large quantities as you can here; most beverages (milk, orange juice, etc) are sold at a max of 1 ltr per bottle, shampoo and stuff is in at least 2 times smaller bottles than here, and i guess double the price etc etc.).

anyways. we sometimes goto target, although we never need anything. and then we come out having bought all kinds of stuff. or the shoe store (although not the above one, im a fan of DSW; shoes can be so deceivingly cheap there! i cant go there too often, as i always buy a new pair of shoes. even after more than 2 years in the us, i still tend to think in dutch/european prices when it comes to clothing and shoes, and its soooo much more cheaper here!!). this time (sunday) i got some clothes; a trouser, a shirt and a dress, together for just 30 dollars..... :)

Gorgeous flowers

tim was in the netherlands last month, and somewhere in south amsterdam he saw this field of flowers. isnt it beautiful? 

Boston drain

i know, i know, i did this before. but i have new shoes... :)))  and it rained today. it was a little chilly, after days, no weeks, of very hot weather. theres also boston water and the boston sewer. if you were ever to be dropped randomly into boston, blindfolded or whatever, having no clue where you are, you will figure it out soon enough, just by looking down. everything is labeled "boston". but why? what else can we expect than a boston drain when we are in boston... right? i find it very funny...  (in new york, ofcourse, you have the new york sewer, and water, and drain. but i havent looked for this in other cities yet, although i guess its the same). ah, and lets not forget the BPD (yes, the boston police department).

the nice thing of rain is that the swimming pool at our apartment complex remains empty. perfect for a swim! but this morning the water was not clear blue... it was murky green. the worst we have ever seen since we live here.... :( not good for laps....(i hope the boston drain/sewer had nothing to do with that!!)

Very american

to me, this row of houses looks very american. the little fenced off yards, the wooden houses with a porch, the electricity wires...., the fire hydrant.... just as you sometimes see in the movies as well. 

the first 3 months we lived in somerville in such a house (but even bigger, it was divided in several apartments), with a front and back porch. i really liked to look around in that neighborhood. often there were yard sales in the weekend, where people just dump out all of the stuff they dont want anymore in their yard, and sell it for little money (some of our furniture we bought there). currently, no porch and no yard sales. i guess management would go crazy if we would dump out all our stuff trying to sell it to our neighbours... ;) and i guess none of our neighbours would want to buy anything. what does happen every now and then is that people put stuff out in the hallway, with a note that you can take it. although i find it  the ultimate form of laziness, i also profited from it; we now have a fancy set of wine glasses, a water boiler, a popcorn maker (i dont know why i tookt that one), a nice glass dome for pies (how do you call that? in dutch it would be a "taartstolp") and a side table.... thats also very american, i dont think dutch would just give stuff away that easily if they also could get money for it.. :), and at least they would want to get credit for it, not just leaving it in the hall anonymously until someone secretly takes it away....