Stanziliëri

Yep... that's my wife...

One day we started talking on Facebook, by pure coincidence. This girl in Prague (Czech Republic) and this guy in Rijswijk ZH (The Netherlands). 2 days later we decided to meet. A few weeks further we met, at London's Gatwick Airport, and kept doing so for 3 years, including other airports and train stations in the mix. This August we set off on the most climactic of our journeys. No one person traveling to or from the other, but together onwards to a better future. Off to Scotland we went, for our marriage. Destination: The Isle of Iona, most sacred of places.
It's a beautiful and most tranquil island, with few inhabitants, beautiful scenery, and a very rich history. A place where the layer between the physical world and the spiritual, whatever that might be or mean, is very thin. One feels closer to the meaning and purpose of being alive there. There wouldn't have been a better spot to establish our marriage bond.

It took us 4 days to travel there. First from The Netherlands to Reigate, England. Then to Glasgow, Scotland. Onwards to Oban to meet the minister who would perform the ceremony. And finally across Mull to Iona. Small steps feel like really big ones when you carry lots of luggage! Our initial week on Iona we'd stay at the MacLeod center of the Iona Community, to settle down and come to rest both physically and mentally. We met some great people there.

2 Days before the wedding we met photographer Paul Robertson, to go over the day and review the spots where we would be taking pictures. He travelled 1.5 hour to Iona, and then back again. Also he found us a hairdresser, whom we visited earlier on the day on the Isle of Mull. And he managed to find Jim, a piper-man to provide a musical note during our processional walks to and from the ceremony at the chapel, who turns out to be a very friendly fireman from Tobermory running a cute little bed and breakfast too.

One day before the wedding, we were awaiting our 4 guests and witnesses: Marleen, Diana, Martin and Roy. In no particular order, but ladies first :) Roy and Marleen also just got engaged, so that made it a little extra festive. While waiting for their ferry to arrive, the wonderful Simon de Voil walked by. He had agreed to play on his guitar and sing a little during our wee (little) ceremony, and it was so great to meet again in person after 4 years.

But then... the day itself. Friday the 24th of August 2012.
It couldn't have been more perfect.

The day started a bit rainy, making everything fresh and green and not too hot, which ceded nicely on time, making way for beautiful dramatic skies with the sun breaking through.

Me myself, I was ready and finished dressing up a few hours before Veronika did, so wandered around the Argyll Hotel a bit, attracting a few oooh's, aaahh's and "are you getting married??"'s from guests. You don't say! :-D Photographer Paul had shown up by now, so it was time for a little fooling around.

Then at about 12:00, we finally received our staircase appearance of Veronika. I could hardly believe my eyes. My aunt, Tine Boelaars, had spend weeks on making the dress, and my oh my was it beyond imagination!

On we went, led by piper Jim, wished good luck by hairdresser Sandra, circled by photographer Paul, and applauded by the tourists just arriving off the ferry, in procession to the small Michael Chapel, tucked away behind the amazing Iona Abbey.

I couldn't keep my eyes off my lady...

While at the same time being dazzled by the glorious view of the gorgeous Abbey in the amazing surrounding Scottish landscape.

But after a walk of about 10 minutes we reached the Abbey and circled around it to the little chapel, where minister Carol and guitarist singer Simon awaited us.

The candles in the chapel were lit, and it was as in a fairytale.

Diana made sure we did indeed have the rings present.

Veronika was happy times happy!

So there we all were. Ready and willing. Minister Carol held a lovely little speech of which we had made sure that the content was so tuned that instead of 'being religious' it was more in touch with 'being spiritual' and 'about love'. It worked out beautifully.

We were put together...

We took the vows...

And were united at last...

Simon played his beautiful rendition of the ancient Scottish prayer and blessing spoken at the end of the ceremony:

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the son of peace to you

It's available on his CD 'Sacred Earth' for sale on his website.

And then we spend some time around the Abbey and in the cloisters. It's such an amazingly beautiful and peaceful place.

All together now!

So happy together...

Afterwards we had our little procession back to the hotel, through the ancient ruins of the Nunnery, the other monastery on the island. Once more led by piper Jim. The sun was blazing, and there were many more tourists in the street now, so congratulations were everywhere. Also the question "Is it a REAL wedding!??" was uttered, to which I could happily respond that indeed it was!

Love was in the air! The next engaged couple is already there.

And no celebration without cake. My colleagues can tell you how important cake is to me ;-) It was heavy with chocolate and with fresh fruits and flowers straight off the little island itself. The tricky bit is to not spill any of that on the light wedding clothing, but we managed.

The evening we joined together with the 6 of us in a nice meal in the Argyll Hotel, before the journey away from Iona the following day. The 2 of us would set off to Greece, and then onwards to new adventures. In the distance can be seen the island called Dutchman's Cap. It's supposed to be looking like the old "Zuidwester" cap worn by Dutch seafarers.

Come walk this way...

Stand by me... 'Cause united we stand, divided we fall.

We look into the future, together.

This is only the beginning...

Since the weather was surprisingly quite alright yesterday, we decided to spend the late afternoon and early evening out and about. Destination: Kinderdijk. This most famous windmill location of The Netherlands had not been visited yet, so needed checking out. It basically consists of 2 parallel canals, or water basins, separated by a long dike, and on the other sides of the water in total 19 windmills that were originally used to pump the water out of the basins, which collected it from the surrounding farmlands, into the river. (The very end of the river Rhine)

The only part open to the public is the dike separating the 2 basins, as to not disturb the peace of the surrounding nature and the people who actualy live in the windmills. The first hundred yards or so of the dike is overcrowded with tourists. Primarily Asian. But if you continue walking beyond that it becomes very peaceful and quiet. Seems like most people only come there to take some quick snapshots and hurry on their way again, while it's so beautiful to sit or walk along the water in the quiet nature for a while. Doesn't mean we didn't take any photos ofcourse... ;)

In order to get to Kinderdijk we took the ferry (waterbus) from Rotterdam for 2 stops and then changed onto the tiny ferry across the river to Kinderdijk. It was the last crossing of the day, so we ended the day by having some lovely pancakes while waiting for the bus, which only goes once an hour. It was a beautiful day!

Every day when I go to work, leave for home, go to the shops, or basically just go outside... I am overwhelmed by beauty. Specifically female beauty. Sexy, good looking, often seemingly intelligent, or sometimes just lustful. It's crazy! ... But then that is all washed away, like a flood, a tsunami, a delhuge, because of my daydreamings about my one and only true love. My Veronika.

And tomorrow will be the day we've been waiting for for 3 years: she's leaving her home country to merge our lives together. I'm so overcome with joy and happiness and emotions and more than words can express and tears can bear.

But... I mean... see for yourself...

Sigh.... My gorgeous. My smarty. My everything. My always. :')

Last week I went to Электросталь (Elektrostal) in Russia. This was my second visit to this town, and Russia in general. I went there previously in the summer of 2009. This time I think I should write down a few notes about my observations of this largest country of the planet, knowing ofcourse that I've seen only such a tiny piece of such an enormously vast and probably overall reasonably diverse place.

This vastness is the first thing to comment on. Nature in Russia is BIG. Assuming you're not in one of the 2 federal cities you will see it everywhere. It is so much everywhere that nature is not so much present in towns, but towns are present in nature. When looking at the country form above, you will see extensive forests, with sometimes spots cut out of it with a bunch of flats plugged in there: a town. But the trees are so numerous that they seem to be overpowering the flats, which are quite massive by themselves, and are overrunning these structures. Buildings seem to drown in the power of nature.

The Russian architecture inherited from the communistic Soviets does not help this. With the exception of some buildings, usually churches, stemming from the Tsarist period, which ended approximately a century ago, all buildings and constructions are horribly ugly concrete monsters. Most buildings in a town are big blocks of flats made out of square concrete platters piled together. To make them look 'nicer' most will have some ceramic tiles on the outside of the building. But since everything is rather old and unmaintained the steel is rusting and the concrete is crumbling and failing due to the power of mother earth. It will take a long long time for the Russian architecture to kind of evolve back to its former glory again.

Corruption is loose in the country and visible on the surface of the police. The police feels too important. They wear too big hats and just a bit too overdecorated uniforms making them look like clowns or caricatures of themselves. They try to stop and pester the public and get their money for the smallest of issues, introducing themselves by their title as if they think themselves of being much too important. "Hello, I am lieutenant Vladimir. Please show me your papers." Where as nobody cares about their title but just about the fact that they're a police officer and generally annoying.

The scared nature of the Russian people becomes apparent in their cars, the buildings, their fear of police. Everybody tries to act as normal as possible as soon as any police is spotted anywhere. Definitely don't try to take photos of them. The first things people do when they get a car is blind as many windows as possible. Or with flats, they're all build with balconies. But everybody closes them off as soon as possible, replacing the balcony fence with full-blown walls and windows, turning them into tiny rooms. Shops and restaurants don't really have windows. Because if someone can look in (to the car, the house, the shop, etcetera) and see all the things they can desire they might break in.

The corruption and maintenance problem is also very much visible, and feelable, in the state of the roads. Most roads are not just simply having some holes in them, but are from a war-zone. Maintenance is scarce and only to the extend of patching up holes with materials that will easily break again. Better materials are of course available, and just replacing the entire road in a single go with something better is cheaper and longer lasting, but that won't make the roadworks companies so much money.

And materials are big business in Russia. I couldn't drive 1km without seeing a sign advertising the sales of concrete. I've actually never seen an advertisement for concrete anywhere, but in Russia it's all over the place. And advertisement signs, wether it's for concrete, building materials in general, or other things, are in general just simple signs seemingly randomly nailed to a tree. Sometimes whole communities of signs together, the business of signs and smallness of letters making it impossible to read any of it anyway. The signs are generally nothing more than 1 word (concrete) and a phone number.

Then on a mental level people seem to be missing a big part of education about the Russian history. The communistic suppression of their crimes is still continuing nowadays, because the people in power are still stemming from the KGB and Communist Party times, unwilling to let their crimes see the light. Stalin and Lenin are still regarded as heroes, even though Stalin was the world's largest mass murderer and pretty much solely responsible for the underdeveloped state the country is in right now. He has more blood on his hands and horrific crimes on his name than any other, but nobody seems to know about it.

And then there's always the general annoyances that demonstrate how much of a bureaucracy is still at large in the country. For example when leaving the country it is possible to have an electronic mobile boarding pass. But the border control people don't recognize/accept it and you MUST go and get a paper boarding pass too only because they must be able to put a stamp on it.

But all this doesn't mean it's a bad place to be, of course. I've had 6 beautiful days meeting with my friends and having a lovely time in general. It's very interesting how it's possible to go to a restaurant hidden in one of those ugly concrete buildings that look like a deserted factory without windows, but then there's some of the best sushi ever being served. Or slowly falling down concrete locks can create a strangely picturesque environment in the nature surrounding the town.

I do wonder about what the country looks like when you go deeper in. One day I do want to take a car and drive deep into the country for a couple of days, away from all the cities and enjoy the vastness... that must be amazing.

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car.
I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick.
It even makes me rhyme.

I hate it...
I hate the way you're always right.
I hate it when you lie.
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around and the fact that you didn't call.

But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you.
Not even close.
Not even a little bit.
Not even at all.

I just love how this poem so boldly states "I miss you and I love you" without saying it and using the exact opposite words. (Julia Styles spoke it in class to Heath Ledger in the movie ('10 Things I Hate About You')

Every holiday must come to an end, and we had finally reached that moment. But before we left, we were determined to go and eat pancakes at the local pancake house. To our surprise though, they were not opened in the evenings. Only from 7 am till 3 pm. Euh, what? Apparently pancakes are not dinner here, but breakfast or lunch. Verrrry strange. So instead of having pancakes on the last evening, we went to the Thai55 restaurant once more. Good choice. The pancakes, we had them the last morning. And boy, were we not the only ones! We entered the pancake house at 8 am, and it was completely jam-packed! I was surprised there was still a table to be found for is. Also, we were the only non-black people there, and we were not the only ones who realized that. We could see many people looking like "what are they doing here?" However, it was an amazing place. Service was good, fast, and the food simply amazing. I had not had such great pancakes before. Also, a little bit of Dutch pride when looking at the menu. :-D

The flight back home was beautiful. We travelled with piles of luggage, because we had bought like 20 pieces of clothing, and most size-importantly I was bringing 3 large pure silk blankets. We love after-Christmas discounts! It all JUST fit in the suitcases and shopping bags we had available. And luckily... we were traveling business class, so we could bring lots of stuff.

At the airport we first had some champagne and bites in the lounge. Then made our way into the top-deck of the KLM Boeing 747. It was sooo nice to travel with all the space one could wish for. Not a cramped seat with barely 1 window. No. A big comfy seat that could turn into a bed, with 4 windows and plenty of walking space. No need to get up when the person next to you wants to go to the loo. We were with only 7 passengers in a compartment that seats about 20. Nice and quiet. Probably the fact that this was New Year's Eve had something to do with it. The flight was beautiful, with the captain announcing midnight (in The Netherlands) over the intercom, and everybody having their glass of champagne to celebrate with. They didn't have a vegetarian meal (because I hadn't ordered it) but the stewardess offered me her meal. And despite my protests she gave it to me anyway. So, happy me with happy belly. After a few hours of proper sleep I suddenly woke up, as the only one of the passengers. My free-food internal alarm had gone. It was only 1 hour till landing, and time to get breakfast! The stewards quickly noticed me, and came out with the food. This hustle and bustle roused the other passengers, and before you knew it everybody was enjoying breakfast. In a moment they handed out the nice Delft blue porcelain jenever-filled Dutch houses that KLM business class is known for.

The plane landed, we got our luggage, and headed home. The holidays were over. But the memories are not. Can't wait till the next time we go somewhere.

What do you do when you are on holiday? Relax. How do you relax really well? In a spa! How do relax even better? In an expensive spa! Awesome... Off we went to The Carlton Club. Spa of the Ritz Carlton 5* 'Four Seasons' hotel. Followed by a lovely lunch in the hotel's restaurant.

But what else do you do when you are on holiday? No... let me rephrase that. What else do you do when you are on holiday in the US-and-A while the dollar is weaker than the euro and the after-Christmas sales have started? Hmmm.... Shop?... OBVIOUSLY! Which was a nice experience. Although I had to wait outside the Victoria's Secret dressing room for quite some time. But then again, no man can really seriously complain about that ;-) Also the dressing rooms of Levi's were visited extensively, and of course a visit to Bloomingdales. It was going to be tricky to pack our suitcases!

Also a final visit to the MCA, where the Sonic Arboretum had been moved back to its proper non-concert exposition setup, a final visit to the Treasure Island supermarket, and on our way there a very extensive laugh about the totally ridiculous Christmas lights some people put up. :-)

Soooo... Christmas was over. But the holidays were not. What else to do? How about finding our way to some nice places to eat? Aaaaand how about paying a visit to the Specimen Products workshop? Great idea! Finding food was easy. We just had to commit to the 'When somewhere, visit the Hard Rock Cafe' ritual, and also the conciërge of the building pointed us to a local street where there were many good oriental and Mediterranean restaurants. He was absolutely right. We visited a place called 'Thai55' (It was on 55th Street) and the food was a-ma-zing. Really wow. We couldn't stop eating, except that our bellies wanted to explode! Still, in the morning the cravings were back, and this was where the 'make it yourself' croissants from the supermarket came in. Pure love.

Regarding the visit to Specimen Products, we took the public transport not through down town, but around it and through some other neighborhoods for a change. That turned out not to be the most amazing choice. Nothing happened, but 'feeling safe' is something else. It was pure ghetto style, and you could see the people, looking like "what are THEY doin' here?!?" while we were waiting at the bus stop where we were changing from metro to bus. Including the homeless man living in said bus shelter.

The days after the concert were mainly... Christmas. A Christmas of being lazy, and eating nice food, drinking nice drinks. I was expecting a delivery with photo goodies, and that arrived finally, so I was marveling at my 'Nikon and Canon lens-shaped shot glasses', relaxing in the hot tub. We wandered around the neighbourhood, and did shopping at the local Treasure Island supermarket. Now, this supermarket advertises itself as "The most European" supermarket of the US. And I guess that's kind of true, since we didn't see any crazy WalMart things. But still, the diversity and amount of products was rather American. This was clear upon entering the store already: apples piled up in pyramid shapes. But not just 2 or 3 kinds. No. 14 kinds. And you want mayonnaise? (For example.) Then there's a choice of 50 brands and sizes (or so). Have a look for yourself in this video, in reverse order. Make sure to drag around in the video with your mouse or touch thingy!!! It's 360 degree.

Anyway, on Christmas eve we went to the Jon Hancock Center. The next-to-tallest sky scraper of Chicago. There on the 95th and 96th floor is a restaurant and bar. We had a lovely Christmas Dinner there, with a beautiful view.

Christmas itself we didn't leave the house, didn't open the door even. We watched Harry Potters movies. And it was great! But on Boxing Day a little bit more cultural activity was planned, and we visited the Chicago Art Institute. A nice museum! Surprisingly much famous paintings are to be found there. Lots of Van Gogh's, Rodin's, Dali's, Monet's, Mondriaan's, and many more. Of course, since we were in the US-and-A, we had to indulge at least once in a true American High Tea. So this was the day. Mac Donalds!!!

Our first day in Chicago already had a long-planned event booked in: A concert of Andrew Bird through the Sonic Arboretum of Specimen Products' Ian Schneller at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. There! That's a mouth full. Andrew Bird is a very interesting and talented multi-instrumental musician, and since a few years he is teaming up with Ian Schneller in performing with the help of Ian's amazing horn speakers. The regular reader will recognize these horns, and connected amplifiers, as being the very same as I am having at home. This is no coincidence of course. I discovered Ian's work a couple of years ago, and have been very enthusiastic about them since. So much that I had to experience this Sonic Arboretum concert for myself.
But before all that we first set out to explore the neighbourhood a little bit. It was quite warm for the season, but none the less no summer time of course. Luckily there was not too much wind so we could make a little walk along the lake side. It's strange to be at water, of which you can not see the other side, but it's not a sea! There's a nice view of the 30-minutes-away downtown Chicago as well.
Once we made our way to downtown we got off the buss a bit early, to then make our way to the MCA by foot while enjoying the sights. Chicago is a great for architecture, and apart from the Salvation Army people who simply wouldn't stop ringing their annoying bells continuously for hours, all was fine. (I bet they missed out on a whole lot of donations because of those ridiculous bells actually.) Since we were quite frozen after this walking we went to get some nice chocolate drinks and bites at Hershey's. Mmmm I could drown myself in Chocolate there. But on we went and visited the MCA itself. Apart from the Sonic Arboretum it was not impressive. Or very impressive, in a 'what the f*ck' kind of way. A neon word on the wall. A little pile of folded blankets in the middle of an empty room. A broken plate of glass on a floor. ... That's not art. That's rubbish.
So off we set to Giordano's for some big stuffed pizza. Last time when I was in Chicago on my own I ordered a small one, and I just managed to eat 50% of it. So this time we ordered a medium. And we again only managed to eat 50% of it, and took the rest home. Excellent! But since there was still more than an hour to kill before the concert would start at the MCA, we went next door to sit down and relax and let the food settle in our overfilled bellies: The Ritz Carlton hotel. It's an absolutely gorgeous hotel, with plenty of nice comfy seats and sofas. So we put ourselves down in one of the corridors and just relaxed a bit, before we had to get on to the concert.
And the concert was simply great. The museum was packed, and the music was great. I walked into Ian Schneller who told me to make sure to walk around the hall because it sounded different everywhere due to the setup of the Sonic Arboretum. And it did. There were small (19 inch), medium, large, super large (8 foot!), and revolving speakers all turning Andrew Bird's musical layer upon layer upon layer upon layer into a beautiful sound experience. Our holiday had really started, and it was Good.

After the London concert we had little time to sleep, because the following morning we had also only little time to speed back to Amsterdam to catch our 12:40 flight there to Chicago. So, once home we jumped into bed, and no more than 3 hours later we got up again to take a taxi to the airport. The taxi was nicely on time. There were no queues at the airport. Boarding went smooth. And the plane took off at the scheduled 6:10 time. Everything going smooth so far. Until the captain announced that 'because of ice on the wings we have to return to Gatwick'.
Uhoh...
So, after exactly 1 hour we were back at London Gatwick airport again. It turned out it was not 'ice on the wings' but some technical failure with the airplane since they didn't go to de-ice it, but the technicians moved the plane out for investigation and a new one was fetched. This was done very quickly and smoothly, so we were up in the air again 1.5 hour later. Got to admit that they did a nice job there. Unexpected from usually crappy Easyjet. But I guess we were lucky this happened at London Gatwick, where they simply have lots of planes lying about.
Anyway, we landed at Amsterdam at about 11:15, arrived at the gate at 11:30 and could walk straight on to the next gate where the flight to Chicago was pre-boarding. Within 5 minutes we were taking our seat in a bit more comfortable Boeing 747 KLM seat in which we would enjoy our lovely pre-ordered Japanese dinners and further endure the 8.5 hour flight.
Once in Chicago we stumbled from the airport to the metro, through the streets, to the bus, into our home for the holidays at Harold Washington Park, right next to Lake Michigan, kindly arranged for us by my now Chicago-based brother who had decided to spend the holiday period in The Netherlands. One funny thing we noticed was that apparently there are a lot of TV and radio studios that are on the ground floor with big windows so the public that's walking by outside can see what's going on. And they did that in large groups, although we couldn't see much of interest inside really. But after such a long day with such a short night before we just wanted to get home and go to sleep. Plenty of holidays ahead of us to wonder about all things Chicago! (And do shopping... because breakfast was a bit meager... ;) )

It took some time, because I had to do some server fixing, but here are some photos from the 2011 Christmas Holidays. The plan was to travel to Chicago for 1.5 weeks. However, a last-minute arrangement was made to go and join a concert of Edith Leerkes and Herman van Veen at the Dutch Church in London. So we set off to London on the Monday evening, to enjoy the concert the Tuesday evening, and travel back to Amsterdam to get our flight to Chicago from there on the Wednesday morning. More on that later. The concert turned out to be a magical evening where we sat on the very front row in the intimate church surroundings. It was beautiful to enjoy the music of these great artists so close up. Afterwards we had the chance to meet with them in the social hall downstairs and had a long talk with Herman about all kinds of things: social media, working in finance, the Russian invasion of Czech long ago, nice hotels, etcetera...