Daar wordt aan de deur geklopt...

First blog in English this year! At least, if anything sensible can still come out of me, this late Thursday afternoon at the end of term. I did a TV interview with the Palatinate earlier and I swear I tried to speak some Dutch and Latin there...

So yeah before I embark upon my story about St Nikolaas, there's a bit of Durham to enjoy: snow, ice and slush. I am not sure how they manage to make it so bad here? In Sweden snow's fun, in Holland you get to ice-skate... in Durham you can't even get to class? Apparently it's illegal to shovel public pavements here (no really, several people have tried to explain this to me now). Err?

It took me over an hour extra than usual to get to the airport! I got the 8:10 AM train... at 9:30 AM. Then the Metro was so full that people couldn't even get on it! I took one to a different station instead and got on one to the airport from there, so at least I got a seat. Subsequently it got stuck randomly in South Gosforth of course. Great. In the end my airplane was delayed by only 20 minutes however - go Newcastle International!

(From the airplane.)

Surely I have explained this last year, so just to summarise: in Holland we celebrate St Nicholas on December 5 rather than Santa Claus on December 25. The concept is pretty much the same: traditional sweets, songs, and loads of gifts.

Sinterklaas *ahem*my mum*ahem* was apparently under the impression that I spent most my time in Durham in the kitchen (oh what would Oma Assen say mum...) so most my gifts were kitchen themed; that's ok though, I do like our kitchen even if I do not actually live in there. My favourite gift was probably my new pyjama pants, which I have pretty much been wearing permanently since Sunday (even for a trip to Sainsbury's, student style...).

In any case we didn't just sit around unwrapping gifts. We also speed-wrote poetry, bought new ('hardcore' as Hilary would say) snowboots, stocked up on chocolate sprinkles, saw all my grandparents, Anoek, made 'borstplaat', and... (insert some epic wedding-coronation-unicorn music here): WENT ICE-SKATING!

Sooo lucky! On Sunday the ice was already melting again. I never really appreciated it much as a child (especially not when I was made to take those horrible ice-skating lessons) but with global warming and all I am really happy with my Dutch ice now. I loved seeing all the little children in their ice-skating outfits with their proper ice-skates and such too; some traditions just don't die.