Brussels

We went to Brussels for the weekend on Friday!  We hired a very nice car (Audi A4 - HEATED SEATS!!!!!!) and sped off through the rain on the autobahn after work (After Matt had played football and I'd been to the pub for wine and chit chat).  The car was much larger than Matt is used to, plus the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and the car was on the wrong side of the road too.  It took a while for him to get used to the dimensions of the car, and I helped,but after a while we were fine.  We arrived at about 9,30pm on Friday and went out for a burger/pizza near the hotel.  We didn't realise how central we were to the city centre until Saturday morning when we went to explore and discovered the Grand Place (above) just a few minutes walk away.  The buildings are wonderfully ornate and covered in gold in the Grand Place, and we sat outside a waffle house there, with huge waffles for breakfast (chocolate, walnut and nutella).

Unfortunately, it rained quite a lot, so we had to spend a lot of time going into pubs and chocolate shops which was a real shame!

Brussels is home to the Tintin comics... 

Brussels is all about food and drink really - chocolates, belgian waffles, beer, mussels and chips are just some of the things that Belgium is known for.  The chocolate shops are fantastic, but so expensive.  These giant meringues caught my eye in one shop window... 

Above is a chocolate shop window display of chocolates shaped like the Mannequin Pis, a statue of a small boy urinating, which has become a symbol of Brussels.

More chocolate shaped like tools!

On Saturday afternoon, Matt's parents arrived by Eurostar.  They were there for Margaret's birthday and only Tony knew that we were meeting them in Brussels!  We went to their room in the same hotel, and called out 'room service!'  Margaret was VERY surprised to see us!

We had a lovely afternoon wandering around, and stopping in pubs to escape the constant rain.  We went out for dinner in the evening, and the next day had a bit more of a wander around.  It didn't rain on Sunday, but it was bitterly cold.  It was nice to wander about, buying chocolate and beer, and soaking up the atmosphere. 

This was a wonderful clock we discovered on our wanders. The bells at the bottom played silent night at 11.30 - it was really very nice.

We like our art, and Matt found these lovely painting in a pop up shop in the city.  They are only about 6 inches high - very cute.

The spoils....

Christmas Holidays

Here are a few photos of Matt getting snuggly with Lola.  I think they are both besotted!

Us on a beautiful sunny day in Hampshire, walking the pooch.

Then off to the Harris family for Christmas day...

We had a lovely Christmas day and New Years Eve with the Harris clan.  It was very different to my usual Christmas, but I enjoyed it very much.

Over the holidays we went to a 60th Birthday party that was Japanese themed.  It was a great night with 'The Chums'.

 Then off to Winchester to spend the night in the Mercure Wessex with Mum, Dad, Sam and Amy, plus the Rayner family.  The Cathedral is beautiful, and we had a nice time.

We got back to Germany on Sunday, after a long day travelling.  We had a wonderful 3 weeks off, but are happy to be back with our lovely friends.

Flying Home for Christmas

Matt and I are now back in the UK after a very busy Autumn term in Germany.  We have a very full 3 weeks in the UK, and time is already flying by!  We landed on Tuesday at Stansted, and shock of all shocks, walked straight through passport control without having to wait for a million years!  We spent some time with Matt's family, and fitted in a Frank Turner concert too, then I headed down to the coast to Mum and Dad's for a couple of days.  We have had a lovely few days walking along the beach, and playing with the puppy.  I really do miss the sea in Germany.

On Thursday, we went to visit a row of houses near by who put on fabulous Christmas lights.  They have a charity box for visitors, and there certainly were a lot of people there having a look.  Their electricity bill must be huge!

The puppy is getting quite big now, and she is super fluffy.  Her front legs are so furry, I think she looks a bit like a sloth!  Troublesome as ever of course.

One thing that Germany really doesn't do as well as the UK is fish 'n' chips, so we had to have them!  They were certainly worth the wait.

Our near by garden centre has Reindeer, so we went to visit them and to see all the Christmas decorations (A bit of a family tradition before Christmas).  This one is Dancer, and the one below is Button.

We had a lovely walk today along the beach at Highcliffe.  It was lovely to be by the sea again.

Happy Christmas everyone!!!

Christmas markets, Christmas parties and Christmas guests

Here are a couple of photos from the very pretty Christmas market in Essen that I went to last week with some friends from work.  Some of the lads from work were planning on cycling there (it's a LONG way to cycle), but ended up chickening out.  The girls were going to meet them there, but in the end this is the group who ended up going.  It rained quite a lot, which was a shame, but the market was fun.

This is a piccy from the work Christmas party.  It was held at a Tapas restaurant in Duisburg, and was really fun.  We did our secret Santas then too, and I got a lovely Christmas cross stitch - a very well thought out present.

Sam and Amy came to visit us last week.  They arrived on Wednesday evening and went home yesterday.  It was great having them here, and made our last weekend in Germany before heading home for Christmas lots of fun.  They amused themselves around Duisburg and Dusseldorf on Thursday and Friday while we were at work.  Friday afternoon we finished work for the holidays early, and they came for after school drinks at the pub near work.  We had gone out for dinner on Thursday evening with some people from work too.  It was really nice introducing Sam and Amy to our lovely new friends, and showing them the bars where we hang out.

On Saturday we decided to go to Cologne for the day.  The weather was unfortunately miserable, but it didn't stop Cologne from being absolutely packed with people.  Cologne has 7 Christmas markets, and we did quite a few of them - the Cathedral market is the photo above, in the shadow of the beautiful Cathedral....

This was in the Old Town market.  We had a gluvine here and lunch (bratwurst and Salmon in a bun)....

Below was the Angel market, which was my favourite.  The lights in the trees were lovely when it got dark, and the stalls were all crafty things.  Just my sort of market.

Below was St Nicolas' town, where we had more gluvine......

Here is where I got a text from my school friend saying that her girlfriend had proposed to her in Prague!  Very happy for her, and excited for my first Lesbian wedding!!!

We also went to the Gay and Lesbian market - lots of chocolate willys but not much else, and the harbour market, where we tried hot glubeer - sounds disgusting but is actually really nice.

So we made it to all 7 markets!  We had a great day, but were exhausted by the end of it, and standing up on the train back to Duisburg didn't help!

Of course we had some Gluvine in Duisburg Christmas market too.... So basically Christmas markets and gluvine sums up the entire weekend!

Today we are heading home for the holidays.  3 weeks at home will be wonderful, as I haven't seen Dad for 4 months and Mum for nearly 3 months!  We're both really looking forward to it!

Mustaches, markets and misfortune

Here is a delightfully sleepy photo of Matt's mustache at the end of 'this years 'Movember'.  Matt organised Movember at work and out of the 12 people who took part, he raised more money for cancer research than everyone else put together!

Well done Matt, and thank goodness the mustache has gone for another year.

This week has been full of more Christmas market visits (as every weekend will be now until Christmas).  I went to Dusseldorf market last Saturday with a couple of girl friends from school.  The market was nice, but it was really busy, so I didn't really get into the Christmas spirit quite as much as on Sunday when Matt and I went to Duisburg market.  Duisburg's stalls are just as nice and it is a lot less busy, so it gets my vote every time.  I'm trying the market in Essen on Sunday, so we will see how that compares.

Other things that happened last week include 'my' class, or rather the class that I covered for the whole week were 'class of the week'!  I was in charge of them that week, therefore I count that as a win for me!  One of the kids in 'my' class told me that I was a very good teacher, which is always nice to hear, especially when they are normally too busy being disappointed that their normal teacher isn't in. 

Every Friday in assembly the teachers each give out an 'achievement award' to a kid who has impressed them that week.  I decided that since I had taught for a whole week, that I would give one out too.  I chose a girl in my English class who had impressed me with her creativity and imagination when carrying on a short film with her own ideas.  The look on this girls face when she realised I was talking about her was priceless.  She was so chuffed and didn't stop smiling, so I was pretty happy on Friday.  This girl has been lovely to me all of this week, so that's an added bonus!

Yesterday, I went on the Year 5 day trip to the Science Museum in Essen.  The museum is fantastic!  The founder of the museum was actually our tour guide so he was obviously very enthusiastic.  The tour ended up being 2 and a half hours long, which sounds far too long for the kids, but it went so quickly!  The museum was split into 4 rooms, all with experiments for the kids to try on sound, movement, texture etc.  We would go into a room, have a talk for 10 minutes, with a couple of demonstrations of the experiments, then the kids would play with the experiments for 40 minutes.  Then we would move to the next room and do the same again.  The kids loved it, and so did I!

In other news, I have had a very sore knee for the past week and a bit, mostly when i'm outside walking in the cold (we're into minus numbers now, and it even snowed a bit yesterday).  Today I went to the doctors.  A friend at school has a doctor friend who she recommended to me.  You don't make appointments here, you just turn up and wait your turn, so my friend said go early, and she had text the doctor to let him know I was coming.  I arrived, and they said it would be an hours wait.  About 3 minutes later they were calling my name.  It's all about who you know!  I got some seriously evil stares from the very full waiting room!

It turns out that you can get joint and muscle problems if you have had an infection recently, so the knee trouble could be related to my recent bladder/kidney infection.  Anyway, they strapped my knee up, and i've got pills to bring the swelling down (it was very swollen for the last few days), and i've been signed off work to rest it, which is pretty annoying.  I'm not meant to go to work tomorrow either, but it's the Christmas party and there is no way im missing that, so i'm going in, and i'll just have to sit down lots!