In Loving Memory

Last week Saturday our precious Granny Hilde passed away.

When we think of Granny we think of some of her passions: family, pets, cooking and gardening. These are some of our favourite memories

Family

Granny loved having family around her, and she loved talking about her family back in Germany. She would often tell us stories about life in Germany, moving to South Africa and the naughty things her three kids would get up to.

Pets

Keeping her company in Cape Town were her two jack Russels, Yogi and Snoopy, and her cat Miauwi. Granny ensured that her pets were all well looked after and lived the good life. Lamb chops for lunch was quite normal. Everybody agreed that they would quite happily come back as one of Granny's pets in a future life.

Cooking

We would often accuse Granny of having a feeder gene. It would be quite normal to arrive for lunch and find that Granny had cooked a chicken, a roll of beef, a roll of pork, various vegetables and two cakes. And that was considered enough for four of us. We had various tactics that we tried in order to keep Granny out of the kitchen:

- organising to take her out for lunch, only to find that she wasn't feeling up to going out, and so had cooked her usual spread anyway.
- arranging to bring lunch with us resulting in her cooking a late breakfast (steak, egg, chips, mushrooms, tomatoes and croissants) to keep us going until lunch was served.
- arriving at Granny unannounced only to find that she had a chicken pie in the oven - just in case!

Gardening

Granny had the type of green fingers that would make any garden enthusiast jealous. Whether it was the 'left-for-dead' shrubs from the previous owner or the most difficult of bonsai, Granny knew how to get them looking like prize winning beauties. Even in her 80's she would still spend a full day in the garden mowing, chopping, cleaning and re-potting.

Sometimes if we were going away on holiday we would ask Granny to look after our plants for us. We would drop them off and 2 or 3 weeks later come back to fetch them, only to find them twice the size, flowering (we didn't even realise they could flower) and looking like they were ready to be photographed for a nursery catalogue.

Granny believed in keeping things simple. If there were two of us sitting down for lunch, the cake would simply be cut in half. 

Celebrating Granny's birthday at Simons in Constantia.

Bronwen, Granny, Carol and Mark.

Granny getting animated as she gets into another story with Kirsten 

Granny's 80th birthday celebration

Justin, Bronwen, Sue, Gary, Granny, Mark and Brenainn

Dad and Gran

Gran and Mum

Christmas 2010

Granny, the Cross's and the de Villiers's

Granny and one of her well pampered pets

Snoopy

Yogi

At Brenainn and Kirsten's wedding

And at our wedding with Granny Mickey

Bronwen's brother Craig and his date for our wedding

Enjoying the garden show at the Lourensford Wine Estate

Hilde Zsohar

21 Feb 1928 - 15 Dec 2012

We will miss you Granny!!
May you rest in peace.

Festivals and Family

This weekend was all about getting into the festive spirit. Christmas markets, festive season food and drink, a couple extra days off work and hanging out with family! 

Brenainn and Kirsten's tour of Europe continued with a stop-over in Rotterdam (Paris was now done and dusted). After dropping off their bags at the house and a roast beef lunch (thanks to Jamie Oliver) we headed out to explore Rotterdam. With sunset now only a few hours after sunrise (Seriously! It honestly feels that way!) it was a quick tour of the highlights before heading to the Chinese Light Festival. 

A funky container down at the docks

The Chinese Light Festival is being advertised as the largest festival of its kind in Europe. Our local park has been converted into a field of Dragons, Ducks, Toadstools, Pandas and a number of other displays with Chinese themes. 

After their initial introduction to Rotterdam (and experiencing some sub-zero temperatures) it was time to call it a day. 

The next day (Friday) was spent exploring Amsterdam. We saw the main sights and there was a healthy dose of shopping therapy. 

 

Lunch

And then it was Saturday! We picked up a rental car and headed off to Aachen. Aachen is in Germany (just - it is 5km from the border) and is well known for its Christmas Market. In Aachen we met up with our family from Wuppertal and started soaking up the Christmas atmosphere (mostly with Gluhwein and great traditional German food).

But before any 'soaking' we started with a tour of the town hall (which used to be a palace) and cathedral. 

Kirst, Bren, Werner, Lukas and Jasper enjoying some German sausage. 

Gluhwein time! 

If you are ever in Aachen for the Christmas Market, we recommend the Hexenhof!

And then time for some more great German food! 

Hard at work making bonbons

The evening ended with Werner taking us all out for dinner at one of the local restaurants. What an awesome day! Thanks to Werner, Lukas and Jasper for coming out and spending the day with us. 

Sunday arrived wet and gloomy so we had a bit of a slow start. Eventually we left the house and made our way to the bike rental shop. Today we were heading for Kinderdijk. 

The trip to Kinderdijk involves cycling from the bike rental shop to the port, catching a water bus 2 stops, changing to a local water taxi and then cycling the last kilometer to the windmills. The only problem was that the water taxi didn't seem to be running today. Time to make some last minute changes to the plans. Dordrecht! We carried on with the water bus and jumped off at Dordrecht, along with a number of other passengers that had come to this normally quiet town for the annual Christmas Market. This Christmas Market felt a lot like any normal Saturday market and definitely wasn't on the same level as the German market, but we had fun anyway! We tried some Poffertjes (small crumpets) served hot with butter and icing sugar (YUM) and some Oliebollen (also in the YUM category). 

We concluded the weekend with a Christmas dinner, a bit of a beer tasting, and Printen for pudding (a traditional German pudding from Aachen). And then it was time to say cheers to Bren and Kirst as they continued on their European adventure. Next stop for them is Nuremburg. 

On a sadder note Granny Hilde passed away on Saturday evening. She was an amazing person and will be sorely missed! 

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

The past week was filled with firsts. We got our very first real REAL Christmas tree ever, the first snow of the season fell, we had a cleaning lady come over for the first time since we moved here, we were invited to the first Christmas dinner of the year and we made our first pot of homemade soup for the season!

Our real REAL Christmas tree! 

Our local florist lady must think we (read Bron) are crazy. We have been asking her for about 3 weeks now, when is she getting real trees in? What kind of tree do we want, she asked, a Nordmann, a Blauwspar or Omorica? (These conversations occur in Dutch by the way) In SA you can have anything you want as long as it is a Pine Tree! We chose a Nordmann tree since its needles don’t drop when they turn brown.

The trees were supposed to be available from Dec 1st but finally arrived on Tuesday Dec 4th. We must have been the first ones to buy a tree when they arrived on Tuesday! It is a chopped tree but came in a pot with soil, complete with resident spider. Well done Justin for getting it home and up the stairs by himself! Not sure how he did it because it is damn heavy! So much for it not losing needles, by the time the tree was installed they were everywhere! Not to mention muddy soil.

On Saturday we discovered a seasonal Christmas shop with reasonably priced real glass baubles. We bought red and silver ones in a range of sizes as well as some real artisan hand painted ones. Sunday was spent wrapping lights around and decorating the tree with old and new decorations. Our place feels so cheery and Christmassy now!

Undecorated tree upon arrival

Justin decorating the tree

Some of our tree decorations

This week also saw the first snowfall of the season. The first three snowfalls actually. It snowed on Monday morning for about 2 hours but it was ‘wet snow’ and none settled. Wednesday morning there was some snow on the ground but it didn’t last long. But on Friday morning there was A LOT of snow! And 40 knot winds to go with it. Nederland Spoor, the train services company, politely cancelled at least half the trains the whole day so the trip to work was super fun. Not. Justin was cosily sipping on a seasonal Starbucks Speculaas latte before meetings in The Hague while Bron was cycling to work in the near blizzard. Not fun. But she survived to tell the tale and without falling off. Next time the bus might be an option.

Friday’s snow did settle but didn’t last long. In the city it was almost all gone by the end of the day. Train services were still slim on Saturday but we couldn’t understand why since there was no more snow. Not until heading out to Utrecht in the evening anyway. There was still snow lying on the ground all the way and a lot more in Utrecht city than in Rotterdam. Because of the wind, the snow had covered one side of trees but not the other, looked so nice! It was quite pretty but also very cold, around the zero degree mark, and generally annoying because of the reduced train schedule. It rained a lot on Sunday and has warmed up a bit, around 6 degrees, so thankfully no more snow and a normal train service again.

Saturday evening we were invited to a Christmas dinner with one of Bron’s colleagues, hence the trip to Utrecht. Dan and Sam are British so it was a very traditional English Christmas dinner, Jamie style. It was such a lovely evening full of good food, good wine and laughter. Was a wonderful treat to have a Christmas dinner how we know it to be. Thanks for an awesome evening Dan and Sam! Was legend =)

Sunset over a canal in Utrecht with snow on the banks

Christmas Dinner!

Justin lighting the traditional Christmas pudding! On Justin's right is Brent, Dan (with the camera) and Sam

We (read Bron) are tired of cleaning our own place! Living in SA makes one so lazy when it comes to these things! So we finally decided to get a cleaning lady. Her first day was on Monday and our place was so clean! Woohoo! Until the arrival of the Christmas tree on Tuesday that is. Totally a winner having a cleaning lady, frees up so much of our time. But it is A LOT more expensive than at home!

This week was also Sinterklaas on Wednesday the 5th. We had a much quieter Sinterklaas than last year with no planned activities but a nice quiet dinner at home trying not to let the end of year busy-ness catch up with us too much!

Last week a friend of Bron’s from UCT, Colin, was visiting Amsterdam and popped in for a visit on Sunday. Was so awesome to see you Col! And thanks for spoiling us with all the Christmas fruit mince pies!! You rock. They are keeping us cheery in this bleak weather =)

Today, Sunday, Bron made the first homemade soup for the season: a beeg pot of potato and leak. Perfect for this grey rainy day. And some leftovers which will be frozen for emergency mid-week meals. Thanks Mum & Dad Cross for the Ina Paarman’s Vegetable Stock!

In other news, Justin’s brother Brenainn and his wife Kirsten have arrived in Europe! They flew into Paris this morning and will be in Rotterdam on Thursday. So looking forward to seeing you guys, having you stay with us in our cosy little place and doing fun touristy things together!! We hope you have an amazing holiday and a restful year end break! Some of the activities planned include a day trip to Amsterdam, meeting the German family at the Christmas market in Aachen and cycling around Kinderdijk if it doesn’t rain/snow. More about that next time!

Hope you are well and enjoying the start of the festive season =)

x

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