A Weekend In Italian Wonderland

Normally we write in chronological order, start where we've left at our last blog. This time I’m going to do it differently, I’m starting with the very last event, the wedding of our Lagos’ friends Dana and Sil in Italy. This was already postponed for year, so we were all grateful, not the least the bride and groom, Covid didn't ruin it this time. We planned to spend a few days prior the big day to go to the coast with Dennis and Mathilde, who recently have moved to Denmark. Monday night September 20th we arrived in Bologna and stayed for one night in Bologna. Apparently there’s not one tilted tower in Italy but two, not only Pisa has one but also Bologna. It’s a lovely city with an enormous amount of students. We strolled around a few hours, had lunch and drove to Gabicce Monte to the hotel. Without fine tuning this, the four of us arrived in half an hour at the hotel. So good to catch up again. We went the next day to Rimini, this is at this time of the year a bit deserted, no one’s there anymore. Beaches are empty, shops closed and restaurant open at 19:00. We were all curious to San Marino, so we drove there, it’s all in the same area. We drove with Dennis & Thil, they have a convertible, very cool! San Marino is tiny, but nice to see, a medieval town. Rob needed a hair cut, we were looking for days for an Italian hair dresser, well we found one in San Marino. When we were in San Marino, I had Hugo on the phone, I told him where we were and he asked me if I knew why San Marino is San Marino. Typically Hugo, he has all this information in his head and likes to share it with us. In the evening we selected a restaurant nearby the hotel, it turned out to be a fish restaurant. All four were a bit like, we don’t really like fish, but it turned out to be excellent. The chef in the kitchen came from India and the food was not Italian at all, matter of fact it was just delicious.

On Thursday our last day at the hotel we spend a few hours at the pool, Rob was working, we were relaxing and waiting for Patrick (our neighbour friend at Bella Vista/Lagos) with his girlfriend Anastasyia from Baku, Azerbaijan.

The next day we did a touristic tour via Fano to Fossombrone. Over the last few days in the wedding app group, many photos came through and loads of chats back and forth. Also that there was a strike at the air traffic control in Italy and a few people were stuck at airports in The Netherlands. A few decided not to wait but to drive all the way down to Italy. The last two arrived on Saturday morning, just on time. This was of course a bit nerve wrecking for Dana and Sil.

On Friday we arrived around 3pm at the venue and it was so beautiful. Great views around you, marvellous atmosphere, nicely decorated. Just stunning. We met the whole entourage, family and friends and in the evening we sat down and had pizza and a few more drinks. Saturday started for the whole group with a nice shared breakfast, unfortunately the story of our lives since Covid invented the PCR test, we had to go to a nearby village and get tested again. Together with Mees, Sil’s oldest son and Patrick and Nastyia. When we came at the lab, we had a line of 25 people waiting before us. It took us almost three hours in total before we got back at the venue. We were leaving with a bus to Fano, which we explored the day before. There the coolest church I’ve ever seen appeared. A ruin from 1200 something was going to be the stage for this wedding. Luckily the weather gods were on our side, you don’t want to be there with umbrellas. Sil and his two boys, Mees and Sep, and his daughter Guusje, were there with us. It was a very emotional wedding, with lots of speeches, which I could not hear….but I sobbed because I saw everyone sobbing, and you could feel the love in the air. It was just amazing. Dana was so beautiful in her wedding dress, Sil was very stylishly dressed and his three children made the whole picture perfect. This is definitely the wedding of 2021!!

Afterwards we drove back to "le Stonghe" and had a dinner outside and partied until our feet were tired. We left the small group of still partying people around 02:45 am, we had to wake up very early to catch our flight back to Amsterdam. In Zoeterwoude we had to repack again and the very next day we flew back to Lagos, where we are now.

The first weekend of September, 4th and 5th of September we were shortly back in The Netherlands. Dana’s friends threw a bachelorette party in Cadzand, in Zeeland and I joined for one day, the next day we went to Zandvoort for the very first grand prix in The Netherlands in 36 years! We had to be there!

First Dana’s party, it was a long drive, very foggy, but the location was great. We had a nice lunch and it was also fun to meet her friends. After lunch they organised peddle boarding, but as you know my ears are a delicate matter, so I declined. If I had known this before I could have told them, anyway it is what it is. Thil found it awful for me to stay behind for two hours, so she stayed with me, the sweetheart. After a bbq in the evening I left the girls and drove back to Zoeterwoude. Rob drove on his bike to his parents in Rotterdam Zuid, it took him almost two hours vice versa, but it was good that he saw them.

Zandvoort 05.09.2021 will go into the history books. Max stayed cool under all the pressure to win the race. He won, with good strategy of the team and cheering of the audience. We partied in our seats and it still gives me goosebumps if I think of this day. Chapeau for the organisation, there were so many trains, you could see thousands of people coming on their bikes. Afterwards we went to the beach to a restaurant to have a few drinks and snacks.

Monday September 6th we flew back to Vienna again to go back to our house. Rob stayed at the airport and I was fetching the car with Ayo. The car was parked on a P&R parking space at the end of Rennweg. When I arrived at the car and stepped out of the taxi I opened the car, but at the same time I saw that our left rear window behind the driver’s seat was smashed. Glass everywhere in the car and outside the car. We had no valuable items in the car except for the old navi system that we put in the dashboard box. To cut a long story short, we went to the police and car glass. Car glass gave us a plastic window protection so we could drive the next two hours to Kärnten to our house. It takes days to order a specific window, so we handed it over to Robin. She brought it where they always bring the car and in the meantime it’s been fixed again. Insurance won’t pay the damages, that’s a bummer.

One of the other highlights of the summer in Austria was that Sanneke, my sister in law and my niece, came. The weather was very unpredictable, but on the good days we went on hikes and we even did the Sommer rodlen Bahn, we like to try them out in the area. This time we choose for the one in Turracherhohe. We took Ayo up the mountain in a chairlift, he was pretty cool about this all. When we came out the lift we found a children’s route you could walk and do all kind of things. Straight away we lost Hugo and Jack, we looked around and they were in the highest point of a climbing frame, feeling very proud. They played a long time in the water park and Joe climbed in a tree! They still are children, aren't they?

Sanneke took Ayo down with the lift and we went down with the rodel Bahn. It was busy, we had to wait for a while, but what happened next we never experienced this before. Apparently a couple of bobs in front of us wre going extremely slow, this made us slow down too, we even had to stop a few times! I think it was a nice track but this lady ruined it for everyone behind her. In the evening we played games, that’s a Kleinjan thing, we love playing games. San and Joe were taught how to play boeren bridge. They made up their own rules, and played wrong cards every time, we had a lot of fun, that’s for sure. We also tried out a schnapps bar, at least that’s what we thought it was. It turned out that they only had really strong liquors. I volunteered to be the driver, I simply don’t like this stuff. After trying out a few drinks the conclusion overall was that no one liked anything. So this place is off our list.

Rob was working most of the days, although he was supposed to have two or three days off per week. This formula didn’t work. People from work were calling him constantly on a daily base. The few days he wasn’t working we were en route to get things organised for our house. Many little things, but we were there and we had to do this and it’s fun too. For more than 20 years we are living in rental houses, where we cannot do anything. Now we can do whatever we want, and this feels so good. We have given the key to the carpenters, and so they can continue when we are away. We feel so at home in this place, it’s indescribable

that we bought it last year and that we’ve been able to spend so many months there.

We have two children who have moved this summer. Noa was easy, I brought her to the train in Graz and she flew from Vienna to Doha/Qatar. She’s doing a leadership internship in marketing and sales at the Hilton Salwa Beach Resort. She’s there for just one months and she’s having a wonderful time. The first 5 weeks is getting to know the business, which means she is shadowing all different departments, like food and beverages, housekeeping, photographing bride models to promote the venue. She worked at the waterpark, this was the best I think. She started at 10am with trying out all the slides , then she went for a swim and got a lunch and slush at the pool.

Noa turned 25 on September 23rd, on the intranet a nice photo and birthday wishes were sent to her and her colleagues. The next day she went with a few colleagues for some cocktails and dinner in Doha. Rob and I are trying to visit her in Qatar at some point, we are so curious how it looks.

The other one who has moved was Hugo. He decided to go to Switzerland, Noa left Switzerland and Hugo went to Switzerland, not Luzern but to St Gallen. A lovely little city. Beginning of July Rob Hugo and I went on a house hunt for him. He choose a nice small apartment down town. On Sunday August 15th Jack, Hugo, Ayo and I drove a car full of stuff to St Gallen. We again stayed at the Walhalla hotel opposite the central station. Monday morning Hugo got his key and he ordered a sofa, bed, cupboards, table and chairs on line at Ikea. This was planned to be delivered between 11 am and 1 pm. They came arround 11:30, Jack and I were happy to see the truck. So we started with the sofa, that was brought first. But we couldn’t do much because they brought half of it…Jack called them up and the second delivery was planned for the afternoon. Soon this tiny living room was full of boxes, no place to put anything. We wanted to sleep alltogheter at his place but the mattresses were not allowed to sleep on for the next 72 hours, so that didn’t work. Rob booked me another night at the hotel, and to be honest, I needed this badly, I was exhausted. The boys slept half on the ground and on the new sofa. Hugo had to do all kind of administrative things, going to the town hall, the university and bank. Jack and I did what we could do to make it a homy place. He’s extremely happy with his apartment and he managed this week to put 18 friends in his living room. At the end of the second day we left St Gallen behind and drove the scenic route via the mountains to Patergassen. This takes maybe half an hour longer, but it’s so beautiful. We arrived just before midnight at Don Papa.

At the end of that week Rob arrived and in the evening Sanneke and my niece Joe Ann. Rob’s suitcase didn’t make it and KLM had no idea where it was. This meant that we had to get something for him like shorts, a t shirt, shoes, he was in his working clothes. It took 4 days before we had his suitcase in Patergassen.

We were able to get a lot of stuff from our house in the mountains to his house. All things that we didn't want to use, I kept this in the garage so that maybe Hugo could use it one day. We loaded the car full for him and drove with Robin to the Netherlands. This was so nice that we could drive together. Robin worked from Zoeterwoude but in the evening and weekend she had time to see her family and friends. After ten days she took the night train to Vienna. It was special to have all my children around me. I cherish these moments.

The short visits we had to the Netherlands, we tried to catch up with a few friends. With Pieter and Tineke we had dinner in Scheveningen. We were served by a waiter from.....yes Lagos Nigeria. It's a small world after all. I alway have the feeling I let people down, who I could not see this summer. It's just impossible to go everywhere and meet everyone, sorry about that.

I'm always trying to see my friends from kindergarten, elementary school and high school, we are a group of 5, we all have our challenges, but we share our childhood memories together, that gives a bond. I've also paid a visit to my "aunt/tante Ingrid, Jivan's mum, Jivan and I grew up together, we were neighbours, she's two weeks older than my mum would have been, so almost 90!! Bless her, look how stunning she looks.

In the next episode/blog, I'm gonna write about our lives in Lagos again. We had the honour to go to James Bond premiere for example. Keep you posted, stay safe everyone, till next time.