Tales from Nordrhein-Westfalen

Well it's been a little while, hasn't it, so as a result this entry's probably gonna have to be a mama one...
okay the 29th of December was a sunny day (one of the few), at least in the morning, so it was of course a perfect day to visit Schloss Burg, which is a medieval fortress about 20 minutes or so away. it was in the mountainous land, so from the tower in it you could see for ages and there were lots of old medieval things on display and you can just imagine the knights riding through the courtyard hehe.

inside the burg

the outside

malin and i in the tower at the top

The next day with the whole family we went to go bowling together, but the place was shut, so I got to visit my first Eiscafe and ate icecream that looks like spaghetti.
For silvester (New Years Eve) we had dinner at home with something called a Racclette (if that's how you spell it) which is like a grilling thing you put in the middle of the table and each person has like their own little frying pan and you put vegies and meat or whatever you like in it and put cheese on top and grill it. real yum! Malin and i went to the party of a friend of a friend, and that was okay, cool at midnight when everyone in every street were letting off fireworks.
on the 2nd of Jan Ava and Lena came to visit us from Kleve for the day, and we all hung out here then had lunch and went ice skating together, which was a bit wobbly at first but lots of fun.

iceskating at leverkusen eissporthalle

the next day Malin and I caught the train to Raesfeld (about 1 hr 15 min) to visit my old neighbour Angela and her family, and meet my penpal! We arrived and Maren (my penpal, she was really nice) came for lunch, then we all popped over the border (about 20 min, 1/2 hr drive) to Wintervijk in Holland for the afternoon, where we did a little shopping and that. it was cool, everyone was speaking dutch but they can speak german as well, and the houses are red brick with bigger windows than ones in germany. Yes, we also saw a few windmills on our travels!
Last weekend (5th-7th Jan) Kerstin, malin, merle and i went on holiday to belgium for the weekend, and stayed in a resort place called sunparks, which had a pool and that so we could go swimming (yay!) in a town called De Haan, on the North Sea. So beautiful.

ocean!!! yuss!!! :D :D

We drove there on the friday, and on saturday we went to the big city of Brugge for the day, about 15 min away, for some shopping and sightseeing, which was amazing, with a new courtyard or canal or castle or church to happen upon around every corner. It was wet and rainy but still lots of fun. We ate pancakes in a nice little cafe/restaurant looking onto one of the canals, and chuckling at the wet bedraggled people trudging past(like a man who walked past twice, once in each direction, carrying an easel on his back). The church bells played a little song every hour too hehe.

one of the canals in Brugge

Merle, Malina and I in a little hidden courtyard

On the Sunday we drove home via Antwerpen, in the Netherlands, and Roermond, where we went to the big factory outlet centre, which was pretty full but still worth it.

Outside the Fred Perry shop (haha)

The next day, 8th Jan, was our first day of school of the new term, during which i got some homework i had to do (in english), read in class, and did a step aerobics class in sport.
Tuesday was pretty uneventful at school, everyone was getting marks back in class still so there wasn't much to do. In the afternoon/evening i went to visit a friend, Michelle, in Burscheid and hung out with her and her friend Gabriella (they're both AFS exchange students, from Brazil and Honduras respectively, and their host families live right next door to each other! How's that?!).
Wednesday (two period day) i had 2 hours or so free at school, read the whole of charlie and the chocolate factory, in english, in the library, as well as a little bit of german history; and made esters in Chemistry (just as smelly as at home).
Thursday was an awesome day: I had a full 7 period timetable, I could do the exercises in Physics(!), learnt HEAPs in history, and nearly fell asleep in chem (but then so did everyone else), BUT the best thing was going to We Will Rock You in the evening, which Malin's parents had given Malin and I tickets for for Christmas. It's a musical basically about the survival of rock, and it's set in the future. All the songs are Queen songs :D and man it was the most awesome show! - wicked lights and phenomenal set and costumes, not to mention these amazing singers singing the timeless Queen songs (i'm sure there's one for every occasion) and a live band, whom you had no idea about til they were exposed at the end...and the rest of the audience loved it too; there were guys older than Dad bopping their heads and tapping their feet to 'Another One Bites the Dust' and 'We Will Rock You'(that one had the whole theater going) and there were about five standing ovations at the end-they just kept coming out again!
On Friday night we went to a pub, just young people there, in Opladen called Bizarre and hung out playing Foosball.
Today, Saturday, we went to IKEA in Düsseldorf (a huge stuff-for-your-home shop that's really big here in Europe..and in Dubai too apparently..) but there was such a long queue at the traffic lights outside with thousands of people going in (Malin and Kerstin say they've never seen it like that before) that we just carried on into Benrath (a suburb of Düsseldorf) and found a castle called Schloss Benrath (haha-it's pink!) which is in a huge posh looking park. So yeah we went for a walk and had a look at that instead.
Off to Berlin for a week on Monday (yay!) with all the other little german kiwis and some aussies too i think, which will be awesome.
So lots of exciting photos and tales from Berlin coming soon!
Love,

Kim