Oud en Nieuw in het Amsterdam
Happy New Year!! I hope your 2007 has been awesome so far!I had plenty of things happening here during this month, and I will quickly recap them in this post.
Before that: Oud en Nieuw in Dutch means New year`s Eve, if you translate it literally - "old and new". Do let me tell you about my oud part and nieuw part.
Oud: This was the first Christmas I have spent not with my family in Vilnius, but over here, in Amsterdam. This was a very cozy and relaxed holiday, and my Christmas shopping was 5 times less stressful! On Christmas eve saw a movie, on 25th had a nice dinner with Jennifer, Alma and Onur (trainees in Italy visiting Amsterdam), Adina and Olena (with a great Christmas tree in Diemen house). Had a great time and chats until late night.
Vaida and Ivan came on the next day, Adina joined us for a lovely wine and cheese evening spiced up with a cards game. Great to have long time not seen friends over!
And Team Lithuania (further - TL) is not complete yet. A few days later the number of Lithuanians soared at the speed of thought - from 2 to 10 in 2 days! They came with a van, with national alcohol, food and waterpipe in their hands, struggled through mazes of Lomzha (a smal town in Poland, which happened to be a big one for those brave travellers) as well as labyriths of Amsterdam (of course when you ask me instead of using GPS). One traveller joined them on the same night from London.
Those few days were awesome! Relax at work, fun at home, boom chicago, dinner and wine at home, dinner and Bailey`s at Agne`s place, catching up with friends in native language, finding the coffee shop, etc etc etc..
Oud en Nieuw: New Years Eve was also exciting! Ieva dropped by to our place, small pre-drinking and pre-chatting, and then adventurous biking towards the Dam square (oddly enough, public transportation was shut from 8pm to 2 am that night). Looking for the rest TL who were brave enough to WALK for WHOLE ONE HOUR to the Dam square (respect!). Final countdown, champagne and fireworks!! Fireworks, by the way, is a part of Dutch culture and almost as strong as biking. Basically everyone had something to shoot in teh air with (I was advised by my colleague not to bike to the centre a week after New Year`s eve... and I followed this advice).
My camera was acting up, but you can see what was happening over here, filmed by someone else. After the big moment we were happy to find our bikes safe from harm (the car on the other side of the gracht was burning though (you can find Vaida`s pictures in flickr)), we biked home and to Agne`s place (that was a looong ride). The town was almost quiet already, just a lot of red ugly stuff from fireworks everywhere on the streets. And a lot of trash, as well. The first morning of the year 2007 was met with talks, drinks and guitar songs, as well as going home by tram and falling asleep in it... and waking up when it was making a circle back to the direction we did not need to go :D . It wa sthe first time ever in my life I slept over my tram stop, so I thought it was worth to have a small drama scene for the sake of it at the end stop in Diemen :)
Nieuw: first day of the new year - they are all the same for most of the people - life in slow slow motion. slept till 3pm, happy not being drunk last night, picking up bikes from Diemen, having some re-organisation at home, having debrief of last night, as well as explaining what are the three threats marked by XXX in Amsterdam - one is water, second is fire, and third one is bikes ( ;) ).
The days after were my days off, and I was so happy that I took them! Had some time to say bye to the driving part of TL (may Lomzha is easy to handle for them!), spend some time with Vaida and Ivan, boom chicago again, Heineken experience finally, Masha coming back with her impressions from Italy, sleeping in, relaxing before Hard Working Week (HWW).
HWW was only two days, but it seemed like all 5...
This weekend we had quite a Russian company (Fluency of my Russian is strongly dependent on the time of the day, but it was a good practice), was nice to meet new people and catch up with Elena and Kolia from Brussels. I am just wondering why all those tourists want to go to coffee shops...
posted by Vija @ 11:00 PM
0 Comments
