Biking in Billsburg

The end is in sight

No, not the end of this road, dummy! Only two more weeks, and then our time of separation is over. 

During this time, I have learnt to make my own breakfast...
 

... and Tiroler Gröstl...



 I was in charge of the yard...

 
and in charge of photography...

 



(yes, that is my finger that you see on the top right.)

So far, this semester has been busy so I was never bored, but this weekend was kind of quiet work-wise, so I went for a bike ride.

  It turns out, it is only 25 minutes to here:
 

Although you do have to pass this:

 
 ... and this
 

All these crosses have always freaked me out (and to be honest, the three crosses have always reminded me of the KKK).

 

Today's bike ride was informative as well as quite gorgeous, and I found out that the land-and-farm-with-too-many-crosses are in fact part of the National Memorial to the Progress of the Colored Race in America founded by Lightfoot Solomon Michaux.

 That just goes to show that I still don't understand s**t about this part of the world.

Beijing Bicycle

Biking

And of course taking pictures. Not the best circumstances to take pictures, therefore just an in depth study of the use of aperture:







And afterwards dinner in a restaurant packed with Dutch people.

I don't know what to call this post

I still feel a bit overwhelmed with the new impressions. But F says I should post nonetheless because otherwise you guys will get bored and will stop visiting our blog. So here is my attempt at a blog post:

1. We are so happy to be doing some impulse buying again! There was way too little of that in China because it was hard to find quality goods for impulsive buying. We will try to make up for two years of not buying any junk, starting with these beautiful 1 liter beer glasses.


2. As F already mentioned, we cook a lot in our temporary big kitchen. Here's some veal with a caper-lemon-butter sauce.


3. Our new bikes are the best! Here they are in front of a house of which we may end up renting the ground floor.


4. The university is smack in the middle of this:


5. A little farther afield (30 minutes by bike) is France, where we ate this:

Almost live blogged from a Vietnam bicycle

If it weren't for the fact that our arses hurt like hell and we don't drink and drive, we would be sending this from a bicycle instead of a riverside restaurant.

Today we explored the tiny streets that we saw from the boat yesterday.



We had a lot of fun, and apparently, so did the people in the little cafe/home at which we stopped for a beer. Yes, yes, our noses ARE humonguous. And, yes, our eyes are a totally unnatural colour. And indeed, F has very funny dimples when he smiles.
We are happy to bring so much joy.



For lunch, we convinced a nice couple with a squeeky clean cafe to make us this bowl of noodles. F swears it was the best broth evah. He would like to encourage Ellen to squeeze a kumquat over her homemade stocks.



As said above, we are currently resting our sore butts and having a beer. Right behind us, covering our backs, is this dude.

We are sad to say we are not doing our tourist duties very well and have no clue about Vietnam's recent history. Was this HCM a good guy? And who ended up "winning" the war? Our guess is HCM, since his face is everywhere. Was he north or south?...We are embarassingly ignorant, but increasingly well rested.

Random things we did today

This morning on the way to the market, our favorite street vendor was there in front of our gate. Yay! He is almost never there, and when he is, his food sells out quickly. It is that good.
All he has are simple pita-like sandwiches, which he lovingly stuffs with meat, fresh green chillies and cilantro.



We took our pitas to a nearby canal. We are thinking of buying a bicycle cart, barbecue and beach chairs and pretending this spot is our backyard:



This afternoon, Anke went to a flower and plant market that Amanda found and where she said we could buy mint, basil and rosemary.




(by the way, our progressive neighbors are working on the next floor, as you can see through our cleaned-just-two-months-ago-yet-quite-dirty-already window).

圆明园

I am doing some fall cleaning on the computer, and it turns out we still have loads of fascinating pictures lying around:




Some time ago, we visited the Old Summer Palace, which is very close to Tsinghua University. The ruins were only slightly interesting, so no pics of them, but the waterlilies and surroundings were nice.

Meet the new Gete

Here is Frans decorating the new Gete in such a way that no sane person would ever want to steal it (we hope).