New Kitchen

As promised, here are pictures of the new kitchen…finally! It’s funny to look back on our time here in Holland and how intimidating something like this was for us when we first moved here. Now, thanks to the help of our local friends, we are happily diving into these kind of projects. Of course there is more work to do here, like laying the tiles above the countertop to add some color and getting some stools for under the bar. But all-in-all, it's ready for cooking. Gourmet stamppot…lekker!

Munich

Beth and I took a short break from kitchen reconstruction last weekend and hopped a plane down to Munich to catch up with an old friend of mine (think way, way, way back) who was over from the States for some skiing in Switzerland.

Munich has been near the top of our "must see" list for some time so my expectations were pretty high. It doesn't have the exciting flare or Barcelona nor the rich layers of history of Rome - two of my favorite cities, but it was immediately comfortable as a place that I could happily live. It has all of my required components - a vibrant downtown, loads of parks, excellent public transportation (including extensive bike paths), an adventurous outdoor culture, and of course it is very dog friendly (although we didn't see one cat...a bit odd).

We had a great time catching up with Jeff and Wendy - it had been more than 10 years - as we explored the city and ate what we all agreed was the best sushi that any of us had ever had. Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Reconstructed city center

Outdoor markets with great worst stands...

...and who can eat worst without a beer garden?

Lowenbrau brewery

City center park (English Gardens)

An old palace, now a museum and park.

Do these "sitting on a sunny European terrace with a beer" photos ever get old? Not for us!

And on the other side of the table...Jeff and Wendy

Scene of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch

Even the nuns stopped to watch these surfers. Center city whitewater! Very cool!

More surfing.

Out with the old...

Our new kitchen will be delivered on March 22, so we’ve begun to rip out the old and get the place ready for installation. It’s a bit of a tricky planning process because we want to minimize the amount of time that we are without a kitchen while still leaving enough “cushion” in the timetable for unexpected issues…like these bloody tiles. I bought a stone chisel and thought that I’d take a few whacks at them to see how hard they would be to get off the wall. The first layer of white tiles was easy…but the ugly 1960’s “tropical forest” green layer is stuck on like bad hair to Donald Trump. The grey that you see in this picture is the cement that I was unable to get off the wall using the traditional “elbow grease” method. So next week I’m off to our local rental center to get a jack-hammer. The neighbors are going to love that!

While I was swinging the hammer, Beth was sanding the front windows to get them ready to paint. Maybe one of these days we’ll actually get curtains.