Identity and such

 

It is New Year’s Eve and as is the habit in this house (if the chance), time for oliebollen….. That real Dutch treat of deep fried yeasty dough balls sprinled with a bit of powder sugar at the end. So rewarding, so good, so Dutch….

And that is it, I am Dutch and I have some real Dutch traditions that are hard to get rid of. Some though have gone, like Sinterklaas, we actually don’t do that anymore, but that is mainly because youngest one was born just two days before, and thus it was easier to give up on that one and do Jul-afton instead.  But oliebollen on NewYear’s eve, no they are too good to be missed so...

What brings this on is the decision of my husband to apply for Swedish citizenship. We have been 20 years here so yes, it is time to do this. We are not going to move, my job is one of the most exciting ever, our children are born here and though they are blends, they are more Swedish than anything else (except for blood that is). So I should apply too, it only makes sense. Except when I do so, I will lose my Dutch citizenship and apparently that is something I still have an emotional attachment to, I am Dutch, if pressed I will cheer for team Oranje whatever sport is played. I am still proud of Dutch tolerance (but not the kind of the last 10 years) and I know more silly facts about Dutch history than Swedish. I do think Amsterdam is a grander city than Stockholm and van Leeuwenhoek was a better scientist than Ångström. Painters, there is just no competition, so in the end ? And really I was only coming here for 2 years, not 20 or even more….

And yet I live here, want my voice to be counted here, SD is a party to vote against and as I live here is it not worth to give up something?

So I will make my Oliebollen and contemplate, be practical or nostalgic…..

Relativelty

 

The last months of the year always seem to just fly by. One reason is that when in an Academic environment the Autumn term seems always the most busy time of the year. I think it is because there is as much stuff put in this term as in the Sprin term, except that Autumn term is about 2 months shorter… So at a certain moment you just go from one settled ting to the other, no rest and everything flies by. December with all its social stuff comes then on top of that, dinners, music performances, school stuff and yes then suddenly it is Christmas break. And what a nice long one we have this year, and I took it off this time. Almost three weeks, some small things to do for work, but otherwise… some knitting, some nice food making and just get energy for the year of light, 2015! 

Anyways I did finish the stranded knitted cardigan for Marit, except for the two places where I did make a mistake in the pattern, I think it worked really nice. I am not sure whether I would use this yarn again, it is a bit splitty and while the price is absolutely right, I didn’t really like knitting with it because of that.

Marit wanted only 3/4 sleeves, which was nice since that meant that I had exactly enough and didn’t needed to get more.

Now having said all that of rest and so on, one other problem with the extreme busy December is that our house is quite in a state of chaos, so off now to decrease the entropy, which will cost some energy unfortunately….