One of the many things I love about Genova, Italy

But perhaps I should begin with the people I meet here in this city I love so well.

Yesterday Hanna and I spent the day with Francesca.  We were putting together a project I have in mind and Francesca had kindly agreed to come along and translate.  She just fitted right in as we wandered and worked our way through the day.  Mille grazie, Francesca.  We had the most excellent time.

And in-between meeting the people we needed to meet, she introduced us to parts of the city we wouldn’t have known about and wouldn’t have dared enter.

Thanks to Francesca, we were able to wander the halls of this grand old house and voila, there was this room, puppet-show in place ... but of course.

There are always these unexpected magical moments here in the ancient city, also called La Superba ... It is also called la Superba - the Superb one - due to its glorious past.

All Blacks Vs France, the final of the Rugby World Cup

It’s been good to sleep through the night and not spend the day anticipating the big match being played in New Zealand in a couple of hours ...

New Zealand’s All Black rugby team is pretty much the best in the world.  Somehow though, when they reach the rugby world cup finals, stuff happens and they rarely win. 
It’s bizarre.
It’s devastating.

We’re a small nation of just over 4 million people.  Rugby is a religion there in our land downunder.  We love being the best, as a nation ...

Then there’s France, the team that reached the finals, not so much because they were the best but because they managed to get past some excellent teams.  Sport is like that. 
As Kay wrote on twitter this morning ... All NZ is one large, hot, tin roof tonight! Go the AB’s! If u support France; may the best team win!

Must go.  We’re off to watch the match with a whole lot of other kiwis ...

Autumn means Easter to Me ...

I’m not sure my unconscious will ever adjust to this upside-down life in the northern-hemisphere.

The leaves are changing colour and we’re waiting for our first frost which means ... it’s almost Easter.  But no, that was a New Zealand thing.  Here it’s already mid-October. although Belgium had been enjoying high temperatures as late as last week. 

I took the bike out this afternoon, needing to stretch. I took myself and my camera into the park on our beautiful day.  We’re blessed with this city park, and mostly I love it even while struggling to forget the massively busy European motorway right next door, the motorway that, if I wake in the night, sounds like a Spring tide at Tautuku, on the lower East Coast of New Zealand.

Anyway, today it was pretty.  There was a blue heron down at one of the many ponds, hanging out with the big white geese and the ducks.  The moles hills were there mocking mans efforts to tame nature too.  I love those moles ... there to remind us, surely, that we’re not quite able to tame and maintain everything out there in the natural world.

An Everyday Scene at the Stadsfeestzaal on the Meir, Antwerpen

Antwerp has 165 different cultures living within its city limits, and mostly we all do okay. 

I love the vibrancy of the cultural mix ... riding the tram is like wandering the world. To me, this foreign creature who found herself living here ... being Belgian stands for so many things but on the good days it’s all about a this tribe of people who have a huge degree of tolerance and acceptance of the other. 

A Little Glass Kiwi

It has been 7 years since I was last home, 7 years since I last saw so many people ... and now I have one of those long-ago people here at my house.

Valda was my first mother-in-law, mother to Chris - my first husband, grandmother to my daughter Jessica.  I’m not sure if you can imagine how delightful it has been to catch up with her.  This woman who has known me since I was 17 years old, something so rare in this life of mine.  I had my daughter when I was 21, so not even she has known me so long and no one in my Istanbul life, nor my Belgian life, has either.

So we have spent the last few days catching up on extended family news, with Valda delighting in time spent with her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter too.  It has been lovely.

But there this small thing that did make me giggle.  The photograph below ... the glass kiwi.  It’s a wine bottle stopper.  An exquisite wine bottle stopper that Valda brought me from from home.  And it shows me, even after all this time, Valda still does know me rather well.