Sunday, January 7, 2007

First . . . Welcome to the new year

We've been over to Holland for fourteen days. Most friends really missed us and that feeling was mutual. The reception was heart-warming. But I can't find better words to express our feelings about Holland than Ruud´s: "everything here is brown, gloomy and grey". After two weeks of fog, traffic jams and polders with half drowned sheep we desperately longed for France.

These are not the northern lights but the artificial light of the greenhouses on a clouded night in Waddinxveen

Passed Clermond Ferrand we finally saw the sun. From a ´vue panoramique´ we overlooked to the south a fantastic landscape that was waiting for us in the sunshine. Instantly we realized that we were not on the way to our holiday address but to our home in the south of France, I mean… wow!

Les volcans d´Auvergne

Despite the narrow and cold apartment, despite the defrosted freezer with fish fingers and spinach, despite the bath drain that we cannot find a suitable stop for, despite our house that seems to be almost entièrement à restaurer, despite the animal unfriendly French, despite the language barrier, despite the fact that again we won nothing in the French Lotto while we are desperately in need of money, yeah, despite of all that and probably more we are all very happy to be back in France with the French.

And because destiny is so kind for us I wish against better judgment that all the badly treated animals will find the road to a better life in 2007.

I'll keep on writing.

posted by Ruud at 23:49  |  send a comment

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