Holiday stress and some story telling relief

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First, a very simple yet stressful film of how a cute little shopping street (Haarlemmerdijk) in Amsterdam can turn into a holiday nightmare for trucks, cars (big Volvo station wagons), bikes and pedestrians. Hook yourself up to a stress machine, and I am sure you will score higher that usual. And remember that everybody always does their last food Christmas shopping at the last minute, which this film captures.

Second, to avoid all that stress and having been invited to an exclusive birthday party, I ran off to Munich where 24orange’s third lesser known blogger lives, beautifully situated across from the Olympic stadium of 1972. The morning has so far been spent fixing a washing machine because a small, plastic “sombrero” broke off.

The German machine, which was bought in the Netherlands and moved to Germany, broke down in Germany. The part could not be ordered in Germany (!) and was ordered in the Netherlands. The part was picked up in the Netherlands, on holiday from Germany. Hopefully, it can be fixed today.

UPDATEThe washing machine was fixed the next day.

washing machine

Tomorow get ready for Branko’s annual picks of fav 24o postings. Prosit!

(Link: amsterdamcentraal.nl)

4 Comments »

  1. Neil says:

    I’m looking forward to Branko’s top 24o posts for 2008.

    The year end can be fun. I am grateful for having found 24o and this great group of bloggers, all interesting writers and from interesting backgrounds.

    Holiday stress came in two parts for me. The first part is doing all the gift selection. I always choose a gift for my Mom and another one for one of my six siblings (we have a different sibling for whom we buy a gift each year) plus gifts for two nephews and three nieces. It came out well. My sister loves her iPod shuffle and so do her two daughters. I also got my Mom a large coffee mug with a homemade photo collage with a contemporary picture of her plus a photo of her from her youth and small black and white photos of all of her kids.

    The second stress is being at my mom’s home with six siblings, their spouses, the nephews and nieces. Since it is the one time every year we all gather together, the stress and the effort is worth the result, being together. One of my sisters was coughing non-stop. Does that ever make you worry about getting sick too? So far, so good.

    And you?

  2. Eric says:

    Actually, I *could* have ordered the sombrero in Germany, but that turned out to be much more expensive than ordering it in the Netherlands. Fixing the machine turns out to be a bit more complicated than I thought…

  3. Orangemaster says:

    Will Eric manage to fix his own washing machine? Will he need even more tools? Stay tuned!

  4. Orangemaster says:

    @Neil Christmas was quiet in Amsterdam, no gift giving, just food, wine and some poker with two other people.

    Back in Canada when I was young we were 30 people in a house and Christmas was filled with food, kids (me included), playing games and cards, eating chocolate and playing outside in the snow. That was fun. Oh, and gifts.

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