A Pièce de Résistance

Yesterday my husband turned 28.

Those of you who count him as a friend will surely agree with me that he is wonderful. He is by far my favorite person in the whole world.

I wanted to make this birthday special. I had to think for a while about how to do this, because during the previous three years his birthdays had been quite special already - last year we were picking up my wedding dress and visiting relatives in Spain, in 2012 we celebrated his birthday in a whimsical castle on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Copacabana, Bolivia and in 2011 I took him to Edinburgh, Scotland for his birthday.

Unfortunately, we did not celebrate his birthday abroad this year, but luckily it does not take much to make my husband happy (unlike his restless wife, perhaps).

In the end, then, I decided to go with what I knew would work: I was going to shower him with plate after plate of homemade food (not literally, of course).

This is why I woke up at 4 AM yesterday morning to make my husband breakfast. The reason why I set my alarm at such an ungodly hour is because my husband leaves for work at 6 AM to beat the traffic between Amersfoort and Amsterdam. I had also chosen a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's book Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi, whose recipes take me a little bit longer to prepare than the average recipe, plus, my inferior knife skills probably do not help matters much.

With my pajamas still on I prepared a couple of very special omelettes.

I started by cooking some potatoes, spinach and saffron in a little bit of boiling water before adding lemon juice and raw garlic. The original recipe calls for chard but I could not find it so I used spinach instead, which seemed to work just fine.

I added fresh tarragon, dill, parsley and chives to the omelettes and made them super thin.

I then spread crème fraîche on one half of the omelet, added some of the potato and spinach mixture and then folded the omelet twice to get a fan-like shape. I did the same with the other omelet, put both omelets in an ovenproof dish and let them heat up in the oven at 165 degrees Celcius for 8 minutes.

The result was a very rich omelet with lots of flavor and different textures. Jochem enjoyed it a lot and told me later that it had kept him satisfied until lunch time.

So far so good.

One of many great things about my husband is that he makes my lunch every day when I go to work. For his birthday I wanted to return the favor and so I made a secret lunch box for him with panzanella in it.

Panzanella is an Italian bread and tomato salad and one of our favorite dishes because it is easy to make, looks amazing and will taste better with time, although it can be challenging not to dive straight into it.

I made this dish one day before his actual birthday because the bread needs to sit in the olive oil and tomato juice overnight. It probably does not sound very appealing to eat day-old, soaked bread for lunch, as it did not to me either when I first read about panzanella, but you have got to trust me on this.

Alternatively, trust Nigella Lawon's judgement, because it is her recipe. Although panzanella is an Italian dish I prefer Nigella Lawson's take on it in her cookbook Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home since classic Italian recipes call for at least twice the amount of ingredients and time, while her version tastes amazing without this extra effort.

The dish looks bright and colorful and tastes even better - after a night in the fridge all the flavors have melded into a perfect harmonious whole.

During the evening we had dinner with Jochem's family at De Aubergerie.

This small restaurant on the edge of the city center in Amersfoort offers inventive seasonal dishes in its beatifully restored dining room.

Perhaps the menu is a little bit too oriented on French cuisine and a little bit too 'chef-y' (for lack of a better word) for my personal taste, but their beurre blanc was to die for. I think I might have licked the plate had we not been in such a formal setting.

At the restaurant I was finally able to give Jochem his birthday gift. I gave him a two-in-one blue Le Creuset pan that I hope he will enjoy cooking with.

But we are not quite done yet, because what is a special birthday for a special person without a special birthday cake? I needed something else - a pièce de résistance.

After the four-course dinner at De Aubergerie we were not unwilling but definitely unable to taste this birthday cake, but luckily for us it is a cheesecake and cheesecakes need to chill overnight in the fridge, says Nigella Lawson, and I tend to believe her in all baking matters.

We have made this chocolate peanut butter cheesecake many times already, but I knew it was the only worthy choice for my husband, who loves cheesecake, who loves peanut butter, and who, in general, prefers the boldest of flavors: strong black coffee, aged Scottish whiskey and caramelized ginger to name a few.

This recipe can also be found in Nigella Lawson's superb cookbook Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home. I did not change a thing about it because, let's face it: Nigella Lawson does not need to be disputed when it comes to baked goods - she knows her stuff.

You will need a 23-cm springform tin to hold the cheesecake and clingfilm to cover it with when you chill it in the fridge overnight.

A food processor is not a requirement, but will make your life a lot easier (not just when making this particular recipe, but for all your future cooking adventures).

Make sure that all of your ingredients have been assembled and are at room temperature when you start.

Begin by preheating the oven to 170 degrees Celcius.

You start with the base, for which you need:
* 200g digestive biscuits
* 50g salted peanuts
* 100g dark chocolate
* 50g unsalted butter

Put the ingredients into your food processor and press play. First smell the mixture, which is divine, and then pour it in your springform tin. Press it into the bottom and a little up the sides and then put it in the fridge.

Continue with the filling, for which you need:
* 500g cream cheese
* 3 eggs
* 3 egg yolks
* 200g caster sugar
* 125ml sour cream
* 250g smooth peanut butter

Repeat the steps that you took with the base: put in food processor, press play, then smell. Pour this filling into the chilled springform tin and cook for 1 hour in the oven. When the cheesecake is done the top should be set and dry, but underneath it may wiggle a little.

Take the cheesecake out of the oven so it can cool slightly while you make the topping, for which you need:
* 250ml sour cream
* 100g milk chocolate
* 30g soft brown sugar

Warm the ingredients in a small saucepan over a low heat until the chocolate has melted and you are left with a smooth chocolate mixture. Carefully pour the topping over the cheesecake and place it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. When it is done, take it out of the oven, let it cool, cover with clingfilm and let it chill in the fridge overnight. If you can.

Nigella Lawson also mentions that when you are finally ready to eat the cheesecake, you should not let it get too warm, because that will make it difficult to slice.

This statement of a cheesecake can be kept in your fridge for four days and you will want to take your time with it. Nigella Lawson warns that this cheesecake is "not for the faint-hearted" and I could not agree more - you really need to be an advanced cheesecake eater to appreciate this one in its "unashamed indulgence," as she calls it. In this last image I held up the cheesecake to take the picture and it was HEAVY.

Enjoy!

Sentimentality

It is October 4 - World Animal Day.

Of course this makes me think of my own animal, our pet cat Manchego, who has been a member of our little family since 2009.



But it makes me think of other things, too.

A couple of weeks ago Dutch researchers presented the first lab-grown hamburger to the world. For years I have been pessimistic, or even downright depressed, about the way we deal with animals as a source of food, but this left me hopeful. Like it or not, this appears to be where we are heading and I, for one, welcome it with great enthusiasm. Moreover, I do not appear to be alone in this - Andras Forgacs agrees with me. When I showed this to my students, though, they could not have been more repulsed by the idea. I guess there is still a long way to go.

I have been a vegetarian for more than two years now, so I no longer crave meat or fish. Last week Jochem and I were in The Hague to have dinner at Bacco Perbacco to cash in my birthday gift to Jochem from April and we made a quick stop at The Vegetarian Butcher to spend a small fortune on fake animal products. It turns out that we find their fish salads too 'fishy'. I guess we've turned into 'those people'.

Darcy Cosper once wrote that "principles don't mean anything if you abandon them when they become inconvenient or uncomfortable". Truth is, though, that while I do not miss meat or fish, it can be tiring to be a person of principle all the time. Why travel to Morocco if there is nothing to eat there but lamb? But then I remember one of my favorite excerpts from Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals about sentimentality:

"The valuing of emotions over reality. Sentimentality is widely considered out of touch, weak. Very often, those who express concern about (or even an interest in) the conditions in which farmed animals are raised are disregarded as sentimentalists. But it's worth taking a step back to ask who is the sentimentalist and who is the realist.

Is caring to know about the treatment of farmed animals a confrontation with the facts about the animals and ourselves or an avoidance of them? Is arguing that a sentiment of compassion should be given greater value than a cheaper burger (or having a burger at all) an expression of emotion and impulse or an engagement with reality and our moral intuitions?

Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' and orders it. The other says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and order something else.

Who is the sentimentalist?"

Manchego and I will be home alone today, since Jochem is going out with some old colleagues. For myself I am making a Roman pasta dish for dinner called cacio e pepe - spaghetti with two of my all-time favorite ingredients: Italian cheeses and lots of crushed black pepper. Manchego will be having white fish for dinner. He is a cat, after all.

I wish you a Happy World Animal Day! 

Summer of Love

There are times in life when everything is exactly as it should be. It is as if the planets have aligned and everything is working in your favor. That is how I will remember the summer of 2013.

I had a wonderful summer. Amazing things happened during those months. I survived my first year as a teacher. I got a promotion. My cousin got married and a few weeks later his wife gave birth to a baby boy. Spanish relatives and American friends flew in to see me. My best friend eloped. I spent a week in silence at a yoga retreat in the Algarve in southern Portugal.

Perhaps most worth mentioning, however, was my own wedding day. Jochem and I got married in the midst of this summer on a warm and sunny day, in the middle of a historic vegetable garden, surrounded by family, friends and vegetarian food, being showered with joy and happiness.


Vorden, The Netherlands

Afterwards we spent two weeks eating our way around Italy.


Amalfi, Italy

Everything was just right.

It has not been easy getting back into the swing of things after such a great summer, but as the dust is settling down and life is getting back to normal, I have some amazing things to look forward to. I hope that I will make the time to tell you about it.

Pan de Cristal

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.

I’ve been thinking about my life – about what makes me happy, what makes me unhappy, but most of all, I’ve been thinking about how to change it so I won’t be so unhappy anymore.

Talking about this topic is hard for me, because I know that in the grand scheme of things, my life is pretty great. As soon as I speak my mind, in fact, as soon as I put these words to paper, I feel as if I’ve been injected with a heavy dose of guilt for uttering these very words, for even feeling them in the first place. The guilt quickly courses through my body with every heartbeat, seeming to grow more and more as it spreads, until I feel so silly for feeling this way, that I quickly start apologizing and taking it all back, claiming that my life is, indeed, pretty great, that I have no reason for feeling like this, and then I continue on as if nothing ever happened. This goes well for a while until I inevitably become overwhelmed with my life once more and come crashing down into a million little pieces again. Poor Jochem has had to help me put myself together far too many times during the last year.

I’ve kept up this self-destructive routine ever since we came back from our trip in June last year. But not anymore. I keep thinking that there will be time to stand still, observe, take notice and do something, but of course this will never happen unless I make the time. I work in education for heaven’s sake – rule number one in teaching school is that your TO DO list will never be done and that it is therefore of the utmost importance to your survival that you learn to take your eyes off of it, look the other way, and pretend it isn’t there. At least some of the time. On Sunday, for example.

I, however, have not given myself this luxury. We came back from our trip and I gave myself no more than three days to acclimatize to life back home before I started working again. I promptly got myself a job and an apartment and wasted no time getting back into my exhausting obsessive compulsive routines. When I started my job (my very first, real, grown-up teaching job) it took over my life completely. Being a perfectionist, my work became my whole world.

My friend Aimee, whom I met in 2011 in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, is a teacher herself from Birmingham. She told me that her first year working as a teacher was like being in a roller coaster that just wouldn’t stop. That sounds about right. I feel blessed that I at least like my job and that I feel confident that I’ve become quite good at it. That has never been the problem. The problem is that with my job taking up so much of my time, there is just not enough room for a whole lot else.

I became so overwhelmed one day that I actually sat down and made a list of all the things occupying my life on any given day. The list was endless. It was filled with work, of course, but also with appointments, household chores, yoga routines, social engagements, 30-minute swimming work-outs, things to read and watch and listen to, money to budget, places and faces to meet and see, and don’t even get me started on the long list of social media apps that was checked every single day.

It just got to be too much. I was losing out on sleep, on time for myself, on time with Jochem, on attention paid to my cat, on the things that I actually like to do because I like to do them – instead, all my time was spent on things that I believed I had to do. Because that’s what’s been wrong, I’ve come to realize – the premise that I HAVE TO do these things. My life was so busy, so filled to the brim with stuff to do, that everything became a blur. Everything became an errand. Everything was a chore.

That’s no way to live. Especially when you’re constantly reminding yourself of a simpler time when all you had was your fiancé, a backpack, lots of money in your back account and all the freedom in the world. It’s unhealthy not to live in the present moment – to always be looking back at the past or to look forward to the future. I became unhealthy.

However, I continued to live my life this way for almost a year – constantly on the verge of another emotional breakdown, trying to find some kind of balance between doing all that I thought I was supposed to do and wishing for a life I no longer had and from which I felt farther removed than ever. And, of course, I kept all of this to myself. Jochem was a powerless witness to my madwoman ways.

But then something amazing happened. My parents, my brother, his girlfriend, Jochem and I went on a road trip to Spain to pick up my wedding dress.

The joy that this trip gave me, after not having been on a trip for so long, cannot be exaggerated. Even though it was just a short week among relatives in surprisingly cold and rainy Spain, a country where I’ve been dozens of times already, it lit me up. I felt like a junkie who’s finally managed to score some dope and is beyond relief - as the pain subsides and the itchiness recedes and some light is shone into the dark corners of his mind, he is at last able to breathe deeply, look around, think clearly and just be. No worry, no pain, no nothing. Until the effect wears off, of course.

During that week in Spain a couple of wonderful things happened. I finally got that wedding dress, for one.

Jochem and I went on a road trip of our own through Don Quixote country to Toledo.

My brother asked his girlfriend to marry him. My friends even flew over from The Netherlands as a surprise, nearly giving me a heart attack, in order to celebrate a small pre-Bachelorette Party. There was sun and sea and good food and wine.

Surrounded by so much love and happiness, I came to feel that I had to do something about this crazy state of mine, something that would stick. Clearly, the idea of working hard at life until the next holiday would come along, was not working for me anymore. I needed to do something to relieve the pressure right now. I had finally grown sick and tired of being such a burden to myself and others.

So, I made another list. A list with all the things that gave me joy and happiness. How shocked was I to see that this list was significantly smaller than my daily TO DO list. No wonder I was so miserable half the time – I had rearranged my life in such a way that it was filled with errands.

Then I tried to make another list of how to change this status quo. This is a list that I am still working on and, boy, it is by far the most difficult list to make. My instinct, whenever I feel overwhelmed, is to run away. Take all the money from my bank account that I’ve been saving for the wedding, buy a plane ticket to Polynesia, and just hide for a couple of weeks. Of course, this is hardly practical. Not to mention the fact that it’s not a real solution – when I eventually return, all of my problems and issues and neuroses will be right where I left them (as I’ve already been painfully made aware of once before).

But what to do then? I find it so difficult to answer this question. For example, I spend so much time each day cleaning up our apartment, which I detest, but to just stop doing this would not bring me any relief. I hate clutter and I hate dirt and just letting it be would make me restless and cranky and toxic. Luckily I have an amazing fiancé who buys me electric vacuum cleaners that go through the house twice a day, but still, that’s only part of the problem.

So, I’ve started trying to make some real changes in my life by, like, not rearranging the sheets when Jochem has made the bed or by not checking to see whether my shampoo is still in the right place whenever Jochem has used the shower. If you knew anything about how I run this household (which more closely resembles a military base than an actual home where people are allowed to live in) or if you’ve ever had the misfortune of coming along on one of my highly organized camping trips (ladies: thank you for not killing me), you would know that, for me, this is nothing short of radical. It takes all of my willpower not to intervene in these matters. Although I feel that I’m literally fighting for my own happiness (and it pains me to have to write this so dramatically, but there you have it), I also know that I’m not there yet, and that it won’t be easy, and that I will have to keep taking notice of my wants and needs forever, and stop feeling bad about having wants and needs in the first place. But I’m trying.

I’ve also done some other, more fun, things. I’ve bought some stuff that I didn’t need. I’ve booked a yoga holiday in southern Portugal, which will be my first solo vacation in five years, dedicated entirely to yoga, meditation, vegetarian food and the art of leisure. I’ve been seriously looking into horseback riding lessons, something which I’ve dismissed until now, solely because of the costs, even though I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. I’ve thrown away a big pile of newspapers and magazines that have been staring at me for months (“READ ME!”) and have started reading books again. I’ve also been reading a lot of Molly Wizenberg’s food blog Orangette to reconnect with my love of cooking. She’s actually the reason why I’ve felt motivated to start writing again and if this means that my posts suddenly look a lot like hers, I apologize, for it is unintentional.

On that note, I would like to end this long post with my recipe (or I should say: our recipe) for pan de cristal.

Pan de cristal is something that I believe my brother discovered on a whim one day while he and his fiancé were visiting our relatives in Spain. It’s kind of become a food legend in my family and every time any of us are in Spain, our main goal appears to be to eat as much pan de cristal as possible. I first tasted it while we were in Spain to pick up my wedding dress and it is, indeed, worthy of its status in our family. I had it three times in Spain and have made a successful replica back home. Pan de cristal is nothing special though – it’s basically a crispy sandwich. Then again, isn’t the best food often the most basic execution of arranging a few simple ingredients in perfect harmony?

Pan de cristal

Ingredients:

- 1 loaf of ciabatta bread
- 1 ripe tomato (big, fat and juicy), preferably a vine tomato
- good-quality extra virgin olive oil
- 150 grams of good-quality Manchego cheese, the famous Spanish sheep’s cheese

[NOTE: The original recipe calls for jamón (a fatty Spanish ham) instead of Manchego. As a vegetarian I don’t eat ham, of course, but, in my opinion, it’s better with Manchego even if you do eat meat. Spanish ham can be delicious (I do remember), but has a very dominant flavor. I think that the ham would overshadow the subtlety of the crispy bread with its soft flavors of ripe tomato and olive oil. My family, however, could not disagree with me more. I guess it’s a matter of taste (or principle).]

Cooking instructions:

* Preheat the oven.
* Divide the loaf of ciabatta bread into 3 equal parts and then halve each part to get 6 slices.
* Heat the loaf of ciabatta bread according to instructions. Because you’ve already divided and halved the bread, the slices will come out nice and crispy. You will get the best results if you set your oven to the hot-air or convection mark and if you place the slices on their ‘back’, so with the inside up.
* Halve the tomato.
* Cut your cheese into thick slices.
* Take the bread slices out of the oven and rub them with the tomato, the same way you would rub a piece of garlic onto a crostini, but be quite rough – it should look kind of messy (in front of guests just call it ‘rustic’).
* Pour some olive oil on top of the slices. You can be quite generous, but your bread should not be soaking in olive oil.
* Put your cheese slices on top of the tomato and olive oil infused ciabatta.
* Serve while still warm.

This recipe serves 2 slices each to 3 people, unless you’re like Jochem and I, in which case you can probably squeeze in that extra slice as well.

Enjoy and, if you’re anything like me, try not to worry about the bread crumbs until after you’ve eaten the whole thing.

Ameland, The Netherlands

I can count the number of times I've been away from home since June on the fingers of one hand. You might be thinking: so what? Well, to you this might be normal, but to me it is pretty much the epitome of sucky.

Since we came back from our world trip we've spent 3 days with my Spanish relatives in Cambrils on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We've also spent 3 days at Jochem's father's holiday home in northern France. And we visited Jochem's mother, who lives in Germany, three times. That's it. Now, call me spoiled (and, for the record, I do know that when it comes to traveling, I am the very definition of spoiled), but visiting one's family abroad does not a trip make. I need a backpack, a flight that's at least 6 hours long and a sifnificant change in weather patterns to fulfill my travel needs. But for the last 8 months there's been none of that.

Of course this all has to do with THE WEDDING. In case you didn't know this yet, weddings are expensive. You should all save yourselves the trouble and just go down to city hall. Perhaps you're wondering why I'm not following my own advice? Well, let me explain. Despite considering myself to be quite the bitter cynic, I actually am one of those women who's always dreamed about their wedding day. I used to read wedding magazines for fun for years (of course now I can't stand them). And although I'm certainly not the kind of bride who worries about things like center pieces and color combinations, there are certain things that I want to have a certain way. Once we decided to have a wedding, we wanted the wedding to feel like ours. We thought it might be nice to enjoy ourselves on our own wedding day. While you can always cut costs and budget money well, certain things were non-negotiable for us, like the date (Saturday), the season (summer) and the food (worthy of only the most critical foodies). And this costs money. Money which I am happy to provide, were it not that with a wedding there is very real deadline that is fastly approaching (less than 5 months as we speak!) and this means that one no longer has the possibility to travel wherever one feels like whenever one wants to.

This has been on my mind lately. I always feel spoiled talking about it but I'm not sure people understand how much I need to travel. That's right - I NEED it.

Anyway, this is why Jochem and I decided to plan a little trip to Ameland. Although not abroad, Ameland is certainly a world away from where we come from. Ameland is one of the 4 Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea at the very northern tip of The Netherlands. I had never been there, even though my grandfather was from Terschelling. We rented a little holiday home at the most western town on the island called Hollum. For 4 days we walked on the beach and rode horses through the countryside. It was nice - quiet, tranquil and dark (no lights other than the lighthouse). I look forward to visiting the other islands some day, but with the rest of the world calling out to me as well, who knows when I'll get to it?

Epilogue

Last July a good friend of mine came to vist me at our new home. She told me how much she had enjoyed our travel stories on my blog while we were away, but that what was missing, was a kind of epilogue, in which I elaborated on life post-world trip. Looks like I'm finally getting to it.

I haven't written anything on here since June. 8 months have passed since we came back from South America via Great Britain. So much has happened since then, yet so little. On the one hand, writing about life back home seemed dull and pointless after having written about Inca trails, Polynesian sculpture and Cambodian contemporary history for 9 months. Mostly, though, I've been busy. Very busy. Extremely busy if you take into account that for the better part of last year I did very little and had close to no responsibilities. Being this busy simply made it impossible for me to sit down long enough to write a blog about what I was doing.

I've basically been working non-stop since we got back. We flew back to The Netherlands on Saturday and I was back at work at my part-time job on Tuesday. In between invigilating English exams, I was applying for teaching jobs in the Utrecht area. Having failed to find 'my passion in life' while backpacking around the world, I decided to put the whole search for my dream job on hold for now and try to get a job as an English teacher, since I have a degree for that and all. For a little while I thought about going back to grad school to pursue another Master's degree (in Translation Theory, no less!), but eventually decided that I didn't feel like saving up for another one of my long-term mega projects. Finally making some money, as opposed to piling on more debt, seemed like the more sensible thing to do.

I thought that, considering the shortage of teachers, my MA in English Linguistics and my teaching degree, it shouldn't be too hard to find a job. But while Jochem was back at his old job after just a week, I was still looking. Despite the shortage of teachers and my credentials, I was only invited to 2 job interviews. One job I lost to a more experienced teacher - the other I was offered on the spot. I took it.

I now teach Business English to first-year Business School students at a university of applied sciences in Utrecht. I love my job. It requires a lot of hard work, but I find that I actually like doing it. So, I am not so much stressed out about my job - I just have very little time left for other things. This is what a typical work day of mine looks like:

I wake up at 5.30 AM. I do yoga, get ready and sit down for breakfast with Jochem at 6.30. I leave the house at 7. I get to work at 8 and check my e-mail before grabbing my material to head for my first class at 8.30. The fall and winter term are the busiest here at school, so in between classes I prepare lessons, grade presentations and correct exercises. I usually don't leave the premises until 6 PM. I get home at 7 PM, have dinner with Jochem and get ready for bed at 8.30. I do some more yoga and am fast asleep by 9.30. The next day I do it all again. In this madness only the precious moments with Jochem and the yoga appear to keep me sane.

It wasn't until the Christmas break that I felt like I could finally slow down. The spring and summer term will be easier, with fewer classes and fewer students. I teach the same course every time, which may seem boring, but I really enjoy being able to keep improving the same lessons over and over again. Since I've spent 6 months preparing these lessons twice already, the rest of the academic year comes down to fine-tuning.

I work part-time, so I have some time for myself to finish up on work and to keep the house. I try to go swimming once a week. I look forward to being able to spend more time just reading, watching TV and listening to podcasts.

Another thing that has added to my overall sense of being busy is my social calendar. To be honest, this was almost as much of a shock to the system as being busy at work. Don't get me wrong - I love being able to see family and friends again on a regular basis, but it sure takes up a lot of my already-very-limited free time. I also had to get re-used to planning my calendar weeks, sometimes months, in advance - understandable, yet strange and surprisingly annoying after doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, for 9 months. I fully participate in this method, yet condemn it at the same time. Sometimes I reminisce about the times where I didn't have to plan at all, other than making sure to be on time for the next plane to the next amazing destination.

I've also had to get used to only seeing Jochem during breakfast and dinner. For 9 months we were joined at the hip - being apart for 12 hours every day has been quite the adjustment.

After we both secured jobs, we quickly found an apartment in Amersfoort because a friend knew a colleague who knew a friend who was moving out. We live in suburbia now, and it's not even the pretty white picket fence kind of suburbia, but the high-rise apartment building kind. Luckily, Amersfoort is much smaller than Utrecht, so it only takes us a few minutes to get to the city center by bike. It has medieval architecture, canals and an amazing dining scene, minus the mega construction projects that Utrecht has been, and will be, enduring. Still, Wittevrouwen beats Liendert in a heart beat. Yet, we're not thinking about moving - I hate moving and we live in a spaceous, light and airy apartment on the top floor with a view over the city. Buying a house is even farther from the brain - mortgages are for grown-up people ready to settle down, not for us. Although we did go to one actual viewing of a house for sale, we quickly decided against it when we realized how much it would affect our ability to spend all of our money on eating out and traveling. Our apartment is close to the bus stop from which a bus takes me straight to work in 30 minutes while I watch the news on my iPhone. Our home is perfect for now.

One final thing that's been on my mind lately is our wedding. Now, I have come to find that planning your actual wedding is a lot less fun than daydreaming about your potential wedding. Since we want a small and simple wedding, there isn't even that much real planning involved. And then I think that maybe I'm forgetting about a bunch of things. And then I think that maybe I just don't have that bridezilla gene in me after all (who knew?!). Either way, most of the planning is done and I'm sure it'll all be just fine. We're getting married at a historic vegetable garden on July 13. By that time, I will have survived my first year at my first real teaching job with 5 weeks of freedom in sight. All my family and friends will be there, surrounded by beautiful vegetarian food, and afterwards we're going on a little culinary adventure in Italy for 2 weeks. To be honest, I might be more excited about the honeymoon than I am about the wedding. We're making a big sacrifice in order to make our wedding happen our way - no travel abroad for a whole year. It's for a good cause, of course. But it also sucks a little bit. It puts one in the awkward position of kind of resenting one's own wedding for being the cause of something that really isn't the wedding's fault - weddings are thought up by 2 incredibly naive people in love and then they take on a life of their own. So call me spoiled, but despite our beautiful wedding plans, I miss the backpackers' lifestyle. Because although many things have changed, one thing hasn't: my unquenchable thirst to travel. As one of my students put it: I have the opposite of being homesick - I am sick for the world.

THE TOP 5

Our world trip is over and I would like to take a moment to recap the last 9 months in this final world trip-related blog. We traveled for exactly 9 months, or 40 weeks, or 280 days.We traveled 84.335 kilometers across 4 continents and 17 countries. We took 7 trains, 14 flights, 15 boats and a staggering 52 busses. We've been to some amazing places and have seen things and done things that some people can only dream of. I never did conquer my fear of flying and free-falling, but I did impress myself by finishing the Inca Trail unscathed. I did not end up hating backpacking, like I had sometimes feared, but thrived and even enjoyed it. I have been bitten by a monkey, bed bugs and countless mosquitos. I have had food poisoning, rabies shots, altitude sickness and teenagers try to mug me, but not once did I get seriously ill, get into an accident or was violently attacked. I did lose 5 kilos and numerous possessions, though, and found out that I too can be disorganized and that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I realize that I don't need a big house, nice car or many things to be happy, and I hope to retain this feeling. Although I am happy to be home and to be back in the Netherlands, another part of me can't wait to hit the road again, this time with an even smaller backpack. Some amazing things have happened. My parents came to visit us in Indonesia and fell in love with its charms as much as I did. Miraculously, Jochem and I managed not to kill each other and are happier together than ever. Jochem asked me to marry him on the beautiful island of Chiloé in Chile and gave me the engagement ring that I had always wanted. We are now quietly planning our next steps and the rest of our lives together. Picking your favorite moments from a lifetime worth of unforgettable moments may seem daunting, but I didn't have to think hard to pick mine, for there are some clear winners. Here are my all-time favorite experiences of our world trip:

5. Roadtripping with old friends in foreign lands, CHILE



4. Exploring the South West Circuit by Jeep, BOLIVIA



3. Navigating the island by scooter, EASTER ISLAND



2. Sailing through Nusa Tenggara, INDONESIA



1. Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, PERU

From Lima to Almelo via Madrid, London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Utrecht

The last leg of our trip played itself out in Europe. On Monday afternoon, June 4, we hired a cab to drive us through the ugly city of Lima to Jorge Chávez International Airport. At that moment I didn't regret having stayed in Miraflores all that time, because the rest of the city didn't look like it was worth exploring. If I ever see half-finished brown buildings again, it will be too soon!

I was looking forward to the long flight and the many movies that I would be able to watch en route, until I discovered that we were flying with an old airplane and that we didn't have a personal screen. Suddenly flying over the Atlantic Ocean at night for 12 hours without any distraction seemed like a daunting task. Luckily Jochem had booked us a couple of seats with extra leg room, but it was still uncomfortable and we didn't get a lot of sleep.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, June 5 we arrived in sunny Madrid. We had a bite to eat and some much-needed coffee before boarding the 2-hour flight to London, where it was cold, grey and pouring rain. We got on the subway and made our way to our cosy hotel near King's Cross. Experiencing Europe's efficiency and cleanliness was a bliss after so many months of backpacking! We went to Charlotte Street where we had dim sum for dinner.





The next morning we got on the nicest train in the world, which took us to Birmingham, where Aimee picked us up. We met Aimee and her husband Matt in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and immediately bonded over travel, South East Asia, food and vegetarianism. They're wonderful people and it was nice to see them again and exhange stories. While Matt was at work, Aimee showed us downtown Birmingham. We did some shopping, had lunch and ate cake. For dinner they took us to one of Birmingham's famous vegetarian Indian restaurants where I had the most amazing thali and mango lassi. Thank you, Matt and Aimee, for a great day!



The next day we took another train to our beloved Edinburgh. We visited Edinburgh for the first time last year, when I took Jochem there for his 25th birthday, and immediately fell in love with it. Of course, then, we were blessed with four warm and sunny days. This time, however, we were not so lucky. Still, I love this city more than ever and, just like last time, I would love to live there. If Edinburgh was a city in the Netherlands, I would move there instantly. I hope that one day we will be able to move there - not indefinitely, but maybe for a year or so. I said the same thing when we visited last year, but it's so easy to forget once you're back home. Possibilities become huge obstacles once you start to think about the practicalities of moving abroad (or at least to me), but I hope that we can make it happen someday.

Edinburgh is such a great city because it has it all: history, greenery, culture, restaurants and night life, while it seems like a small and easily managed place that cannot be compared to other capitals that I often find pompous, overwhelming and simply too big. But my favorite thing about Edinburgh is that the locals know their priorities, namely eating out and drinking. We had but a mere day in town so we had to squeeze in as much as possible.

First point on the agenda was to pick up Mariëlle from her hotel. She wasn't able to visit us in Chile so we were thrilled that we could show her around Edinburgh. We took her to Arthur's Seat for a hike up the volcanic mountain, possibly my favorite place in town. Next stop was tea and cake for lunch. We spent the next few hours wandering the many beautiful streets of downtown Edinburgh and making a few stops here and there - nothing too demanding. We ended our evening with dinner at David Bann, Edinburgh's best vegetarian restaurant.









And then, suddenly very quickly, the moment had arrived to go home. The three of us got on a plane and in a short hour the all-too-familiar sight of the Dutch countryside came into view. A whole delegation of family and friends was at Schiphol to welcome us home. Unfortunately, the weather in the Netherlands wasn't very nice either, but that didn't stop us from traveling to Utrecht for a well-deserved bag of fries with Dutch mayonnaise and fresh 'stroopwafels'. Back in Almelo more family and friends arrived to welcome us back home.





And now we're home. We're official residents of Almelo and are living at my parents' house. Our pets appear to recognize us and will surely forgive us any day now for forsaking them for 9 months. We unpacked our backpacks and after overcoming the initial shock of the unreasonable amount of clothes in our closet, we gave about a third of it away to charity. I have started my parttime job invigilating and supervising exams and am applying for teaching jobs in the 'Randstad', while Jochem got his old job back in exactly 3 days and got back to work this morning. We're looking at apartments in Amersfoort and have made an appointment for our very first location sighting in preparation for our wedding, although I get more excited thinking about possible honeymoon destinations than looking at wedding dresses. I've been so busy working, running errands and meeting up with family and friends that I haven't really had time to relax and let this new reality sink in. I suppose I'll get to it, eventually.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Home by Michael Bublé

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmm


Thailand

May be surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
Just wanna go home
Oh, I miss you, you know


Laos

I've been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
''I'm fine, baby, how are you?''
I would send them but I know that it's just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that


Cambodia


Malaysia


Singapore


Indonesia

Another airplane
Another sunny place
I'm lucky, I know
But I wanna go home
I've got to go home


Australia

Let me go home
I'm just too far
From where you are
I wanna come home


New Zealand

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not come along with me
This was not your dream
But you always believed in me


Easter Island


Chile


Argentina


Uruguay

Another winter day
Has come and gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home


Paraguay

And I'm surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel alone
Let me go home
Oh, I miss you, you know


Brazil

Let me go home
I've had my run
Baby, I'm done
I've gotta go home


Bolivia

Let me go home
It'll all be alright
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home


Peru