Airport Chaos

Just back from dropping Hermann off at the airport and have a few observations:

1)Why is there no toilet in Mugg & Bean meaning you have to abandon your table to sprint the length of the airport terminal to get to the nearest loo while dragging a toddler screaming "wee wee" at the top of her lungs?
2) Why can't you fit a pram into the Mother & Baby room meaning that random passers by have to amuse your baby while you attend to the piddling toddler?
3) Why are those nasty mat/grills on the floor inside every door designed to trip up toddlers when they are presumably there to stop people slipping?
4) Why are Hermann's flights always at tea time and whenever the kids are sick?

All I can do is apologise to everyone who just happened to be in Mugg & Bean around 5pm this evening. I've never seen a restaurant clear so fast. It could have been worse though... at least we weren't getting on your plane!!!

Persona Non Grata

I am fed up with being an illegal alien - while Pretoria takes 6 weeks to process my temporary residency visa, the banks have stopped all my bank cards - AGAIN! Luckily the Bank of Hermann is always open.

Its All Over....

Our last game (Holland v Japan);
Kath, Jonny & Hannah are back in the UK;
Bafana Bafana have been knocked out......

and we're all looking a little bit worse for wear: the car flags are tatty frayed rags; the vuvuzelas are sticky (that would be from the beer) and we all need to catch up on 10 days of sleep ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You know your parking is bad.....

When the car guard tells you that you drive like Mugabe!

Round 2

Barely enough time had passed for the shin splints to recover and the next game was upon us: Switzerland versus Spain. The walk down the hill was a little more subdued second time around - mainly because we were all sporting drink related injuries from the previous game. My peg leg was playing up; Kath has a dodgy back from sleeping (passing out) funny; Jonny's tummy was still feeling delicate (he wins the prize for loudest vomit) and Hermann had already had 4 beers. Nevertheless, we sampled the hospitality of the local shebeen - Cha Cha's - before heading to the game. The stadium was mostly filled with Durbanites supporting Spain in a wide variety of costumes and accessories. Beaded flag earrings seem to be all the rage - while many of the younger female fans seemed to be wearing slightly less clothing that one would imagine was appropriate for a winter's evening in Durbs....perhaps on the hope of catching a roving Spanish eye or two. Jonny, Kath and Hermann were all nominally supporting Spain, whereas a tenuous link to an acquaintance of Brenda's (the Annique lady) meant that I was full on supporting Switzerland. Unfortunately, the closest thing I had to Swiss colours was my red and white Take That t-shirt. Turns out it was very appropriate with Switzerland beating the Spaniards 1-nil.

After the game we braved the cold to hustle our way into Udo's Fan Park at Suncoast, in the mistaken belief that we would stand for an hour and a half before the Bafana Game even started. 3 samosas were not enough to persuade us to stay. A mere 15 minutes, one beer and a pee later and we were caught sneaking out. Oh well, at least we successfully managed to persuade taxi driver Tammi to drive us back up to Morningside via Durban North to avoid the road closures. He even did a tour of the bottle shops so that we could stock up with more beer. Hermann did us proud and managed to procure a case of Windhoek and 2 packets of crisps well after closing time.

Benedicta was a bit surprised to see us home early - mainly cos the kids were still up and forcing her to undergo some serious medical procedures involving a plastic doctors kits and a lot of imagination. It took us just under 10 minutes to clear downstairs of all little people and settle down to watch the game. I'd like to be able to report first hand on the local reaction to a 3-nil defeat and red-carded goalie....but I was asleep on the sofa well before the first goal was scored. Oh well, there's still hope.....slightly more subdued....ayoba....

AYOBA!

We haven't partied this hard in a long time!!!! Whoo hoo!!!! We started the week with the Germany v Australia game, and walked down to Suncoast to soak up the atmosphere and drink a few beers. The Australians were rowdier and armed with inflatable kangaroos. The Natal Germans were also well represented - pretty much everyone was at the game. Coert had the best horn, but I reckon I get extra marks for making my minivuvu sound the Last Post. We popped into the Fan Park to grab a killer boere roll...and another beer or two..and to check out the obligatory portaloos which were surprisingly still in a fairly sanitary condition. Di, Ronin, Rob & Jen were also partying at the News Cafe at Suncoast where drinking thru a vuvzela became mandatory.

The atmosphere at the game was amazing - as was the stadium itself. And we had lots to cheer as Germany beat the Ozzies with a convincing 4-0 victory. The 8 pints we had (by now) consumed meant that the stagger back up the hill is a pretty hazy memory. But stopping at Billy's for more beer seemed like a good idea at the time. Kath & I deserted the boys and attempted to get home without a key. Funnily enough, Benedicta either didn't hear us ringing the doorbell, or was hiding under the bed in fright, scarred for life from her last 'robbery in progress/armed response' sleepover (see Hermann's 40th b'day for further details). This meant that the call of the killer boere had to be answered behind the big pile of builders sand standing outside next door's building site....much like a gigantic pile of cat litter.... I'm not proud, but secretly very pleased, its revenge for the theft of my Scotland flag!!!!

○======<() ♪♫♪♫♪ AYOBA !!!

Vuvuzela Power

Durban is sooooooooooooooooo hyped up for the World Cup. We have a fantastic new stadium; the beachfront has been completely upgraded; and the whole nation (except Benedicta who thinks we're all mad) has gone football crazy.

Today at 12pm everyone came out onto the street and blew their vuvzelas to show support for Bafana Bafana. All their cars blew their horns and Durban was pumping. It was so cool - everyone has flags on their cars and we were making so much noise. Anya, Sienna and I tooted all the cars on our way home from school.

Tomorrow we go to the airport to pick up Kath, Jonny and Hannah - we're going to meet them fully kitted up in our Bafana shirts, makarabas, silly specs and flags, vuvuzelas tooting loudly when they walk through those doors.

Sunday is our first game - Germany v Australia. We're going to the beachfront Fan Park before the game. World Cup fever - Bring it on!!!!!

Its All A Load of Old Blarney.....

Now, night life in Durban doesn't have a patch on Glasgow, but I think I may have sunk to an all time low with THE BLARNEY BROTHERS at.....wait for it.....the German Club. I know, an odd combination, but despite being warned that the Blarney Brother's were in their 70's and needed more intervals than Tom Jones, I decided to go with an open mind. My open mind evaporated the minute I let Hermann drink and volunteered to drive home. This is NOT the sort of evening that you want to experience sober.

Here follows a quick run down on the criteria for song choice:

1) No song to have been a hit post 1979
2) All songs to have actions (does anyone reading this actually remember the Superman move?)
3) Chorus must be interspersed with 'a hoo hoo'
4) Shamrock shaped guitar riffs (a la the Shadows) are an absolute necessity

Also witnessed during the course of the evening:

1) Ladies of a certain age dirty dancing their way up a table - its just not polite to try and hump someone while they are attempting to drink their beer!
2) A congo line of determined Boers 'Marching to Pretoria'
3) Not to leave the next war out - 300 Germans singing their hearts out for Dame Vera Lynn
4) The Birdie Song oder Die Ente Tantzen - and I thought that only the Brits were daft enough?
5) 300 Germans singing Irish rugby songs as if their hearts would break should they not find themselves imminently on Irish soil once more.

All I can say was that it was horrifying but strangely compelling at the same time. And towards the end of the evening I may even have been guilty of joining in with the YMCA, and of singing Flower O' Scotland very loudly (including the FU which went down like a lead balloon - it was a church fundraiser oops).

All in all, I'm not entirely sure what this evening has taught me on the anthropological make up of modern South Africa. The 300 German/Irish/South Africans sang 'Give Me Hope Joanna' and 'Marched to Pretoria' with equal amounts of enthusiasm. Maybe the answer is that bad music and beer know no boundaries. There is only one burning question left outstanding though: surely the Blarney Brothers should be first on the Home Affairs hit list?

everyONEcounts

Its Freedom Day in SA today so loads of people took yesterday off and enjoyed a long weekend. As Hermann is off to Rotters for work, we girls have been making the most of Ushaka. We went to the aquarium yesterday, and Wet N Wild today. We've just been having a brilliant couple of days, which is why I wanted to share with you the following link:

www.everyonecounts.co.za

Its heartbreaking to know that every 48 hours 2 babies are abandoned in KZN alone - usually in dustbins or toilets. We can't all adopt a baby, but we can (and did) buy a fantastic piece of South African art for a good cause.

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
Hellen Keller

Fag Art

Hermann was not amused when he saw how someone had chosen to decorate the euphorbia just outside our front door......

Hlalanathi

OK - 2 weekends camping with only 3 days in-between to get all the washing done is officially too short!! Luckily, we now have this camping lark sussed and booked a campsite with our own little toilet and kitchen rondavel. Makes life a heck of a lot easier and even provides some well deserved shade around lunchtimes. We headed up to the Berg early on Friday, even managing to leave at 7am as planned (minor miracle). We had a quick stop for second breakfast so that I could feed Solveig but made it to Hlalanathi by 11am. The campsite had fantastic views of the Amphitheathre (Royal Natal National Park) and lots of rock dassies running around. Brenda, Holger and kids were sharing our campsite and we had a braai on Friday evening. Me & BB had an early night while the boys all went to meet up in the pub. Saturday was spent having breakfast up at Mark & Jan's chalet, then playing in the park, swimming in the river and generally chilling out as much as you can do whilst camping with small people. Kate even found a chameleon which wandered around our campsite until he tried to climb up the table and we relocated him to some bushes. Anya was fascinated when he changed colour from green to brown while climbing a tree. Saturday night was Mark's 40th birthday bash. Jan and her Mum had done a fantastic job on the catering and all we had to do was sit back and enjoy ourselves...well...that was the plan. Anya was totally excited about playing with Kate & Jess but we still had to keep a permanent eye on her. Solveig decided that the party was far too noisy so cried all night and I ended up taking the kids back to the tent at 9pm. Let's face it - I was finished too!! Sunday was the long drive back to Durbs, and Anya whinged most of the way, topping it off by finally vomiting all over me as I heroically hung over the front seat wielding a bath towel stashed for such emergencies. The poor babe had managed to hang on most of the way home, and true to form, chucked up 15 mins from home. The poor babe pretty much hasn't stopped puking since we got home, hence the slight delay in updating the blog from last weekend. This weekend we are doing NOTHING. A day trip to Greytown to visit Oma & Opa was all I would agree to! Happy Easter everyone!

Survivor: Bazely Beach

Can I just say, first and foremost, that camping with 7 barely potty trained small kids and 3 babies is not for the fainthearted. Just as well it was the Foreign Legion's camping trip (that's the foreign wives club - as christened by Hermann). 50 emails and about the same number of texts later (and that's just from Camper Lulu) and we had somehow successfully coordinated a foolproof cooking rota and 5 campsites in a row at Bazely Beach, about an hour down the South Coast from Durbs. The weekend was fantastic. The kids had a brilliant time playing around the campsite, hunting Easter eggs, swimming in the camp pools, or just hanging out on the beach. Us girlies even managed a couple of hours away from the kids to surprise Claudia with a combined birthday party and baby shower. We commandeered the jetty, tied pink ballons everywhere and even managed to smuggle presents, pink sparkly plonk and a cooler box full of daiquiris out of camp without being spotted. It was so hot that most of the Dads opted to drive their kids around for an hour so that they could have an afternoon nap in air conditioning. We headed home on Monday, exhausted but very very happy. Can't wait to do it all again next weekend...

http://smilebox.com/playEmail/4d5455334d544d324e6a64384d7a51344d4455354e6a673d0d0a&sb=1

It's March Already.........

Well, Blogfans, I have no idea where the time is going. Obviously we spent most of February recovering from Hermann's 40th birthday party. Shocking behaviour from all concerned, but the best party ever! I don't even remember being dropped on my head, but the photographic evidence still exists. Despite us putting up a big sign, leaving all the doors open and inviting the burglars in, Jennifer's camera managed to survive the evening. Luckily we didn't have to deal with the kids as Benedicta babysat overnight at Gitty's. Mind you, I did resort to going to KFC in my pyjamas for breakfast and I still didn't sober up till after the evening pizza.

Life is now back into the usual routine of playschool for Anya in the mornings, then swimming lessons, Clamber Club, Kindermusik and numerous playdates in the afternoons. We're attmepting to do a regular playdate at the Botanic Gardens. Jen had a great idea of freezing stale bread to feed to the ducks. It helps though, if you defrost it before you get to the park....although it is very funny watching scared ibis (who have very narrow long beaks) trying to eat a slice of frozen Albany white. And that was before the brick (sorry, loaf) of homemade rosemary and olive bread came out. It actually bounced before it hit the lake and then sank to become slow release fish food. Its also quite good fun to throw chunks of bread at snogging 18 years olds so that they get mugged by the geese...but that's another story...

Hermann is just back from a skiing holiday in France. I decided that the week home alone would be much more palatable with a glass of low alcohol wine in the hand at all times. Worked a treat, possible because the wine wasn't quite as low in alcohol as I had originally thought. No wonder I was so relaxed all week. Nevertheless, we were all very excited when Hermann decided to come home a couple of days early. Anya was beginning to miss her Papa and I'm not sure that another night in with Colin & Justin's Home Heist is good for your mental well being.

We're going to be camping the next 2 weekends on the trot, so no doubt much more bad behavious will ensue...ta ra for now

Solveig at 3 months

Our lovely photographer Leonie was back in town over Christmas and New Year, so we took the opportunity to have some more photos done, before she flew back to the UK. Leonie also did Anya's baby photos so we were keen to have a matching set for Solveig. We don't want to be accused of having 2nd child syndrome later in life (ie having made no time to take photos of the 2nd baby). There are more photos up on Facebook, but here's a couple for the blog anyway.

Anya was working to her own agenda during the photo shoot. She spent most of the time trying to take photos with her little pink plastic camera. She also spent rather a lot of time jumping on our bed. In fact bribing her with smarties seemed to have the opposite affect to what we hoped. It just meant that not only was she super excited - but she was super excited on a smartie high.

Despite feeling like we had done 10 rounds of wrestling with Big Daddy, the photos have turned out really cute. Our favourite are the action shots - Anya looks her cheeky best and thankfully not a double chin in sight - must be that camera angle!!

Lunch with Colin & Penny

Not much has been happening at Chez Kistner this last week - mainly because it's been too stinking hot to do anything except peel ourselves off of our backsides and head to the gym - which has the added bonuses of having both a creche and air conditioning. Wednesday night date night was a very low key affair (only the 2 bottles of wine then) so we had to make up for it at the weekend. Colin, Penny and their kids Amy & Rebecca popped round for a light lunch, and while the girls went for a swim, we sipped wine and had the odd G&T. Lovely. And when 5pm came and everyone left, it was such a nice evening that we decided to carry on with the white, and when that was finished, we started on the red. Hermann very kindly tried to sober me up with a round of cheesy toasts but to no avail. At least he woke me up when it was bedtime....

Rhetorical Question

Why is that every week I lose a kg...and then every weekend I find it again...

Photos from Hermannsburg

The Kistner cousins and families

Jo's 80th Birthday

We're just back from Jos's 80th birthday party in Greytown. Oncle Albrecht & Tante Wietske came down for the weekend, as well as all the Kistner first cousins. It was great catching up with everyone again. We all stayed at a very rustic farm B&B. However, it wouldn't have been a Kistner weekend away without a few challenges - the first being the lack of soap on the premises; the second being the shortage of red wine (both sorted by a trip to the shops); and the third being the sleeping and ablution facilities. Our bedroom didn't have an ensuite bathroom. Or even a bathroom in the house. We had to go to the toilet on the veranda! A strange place to put a bathroom...but at least it had a nice view..... The sleeping arrangements were a different matter. Let's just say that my bed wasn't that comfortable. Getting into bed sounded a bit like I imagine the Titanic sounded shortly before it sank....screeching metal followed by the sound of low groans. Luckily Hermann took pity on me and swapped for the 2nd night so that I could get at least a little sleep.

Neverthless, being in the sticks had its advantages. Anya & Luca were just loving being in the countryside and seeing all the animals, despite Luca getting bitten on the nose by a goose. The kids had loads of space to run around - inside and out. It was just a pity that the weather was horrible - cold rain and mist for the whole weekend.

On Saturday we visited some steam engines, then the Hermannsberg Schule & Museum for a spot of reminiscing. Then it was back to the farm for Jos's party.

Preparing for the weekend was a mammoth effort. Hermann and Tinus manned the bar like they were made for the job. Gitty decorated the hall beautifully. And we all chipped in to prepare the food and clean up afterwards. No-one went home hungry! We slightly overestimated the amount of food (and drink) required for 30 people - resulting in a mini KZN potato salad and trifle mountain... any suggestions on how to dispose of 11kgs of home made potato salad will be gratefully received. In the meantime, we know what we will be having for lunch this week...

It was a cracking weekend, despite having to cram all our luggage, and the kids, into the Hyundai Atos on loan from the garage. Our car is still in the garage waiting for a new handbrake! All I can say is that if I ever want to drive with my knees directly under my chin, then I know exactly which car to choose!

There's no photos for this blog, as I spent the weekend videoing the proceedings instead. It was great - meant that I didn't have to feature in any photos or videos until Georg got hold of the camera. But just remember - I have editing rights!!!!

Until then (editing with minimal skill takes some time)...

Happy Birthday Opa! We love you! We hope you had a fantastic weekend! Anya sends you her best big hug and kiss! And, I can't wait to get my hands on all that dodgy video.

PROST PROST PROST!!!!!

Happy New Year

Here's wishing all our family and friends a happy new year.