Party time!

Look! We can all hold a glass between our teeth!, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

First of all, a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our dear friend Els who became 90 yesterday. She gave a very enjoyable party in a bar in Buitenveldert yesteday evening, with the beer and wie flowing and delicious hapje/snacks bein served.

A slightly smaller gathering than ten years ago when we all met up at a cafe in the Amstel Park but Els has always been very good at making and keeping friends with people younger than her, so there were a good 40 or so people who turned up. We spent a lot of the time talking to Jacob and Johan who have been friends for years but who we had never met.

It being a major Els party we were treated to some music in the form of a small band who played some songs from the 1930's in a Dutch folk style with a guitar and a violin. Greatly enjoyable.

And we have a date in ten years time, inshallah!

Life being the way it is, we had another major party to go to afterwards, namely Ineke and Jasper's housewarming party the other side of Amsterdam in Noord. We arrived just after the food had finished and just as it was getting dark at around 9 but just before Ineke's dear parents were leaving.

Funnily enough, four young pepole turned up all of a sudden and they were the new neighbours who hadn't been there when we had been at Ineke and Jasper's a week early. They were Norwegian studfents who had joined in during the week, the neighbours having decided to let out the house which they could not sell. Strangely, one of them works as an assitant to the mayor in the little town of Sandvika just outside Oslo, which I had visited the week before. What a small world!