I'm used to Norway so the winters here in the Netherlands are pretty mild in comparison Hardly no snow, just a bit of cold rain. In Norway it's allready 15cm snow in the capital in the south east, here we might get in total 6 days of snow, but probably nothing at all. It's cold enough, but I don't mind. In Norway the winter start early, end late and is terrible dark. Here it is just about perfect with light (I don't mind the dark but I need a certain amount of daylight). The summers are usually not too bad, the last couple of years it has been one or two heat waves during the summer though. The problem is that the air here is very damp, so high temperatures feels quite bad.

There's so many things I like about the place, I think I am more Dutch than Norwegian in my heart. I like the fact that whoever you have a conversation with here and say something like "but its impossible to XXXX", you will ALWAYS have a few moment of silence where the person is thinking, and then the reply will be "well, nothing is impossible....". Thats my type of response! And how wonderful it is when I'm going for a walk in the nearby park and people keep saying hello to me, even though I have never seen them before. Heck, this is a big city! But in the green areas you are polite! Hehe, fits me nicely, some politeness now and then doon't hurt anybody (it ads a bit to the provincial touch of the city though, and I am not too fond of that).

I wouldn't mind having lots of people living here, it's place enough. I think the pictures might fool you a bit though. It IS a really nice buildings with a small chapel (that has a very old organ in it) with a tower in it to put a small bell in. It's coloured glass in all the hallways, and marble floor in te outer hallways, There are lions on the front side (I will see if I can find a more close up pictures of the building from the front), and in the tower on the top you can walk safely ourside and walk all the way around, and see the city in all possible directions.

But this place is a monument, we are not allowed to do anything in the garden except from walking there, and even though the building is going to be totally renovated into luxurious apartments, we were not allowed to have my two precious cats here. We cannot paint any walls, and have to make sure that we can take away any decorations, even though some places the walls are quite bad. We cannot reach the ceiling (its 4 meters up), and thereby its quite difficult to get proper light in here. We cannot use the balconies because they are too rotten. Some places the quality of the building is quite bad (the roof has fallen down in one of the corners of the laundry room), and it's impossible to clean the place properly.

It is cheap though (135 euros a month per grown up person), including electricity and gas, and all public service costs (garbage, water etc). It's also in one of the better areas in Utrecht, the Museumskwartier, and it is close to the train station and bus station (and the hospital, and the fire police)...it's in the city center, so we have everything within close reach.

The woods outside of the city are within biking distance, and Amsterdam is 30-45 minutes away by train. Utrecht is a superb place to have kids in, there are proper playgrounds and big well kept parks everywhere. There are plenty of small shops that sells every thinkable kind of thing: homemade wooden toys, antiquities, beads, small furniture, art, used clothes, exclusive things, any kind of homemade decorations, anything.

The open air market is close to us, with very cheap vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, bread, cheese, clothes, and everything else (including instruments from different countries and mobile phones). So, it's more than nice enough in total I manage here. I'm warm, I have clean water, I have a bathroom and a bathtub, and enough space for all my friends to visit at once. We know we have to move soon though, probably within april 2005

Charlie