Sevinyan for dessert

Some real Sevinyan for dessert

Last week I invited some of my frens for dinner (I realized that inviting people & going for potluck dinner is my fav.social activity now :) hehehe). The menu was not very elaborate but it was yummm Prawn curry with coconut milk, Chilly Chicken, Aloo-Gobi-mattar ke subzi, Rice and Sevinya. I bought the real sevinyan like the one we get in India from a Pakistani shop near the open market, the 200 gm packet costed me just  75 cents and I think it was worth every cent. I tried making Sevinyan from the Euroshop vermicelli packet...which turned into a total disaster, two week back when me CT & SS had invited our frens for dinner, the food was really good that day but the dessert was a grand failure.  

But this time...all thanx to using the real sevinya it was really good. The best part about the dinner was of course the dessert and I plan to make  it again some other day for another grand dinner.

Spring is here....

and we are loving it. Hague has become almost a valley of flowers.

Finally found some snowdrops....

Kiley mei Fateh....

The "Kiley mei Fateh" joke between me, CT and SS started from Lisbon when we went to St.George Castle, our typical dialogue was "Sathiyon humme Kiley mei fateh haasil karni hai aur tiranga jhanda lehrana hai"...."Sathiyon maiden-e-jung ke tarah kouch karo...dushmano ko harana hai" and this has continued till Luxemburg, this time it was even more dramatic as I bought the Luxumburg city flag  and we used it to make our dialogues even more funny but the best line was of course "Maharaj ki jai ho". 

During our walk upto the castle we discovered that our fren from Kenya, 'J' used to watch a lot of hindi TV serials like "Ramayan, Mahabharat and even Ji Hanuman and she remembered the 'Maharaj ki jai ho' line from all these serials...we had so much fun at the cost of castle, talking in pure hindi  and our endless 'Kiley mei fateh' jokes. Luxumburg trip was quite fun and I plan to write some more post with details on how to travel and must see places in Luxumburg by end of this week. More trip post with pics. will follow soon :). 

Viandam Castle from a distance

A new country to travel...Luxembourg

 I am travelling to Luxembourg this weekend with my friends...yeah...yeah another new country. My depreciating bank balance makes me realize that every month since November, I've travelled to a new country which is not so good for my pockets but for the traveller in me, it's the ultimate thing to happen...I always end up travelling no matter what I do or where I live. January was Spain and Portugal and this month it's Luxembourg, and if you were thinking whether it's in Germany then I must tell you that no...its not in Germany, but it's another country in Europe, a really tiny country between located Belgium, France and Germany and the world's  only remaining  Grand Duchy. I think, I should update about all my travel in the blog....which I've not done since December but I should update next week once m back. 

As I like to travel prepared and knowing a bit more about the place before I leave, I checked lonely planet website to see places to visit in Luxembourg and this place looks interesting from the pictures and the other information available online. I am sure it will a fun trip and more updates will follow. 

Roger Federer Live @ Ahoy Rotterdam

Dreams do come true, and some time one needs to be super lucky for the dreams to come true  esp. when only few tickets out of 10,000 are left for booking ....and today my dream of watching Roger Federer live came true @ the ABN-AMRO Tennis Champion....was I excited! hell yeah I was super excited.

Me, CT &SS went early for the match as we could also watch the doubles final with the same ticket for the singles final, we were on time and took our seats....our seats were not so far as I thought it would be, infact the court was very clearly visible the only problem was the seats which were not too comfortable. We enjoyed watching both the match but the highlight of the match was  of course Roger  Federer winning the title.

Ahoy Rotterdam

Federer practicing just before the match began

Federer live n in the screen...

The final winning serve.

Federer throwing his wrist band to a fan...

The champ and the trophy...awesome match.

Winter update- Frozen lake and canals

Experiencing sub-zero temperature for almost 2 weeks is  not a pleasant experience but to see snow fall in real for the first time in my life, frozen canals and lakes and to walk on it is definitely and truly an amazing experience. I had an eventful day today, it started with a visit to Floraholland this morning...or rather very,very early morning, located at Aalsmeer it's world's largest flower auction cooperative with a turnover of 4 bn Euro. We went there to see how the flower auction happens and understand the value chain as part of one of my optional course with the LDS dept.

We had to leave really early to be able to see the auction and we were on time at  the Hague central station but damn 2 trains to Schipol were cancelled and we had to wait for almost an hour in the freezing temp. which was really annoying....Dutch winter ahhhhh m so not liking it.The route to Floraholland was via Schipol and this morning once we were out of the Schipol airport to take the bus, all of us almost froze, it was much colder than Hague and we were literally  foot tapping while waiting for the bus, it was so cold that I hated the LDS class for keeping the study visit during such miserable weather and at 7 am it was super duper cold. The visit was interesting and I did enjoyed touring it again as I had been there with my ARD class too.

On our way back from Alasmeer, I saw the famous canals of Amsterdam completely frozen and it was a site to watch, all the jetty's and boat were lying  still and the very busy & bustling canals  were not busy at all. I took some pictures and we rushed back to Hague. Once we reached Hague we decided to walk instead of taking the bus and the Lake next to Binnenhof was on our way, which is completely frozen we decided to walk inside the lake and take pics. It was really cold but inside the lake it felt even more colder....so many people were skating and I only wished to have known how to skate. We took some pics but as the temperature further dipped we came out of the lake.  My first winter in The Netherlands has been quite fun...I saw snow, frozen canals, lakes and the snow making the city beautiful first and than ugly  as it refuses to melt and turns into slug, mud and dirt.

The Frozen canals @ Amsterdam

The frozen lake next to Binnenhof @ The Hague

People skating and enjoying in the frozen lake...