Recently in December '24

December is now coming to an end. It’s time to recap about what has happened during this last month, before writing my final Year in Review. This month was quite of a rollercoaster, I visited a few places, met with people a few times and watched a lot of stuff.

🍄 Life

At the beginning of December, we visited Maastricht for their Christmas market. Since moving to the Netherlands, I’ve enjoyed going to Christmas markets every year. The first few years I didn’t do it because of the pandemic, but since then we’ve been to Aachen’s and Köln’s. This year, we decided to do it more locally and went to Maastricht, which has one of the few Christmas markets in the Netherlands, maybe because it’s so close to Germany and Belgium. It was enjoyable, but it did not have the same vibe as the ones we’ve been to in Germany.

The same day, we also went to the caves in Maastricht. I had no idea Maastricht had caves, but it quickly became obvious that they were not natural caves. They are just limestone quarries, dating back to the 13th century. It was also great to visit with a Dutch-speaking tour, where we got to learn quite a lot about the history.

Also at the beginning of the month, it was the turn of my company to organize the community lunch at the place where we work. I made the desserts. I decided on making both Arroz Doce, which is a Portuguese sweet rice pudding. This time it ended up being much better! I also made so much I had to split it into multiple pans while cooking.

In addition, also made a few Chocolate Salami. “A few”. A coworker of mine made a very delicious Indian dish, whose name I’ve forgotten in the meanwhile. But it was based on vegetables and paired with very nice bread buns that had just been fried on a bit of butter. I must say that the lunch was an incredible success.

During the course of the month, I’ve also met with friends for different occasions: from an international dinner, to holiday parties. For the international dinner and to break the habit, we all cooked something from someone else’s land. That was a very nice challenge and I’m very happy with the results, including the Portuguese dish done by a friend of mine: Bacalhau à Gomes de Sà.

I also spent a week in Portugal, where I got the chance to have a lot of lunches and dinners. It was the Christmas week, so we did what we do in Portugal: eat. Eat for Christmas Eve with some family. Eat for lunch for Christmas Day with some family, and this time we also had lunch with family the day after. Lots of delicious foods.

Last weekend, Chris and I went to Brugge, in Belgium. The idea was to go there for their Christmas market, since it was the last weekend. However, we ended up seeing much more of Brugge than the Christmas market. It was very busy, but also a very pretty city. Quite magnificent.

We also got a tour of the Halve Maan Brewery, which is just in the center of Brugge. The tour was in Dutch, which was nice to test my understanding of a Flemish accent. Most things I understood, there were some more technical terms that I didn’t know, but that’s fine. This brewery has 3km long pipelines under the city center of Brugge to move beer to their distillery. It’s crazy!

💪 Health

No special reports here, besides the fact that I got sick two times: at the beginning of the month, and during Christmas. It seems that I’m a bit more susceptible to the viruses this year. On the other hand, I’ve also been in many many many places with many many many people.

📚 Reading

I finished the third and last book of the Silo trilogy: Dust. Just like the previous books, it was also incredible. Without giving spoilers, I just want to say that I really enjoyed how the story progressed and how the first two books gave the foundation for the third.

🍿 Entertainment

Just like last month, we attended one more concert, also from a Dutch artist: S10. S10 participated in the Eurovision two years ago, so maybe you’ve heard about her. It was a sort of theatrical concert, and we got to see one of the last shows here in Eindhoven, in the Muziekgebouw.

When it comes to 🎬 movies, we watched way too many, so I’m just going to highlight a few good ones. We watched Conclave and Heretic, which are both related to religion, but in very different ways. The first one follows the story of a conclave after a pope has died, while the second is a holy horror movie. Both interesting and nice. I also want to highlight Flow, an animated, but mute, film, which follows a cat after a natural disaster.

This month in the series 📺 series department, we have finished the first season of Dwars door de Lage Landen, which is a sort of documentary series, where the presenters walk from Ostende to Maastricht and then to the north of the Netherlands through the east side. On the second season they go back through the west side.

We also finished the first season of Dune: Prophecy, which gives background information about the history of the Sisterhood. We’ve also watched the two first seasons of Shrinking, which was quite heartwarming.

If you weren’t hungry before, I hope you’re hungry now. I wasn’t expecting to publish so many food-related photos this time. Unfortunately, I did not even add all the ones I wanted. Everything was delicious.

I hope you had a nice Christmas, if you celebrated, otherwise holidays. See you soon in the next post!