-
A typical start for vlaai baking: for weeks, I had planned to make you vlaai filled with rice pudding, as it is one of my…
-
Continuing a tradition is a process. The tradition continues from generation to generation, evolving organically with the changing environmental and social circumstances. On an individual…
-
A tradition is not just the combination of what a people need and what they have. More than that, it is the materialisation of how…
-
Recently, conversations with friends who do not eat dairy confronted me with the following question: is vlaai (pronounce “vly” as in fly) made without milk…
-
I have long puzzled what had made my experiences so painful to me sometimes. So much so that I found it difficult to move on.…
-
It has taken me some time to write you again. I have an idea, a feeling, something I would like to share, an insight of…
-
“The essential thing is to want to sing.” These words from the opening of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer brought me to tears the first…
-
Recently I was talking to a friend. “You look beautiful!” I told her upon meeting. “Thank you,” she said. “As I was feeling a bit…
-
I’m spending a week in my friend’s house in my old hometown. I’m reconnecting with all the shops I used to visit. The fishmonger at…
-
Fear seems to be à la mode these days. I have joined the trend certainly. The past years, I have been afraid of men, heatwaves,…
-
Reading the Pope’s The Name of God is Mercy, came after a lineup of other “self-help” books, which, though interesting, had all left me unsatisfied…
-
Three months ago, the Pope died. He had risen from his illness, wished everyone “Buona Pasqua”, then he died. He had picked some moment, or…
-
“Stella, leave.”“Leave Stella, I will kill you.” This is the opening of the final scene of Stella, the 1955 film from Greek director Mihalis Kakoyannis,…
-
For some time now, I haven’t been into recipes that much. I mean food recipes, but maybe it’s been a metaphor for the other recipes…
-
Maybe it is my pre-carnival mood. The diamond grid. It reminds me of Italian commedia dell’arte. Carnival Venice style. Puppets, masks, the mysterious eyes behind.…
-
In the early days of January, I had a little French adventure in Amsterdam. I am not French, but I do feel related to them,…
-
Recently, my wonderful Brazilian friend gave me Monsieur Big mascara for my birthday. It came in a black and stiletto pink carton box, Sex and…
-
I haven’t told you yet about a friend of mine, a beautiful lady, happy, light, colourful. She has lived a life full of beautiful people…
-
I had grown tired, so tired in fact that my back didn’t function any more. At all. I was familiar with my back problems and…
-
I had forgotten about oats. That is, not really forgotten. I had just not thought about them for some time now. Summer had arrived–oats can…
-
I find city life so beautiful. There is such style to it, such vibrancy. The buzz of a metropolis. Never mind the dirt, the pollution,…
-
Rekindling an appetite for life My body started to feel thin, worn out. In a wish to learn something new, I had gone through all…
-
The first time I met Paul was in London. I’m not sure, whether it was right after I arrived at King’s Cross that we ran…
-
There it was, in an upper corner stuck to the inside of the window of the bus, just above the entrance door and a collection…
-
Waiting at the traffic lights to cross the street to Hotel Grande Bretagne, I watched the city pass me by. To my right, I saw…
-
Syntagma Square had even more Christmas lights than I had expected from photos friends had sent me. It was drenched in Christmas lights, enthusiastically drizzled…
-
I had a practical problem, my need for food. I would arrive in Athens on the evening of the second day of Christmas and I…
-
Vienna was boring in a good way. Predictable like the end of a romantic comedy, you know what is going to happen and you couldn’t…
-
Vienna was boring in a good way. After Athens, I had longed to return to civilization. I mean this in the best possible way, on…
-
“Oh my, you have a beautiful smile,” said the man who had just taken the seat opposite me in the train from Verona to Innsbruck.…
-
“Did you tell the man in the trattoria you came from us,” asked my happy receptionist in the hotel the next morning. “Ehm, no, I…
-
“You can just take anything you like,” the receptionist in the hotel had told me. “No extra charges. We want you to feel free and…
-
I woke up early, happy that I could finally get out of this place. Somehow, Bologna and I hadn’t been off to a good start…
-
This is the story of the old lady who was sitting in front of Alfa-Vita at New Year. My first place in Athens was an…
-
If generosity is one art to admire in Athens, music is another one. The secret to Greek music is conviction. To love without shame, to…
-
Athens is simple. There are no hidden messages. Athens is more direct than Amsterdam, where people do not hesitate to ask you how much money…
-
Athens is honest. To be honest is more than not lying, it is a man’s pride, and a woman’s too. Being honest is being free.…
-
I love Athens for her bloodiness. She is the most blooded city I have ever been. Not like Rome, where everything is perfectly cute, even…