30-07-2010 om 08:48 by Sueli Brodin
My mother-in-law had a hard time following me last Sunday as I explained how I had found out about the ice-cream parlour in the hamlet of Nattenhoven. I first had to tell her about the online social platform Twitter, where one can start getting followed by people one doesn’t necessarily know.
“Yes, it can sound a bit strange at first, but there’s a purpose to it, really...”
I went on explaining that one of my new followers was an account called “Cameta IJsterras” and that I had been most pleasantly surprised to discover that it was an ice-cream parlour near the town of Berg aan de Maas owned by a Dutch-Brazilian couple.
I have a natural and instinctive attraction for mixed couples, no matter their nationalities, but the prospect of meeting someone from my country of birth and speaking... read more
23-07-2010 om 12:26 by Sueli Brodin
Do you know the strange feeling when everything that happens around you at certain periods of time somehow seems to be connected?
This past week for example definitely fell under the theme of parasites and mosquito bites.
It all started when my children woke up one morning, their arms and legs covered with red itchy bumps.
“Why do mosquitoes bite us?” they moaned.
“Because you’re so sweet,” my husband said. And he added, teasing: “See, they don’t bite your mother.”
That same day we heard that my brother in law Peter, who moved to Sierra Leone some 18 months ago with his wife Annette, had caught malaria and had been very sick. Annette herself contracted the disease last fall.
Not only that, but Peter fell ill just as Annette had returned to Sierra Leone after recovering... read more
16-07-2010 om 00:03 by Sueli Brodin
This summer we will pass through the city of Tours on our way to our holiday destination on the French Atlantic coast. “That’s the place where I spent my teenage years,” I told my children, “and we’ll make a short stop there to visit some dear friends of mine whom I have seen for more than 20 years.”
My friends Patricia (left) and Christèle (right), 1983
“Were they your best friends?” my son Tim asked me, “like Thomas and me?”
Thomas was three and Tim only two when they met at the local playground. Thomas says that their friendship started when Tim asked him: “Shall we play together?” and he thought it was a good idea.
They would spend entire afternoons playing together. Every time Thomas was at the playground, Tim’s natural shyness would vanish and the only sounds Thomas’... read more
09-07-2010 om 17:01 by Sueli Brodin
One of my earliest memories is waking up in the middle of the night on my father’s shoulders during an air-raid alarm in Pakistan. He was carrying me to safety in the downstairs lodgings of the Pakistani family who lived with us. My mother was walking next to us, holding my baby brother in her arms and our Pakistani housekeeper, Gulam, was carrying my little sister. Then I closed my eyes again, pretending to sleep, because I didn’t want my father to put me down and let me walk.
Underground bomb shelter in Maastricht
Although I was only four years old at the time of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, some incidents have stayed engraved in my memory, like the time when I accidentally switched on the light during curfew and was so afraid that our house might be spotted and bombed because... read more
02-07-2010 om 00:11 by Sueli Brodin
I learned about the Barefoot Trail in Zutendaal through friends who shared happy photographs on Facebook of themselves and their children walking barefoot in nature.
When our two older children went camping with their judo club last weekend, my husband and I thought our youngest daughter Sacha would enjoy having a special treat as well and offered to take her to the Barefoot Trail.
The Belgian Limburg town of Zutendaal is only 15 minutes away by car from Maastricht. It is located at the gates of a vast nature reserve known as the Hoge Kempen National Park.
The Barefoot Trail starts at the Lietenberg Visitors' Centre, which also houses an insect museum, a butterfly greenhouse, a honey bee centre and a cafeteria.
We took our shoes off at the entrance of the trail and... read more