Medieval Bookworm

Last Saturday, a pleasant surprise was delivered to me through the postman – my Secret Santa gift!

In case you haven’t been around for very long, you should know I haven’t had too much luck with Secret Santa gifts. The first year I participated, I didn’t receive anything at all, but the lovely Ana sent me a book herself anyway, for which I was incredibly grateful. Last year, I did get a couple of nice books, but I still haven’t read them, so I guess I wasn’t as enamored with them as I thought. I wondered what I’d get, but I hadn’t really thought much about it.

This year? I was completely blown away by my Secret Santa gift.

I was thrilled to open the box and discover more and more goodies spilling out. Here are the gifts all wrapped up:

Two large, book-shaped silver packages, plus a couple of mystery items, a lovely card, and bookish swag!

And there they are unwrapped! Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber, an author I’ve not read but have had my eye on for a couple of years, Wither by Lauren DeStefano which I’ve been picking up longingly in the bookstore, plus a cute bookmark and some chocolate. The card is absolutely adorable, too.

Even better? I opened the books …

I think my mouth dropped open! What a wonderful gift. I only wish I knew who my Secret Santa was so I could thank them – but the card didn’t have a name. So thanks, Secret Santa – you honestly made that day for me (and that entire week!). I know what I’ll be doing with my free time over the Christmas holidays!

My friend and I started out our trip in Amsterdam. We are definitely not the target audience of Amsterdam, as neither of us had much interest in smoking pot or doing anything in the Red Light district besides gawking during the very safe daylight. Nor did we visit any of the more famous art museums. Regardless, we still had fun, even though it rained a lot.

We arrived first to discover that Dutch people seem to drink tea in clear glass mugs. And you add the teabag into the hot water rather than pouring the water over the teabag. I kept seeing this happen, and even tried it myself (we needed tea after finding the hotel in the rain!).

The narrow houses lean a lot but are still ridiculously cute. The older ones all still stand on wooden pillars. They have to carefully monitor the canal levels to prevent the wood from rotting away – when it starts, the houses lean, and they have to be shored up with other materials.

Did you know many of them used to be warehouses? Now, instead of hauling goods, they use the little hooks on top to haul furniture through windows:

They have ridiculously steep staircases because of their narrow size, which also explains why they bring big furniture in through the windows:

Also, Darth Vader likes to hang out around the palace in Dam Square and lure small children to the Dark Side:

By far, though, the best part, if you can call it best, of Amsterdam was visiting the Anne Frank House. I don’t have any pictures of the experience, aside from a very dark one of the exterior of the building:

That is the warehouse / office that the Frank family hid in over two years. Like most young girls (and probably boys), I read Anne’s diary, more than once, and it’s something that has stayed with me all of my life, and which I’m sure will stay with me for the rest of it too. Seeing the rooms where she walked, the pictures she posted on her walls to cheer up, and pages that she wrote while in hiding was incredibly moving and memorable.

The museum compiles information about Anne’s life, living conditions in hiding, videos from survivors and friends and Otto Frank himself, and actual items from the period. It also ends in a fantastic bookstore. If you go to Amsterdam, you simply can’t miss it. We spent three days there in total and that was definitely the most significant and memorable part of the city for me.

I probably won’t go to Amsterdam again, as I felt like we saw everything we wanted to really, but I’m really glad we stopped there. My favorite, though, was Bruges, which is the next stop for next week!

When you move to a new place in adulthood, making new friends isn’t easy. I’ve moved three times since graduating college and, everywhere I go, it seems difficult to meet people with whom I have a common interest. It certainly isn’t as easy as it was when I was in school. Blogger Rachel Bertsche at MWF Seeking BFF has precisely this problem. Having moved only a few years after college to be with her now-husband, she’s found herself without a best friend locally.  Though very successful in her professional life, she’s spent two and a half years best-friend-less and thus decided that the time has come to step it up a notch and find one. She’s spent the past year blogging about her efforts to find someone and she’s writing a book about her search, which will be published in early 2012. When Jen at Booklicity contacted me and asked if I’d feature Rachel, of course I said yes.

One of the posts which struck a particular chord with me was Rachel’s discussion of how a husband isn’t quite enough in the friend department. This is something that’s also been true for me; I love my husband, but having him as my sole in-person anchor just doesn’t provide the same emotional satisfaction. He doesn’t always want to converse about people’s reactions in death, he’s not interested in what I’m wearing and whether it goes, and really sometimes he’d rather just go off and play a video game (or head out to snooker with one of his own friends). It’s so nice to find someone who feels similarly, and this is only one of the reasons I’ve become a reader of Rachel’s blog.

I also really enjoyed this post, wherein Rachel writes about how we think others won’t want us as friends. I think after school, we expect friendships will just pop up naturally, but in reality they just don’t always. People often love being your friend as much as you love being theirs – which is why, as she writes, going for it is actually a great move. This is something I’ve heard from others as well, but shyness is always a barrier. It’s a fantastic reminder that it it’s sometimes worth going out there and just meeting people. If you hit it off at work or in a book club, it’s worth trying to be friends outside too.

One of Rachel’s most recent posts, A Case of Friends That Could Be, hit a particularly relevant note for me, too. I have made friends towards the tail ends of time in particular places – in high school, in college, even in grad school – where I felt that those friendships could have definitely been more. I had plenty of close friends in college, so I didn’t think I needed more, but now I do often regret not chatting to those people more, not making an effort to be real friends while we had the chance. I did with one and it turned out to be a great friendship. Of course, I now don’t have the opportunity to see them and follow up like Rachel does – but should that come my way in the future, I am determined to do so.

In addition to these reflections on friendship issues that will resonate with all women – whether or not our best friend lives next door – Rachel is a fantastic writer, also loves to read, and has plenty to say about pop culture. I definitely recommend checking out her blog. I suspect you’ll become a subscriber just like I did.

It’s become apparent that I won’t be posting again until after Christmas, so I’d just like to wish you all a wonderful few days with family and friends! I will be back next week with end of the year lists, my reading list for the week off, and hopefully even some reviews one of these days.

(Image brought to you by my husband and his new obsession, Minecraft)

For the next few days, you might find me here!

My husband and I are celebrating our first anniversary with a long weekend in Paris.  It was actually last weekend, but this one worked better for our trip!  I’ll be back on Tuesday, probably with a whole new lot of unread books along too. Have a great weekend!