The blogs I read

While you're reading my blog posts I'm reading others. I'm sitting in bed still this morning catching up on some reading and just read this one on Ameringlish about their wedding dance. It made me think of our wedding dance and I went and searched the post I did before on our first aniversary. I posted our wedding dance video there and just watched it again now. It was such a great day.

Here it is again if you like watching these sort of things. If it bores you, I might write something else later today! The first bit of the video is not very good quality so you're welcome to forward that bit..

Our second first anniversary

On 30 August 2008 Andre and I got married. Then we got married again on 3rd January 2009! I would do it again it was so much fun but Andre says NO. He says the big one on the 3rd was too stressful for him.

On 30 August we had a very small ceremony, so small that only our parents and my sister knew about it. We decided not to tell anyone because we already had our "big day" planned for the 3rd of January and we didn't want to spoil the excitement of that day. We didn't want our family and friends to think, "They're married already so it's not such a big thing." It was not easy to keep it a secret. But we knew if we told one family member we'd have to tell all of them and the same with our friends. Otherwise it wouldn't have been fair.

So we still had our big day with flowers, wedding dress, cake and all on the 3rd of January and that makes today our second first anniversary!

Here's a video of wedding dance. We had lots of fun learning the dance and others at a dance school a few months before our wedding.


Our wedding dance from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Zermatt

After the festival on Saturday André and I drove to Zermatt. 230km took four hours of driving along very very windy roads snaking up mountains and down the other side. We only drove an average speed of 50km/hr and went through 40 tunnels! Yep, exactly 40, I counted them. There are some photos of the mountain where you can see the winding road.

At one stage it got very misty and we could hardly see anything in front of us. At that time it was only 3.5 C outside.

Quite tired after the long drive, but excited to have finally arrived, we parked the car in Täsch, the town before Zermatt and took the train in to Zermatt. Zermatt is a car free town so you can't drive there.

We arrived in Zermatt and walked down Bahnhoffstrasse which is a beautiful welcome into this little town. It wasn't far to our hotel. There are little electric cars, like golf cars which you can use as a taxi, but we enjoyed the walk and stretching our legs.

At the hotel we received a welcome drink and then went up to our cosy room. Look at the wood carvings at the entrance to our room and on the ceiling.

For dinner on Saturday night we went to a steak house where we had some really good steak. It was done on an open fire in the restaurant, right next to our table actually. Then the chef brings it to your table and slices half of it and serves it with your veggies and rösti. I was very worried about where he took the rest of my steak. He explained that when we're done he "makes another plate". In the video you can see my second plate.

Of course you'll see many photos of the Matterhorn in the video.

We saw two men playing their alpine horns. It was the first time I heard what this sounds like. Really nice.

The old part of the town is crammed with tumbledown wooden houses. The wooden storage barns are built on stilts balanced on stone discs to keep out rodents. Interesting. I've never seen something like this before.

On Sunday we went for a short walk. Well we tried, but we had an afternoon nap before going for the hike so I didn't have much energy and for some reason I'm not all that much into hiking anymore. That's sad for André, I do try from time to time to scrape some energy together to go on a short and easy hike with him. But it didn't work this time and we turned around to go have drinks and a snack at a pub in town.

On Sunday night we had our first fondue in Switzerland! I really wanted to try a cheese fondue since I've never had that, but the restaurant didn't do that so we had the oil fondue with meat and 16 little bowls with dips and fruit and veg to snack on while your meat is frying. We were totally stuffed after that!!! We really ate well this weekend. The hotel breakfasts were of course a feast too. I love hotel breakfasts!

We were very lucky to have great weather. Clear, so we can see the Matterhorn, and sunny and not cold. Only in the evenings it got a bit colder and I was wearing my winter jacket, so I can imagine it must be freezing in winter!

If you haven't noticed already, you will see from the pictures that I love all the wooden buildings with the flowers on the balconies.

Enjoy the video! (As usual, if you have problems viewing the video, see it here on vimeo.)

Zermatt, Switzerland from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

First wedding anniversary

Tomorrow is our first wedding anniversary! I can't believe a year has gone by already. It doesn't feel like we've been married for a year, but maybe that is because we had the big wedding day on the 3rd January, but really got married on 30 August last year already.

We decided to get married sooner because at that stage we were still going to go to the UK and it would have helped André to get a visa easier if we were married since I've got an EU passport.

We had a very small ceremony, only our parents were there and my sister knew about it too. But nobody else. We already had our wedding organised for 3rd January and didn't want to spoil that day. We didn't want people to think that since we're already married then it's not such a big deal. We still wanted that to be a special day too.

So we had this first ceremony at our house in Melkbosstrand. It was really special having such a small ceremony with our parents. Especially also having my dad there since he couldn't be there in January.

Afterwards we had cake and tea and champagne with our parents and then André and I went for a one night honeymoon, since we had to be back at work again on the Monday. You can read about our stay in this cosy little cottage here.

It wasn't easy keeping it a secret and it was hard for us to decide who to tell and who not. If we told some family we'd have to tell all the family and if we told some friends we felt we'd have to tell them all. So that's why we decided not to tell anyone. The minister was going to announce it in the chapel on our 3rd January wedding day, but then we decided it might not be such a good idea giving people such a shock! So on Christmas we told our families and then tried really hard to get all our friends together for a new years party and surprised them then.

We've had a fantastic first year being married. Definitely a very interesting and exciting year!

Wedding celebrations from afar

Yesterday good friends of ours got married in Cape Town. Of course with us being here in Switzerland we couldn't go to the wedding. But they were in our thoughts the whole day. I was thinking back to our wedding and all the excitement of the day, and wondering what our friends were doing.

After another visit to the archery shop in Luzern yesterday morning to replace some broken arrows we headed off to Lake Luzern. It was a beautiful summers day. I packed a picnic lunch and we brought some champagne. We celebrated our friends' marriage on the beach at the lake. We made them a little video clip message and if you want you can sneak off to my vimeo page and see it.

Some ducks and swans came to visit:

We were hoping to rent a motorbike for the weekend, or half of the weekend, but it was a first come first served basis and when we got to the BMW motorbike shop the bike André wanted was already taken. Another time then...

With our friends getting married yesterday it gave us more reason to go out for dinner. A while back when we were in Schaffhausen we had this great curry at a restaurant there called Lemongrass. It was so good that André decided last night that's where we're going for dinner! It's 53km (45min) drive from our home but it was so worth the drive! We had really good curry and for dessert we had apricot sorbet with Cointreau over it. Mmmm... We only got back just before midnight, our first late night out here!

Weddings...

Hi there my dear friends and family!

Hope you're all doing well? I was browsing around on the internet as I do most days and thought I'd look up our wedding photographer. I just love looking at wedding pictures... A while back he mailed us and asked if we would write up a short piece about him, our photo's and so on for his new website. So if, like me you have times when you've seen all you can on facebook and whatever else you do on the internet (like read my blog of course ;-) then go take a look at this: http://www.rcphoto.za.net/default.asp

To Meghan, Angela, Pieter, Simone and Juan: There's a picture of you too on his website!!! Click on portfolio, then Reception, it's picture number 30. There's another picture of me and Andre doing our wedding dance and one of us when you click on 'Couples'.

You can also see some of our wedding pics under Recent Weddings (if you haven't already seen enough after the 100's I posted on facebook! ;-)

Have a fabulous day! Miss you all lots.

Anneliese

xx

Into the Wilderness

Before I can write about something else I better finish the honeymoon story now. We went to Wilderness after our January wedding for a few really relaxing days. It's so beautiful there. So green. We stayed at a lovely guest house called Slanting Acres. I can recommend the honeymoon suite with a jacuzzi in the bedroom. The guest house is up on a hill with a view over the ocean.

The highlight of our stay at Wilderness was canoeing on the Touw

River. We rented a canoe for 5 hours.

After about 30 min rowing

we left the canoe on a little beach and walked 40 min along a

stunning walkway through the trees to a waterfall. Then also

went down the Serpentine River where we saw 13 Malachite

Kingfishers. Andre got some great photo's there, I'll get one

from him later to add. We enjoyed it so much that on the day

we had to leave we went for another trip down the Serpentine

for some more photo's.

On our way home from Wilderness we stopped at Andre's dad's farm

near Abertinia for a few days. Always great to be on the farm.

.

'Honeymoon' number two

Soon after getting married in August, my mom felt I should experience England before deciding to make it my new home. So off Andre and I went for a week in the UK. Some very generous friends offered to share their home with us. Andre did his best to show off this country he likes so much. He started with London where I think we spent two whole days walking. I don't mind walking and enjoyed seeing so much of the city. I saw some interesting (read weird or strange) people including a rather rude English lady on my first train ride. Andre assured me English people aren't all like this but I soon decided the city is not for me. I did enjoy the shops and walking around. I guess it could be nice for maybe a once a month or so outing.

My impression of England changed for the better when Andre rented a car for us and drove me to Bath. Wow! What a beautiful place. You should definitely go there if you haven't been yet. I loved it! Such an old little town. I don't know how to describe it and the pictures don't really show just how beautiful it is either. Here are some pictures of Bath anyway. Oh we had such a great time there!

There were some other things I liked about England too:

1. To Andre's surprise, I really quite liked the pubs and the food they served. Although this was only for holiday eating. If I were to live there I could not eat like that on a regular basis.
   
2. I like that when it's cold outside it's nice and warm inside. We don't have that luxury in Africa. You just wear your down jacket inside too if you're cold.
3. I liked watching those men dressed in red in front of... um, hold on I need to check with Andre what it was called. Oh yes, Buckingham Palace, that's where they were. They stood so still. I was wondering, you know when you have to stand in one spot how sore your feet get? Do they also feel that? The one guy started marching up and down, up and down and carried on until Andre said we really can't watch any longer, we need to go. Perhaps that guy had that problem. It's like your feet get all burny from standing in one spot. And I was wondering, do they get to listen to their iPod? Or what do they think about all day standing there? Anyway.
4. Then the best thing about England is the friends we have there. On our way to Bath we went to visit one such friend. Here she is. We had another great pub lunch.

I had a great holiday. Andre also showed me where he used to live and that looked much better. A really nice little town quite a bit out of London. I could live there, as long as I don't have to go in to the city too often.

Honeymoons and honeystars

So Andre and I recently got married again, just to be sure. But more importantly to share it the second time round with our friends and family and to have a great party of course.

Now getting married so often naturally means you need a honeymoon each time too. Wedding and honeymoon just go together. So the first time we got married was 30 August 2008 (surprise surprise for those who still didn't know!! ;-) With it being such a very small ceremony we had a very small honeymoon to go with it. We had a lovely night out at a lodge just outside the town of McGreggor. It didn't start out so lovely though...

It was a rainy day, which was actually good since they say rain on your wedding day means good luck. Anyway, the rain wasn't that bad. On our way there Andre's poor bakkie (he'll call it more than just a bakkie) got properly sandblasted. The wind was so strong and it was like driving through a sand storm. So we get to the lodge, struggle against the wind, to hear the manager explain to us that unfortunately due to the storm the power is out. And also due to the strong wind we can't make a fire in our cosy romantic fireplace in our cosy romantic cottage because these cosy romantic cottages all have thatch roofing! And that's not all, he then continued to tell us that due to the power being out their restaurant with their famous chef who was supposed to make us a delicious romantic dinner will not be open.

So there we sat in the half dark cold cottage. We took a drive to the town. But usually when there is such a storm outside, everyone stays inside their houses so the town was deserted! After walking around a bit in the drizzling rain and buying a beanie for the cold we went back ready to pack up and go back home.

After praying all the way back to the lodge, we got back and the power was back on! We got to have a fantastic multi course meal from the above mentioned chef. And in between courses we got to sit in front of a huge fire, defrosting and sipping our red wine. AND then we even go to make our own fire in our own cottage after dinner!

And that is where this story will end for now... I'll try to add a picture and next time I'll tell you about our second honeymoon (there were three!)

xx