the beauty of moving...ahhhh

Unbelievable but true, the shipment with all our things from Amsterdam has still not arrived. We packed everything mid June and took only summer clothes to Monaco. After all we were expecting to stay there till Sep/Oct, so we weren't in need of warm things. Obviously the containers are not at sea all this time. They were supposed to wait in Rotterdam harbour for our cue that we were leaving Monaco. When we finally knew the move date, we could not get in touch with any competent people from the freight company.
Once on the island we ultimately found out that, they currently don't have sufficient cargo to send a full ship from NL to SXM, and ours being only 17m3 couldn't be shipped alone. So our things will get shipped to Guadeloupe instead (hahah...) from where supposedly there are more frequent shipments to St. Martin. We heard this 3 weeks ago. I guess not that frequent after all.

Furthermore, while we were camping at the Charles de Gaulle airport, switching our flights, we had to make adjustments in terms of baggage and the different regulations of American carriers. There, instead of weight, units count. With our 13 pieces we were bound to pay 2 big fines (Paris-Miami and Miami-SXM), as our flight was with a 1 night stopover in Miami.
Therefore, thanks to a La Poste located conveniently at the airport, 9 of our suitcases we sent with regular post. This was 29.11; and our suitcases still have not arrived.
These 2 would not be a big issue; we don't need many garments down here for one, and living in a hotel room, the less suitcases you can trip over in the 16m2 the better. But we are going home for Christmas, were it is significantly colder. My personal favourite, is the temperature Warsaw will reach on the 12th of December:) a whole 45 degrees less than here.

The dark side of the moon... Philipsburg Marina St. Maarten

St. Maarten has the peculiarity of combining the typical Caribbean images of the a beach party, of happy people dancing around a bbq while sipping ice cold drinks, and the total lack of care for the same Caribbean landscape. The peculiarity is the 2 things are combined, seemingly intertwined at the very same time, in the very same place. Like if it were normal that the 2 sides of the moon could show themselves at the same time, by explaining each other.
So on the very boardwalk, as the street along the sea is called, while an fund raising beach party is going on - fund raising from a Saving the Sea association - broken bottles and sun faded cans - not too mention old engines, pneumatics and plastic stuff - lay on the ground 10 mt away. With a roaster happily seeking for food in all this mess!



Saba from our window


this is Saba last night, around 18h.









the next 3 show Saba today at 6 in the morning




























and this is Saba around 9

house hunt is not going



maybe it's difficult to believe, a house with this view (it's smudged because of the mosquito net) was actually not perfect...
although I guess you agree the view is




this one, even though it had a banana tree in the garden...also wasn't it..

emotions


Perhaps the hardest part of arriving to a new place is realising you don’t like it. I don’t want to say this is the case with me and SXM. But as anyone who has moved around knows, when you move, you go through all phases of love and hate with your new ‘home’, you compare it with all other places you know, you love and praise it for everything it has that others didn’t, and you degrade it horribly for lacking whatever you took for granted in the former places.
I guess 3 weeks (exactly today) into living on the island is an expected moment to fall into my negative sinusoidal part of relationship. It’s hard for me to complain already because I still haven’t written anything good here…and don’t want to start of on a negative. So as therapy to myself I’ll write about both, what drives me mad and what is quite OK about the island.
I just remembered what Olivia and Nick once said about Barcelona, which could actually help me deal my current feelings; they said Barcelona doesn’t suck
:) maybe that’s how I should approach SXM…

So what I find fantastic is:

  1. being dressed 60 seconds after I shower, don’t need to towel-dry
  2. my feet are the happiest for wearing flip-flops 24/7
  3. I never have to make time for washing my hair…blow driers totally unnecessary
  4. it’s daylight at 6 in the morning…so I never have to wake/get up when it’s dark
  5. the island is duty-free, often with $1= €1
  6. the supermarkets are full of American, Dutch and French products so pindakaas, hoemoes, president milk, koolaid all are found under 1 rooftop
  7. lush green hills that make me think this is what Ireland must be like on a sunny day
  8. horses, goats, sheep roaming happily on these hills
  9. swimming in the sea all year round
  10. butterflies everywhere, in all colour









If I were to do SXM from scratch I’d

  1. make music other than Caribbean compulsory on the radio
  2. disallow religious invasion and occupation of all radio programmes, sticking preaching stickers on cars, etc.
  3. fine the authorities for allowing spontaneous garbage dumps, ca. every 25 metres
  4. remove onion soup and caesar salad from 50% of restaurant menus (trust me I love both dishes…but why does EVERYONE serve it…? and how can you enjoy greasy and spicy onion soups in this heat?)
  5. have them install extractors in all kitchens…I really don’t like knowing what everyone is frying…and they fry as early as 6 am…
  6. introduce smiling courses in schools…no one of the locals smiles
  7. do something about the stray dogs everywhere, as well as the very unclean pigs, and noisy roosters…
  8. build more roads+side walks, introduce a proper public transport infrastructure and get rid of the current you-have-to-drive-wherever-you-need-to-go









In addition to all of this, I am under the constant feeling that the XIX and XXI centuries cross paths at all time. On one hand side everyone drives brand new SUVs (surprisingly for my understanding of the island’s GDP and average income), but then the roads and houses often look like they were built 90 years ago and never repaired.
Plus the, otherwise contradicting, French and American cultures both exercise here an extremely strong influence. I don’t know where else on the planet you can find so many French license plates on Chryslers. Here the two cultures seem to be fighting for dominance, yet in away they almost manage to merge…as heretical as that sounds;) ….their influence is just as strong on the island’s gastronomy.
There are contrasts everywhere you look and they’re hard to get accustomed to. The most obvious ones are of course the rags and riches. We have never seen so many Hummers, as here, but when you see a rooster and/or a goat strolling in front of them, there’s a sense of dissonance difficult to shake. The diamond shops right next to falling apart huts (yes, huts, they may be more sophisticated that the ones on Lost, but they are still far away from houses/buildings),…These jewellery shops are just meters away from shops were locals buy, which are just difficult to describe with words, in general, they look like badly lit warehouses; even tiendas de Chinos looked classier in Spain. Lastly, all the locals eating at the plentiful KFCs, McDonalds, Burger Kings…you can see these places at their tops even at 22h! families with small kids…really hurts to observe. While the foreigners of the cruise boats, (on average 3 daily) dine and spend like locos…


So for a few days I was unable to write, because of all these emotions. I was waiting for them to cool, and to come back fresh and happy to write about something optimistic.
Today is Thanksgiving, and although neither to the Polish nor to the Italian culture, this holiday means anything; our hotel is under siege of American tourists who are celebrating tonight at our hotel’s restaurant. They lifted my spirits in a way, arriving cheery and dressed up, ready for a big festivity, often as big families:)
We’re also about to go down and have our dinner, right next to all these happy people…see how they celebrate it, in the tropics:)

this blog was supposed to be about the island...

...and I keep talking about other places...
the island is more difficult than we thought...
and today I just don't feel like writing anything positive...

the unexpected Paris holiday



As you imagine, we left Nice wearing summer clothes..after all we were supposed to land in SXM at hottest time of the day, 14.oo.
Paris was of course C O L D, but I must say sunny and beautiful. Autumn, my favourite season (which I was so worried I would not get to see this year) is a great time to visit this city. Thank you AF once more!
So Sunday morning, we open all of our 13 pieces of luggage in frantic search for winter gear...and hit the town!:)

More pics from Paris
Fili has not uploaded all yet...

Our trip interrupted by AF strike



We were scheduled to fly on the 26.10, but Fili had a meeting so we changed the flight to Saturday 27th. (btw, that meeting was cancelled at last moment).
We had a very early flight from Nice: there's only 1 flight Paris-SXM a day and it's at 10am:( We had 13 pieces of luggage! and an 80 or 90 kg limit (European airline, so limits per weight rather than units of luggage.)


We arrive at airport ON time:) it's the pre-All Saints w-end, so althought it's 4am...the airport is packed. We find out our total weight is 200kg! ohmi... Our boarding pass won't be given until we pay the fine. Can't pay it at checkin, must go to a long queue were angry French people are already screaming at the Airport employees. We know it's the days AF was supposed to strike...but the flight agency confirmed to us our Paris-SXM is operated, so we're tranquil. We were more concerned about the Nice-Paris, as this one was not confirmed.
We get 2 surprises: we are told excess weight is not being charged that day:)!, and we do get boarding passes to Paris. Yet the ladydog at the checkin
won't give us passes to SXM. Says she can't access info whether Paris-SXM will fly and we must pick up our luggage in Paris, check there whether the flight goes, or not. We are advised to stay...but since she does not say for sure it's cancelled, we fly.
We arrive to a very angry Paris; even more tourists, more yelling, chaos. Our flight is of course: cancelled. After a few hours of useless queues and attempts at trying to figure out where to go, to get any info at all, we give up. We move our 2 overpacked trollies towards the hotel (thank God for hotels built indoors of airports). We're told they're full. We know they are not, Fili's dad phoned and was told there are rooms. So they have no choice but to give us one. We get a beautiful Paris view of the Charles de Gaulle runway....hahaha, it was actually fun to watch. We go discovering the 'neighbourhood' bistros. There are really plenty of places you can eat at without stepping a foot outside the airport. On the way back from lunch we pass another queue where we see many familiar faces.. There are babies crying, we here complaints of people who say they've been stuck there a few days. Yet now that we've been through our share of the ordeal, we get wise, calmly ask a lady if maybe there's a special business class queue. I feel bad for all the pregnant and nursing women behind our back as we make it to the counter in less than 3 minutes.
It is here that we discover what the strike is all about; cabin crew gets to decide whether they fly or not, and they announce it when they please. So this is why all flights remain scheduled, and become cancelled usually only at last minute. We are told we can not be booked on any flights within the following 6 days; there are long waiting lists on all. Moreover, there is no certainty they will actually take off. AF and KLM are the only direct flights to the island. Although we could try getting a train to Ams to fly from there, it's unthinkable with our amount of bags. We rebook to americanAirlines. It's not direct but it's relatively the earliest flight, without waiting lists, and without the risk of the cabin crew striking. Earliest means 4 days later. We get a paper to claim back from AF costs born due to our flight's cancellation.

We realise we'll have an unexpected Paris holiday (perhaps free of charge). We still don't know, paper sent, but no reply yet:)
We went back to the runway view hotel room....and slept till midnight. It did us good, started preparingfor the come in 4 days jet-lag.

about Cap d'Ail





I want to also say a few things about Cap d'Ail...
If any one ever gets to go, a MUST is Plage Mala, and its 2 restaurants, Eden and La Reserve (open only July and August though).
here's a sneak...plus the view we had from our window in Cap d'Ail:)

our trip to the island begun 5 months AGO!!!

After many hassles, uncertainties and delays, we finally made it to the island of St. Martin, our new 'home'.

As many of you know, we did not know our exact move date till late September, and living out of a suitcase, even if in beautiful Monaco, was becoming painful. Hardest was the not knowing, when we need to pack, what we still have time for and what not, how many more visits home we could squeeze in and which would be the final see you later with family and friends.

Monaco and Cap d'Ail (the actual town our temporary apt was in) were fantastic. I wish there was a way of sharing smells over internet, because that was what I most loved about the south of France... it's indescribable for an amature blogger...so I won't even try. But I can share the zykzykzyk...
The views were spectacular. The blue of Costa Azul (and of the sky!), and the sandy grey of the mountains that literally reached the beaches. Plus the very green and all the shades of pink from the endless bougainvillea and oleanders.
I still remember my first impressions when we were approaching the coast, the first glimpse of the sea...and just 24 hours earlier we had left a very typical Amsterdam June day...partly cloudy...cold...rain hanging in the air...It seemed like a different planet. Below are some pics of our arriving to Monaco. This was, wow the27th of June!


















as you can see, there
were clouds the day we arrived! but they were so different then the ones we left behind in NL...:)









And just for the record, Amsterdam was not only bad. Now after a while of being away we can look
back more calmly and I think most of the sorrow is gone. Everyone knows what made our stay most difficult was the job situation. Both for me and Fili the great opportunities NL was supposed to offer...did not turn up. This was not only hard on our professional egos...which both of us have extremely high..; most of all this turned the whole NLexperience into a disillusion. We had so much hope for that move. We really believed leaving Spain for the Netherlands was going to open so many doors for us, which we felt were either closed, non-existent, or reserved for the Catalans in Barcelona. So it was double painful to learn that the great life we had given up in Spain (great friends, weather, prices, lifestyle) were all sacrificed for no reason...as the one thing we thought NL was better at than Spain (i.e. career opportunities), NL was not better at at all:( or at least not in our particular case.
What we obviously miss the most from Amsterdam, are the people we met there:) Thanks to all of you guys the 2 years there were not only bearable, but fun:) Towards the end of our stay we really felt we had finally gained back a social life! hahah! We hope you are all doing well in the lowlands, thankGod for facebook &co., I feel like we're much more in touch, and I can still peak into your lives:)