28 December 2003 Safely home again I take some pictures of Maxi's goofy cat. Next to Pepper are Maxi's birthday flowers - one for each year. Pepper really liked this paper bag for some reason. She liked to sit inside it constantly. Don't bother buying expensive toys - that's the lesson here. See? Pepper REALLY likes this bag. And she'd even play with it like it was alive or something, right before crawling inside to hide out. I am not sure what Pepper is trying to do here. 31 December 2003 Ok. Now it's New Year's Eve and we're returning to Holland so we don't miss the fireworks. For all you North Americans out there, this is Autobahn. People from Canada and the US tend to think that the Autobahn is this magical race-car track type of road that you can drive as fast as you want to on. Yes, you can drive as fast as you want, but they are just highways, the same as any other highways. And if you ask me it doesn't really matter whether or not there are speed limits since the people that go 200 on the Autobahn are going to drive 200 on freeways with speed limits as well. Stupid idiots are stupid idiots regardless of what the speed laws might be. And it's not like you get onto the Autobahn and suddenly you're surrounded by Ferraris going 250 km/h. People just drive their normal speeds. In fact, from my limited European driving experience it seems to me that in general people go excessively fast MORE in Holland than they do in Germany. But maybe that's just me. At any rate... it's just the road. But what IS interesting is how the Germans spell "Arnhem" - "Arnheim". Hee hee. It's been almost a decade since the borders came down in Europe, but the signs are still up (albeit with black marks crossing out the bit about having currency changing stations). One more tenth of a second and we're in The Netherlands! Ahhhh. The proper spelling of Arnhem. And The Hague is just over an hour away! Yay! Maxi! You'd better stop driving at 300 km/h now because there are speed limits here! 01 January 2004 And the final photos of this instalment are the first photos of 2004. After surviving the Dutch New Year (unlike a couple of other unfortunate souls who got blown up) we are greeted with a lovely snowfall on the first of January. This is the view out of my front window. Looking out my back window reveals a peaceful morning scene. And with this the photos of my Christmas vacation 2003 come to an end. I hope it was enjoyable.