Finally our holidays have arrived. Don’t know if they are well deserved, but whether they are or not, they are here and we’ll make the most of them. Initially we wanted to go to Shetland over the holidays but some insiders told us that Shetland in April may not be the best choice. So we decided to stay in Orkney. To people from the South, this logic is probably beyond comprehension. Orkney, Shetland, it’s all the same! It seems I am from the South, too, because in hindsight I have to say, if you’re brave enough to enjoy winter in Orkney, an April in Shetland wouldn’t have killed anyone. Anyway, we still decided to go North, if not quite as far as Shetland, but we’ll be spending a few days on North Ronaldsay, Stronsay, Sanday and Eday. To balance it out, we decided to go South, too, so we went ahead and booked two days on Hoy. So plenty of adventures coming our way and there will probably be plenty of blogs in the next two weeks.

After the holidays the visitors (mostly from Switzerland) will start coming in. We’ll be playing hosts to 21 visitors on about 45 days starting at Easter. Actually Orkney will be playing host because none of our visitors will be staying with us permanently. One reason for it being the quite small house we’re living in, the other to keep some independence and a little bit of our everyday Orkney lives. But of course we’re very much looking forward to showing them all around our favourite sites in Orkney and also to do some accompanied island hopping. We’ve already booked Westray, but Rousay and Shapinsay are certainly also on the agenda as well as Hoy again and hopefully Copinsay.

Our children are starting to pick up a bit of an Orkney accent and we can certainly hear more and more of the Orkney sing-song, even sometimes when they speak German. One thing that has started to stick out the most is the pronounciation of the ‘i’ (like in ‘wind’), which in German I would say sounds like a mixture between an ‘ä’ and an ‘e’. Also, Maleah came home the other day, telling us about the ‘troots’ they saw in school. It took me a while to find out she was talking about ‘trouts’.

Natalie and the children are at the last craft club right now. There is a big buffet at the end and kids certainly didn’t want to miss that. A lot of indoor activities stop here after spring because why would you want to spend your time inside when it’s light outside for most of the night!

Fill out the form below to add your own comments.

Your Name:

Email:

URL:

Remember me:

Insert Special:
--[strong]xxx[/strong][b]xxx[/b][em]xxx[/em][i]xxx[/i]

Comment:


Anti-Spam: Enter