When Hayden’s parrain JT flew over from NYC, we took him to the quirky towns of Dutch Baarle-Nassau and Belgian Baarle-Haartog, all tangled up within each other like a jigsaw puzzle. Located across the Dutch border, twenty Belgian exclaves can be found here, with seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. This meant that Hayden could stand with one foot in the Netherlands and one foot in Belgium:

There is a “front door rule” that means that the position of the front door determines whether a house is classified as being in Belgium or the Netherlands. The nationality of the home is also indicated by a flag next to the house number. We visited the house in which the border goes straight through the middle of the door, and thus has two addresses (and two doorbells):

Loveren 2
2387 Baarle-Hertog
Belgium

and

Loveren 19
5111 Baarle-Nassau
The Netherlands

There was even a divisive border across my lunch, separating the savoury cheese and potato pancake from the sweet cherry crepe. I ate each in isolation and they were delicious.

Plus, JT hand-delivered to us a delicious Black & White cookie, all the way from New York City. Hayden is still too little, so I ate it for him.

Our friends Luke and Shyla took us to see the Guy Fawkes fireworks during our trip to England last weekend. It’s been years since I’ve seen fireworks up close enough to hear the music and enjoy the atmosphere of being surrounded by a crowd of other people enjoying the display. We were also delighted to see how much Hayden also loved watching the explosions. I was a little worried that the sounds would be too loud for him, and he did often jump, but he spent most of the time with his little eyes wide open in amazement. Eventually his dummy fell out of his mouth and he waved his arms around as if to say “this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen”. He was entranced the whole time, sometimes gurgling along with the music, other times simply silent with wonder. I loved watching his smiling little face. I think that this is the first event that we have both enjoyed together at a similar level – the pretty colours and spectacular lights. A super fun night for everyone.

This week Hayden visited his fourth country when we accompanied Adrian to a conference in The Netherlands. Less than two hours on the train took us from Brussels to Amsterdam. The hotel gave us a free upgrade to a bigger room to fit the cot, and we had a lovely view over the main square.

While Adrian and his students presented their work to an international crowd, Hayden and I took long walks along the canals. The air was brisk but most days we had beautiful blue skies that were perfect for sightseeing. Once the talks had finished for the day we met up with Adrian and his colleagues to talk science over a few beers.

We had breakfast each morning in the elegant Winter Garden of the hotel – a huge glass-roofed room built in 1881 and filled with tropical ferns and a long buffet table filled with tempting treats. I started each day with poffertjes (tiny pancakes) with sour cherry sauce, and ended the day with poffertjes with maple syrup.

In between pancakes we managed to do some shoe shopping, as well as visiting the Wetheimpark and the Resistance Museum. A lovely way to mark the end of my maternity leave and squeeze in one more mini break before I go back to work next week.

Thanks to Grant for taking the photo.