Dear friends,
Another year has passed so it's time for us to send you a greeting. We hope
that you have all had a very nice christmas and will have a good new year - 2003.
2002 has been year that has brought many changes to us.
In February Per started to work for the EU-Commission in Bruxelles. During
the first half year he lived alone in a flat in Bruxelles during the week and
then came back to Denmark in the weekends. It was a time with a lot of work
for Susanne - taking care of the 3 children and going to work - and it was a
lonesome time for Per being all alone in Bruxelles.
Per works in DG AGRI where he is supposed to develop an Action Plan for
organic farming in Europe. The plan should analyse different aspects relating
to organic farming like the standards, marketing, inspection, support
programmes, research, trade etc. A first draft will be put at the Internet later
this month for a public consultation. It will give him a lot of linguistic
training to read the comments from farmers and consumers from all over Europe.
In August the rest of the family moved to Bruxelles. We rented a house 7 km
from the centre and 1 km from the European School, which the children attend.
- In Denmark Per would get home from work around 5 pm. Here he comes
home around 7 pm. - In Denmark Susanne was working. Here she's staying at home not
knowing what to do the whole day. - In Denmark the children would go to school until noon or 2 pm, then go
home and do some homework or play with their friends, attend sports,
scouts, music-classes etc. Here they go to school until 4 pm. They have
to be picked up by their mother, they don't attend sports, scouts,
music-classes etc. and their friends live so far from us that they can't
play with them during the week.
Especially Susanne has had a hard time to get used to that big amount of free
time but she has now started to do some voluntary work for Max Havelaar
Belgium. Furthermore we have had and will still have a lot of friends and
family to come and visit us and drink Belgian beer and eat the wafers.
Another nice thing about going to Belgium is that we have come to talk to
old IAAS acquaintances that we haven't seen for long, like Alexander and
Susanne Döring, Caroline Heylen and Werner and we may find more...
In May we went to Norway for the wedding of Ana (Soveral Dias) and Ivar.
The wedding took place in a small village about 500 km north west of Oslo.
It was a wonderful wedding on beautiful sunny spring days (snow at the top
of the mountains and blooming fruit trees everywhere). The party lasted for
three days - or at least all the guests stayed for three days. Our children found
that Norway is the most beautiful country they have seen.
Well, time passes, and this year we both turned 40. At Susanne's birthday the
party was only for women. Per and René were cooking while the children
served the very good food. Per's birthday was celebrated in Bruxelles with
Per's and Susanne's family. For 3 nights we were 22 persons sleeping in our
house here.