S W E E T O B S E S S I O N S

Lizzie has sent me ( and SOB) a postcard from Scotland.

She says, and I quote..

Great food, great people, great music and great landscapes!

Love & hugs

Lizzie

Awww, glad to hear she's having a good time.

awww yay!! send her our love!

Good to hear she's having fun.

And fun I had! I'll tell you more about it later if there's any interest but I'm now too tired to be bothered with details. My apologies that I didn't send everyone a personal card but that would've cost me a lot of money. Anyway, I came back with new experiences (new foods, driving on the left hand side...) and about 1017 pictures! It'll be quite a job to sort through them all but several will still be deleted anyway.

Love and hugs,
Lizzie

Welcome back Lizzie, glad you had a good time.

Glad to have you back Lizzie!!

Thanks, darlings. It's great to be back! Mind you, I'm going back during the first weekend of september to visit the Braemar Gathering again. LOL!

I did get a bit of an odd e-mail from my hostess though which I think was originated from several misunderstandings while I stayed at her place. Annoyed husbands, money and uncomfortable situations can cause that I guess. Ah well. Never mind.

Lizzie *hugs*

Lady_Voldemort wrote:I did get a bit of an odd e-mail from my hostess though which I think was originated from several misunderstandings while I stayed at her place. Annoyed husbands, money and uncomfortable situations can cause that I guess. Ah well. Never mind.

Lizzie *hugs*

That sounds very intriguing...tell us more!!

LOL! Well, the husband of my hostess was around quite a lot. Not that it bothered me but compared to other situations, a bit unusual. When I stayed with some of you, hubbies were about but usually didn't interfere too much. Which I didn't mind and didn't find too abnormal either. This one did constantly try to talk to me and sometimes asked me those impossible questions such as 'how's the economy in Belgium'.... To tell you the truth, I can't be arsed as long as I get my pay on time.

Then we went out a few times to see several historical interesting buildings but mostly at a stroll instead of a normal pace. You'll all know that I'm more the active kind of tourist who's eager to see as much as humanly possible and then some. We did spent some time in a pub or a coffee house on their suggestions. Here comes one of the problems. The husband casually asked me what I wanted to drink and then paid for the entire lot. On other moments we went out to coffee houses, he also paid everything and even for the entrance of a castle we visited. I found this rather uncomfortable as I'm more used to paying my own entrance fee or drink. In return, neither of them ever told me how much my share of the costs were.

Anyway, apparently the husband is now annoyed by the fact that I didn't offer a refund or to pay at one of the lunch moments. Quite hard to do when you're out on the loo and the man has already paid everything, right? He found me ungrateful as well. Now, I did get this mail a day after my return home so before I had even gotten the chance to e-mail the woman and thank them once more for allowing me to stay and so on and so forth. Do keep in mind that I have taken along a bottle of alcohol and several candy they like but can't be bought in the UK or for a large amount of money. All of that is worth about 25 pounds as well but no word about any of that is mentioned in a mail.

A bit of psychological background here. She keeps her husband a bit in the dark towards her internet connections. That's a choice everybody makes but apart from his name and a small amount of his professional background, I knew absolutely nothing about him and didn't know what he looked like. I don't feel very comfortable around men that I don't know at all and it takes me a while to adjust to strangers and if such a man is then constantly around, it's quite unnerving for me. Things were different with Sue's Phyllis for example. He was around to bring coffee/tea and cakes but disappeared out of the picture most of the time. The times I was around Sue's place, the other Surrey Sobbers were around too so I was quite at ease in general anyway. Just trying to form a bit of an image of how I felt.

Several of you have had me as a guest and it would be nice to know how you experienced me. Otherwise, it'd be better if I'd never accept an invitation to sleep over again and just go to a hotel. Well, that was quite a surprise to find in my mailbox yesterday when I turned the computer on for a bit. Now I hope I've never annoyed or insulted any of you or your husbands...

Lizzie... scared to visit now.

Lizzie you have always been the perfect houseguest. Don't let it bother you, I would imagine it's a cultural thing? In England and I would think Scotland too, it's the norm to buy 'rounds'... you pay for someone's drink, then they pay for yours etc etc.. but unless you're told how would you know? Besides it sounds like he didn't ever give the opportunity to pay for anything..? How awkward to have to come back to that. :x

As for the holiday, can't wait to hear all about it!

Lady_Voldemort wrote:LOL! Well, the husband of my hostess was around quite a lot. Not that it bothered me but compared to other situations, a bit unusual. When I stayed with some of you, hubbies were about but usually didn't interfere too much. Which I didn't mind and didn't find too abnormal either. This one did constantly try to talk to me and sometimes asked me those impossible questions such as 'how's the economy in Belgium'.... To tell you the truth, I can't be arsed as long as I get my pay on time.

I imagine he was just trying to making you feel welcome, and maybe didn't realise how uncomfortable you felt. Maybe he felt it would be rude to just disappear and keep out of the way, some people have different ways of looking at things

Lady_Voldemort wrote:I found this rather uncomfortable as I'm more used to paying my own entrance fee or drink. In return, neither of them ever told me how much my share of the costs were.

Perhaps they were too polite to say how much it was and were waiting for you to ask...... it sounds like there may have been a bit of cultural difference and this has led to them interpreting your actions as being ungrateful. Perhaps you could email back and explain it from your point of view and perhaps that would resolve the situation.
It would be a shame to lose a friendship over a few misinterpretations

Well, I did send her a reply mail but I haven't heard anything since. Well, we'll see how things end.

Thanks for your reactions, I appreciate it.

Lizzie