Preparing to Leave

It's Wednesday.  We leave on Saturday.  Seth stays behind for another month, which means I'm leaving two parts of my soul behind.  Granted, a month is hardly enough time to put down roots, but it is enough time to test the soil, and I think I like it.  When we first started planning this trip, a month seemed like an extravagantly long time.  Now I'd like to stay a year or maybe even two.   I'd like to see the canals freeze over and maybe learn to ice skate.  I wouldn't mind brushing up on my cycling skills or learning the language by immersion (because I made almost no progress with my cds).  I'm going to miss the omnipresent brick buildings and the casual use of old world architecture, the flaky pastries and the tiny grocery stores. 

For the last week, we've been splurging a little.  I go shopping almost every day to make sure that I haven't forgotten anything that I "need" to take home.  I have new slippers, a couple of new sweaters, and a new pair of (gasp) skinny jeans.  We've gotten a few  souvenirs from every city we've been to and a small gift from each of the relatives.  I'm beginning to wonder how all of our stuff is going to make it home with us.  Seth says we can ship it, but that seems like cheating somehow. 

  We've also been splurging in the dietary department.  Every time either Seth or I go to the grocery store, it seems like we come home with yet another Dutch desert that we have to try.  We haven't found much in the way of uniquely Dutch food, at least not things that we don't find back home.  If anything, it seems that the Dutch love to eat out, as in food from somewhere else.  We find it's the little touches that make the simple food "Dutch," the most common touch being the incorporation of something from somewhere else.  Ham and cheese on foccia bread.  Goat cheese with honey and pine nuts sandwich.  Tomato soup with sausage, vegetables and noodles. Hamburgers without the bun.   But the deserts, the pastries in particular, are very Dutch.  At least I think they are.  They're like the treats on Beppe's coffee table but moreso. 

We're not sure what makes the deserts different, but they are somehow.  We stopped at a gas station and got some doughnuts, just some basic sugar-sprinkled doughnuts, Sunday morning (while we were getting lost), and we were shocked at how good they were.  "That was a really good doughnut," Seth said.  "Not just gas station good, but a really good doughnut."   And the ice cream (ijs) is almost universally soft serve, even the flavored stuff that comes from the store. It's less work to eat and more work to resist.  I had vowed to try every kind in the freezer section, but I didn't have enough time.  We've been collecting fudge cakes, baked apple rum balls, stroop waffles, peppernuts, and spongey little chocolate dipped cakes called mergpijpjes, which I'm starting to think means "dog biscuits".  Our snack shelf is pretty full, and I have to go to the grocery store and brave temptation again today.  All we really need is bread and cereal, but I'm pretty sure I'll come home with something sugary, unhealthy, and probably waffley.  A lot of Dutch sweets seem to come in the form of waffles. 

Going to the grocery store is one of the reasons that I wish I had learned a little more Dutch.  The people who told me that "everyone speaks English over there" were right.  Nearly everyone does.  But that doesn't help when I'm trying to read the back of the baking mix or a yogurt bottle or a juice syrup (because concentrate comes in syrups out here).  It doesn't help me understand sales, contests, advertisements, or no shoplifting signs (not that the last has been a problem).  And in the meat department, where everything kind of looks alike and the only ones I can be sure of are chicken and sausage, and they don't actually write koe (cow) or varken (pig) on the package because it's not a cow, it's a roast, well, it all becomes one to me, and I end up just grabbing whatever looks interesting.  Call it instinctive cooking. 

The same principle applies to street signs, advertisements, billboards, and the like.  I didn't realize until I came here how much of our general communication is done in writing.  Nothing makes me feel more like a tourist than walking down the street and being completely at a loss as to what I'm reading on random posters thrown up on an empty building or the sign in the shop window.  I get the gist of it simply because certain things always present themselves in certain ways. For instance, I know that korting means sale because it's always followed by a number and a percentage sign.  But the nuances that make people want to buy or reveal the social attitude toward the subject are missing.  There's one street sign that's been confuddling Seth and I since I got here.  It says "100% BOB, 0% op," and it has a big gold medal as the O.  We don't get it.   

Some of the bigger advertisements are in English, but all the signs in the stores are Dutch, and all the conversations are in Dutch or in some other language (Moroccan is a distinct possibility.), so heading to a shopping center is a good way to get a feel for being in a foreign country.  All around me, I see life going on in all its familiar phases.  People doing everyday things in their everyday way crowd around me.  I can see the activity.  I can understand the activity.  I probably share a lot of the activity.  But I can't understand what they're saying about it.  It's an odd feeling to stand in the middle of a public place and realize that I can't eavesdrop even if I want to.  It does make me feel alone. 

But it is impossible to stay on the outside when one has family in the area.  The biggest highlight of our trip has been meeting Beppe's many brothers and sisters, seeing their homes, hearing their stories, meeting their families, and building a few connections with these wonderful friendly people.  They say that once the Dutch welcome you into their homes, you are welcome there for life, and I believe it.  Much thanks to Teimin and Tinneka for entertaining Boogaloo and I while Seth was at work, to Kees and Rie for opening their home and showing us around Friesland, and to Gerben and Sietske and Arjan and Geerte for Sunday food and fellowship.  Thanks to all for lots of family history, advice for the tourist in us, and lots more sweet things.  You made the old homeland feel like home for a little while.  We are grateful.  We hope to see you all again, and if you're ever west of the Rocky Mountains, look us up.  We'd be glad to return the favor.   

Tooling around the Netherlands



The valley of the River Maas and the modern city of Maastrict.  Where else could one see church spires and cooling towers in the same panorama? 

This is our (Boogaloo's and my own) last weekend in the Netherlands, so we resolved to catch up on some things that slipped through our figners.  We spent Saturday in the St. Pietersberg caves, which aren't actually caves.  Our tour guide Paul made that quite clear.  The caves were limestone mines dating back to the 1200s because Maastrict is part of a prehistoric ocean scene that gave birth to a huge limestone plateau stretching all the way from Germany to the white cliffs of Dover, UK.  The River Maas put a hole in one side of the plateau and the River Jager cut up the other side, making Mt. St. Pietersberg in the middle.  Then the Romans came up the river Maas and put a city there.  "So," as our guide told us, "when people tell you that Maastrict is hill country, they are wrong.  It is actually [river] valley country." 

Fort St. Pietersberg, named after the mountain from which it was carved.  The fort was built in the days of Napoleon. 

The limestone mines around Maastrict stretch all the way into Belgium.  They have been used to smuggle soldiers and refugees during war time and butter, bread and wine in peace time, but originally, they were the source of the primary building material of the area. 

A drawing of the miner at work.  It must have been lonely work,
 not to mention the dangers of cave ins, getting lost, and hypothermia.
And yet it was their daily bread and butter.  Boggles the mind, doesn't it.  

Limestone is too expensive now, but it used to be the building material of choice, shipping as far as Austria.  Miners quarried out two to three 1x3 foot blocks a day (per person), slowly carving their way in.  When they had cut out as much as they could safely cut (before incurring "a short headache which you will never get again," said our guide), they cut the next layer down. Finally, when the cost of limestone made it obsolete, a vast labyrinth of eight foot wide tunnels existed under the ground. 

The limestone they didn't dare cut away. 

A child's drawing on the walls of the mines. 

After the mines were closed, they became a kind of communal property where people would go to reflect or wander or smuggle (I'm sure you can come up with other purposes.)  Kids used to play down here and draw pictures on the walls.   Artists made charcoal drawings on the damp limestone, delicate masterpieces that will last for centuries as long as no one leans against them. 

A hundred -year-old charcoal drawing of the miners paying homage to the Virgin Mary.  The drawing references a statue that stands in the church of the Virgin in Maastrict. 

On Sunday, we had a date with another of Beppe's relatives.  We arranged to go down to Giessenburg and visit Gerben and Sietske Wijnja, Beppe's oldest brother and his wife.  We were invited to show up anytime after 11:00, so we set out at 10:30 and expected to arrive right after church.  What we didn't count on was the possibility of road construction.  Actually, what we didn't expect is that they would completely shut down a major highway on a weekend.  Three times, we were blocked at a freeway entrance and ended up wandering around the country waiting for TomTom to pick up  a new route to the next freeway entrance.  Then we just figured that we were going to have to find a new route altogether. 

That hour would have been a complete waste if we hadn't been driving through the Dutch countryside, where all the buildings sport sloping, barnstyle roofs over homey brick walls and cobbled sidewalks, where the grass is perpetually green and the cows are perpetually clean, where roads barely wide enough for a car and a bicycle are flanked on both sides with perfectly spaced trees and flooded with scores of cyclists in matching jerseys, forcing us to go slow enough to see the flowers in the windows and realize that, yes, those are yearling swans swimming in those canals.  The sad thing is I don't have any pictures to share with you because I was too busy gaping out the window and drinking it all in (and negotiating with the TomTom) to remember that I had a camera in my lap.  The pictures you see are from our Saturday trip. 

Looking afar from the top of Ft. St. Pietersberg.

 



Seth, Arian, Boogaloo, myself, Geertje, Sietske, and Gerben. 

We did eventually make it to Giessenburg, where we met most of the cousins and grandkids on their way out the door.  I guess we just took too long.  We spent a long and lovely afternoon, drinking coffee and looking at family photos, sharing jokes and hearing history from Gerben and Sietske, who are both in their eighties.  They asked us to stay for lunch.  We had wonderful Dutch soup (tomato with sausage and noodle -- who'd have thought of that combination in America?  I have never seen it before) and fluffy Dutch pastry and were showered with little Dutch coffee delicacies by Sietzke and her daughter Geertje. 



Boogaloo discovers Gerben and Seitske's motorized elevator
chair.  It was as good as a theme park to her. 

Gerben and Sietske's house was once the town school.  Seitske cleaned it. 
Then, when the school had outgrown the school, and the Wijnjas had
outgrown their apartment (9 kids will do that to you), the school board offered
them this house in exchange for their continued services.   

As we were leaving, Geertje suggested that we detour through Kinderdijk (which has nothing to do with children) and see the antique windmills which are still used to pump water and house people.  Note: if you visit the kinderdijk, you are expected to park in the pay parking and walk to the windmills.  The residents don't appreciate having their parking pilfered.  We didn't realize that we were pilfering parking until the museum director corrected us. 

The windmills of Kinderdijk, which are still in operation. 

On the way to Kinderdijk, we saw a sign for Dordrecht, and being Dordt grads, we just had to go there.  (Dordrecht is the city where the Dutch Reformed churches defined the doctrines that the national church would follow, back when there were national churches.)  We set up the TomTom to go to the historic city center and once again ran into road construction.  In addition, we also found narrow roads, rain clouds, and no parking, so we didn't actually get any pictures of historic downtown Dordrecht, but I did get a nice picture of the train station, just to prove that we were there. 

On the way home, we ran into yet more road construction (Seth is prepared to swear that the Dutch as a populace hate cars.), and had to make a detour through Tilburg and come into Eindhoven from the other side.  We made it home in time to have more soup before turning on the first football game of the day.  Because Sunday, where you are, is just starting. 

Amsterdam

Autumn has come to the Netherlands.  I was startled to see the leaves start falling last week already, and I  had to remind myself that the NL is several degrees farther north than the PNW.  The temperature has dropped to about 60 degrees farenheit, and all the locals have dug out their coats and swapped their frothy scarves for scarves that might actually keep their necks warm.  As Seth puts it, it's good football weather. 

 

I was going to stun all my readers with beautiful pictures of our Amsterdam journey last weekend, but it turns out that a bus window is not the best way to see a city.  We signed up for a bus and boat tour because it promised to show us the most of the city.  I don't think their ideas of important matched up so well with our ideas of important.  For instance, I got the shock of my life while we were driving through a red light district (apparently there are three) when I saw a young woman posing in a window.  At first I thought she was a manikin for a lingerie shop.  Then we made eye contact.  That will bring the reality of legalized prostitution home in a hurry.   And we really didn't need to know where the most expensive houses in Amsterdam are.  The tours are mostly designed to show you where the sights are.  They don't really give you a chance to see the sights. 

 

 

We spent two hours on the bus, took a break for lunch, and then spent an hour on the boat.  By that point, the Boo had had enough, so we stopped at a candy shop and called it a day.  So my advice if you want to tour a foreign city would be figure out where you want to go, figure out how to use the public transportation, and then go where you want to go.  You'll save money, and you'll go where you want to go.  That's what Seth plans to do once we've gone home and he doesn't have to worry about the attention span of a four-year-old.  Am I jealous?  Yeah, a little. 

 

Here are some of the pictures that I did get:

 

This is Amsterdam Centraal Station where we arrivd a little after 9 o'clock in the morning to begin our tour.  We were kind of confused by the clocks at first until we realized that the one on the left tells wind direction, which given the number of boats moving in and out of the square in front of the station makes perfect sense. 

The Shipping House, a.k.a. the House of a Thousand Windows, once guardian to Amsterdam's Old Harbor. 

Sculptures of Renaissance and Classical gentlemen.  I found it ironic that they are on the outside of the Museum of Modern Art. 

Point of interest: the buildings alongside the canals lean when air gets at their support posts.   

Old and picturesque defense tower.

The shortest canal in all of Amsterdam.  I love taking pictures of water.

This is how you get Rembrandt to take your picture.  The windmill in back is called "Rembrandt's Windmill" because he often went there for inspirtation. 

 

The Rijks Museum, national art museum of the Netherlands.

The Van Gogh Museum, which our tour guide called the "Van Gog" museum.  I thought Van Gogh was the Dutch pronunciation.  Maybe not.  This is one of those places that Seth will be coming back to.  I told him to get me a poster.

The N.E.M.O. or science and technology museum. 

The Tower at the Sharp Curve in the Wall which has somehow become The Weeping Tower over time.  The names in Dutch are very similar.  One devolved into the other.  Still, the name "Weeping Tower" sounds like it would have a story behind it, and it doesn't. 

The Royal Palace

Boogaloo tackles an enormous shoarma hamburger, and yes, she did finish the whole thing. 

Man against the Sea

On our way home from Friesland, we stopped at the one place that all our Dutch relatives said that we had to see: the Afsluitdijk (O-sloo-dike).  The Afsluitdijk is a large earthenwork dam that stretches from Friesland to North Holland across the Zuiderzee, the part of the North Sea that stretches into the Netherlands. 

 

 

Boogaloo and I stand on the walkway at the monument in the center. 
Behind us is the IJsselmeer and the flags of Friesland and North
Holland. 

It was plain to the Dutch even back in the early 1700s that some sort of dam was needed in the area of the Zuiderzee. The farmland was getting salty, and the tides were too much for the minor dikeworks already in place.  However, 20 miles of of earth and sluice gates takes a lot of money, and pumping out an ocean (essentially) takes modern technology like steam power.  The Afsluitdijk construction project officially began in 1920 after a huge flood proved even to Parliamentarians that measures had to be taken. 

 

The Afsluitdijk is constructed on a 90 m base of stones a lot like the ones you see in the picture below.  These stones were loaded into boats and carried to the site of the dike and then placed by hand over the course of the dike. 

 

Over the stones, the engineers put a special kind of clay called boulder clay and then rocks, sand, and earth.  The end result looks like this. 

 

 

I though the Afsliutdijk would be more technological with metal and hinges and lockes.  Apparently , I was thinking of the Delta Works (wikipedia entry) around Amsterdam which were built in the 1950s to regulate flooding and shipping. 

 

The Afsluitdijk is no less impressive in its own way.  It has four gates that systematically pump water out of the IJsselmeer into the North Sea at low tide every day. 

 

 

It's an uncanny feeling to stand on the top of the dike facing north and see the that water to your left is distinctly higher than the water to your right. It's also very hard to capture with a camera.  We made several valiant efforts, but this is the best we could do. 

 

 

 The IJsselmeer, which was once ocean, is now fresh water, a testament to Dutch dam building technique and the amount of rain the Netherlands gets each year.  It's also a bit mind boggling.  This is definitely man-made environmental change, but it seems to have worked out for all concerned.  Boo was fascinated by the water, and we had to watch her pretty constantly to keep her out of the foam.  If you look at the jetty she's running on, you can see the foundation stones of the dike. 

 

If you get the Afsluitdijk, there is a monument to the hard work and ingenuity of the Dutch people in the middle of it.  You can climb to the top of the monument and look out at the Waddenzee and the IJsselmeer.  Then you can stop at the gift shop on the first floor on your way to the coffee shop in the basement.  Really, at this point on the dike, coffee is probably a good idea.  It's cold out there. 

Add caption

Seth on top of a minor dike on the Waddenzee side of the Afslluitdijk. 

Sources beyond my observations:
Deltaworken Online.  2004.  The Stitchting Deltaworken Online. 
www.deltaworken.com

Aflsuitdijk.  Wikipedia. Accessed 9/17/2012. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk
 

 

How we spend our time

We are not finding Eindhoven as family-friendly as Almelo, at least not the area we are living in.  If we were inclined to shop, then there would be plenty to do.  Seth hazards the hypothesis that since buying a nice car or building a nice house is not so much a priority in the Netherlands, more money goes into discretionary spending like clothing and gadgetry, and boy, you can tell.  There are so many clothing stores, electronics stores, shoe stores (especially shoe stores), and little tasty tidbit stores that I've started cataloguing the Starbucks effect.  Didn't I just see that store a block ago? 

Boo's first happy experience with a carousel.  There was a time
when she would not go anywhere near a carousel horse, but
now it's one of her favourite things. 

We do indulge in a little bit of shopping, though not that kind.  There is an open air market in the square across the street every Tuesday, so we wander through that to buy our produce, some fish, and some wonderful pastries.  When the market is open, so is the carousel which thrills Boogaloo to no end.  We also hit the grocery store two or three times a week (at least).  We've noticed that the Dutch don't really believe in family-sized packages.  For instance, milk doesn't come in larger than half gallon containers.  By the same token, produce seems to spoil rapidly, so it's no good stocking up.  Consequently, we wander down the street to the Jan Linders on an almost daily basis.    

Boogaloo observes the fish in the canal that runs through central
Eindhoven. 

Walking is probably what we do the most of.  There is a lovely greenway along the Dommel River that ends in a children's park and wildlife preserve just outside the high school.  I would go there every day, but it's about an hour's walk which is a long time for little feet (and little bladders, and since they don't believe in public potties for Dutch parks, we don't go there very often. The Dutch have come up with an ingenious system for managing the call of nature.  You can go into any public place you want to use the "toiletten," but you have to pay 50 cents.  Some of the gas stations let you use the 50 cents to buy something in the convenience store.  The only problem with the green way is that it's surrounded by apartments and schools, so ducking in and borrowing a potty isn't a possibility.) 

The greenway by the Dommel River. 

"What is it?" Boogaloo said, and I had no answer.
 It sits in the middle of the canal, and evidently it moves, but I don't know what it is. 

The Van Abbe Art Museum, which we have not been in, but
which Boogaloo loves for the horses. 

More breathtaking greenway by the Dommel River.  An elderly gentleman on a bicycle who spoke no English told me that this kind of park is called a "Park Frank" or German-style park.  Of course, I also thought he told me that there was no slide at the end, and there was, so take my understanding with a grain of salt. 

The greenway is dotted with weeping willows, possibly my favorite tree on earth.  If it were just more convenient for small children, we would spend all day every day there. 

We've just discovered another little park on the other side of the shopping center, but even that is half an hour away.  Sometimes I wish we could just borrow the grass in the churchyard across the street for an hour or so, but they have it all fenced off.  I get the feeling that a lot of university students (Eindhoven is a university town) have borrowed the grass before. 

When we aren't walking, we're mostly at home in our little apartment. Boogaloo spends a little time on the computer each day improving her vocabulary. She just mastered the use of the mouse which means she can direct her own course. She likes that. She's also discovered that she can climb up on the window sill, so now she uses it for everything from a bed for her animals to an imaginary mountain to climb (we had to put a stop to the mountain climbing. It was making me nervous.). We hunted down a toy store at the top of one of the malls across the street and bought her some sidewalk chalk and bubbles which keep her entertained on the patio.



Boo stands proudly among her pictures on the patio.  Our patio is
now so full up of pictures that we're waiting for a good rain to
erase it all so Boo can draw again. 

Boogaloo masters the mouse on Starfall.com.  What you see in the cups in a Dutch food called "vla," which
we suspect is American pudding in cartons.  It's very tasty and comes
in an amazing array of flavors, and like most of the food out here, it's
pretty cheap. 

Once Seth comes home, and he often comes home early, then we hop in the car and seek out some of the local sights. We found an open-air historical museum last week, but it was closing as we found it, so I have no pictures as of the moment. We also found historical caves outside of a neighboring city, but we didn't find the touring schedule until they were closed, so we hope to take that in before we leave too. In spite of our bad timing, we always find something worth seeing. In place with this much history, it would be impossible to go a day without finding something. 

The artwork over the doorway of the Church of St. Joris (St. George).