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Sunday, December 20, 2009

Merry Christmas

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas Everyone!




Just in time for the holidays, The Netherlands got hit with a nice blanket of snow. I know that it won't seem like much to our friends and family back on the east coast of America where they got hammered with a famous Nor'easter, but it was still pretty exciting for us over here in Holland. Kids filled the streets for snowball fights...

...and frolicking dogs filled up the parks. Sage goes completely mad in the snow. Her love of the white stuff must be due to her first year with us back in Maryland when we got over 20 feet in Garrett County. She saw only snow for the first 4 months of her life.



Having snow on the ground also seemed to brighten everyone's mood for Christmas shopping on our little neighborhood winkelstraatje, the Cronje.

Warming up inside the pub is always gezellig. We met our friends Leon and Miranda for a drink at the Rusthoek only to be surprised with Miranda singing when we got there. If she wasn't a busy, working, mother of two great girls under seven, Miranda should have been a professional jazz singer. She has one hell of voice. Unbelievable! We're looking forward to the next gig.

No, this is not a(nother) war entry. We also attended Eva's sweet 16 birthday party at "The Bunker" in Spaarnwoude last weekend. This converted WWII bunker made for a perfect party venue.

She even hung an American flag in the bunker as part of the party decorations in honor of these two old farts. Here in Holland, kids can drink alcohol at 16 (they don't get a driver's license until 18). It was great fun watching them swagger up to the bar to order a drink and I couldn't help but remember all of those field parties back in Ligonier when I was 16 (or younger) and how we were always looking over our shoulders for the cops to arrive. I like the system here much better. It gives the parents an opportunity to teach the kids to drink responsibly rather than just turning them loose to go wild and figure it out for themselves at 21.



Monday, December 14, 2009

Berlin

Because it is the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital city has been in the news a lot this year. So we decided to see what all the fuss was about and hop a train over for our annual pilgrimage to the German Christmas markets.


The Germans LOVE Christmas! They even painted a Santa hat on the engine.


We booked a 1st class carriage and kicked back to relax for the ride over.


There were dozens of Christmas markets setup throughout the city. This is our second “Flat Stanley” trip - this one is for the daughter of one of Beth’s cousins (read story here). It’s funny how other American’s always spot us when we’re taking a photo with a Flat Stanley, or in this case “Flat Halle”. “Watch out! You’ll poke her eye out!”


Christmas Creep! We weren’t sure what German story this guy was from, but he sure was having fun throwing confetti on everyone.


Getting into the spirit with snow tubing on Potsdamer Plaza.


Oddly enough, we always manage to get good sushi in Germany. We DESTROYED an all-you-can-eat early bird special. I don’t think that they knew we were Americans when they invited us in. :-)


We’ve visited eleven different country capitals so far and compared with all the others that we’ve been to, the monument area of Berlin was pretty standard for the course. It had big, broad avenues like Washington or Paris lined with museums and monuments. But once you got outside of that area, especially into the heart of West Berlin, we found a fantastic patchwork of vibrant neighborhoods that each had their own character. I know that our French friends will be very disappointed in us, but Berlin tops the list so far!


One major difference with Berlin is that it was essentially obliterated during the war (oh no, he’s going to talk about the war!). This wasteland right in the heart of the city is the old royal palace. They are still excavating for artifacts before they begin to rebuild it.


The required photo of the Brandenburg Gate.


I have to apologize to our German friends about inserting this old photograph (I’m pissing everyone off today). I know that it is an emotional image, but it is so ingrained in my own mind as the defining moment when Berlin laid in smoldering, defeated ruins that it is the primary reason that I wanted to see the Reichstag at all -- parliament buildings aren’t usually high on my ‘must see’ list.


Now, the Reichstag has been rebuilt with an amazing new glass dome and is again proudly sporting the German flag.


This last remaining section of the wall was a highlight of the trip for both of us. I was just becoming politically aware when the wall finally fell, but it still holds powerful imagery for me. I could almost see and hear the old news clips of the night that people were allowed to cross and you can still see on this section where people hammered on it, trying to break it down. It’s now hard to imagine this city divided by the wall, especially when you see how arbitrary the barrier was. Standing there was very similar to the Lincoln memorial. If you take the time to read and reflect, it is very powerful stuff.


It’s no accident that they decided to preserve this section of the wall. It stands less than 50 meters from the headquarters of the Nazi political apparatus – Gestapo and SS. They are still excavating here as well, uncovering old torture chambers. It will all be a museum at some point in the future.


The Holocaust memorial was extremely well done. Like the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C., this was created by an artist/architect. When you approach the memorial, the columns look to be similar height. There is some variation, but the small differences cause more of a curiosity, drawing you to look closer to see what it is all about. But as you walk into the field of monoliths, you realize that the ground is not even. You start with the monoliths only reaching the height of your knees, but then before you know it, they are towering over your head. The whole site rolls across you like the swell of a giant wave and you are allowed to interpret the meaning for yourself as you wander through. These types of memorials are so much better than the old statues that they used to build.



This last photo is classic Berlin at Christmas. The decorations were spectacular even as the reinvention and rebuilding continues. The results so far are a fantastic city, grounded in a checkered past, but with the sights set firmly on the future.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Choose wisely - your sanity depends on it

Randstad - a tiny area home to more than 7 million folks
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After living in the Netherlands for more than five years now, we’ve come to appreciate the many amenities of city life. Of course there are the obvious benefits, like festivals, theaters, live music, pubs, and restaurants. Our own little burg of Haarlem has two major concert venues, an opera house, dozens of pubs and cafes, and more than forty restaurants-- all within an easy stroll of the central market square. (We even have our own red light district, but some of you may not consider that an amenity. ;-)

There are also the more subtle undercurrents of social energy that we now recognize as an integral part of the urban experience. It’s the buzz of activity, the ever changing sights and sounds, the interaction with other human beings. Of course sometimes the volume of people and activity can be exasperating. Sometimes you just want a little privacy…a little quiet. We’re lucky that The Netherlands has set aside so much open space within the Randstad to get away from it all-- locally. For me, it works nicely and I couldn’t imagine a better environment to live in….except for the $%&^* traffic.

I think only Beth knows the special attitude that I’ve developed against the automobile over the years. It started way back in Boise, Idaho when we bought our first house on 9th street. We didn’t know it at the time, but the city was aggressively developing the hills above our neighborhood and they were opening 9th street to thru-traffic. We fought it for months, but eventually lost. We watched helplessly as more and more traffic began racing down our street, completely disregarding the people who lived there. The people behind the wheel only wanted to get from point A (home) to point B (town) and nothing in between those two points was of consequence to them. I began to notice, even in myself, how the car becomes an insular environment for the driver. When driving a car, interaction is based upon a defined set of rules, not with other humans, but with other cars and all obstacles hindering your progress from point A and point B. It removes your requirement to be considerate, sucking a little humanity out of you. There are some interesting experiments taking place in Europe where cities are going ‘traffic-sign free’ in an atempt to correct this imbalance – read the wiki entry on Shared Space here.

However, the depths of my bad attitude toward cars didn’t fully develop until a few years after Boise when we relocated to Washington, DC. Our preference was to live in the city, but the rampant, violent, and totally random crime kept us looking further out. We settled in suburban Northern Virginia. I’m not much of a religious guy, but if there is a hell, then for me it can’t be as bad as living in a post-war, American style, suburban development. I never felt so isolated in my life, even when we lived in a house built in the middle of 400 acres in the country two years later. Literally anything that you wanted to do outside of the four walls of your house, you had to get in the car to do. And every day, there were thousands of other people living in the same sprawling development (who you had never met and had virtually a 0% chance of meeting) driving around on the same suburban roads thinking how convenient everything was. A day of shopping was getting in your car and driving from plaza X to mall Y to strip development Z as you went from destination store to destination store. No meandering. No interaction. No sense of community. And then when you were tired from all that driving, you looked for a nice cafĂ© to sit and relax with a cup of coffee. How convienient! Just pull on up to the next shopping plaza and grab a window seat overlooking the sea of concrete and parked cars to watch the suburban world drive by. Wat gezellig!
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But I have seriously digressed into a rabid, and somewhat unreasonably fanatical, diatribe against the suburban automobile lifestyle. Sorry about that. Let me wipe the foam from my mouth and get back on track with the original intent of this post…hmmm, I had a point? Ah yes, now I remember.

Even in the massive conurbation that we now call home – The Randstad, which has a great network of trains and subways and trams and parks and bike paths, people get sucked into this auto-centric mentality. We’ve never driven into Amsterdam and we rarely use the car except to get Sage out to some of the more remote parks. It’s a safe, exciting urban lifestyle and a great place to call home…as long as you live where you can take advantage of that wonderful public transportation network. One only need look at this Randstad traffic report to understand why.


Real time traffic report

Red means traffic jams. The entire 60 square mile Randstad is locked up like this twice a day, every day. Location, location, location – save a few bucks on that place further out, and spend your days in your car. Not for me. I’ve learned my lesson. I'll always choose vibrant urban core or fresh country air over an auto-centric, tweener lifestyle.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Caprera chainsaw massacre


This was an exciting weekend in Haarlem. It started late on Friday night when we found ourselves wandering deep into the blackness of the forest on the edge of the city. Loki, the mischievous Norse god, had opened the gates of hell and unleashed the dominions of evil here. Our task was to locate the hellish portal, pass through it, and confront that which we found there.

Well, that’s what the witch told us as we sat around the bonfire in the parking lot of our favorite dog park, Caprera. She spoke in shrill, quivering Dutch, so my translation might be a bit off. In any case, it was Friday the 13th and after a tremendously successful Halloween night event (which we missed because we were in America), Caprera decided to set up the haunted forest one more time.

And man-o-man are we glad they did! You expect good quality stuff like this in America, where Halloween is big business, but what we experienced last Friday was the top-of-the-top for this sort of thing. We were amazed at the extent of the production. It was by far the best one of these haunted walks that I’ve ever done.

Each group was spaced about 5 minutes apart and allowed to go through the forest on their own. No guides, no forced bunching of groups. This meant that you could only occasionally hear the group in front of you screaming, but you had no idea where they were in the meandering 200 acre park or what had frightened them. There were four of us in our group - me, Beth, Natasja, and Eva.

The paths were very dark, only lit by an occasional small glow stick every 50 meters or so, giving everything an eerie smoldering quality. It wasn’t until we had walked about 100 meters that we could hear a metallic, otherworldly heartbeat throbbing through the forest. This got our adrenaline pumping, but it was still another 50 meters before we encountered our first bit of entertainment. And it was the tackiest, cheesiest thing we had ever seen. A sensor picked up our motion and flicked a light onto a mask hanging in a tree. There were a few Styrofoam graves tucked into a thicket. The light caught us off guard, which scared us a little, but mostly we laughed. The adrenaline came down a notch. We relaxed. We had no idea that this was the intent. Our guard was now down.

Then it started. About 10 meters further up the path there were some webs in the trees. After the cheesy mask, we expected rubber spiders dangling in front of us. But as we came underneath the webs, a gruesome character came bursting from the bushes and scared the living crap out of us. We ran, laughing down the path, only to be attacked by electronic spiders coming at us on the ground. They must have been remote controlled cars covered in spider 'costumes', because they veered and swerved at us as we ran.

It just kept getting better as we went. There was a pack of snarling wolves with glowing eyes misdirecting your attention as a real wolfman came at you from the other side of the path, scarecrows sitting on benches would leap up at you as you passed, giant bats buzzed you from above and zombies came out of graves and chased you down the trail. And then there was the chainsaw massacre guy. The trails were spread out enough that we hadn't heard the chainsaw running for the group in front of us. We had no idea that this guy was even there and when he fired that chainsaw up and came running at us, the experience was complete.

The whole atmosphere was superbly done. You never knew what was “real” and what was just a prop. But the best part was the door to hell. It was a simple setup- just a rope across the path covered in black cloth with a standard door set in the middle. A small spotlight lit up the door. But when standing in the middle of the woods with your adrenaline pumping, it looked like a portal to nowhere. It took a lot of laughs and prodding to walk up to that door. And as I reached for the knocker, it started going by itself! Boom! Boom! Boom! Very cool. When we finally got the nerve to open the door, all we saw was a silent character, just standing there and waiting. He was real, but never made a move. It wasn’t until later that Death (with the sickle) confronted us, demanding respect as we passed the (real) graveyard on the edge of the woods.

The only character that went off script was the vampire. He did a great job scaring the bejeebers out of us, but when we started running down the wrong path to get away from him, he called out to us to get us going in the right direction. And when we turned back, he started flirting with Natasja. We were screaming with laughter as he put his arm around her and kept saying that he wanted her for his bride, even as she pleaded with him through tears of laughter to stay away from her.

I still laugh, even today, when I walk through Caprera with Sage in the bright light of day and remember where each of the props/actors was set up. It was a different world that night, and one of the highlight evenings of the year.


The other big evening of the weekend was on Sunday, my 44th birthday. Beth and I kept it low key and just went out for a nice dinner and drinks in the city. But when we got home I put together the present that Alex and Stefanie got me…a Picoo2 miniature remote controlled helicopter. They bought it for me as a gag gift, since I enjoy playing with all of Isabella’s electronic toys every time that we go to visit them. But I SEVERELY underestimated the kick that this thing would be. I’ve finally learned to fly it properly in the house without crashing every 10 seconds. Now, with this new found skill, I can terrorize the cats endlessly. Beth's not so crazy about it, but the cats love it.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Changes

We just returned from the annual fall pilgrimage back to America. This year seemed to be full of changes, starting with the house in Maryland.

We’ve decided to rent the place out to vacationers to offset some of the absurd taxes that we pay in Garrett County. Even with the down economy, the rental season was a resounding success. We had visitors from as far away as Los Angeles and Chicago and it was really fun reading through their comments in our guest book. The place held up well and except for one broken vase, we noticed no theft or damage. Our rental manager did tell us about a bizarre situation when a young couple (mid twenties) arrived from Pittsburgh very late on Friday night. They called him at 1:00 AM threatening to sue for ruining their vacation because the driveway was too bumpy and too long. They ended up at the police station with the women on the phone with her lawyer. The officers were able to calm the situation down, and then the couple was escorted by the rental manager out to the house. After they got over their apparent fear of the dark, they enjoyed the place, wrote very nice comments, and promised to return next year. Only in America…I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

We blazed a new trail to the river and added the “Crooked Butt Bench” for next year’s guests. Beth and I always loved this spot on the land, but have called it by a different name that isn’t appropriate for our family-oriented renters.
We’ve also begun construction on a Celtic stone circle just below the house, inspired by our recent visit to the Drombeg circle in Ireland. It’s a smaller version, not aligned to the stars like the original. And I’m sure that the ancient Celts didn’t use a John Deere 790 to set the stones.
My parents are selling the old hillbilly homestead up in Ligonier. Lots of memories in this place and we’re all sad to see it go.
But living in downtown within walking distance to the village square is also very nice.
We hit the fall colors after peak, but they did seem a little brighter down in West Virginia. The hiking around Seneca Rocks was spectacular…
…as was the view from the top.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Drukte

It’s been a busy two weeks over here in Holland. Actually, Beth hasn’t been around much. Business is picking up at her company and the travel budget is starting to flow again. She’s had back-to-back trips to America and has a few others already scheduled down to mecca in Germany. She’s missed the travel and is not complaining. Besides, after the rude awakening of not being able to use the premier lounge in the airport on our last vacation, she’s happy to be building up her status miles again.

I, on the other hand, have been doing a lot of in-country travel, capped by an intensive training in Arnhem where I was subjected to an intensive 4-hour, rotating interrogation (the interrogators rotated, I didn’t). The training was being observed by a group of students, and the entire exercise was in Dutch. I held up ok during the session, but my brain completely ceased to function as soon as I got back in the car and autopiloted home to Haarlem. It was one of my most grueling days in a long, long time.

I figured what I really needed was some good, old-fashioned physical labor, so I finally set aside a few days and replaced the roof on our shed. This was a lot more harrowing than you would think. The roof decking is 1/8 inch plywood and barely holds the weight of a heavy cat (like clyde), let alone me. There is only one supporting beam between each wall and the peak, so I had to make a few jigs out of 1 inch boards that I could walk on (see just above ladder in this picture). I then had to slide the jigs along as I worked. Can we all say “major pain in the ass?” To top it all off, you are under constant surveillance from your neighbors when you do this kind of work. It was the second time in a week that I felt like I was in a fishbowl and it didn't do much to help relieve my mental fatigue.

But, as luck would have it, Beth was home over the weekend, and we had a chance to finally let off a little of the steam at the Bok Bier Festival here in Haarlem. Bok bier is a bit on the heavy side and comes in at 6.5% alcohol, so the tastings quickly hit home with us. Each glass was like eating a loaf of alcohol soaked bread. But Ilona wanted to keep going. There was a gang of bikers on the route in front of us, and she kept pushing us to get caught up with them. I think she had her eye on the one with the long beard and skull tattoo on his cheek.
We're headed off to America to shut down the house for winter. Next posting in November.
Cheers!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Chop Shop


One only need look at this massive bike parking garage in Amsterdam to understand how ubiquitous the bicycle is to Dutch culture. And even though you see all sorts of bikes on the streets, from high-end 5000 euro racing bikes to 5 euro beat-up granny fiets, they take each and every one very seriously. It is no coincidence that we frequently hear from the older generations that one of the things that they remember the most about the Nazi occupation back in 1942 was the confiscation of their bicycles.

But as Americans, it was never a particularly big concern to us that Beth has already had two bikes stolen in the last five years. She knows that she asked for it both times, once leaving it unlocked in the front garden and another time leaving it at the central rail station over a weekend. We always chuckled when our friends gave us great condolences on each loss, as if it were a child, and spoke about how those awful people (bike thieves) should be tarred, feathered, and strung up on the city square like in the good old days.

So with that background now given for context, you will understand that it was with great trepidation, and genuine fear, that I undertook a covert operation last month to get Beth a new bike. Here’s how it went down…

After her last bike was stolen, we decided to buy her a used piece-o-shit that we thought no one could ever possibly want to steal. After all, I have left mine unlocked overnight at the train station on more than one occasion and no one has shown any interest in nicking it. My bike is an extremely ugly sucker, with torn saddle bags, chipped paint, and duck-tapped fenders.

So we went the to the used bike shop and she tried out a few. We were in a hurry because of a dinner engagement, so she just chose the ugliest bike she could find. The problem was that, unlike my comfortable piece-o-shit, her ugly bike turned out to be a real lemon. The gears didn’t work properly, the front rim had sharp spot that punctured three tires in four days and she could barely keep up with me even on a simple grocery run. All this luxury for only 175 euros. And to top it off, there was no warranty or guarantee on used bikes. We had been screwed.

About three weeks (and numerous inner-tubes) later, I noticed a bike pushed into the weeds in the local dog park – where I walk every day, twice a day and know just about everyone else who walks there. At first, I thought that some kids had left it there while they were running around the park. But on the second day when I saw that the bike was still there, I nonchalantly walked over toward the weeds, pretending to pick up a mess left by Sage. As I got closer to the bike, I could see that it was a nice one. I scanned the park-- no one was watching me, so I took a chance and lifted the bike up to get a better look at it. It was in perfect condition! None of the frame was bent and the tires even still had air in them. And it looked about Beth’s size. The bike was locked, so it was pretty obvious that some drunken teen-agers had stolen it over the weekend, locked it, ditched it in the weeds and flung the key into the pond.

A Dutch person would have come to this same conclusion. But their reaction would have been very different. They would have called the police who would have come, reviewed the “scene” then taken the bike back to the station for cataloging. If by chance someone could claim it (by serial number), they would get their bike back. If not, well then it would go up for auction with the 100’s of others every month and the police would make a little profit.

I saw it differently. For me, it was an opportunity to score Beth a new bike.

On the third day, the bike was still there. So I stayed up later than usual and walked by myself to the park after dark. It was 23.30 on a weeknight, so the chances of seeing anyone were minimal. It’s Haarlem, not Amsteram. I snuck over to the weeds and pulled the bike out. For those of you who don’t know, the bike locks here in Holland are attached to the back forks and then engage around the back tire between the spokes. This keeps the bike from moving. So in order to get the thing home, I had to lift the back of the bike and half carry it the four blocks to my house. Not something that can really be done without being pretty obvious about your intentions. The only excuse is “I lost my key” which I kept running through my head in Dutch in case I had to say it.

Just as I was exiting the park, I ran into an older man walking his two Jack Russels. I didn’t know him well, but we have exchanged many pleasantries in the park. He recognized me immediately and asked where Sage was, eyeing me cautiously with the obviously locked bike. My heart was racing and I was sure that I’d get an accusatory question about the bike, but luckily, he let me off after I said that Sage was sick…never underestimate the sympathy of other dog lovers. I was able to get the thing home without further encounter and secreted into my back yard where I hid it under the outdoor table. I didn’t sleep very well that night as I kept dreaming of people pounding on my door and envisioning tomorrow’s headlines – “Citizen alert! Foreign scumbag caught in North Haarlem as mastermind for huge bike theft ring!”

The next day, I set to the task of getting the lock off the bike. The thick steel half-circle locking component would take me hours to hack through with my little saw, so I started with the thinner, metal plated lock housing. It only took about 10 minutes before I had cut enough to jam a stout screw driver into the slot and bend the housing out around the frame. Five minutes later, the wheel was spinning freely.

But the bike still looked stolen (even though, technically, I wasn’t the one who stole it). So I started breaking down components from Beth’s old bike – Seat, saddle bags, lights and moving them over the new bike. I finished it off with a few rounds of duck-tape to hide the brand name and some of the coloring. The yard looked like a chop shop, with bike parts and tools scattered everywhere. But at 13.00 in the afternoon, it was finally reassembled and I was feeling confident enough to have Beth give it a test run. It fit her surprisingly well, everything worked perfectly, and it was completely unrecognizable. She loved it!
Maybe I’ve finally found my true calling…

Monday, September 14, 2009

Eire

A friend of ours has a family vacation home right on the coast in West Cork, Ireland and has been offering for us to stay there for a few years now. So when Sue and Tom suggested meeting up somewhere in Europe for a fall holiday, we finally took Jonathan up on his offer. The weather was perfect and the scenery was spectacular. Here are a few pictures from the trip, with a special thanks to Jonathan, John, and Mary!


The beautiful cottage in Union Hall that we called home for the week.


We had a great time on the sunny terrace in the mornings or exploring the local hidden coves…

…and crawling on the seaside rocks to check out the tidal pools.


There was plenty of hiking with incredible mountaintop views...


...and loads of cool, forgotten ruins around every corner.


You can almost imagine the sharks circling below these cliffs, waiting for one of these sheep to fall. Mmmm….mutton, lekker.


The trail into Mizen Head with the rusty bridge-o-death as Beth called it.


This ancient Celtic stone circle was amazing. I wonder what curse she is conjuring up for me now!

The original port of Baltimore.


There were loads of authentic Irish pubs with great music in the evenings. This was our local hangout just down the street from the cottage.


But I thought this was a great one in Dingle. An Irish pub with a German beer garden -- the real Glasstetter heritage -- my grandfathers would be proud!


Isn't she a sweetheart? I’m sure that I never said anything to provoke such a reaction.

Which one of these kids is thinking, ”I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something…”