Expat Adventures

Sicily

2012-02-09T18:47:00.002+01:00

It was supposed to be a sunny diversion from a dreary Dutch January. We thought about skiing, but opted for a bit of hiking and culture...and most importantly, warmth, so we headed for Sicily with an aggressively laid-back agenda. The weather started out well enough, but deteriorated quickly when a trough of low pressure sunk into the Mediterranean, ushering in a Nordic chill that brought unprecedented snow and airport shutdowns to southern Europe. We managed to skirt the worst of it by staying on the island's southern shores, but picked up two days of rain and thunderstorms as we cut back north to Taormina. It was an incredible experience sitting in what must have been the only patch of sun for miles around and watching the snow line descend ominously down the slopes of Mount Etna.

Classic Sicily - three dogs and a cat on a laundry strewn balcony.

The view from the window of the first hotel in ancient Ortega, birthplace of Archimedes. Awesome hotel rooms were a theme for the trip.

A Greek temple converted to Catholic church. The mix of architecture was amazing.

For our Dutch friends - I'm not sure why the locals in Syracuse were so obsessed, but I think Vincent would approve.

Hanging out in a 3rd century Roman theater in a weedy pullover just outside town. This would be an A-grade attraction anywhere else in the world.

Then it was over to Agrigento where we picked up another great off-season deal on a hotel. The view from our terrace.

Agrigento was one of the most important Greek colonies on Sicily. The valley of the temples was amazing.

Some cool contemporary art scattered in with the ruins.

One of the best preserved Greek temples on the planet.

4-wheelin' in the Smart Car on the way up the mountain to Piazza Armerina.

The ruins of a Roman Villa just outside Piazza Armerina was the highlight of the trip for me. This site has the best preserved tile floors ever found. I love this kind of stuff because it shows so much of daily life and is exactly as it was when the empire fell.

The famous "Girls in bikini's" on the floor of the baths.

Touching history.

Sunset from Piazza Armerina.

While the off-season delivered excellent hotels at cheap prices for most of the trip, there was literally only one open hotel in Piazza Armerina and it was a toilet. The bed was so worn out and squeaky that we didn't sleep all night. Beth figured out how to make the squeaky springs sound like an ABBA sound by doing the twist. And, "yes", that's another Van Gogh on the wall...go figure.

Piazza Armerina

Then it was back over to the coastal town of Taormina where we made up for the previous hotel with this spectacular view from our deck. You can see the storm hammering the mainland in the distance.

We based ourselves in Taormina for the rest of the trip. This fantastic, hilltop Greek settlement was perfect for hiking, shopping, and eating. That's a Greek era theatre on the cliff behind the city.

Hiking a coastal trail.

Sitting out a rain shower under an old boat house on the coast.

A different vantage of the same little island.

Back on the mountain in the Greek theatre.

Old Taormina

Marble carving? This guy was brilliant! A true craftsman...we could have easily spent the inheritance in his shop.

Hiking in the opposite direction...up the mountain to the monastery. We decided to take a picture looking down to the town, but my sensitive wife vetoed this one as having "too much forehead"...

...so she made me put the hat on. Nice!

Cool in the Smart Car. This thing was a life-saver for navigating the tiny streets of Sicily...and more importantly fitting into the tiny parking spaces.

Kerstdagen

2011-12-19T18:45:00.000+01:00

We've been doing the rounds for Christmas markets these past few weeks, starting off in Haarlem where there was an old-fashioned street fair. The "sleep fairies" sprinkled me with magic dust, but that still couldn't compete with the 1800's hookers in the windows...gotta love those knee length knickers.

A new "heritage" law states that the Christmas tree can't go up until after 5-December, which is the oh-so-Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas.

Then it was into Amsterdam to see the lights, do some shopping, and grab a nice dinner. The Bijenkorf (The beehive) always does it up properly.

But we still prefer the quiet, back streets of the city as apposed to the hustle and bustle of Dam square.

We also took a road trip over to Cologne, Germany for their Christmas markets. There was some amazing history in the city, including one of the best Roman towers and mosaic floors that we've ever seen (not the one in this photo). 50 AD and survived the bombings of WWII...amazing!

Of course Cologne is all about "the" church. Too massive to capture in a single photo, it was truly impressive. But the rest of the core city left us a little disappointed. We loved the outer rings, with their eclectic neighborhoods and parks, but the rebuilt center was too crowded and didn't have the charm that we've come to expect on our Chrismas market jaunt.

Love locks - apparently there is a tradition to place a lock on this fence when you get engaged to declare your undying love. There were some pretty interesting stories in those locks - tens of thousands of them. I wonder if they go back and remove them when they get divorced?

I know, I know. I say it every year...but the "brats" in Germany can't be beat. If there is no other reason to drive 3.5 hours, it's for the brats.

A new twist on street performers. He was hilarious! Although it was a bit creepy when he wagged his tail as a pretty girl walked by.

We slept late on Sunday and didn't get up much before checkout time - it must have had something to do with that last pub. So on the way home, we got to talking and decided to stop in the small town of Kevelaer for a final German Christmas market. There were two reasons for this, and I've already mentioned the brats, right? So let's be open and honest about this. Since leaving Cologne, our drive was a beautiful, blue-sky road trip that took us back to the days of crossing central Oregon with nothing but sunshine and open horizon. That is until we got within 15 kilometers of the Dutch border. The dark, soggy clouds looked ominous, and oh-so-familiar. I hate to admit it, but I might have (finally) reached my limit. If 2012 plays out like 2011 (weather wise), I think it's time for some soul searching.

But today it's Christmas week. So Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Bodacious Bar mitzvah! or whatever other greeting floats your boat...you know what I mean.

Cheers from Holland!

Ajax

2011-12-07T22:13:00.000+01:00

No, not the 1970's dish detergent. I'm talking about the Amsterdam football team...as in soccer. In Dutch it's pronounced "I-ax".

I thought that I was doing pretty well adapting to the Dutch lifestyle when I carried my first case of beer home from the grocery store on the back of my bicycle. And when I bought my first sausage from the Hema I started really feeling like a local. But it wasn't until I was finally able to speak the language that I people started to second guess my nationality. I could keep them strung along for a little while, even with my thick accent....until the subject of football came up, which it inevitably does. I don't know squat about soccer.

But everyone else in Holland knows EVERYTHING about soccer. And they fall into one of two camps - Ajax or Feyenoord. Amsterdam or Rotterdam. And when I say camps, I really mean adversaries...enemies. It can come to blows. In fact, it has gotten to be such a big rivalry that the fans of Rotterdam are not allowed to attend a match in Amsterdam and vice versa.

I'm not much of an organized sports fan, but I thought that if I really wanted to fit in over here that I needed to experience a soccer match and see what all the hoopla was about. So I went with my friend Frank into Amsterdam on Saturday night for a match. I still don't get the rules, but the atmosphere was really a great experience - from the fanatics in "Block 14" with their endless chanting and flag waving, to the whacky guy who ran through the crowds, back and forth through the aisles for the last 15 minutes of the match. Ajax dominated the play (75% of ball handling) and easily beat their opponents 4-1. It was fun...but once was enough. Now I think that I can hold my own in a conversation. Just don't tell my boss that I went to see Ajax...he's a Feyenoord supporter.

We've got a jumper!!

2011-11-16T18:21:00.003+01:00

We hit some fantastic weather on our trip back to America this fall. While it was nice to get a little bit of snow in between the 70 degree sunshine, we were glad that we didn't go in October when the region was coated with over a foot of the white stuff. We got to visit with relatives on both sides of the family, but had this increasingly rare opportunity for a full Glasstetter family photo: (unfortunately from the nursing home)

Beth and I spent some much needed "down-time" at the homestead in Maryland...

..and really enjoyed getting out into the woods for some physical labor. It sounds sadistic, but blazing a trail through the forest or building a bench or cutting some firewood is a great break from our sit-on-your-butt-all-day-in-a-stuffy-office routine.

Some things never change. Even doing these testosterone-filled, manly activities in my rough-and-rugged woodsman overhauls, Beth managed to quickly emasculate me with a simple comment. When I asked her why she was taking a picture of me cutting firewood she said (and I quote), "I think you look sexy in your jumper." What!?!?!? The only thing that comes to mind when I hear "jumper" in a clothing context is this old photo of Abba...nuff said.

And yet, even dressed in her best hillbilly garb she somehow manages to still look cute.

Time for a barbecue? This all that remains of the old dump site on the property. We had the whole site cleaned up over the summer in preparation for our next venture...Glamping anyone?

We're starting to see the Marcellus shale rigs creeping toward the Maryland line. This one in PA is only a few miles from the border. Maryland is still putting together the research on "fracing" and will make a decision on what conditions need to be met for drilling in 2014. Our own verdict is still out. There is a lot of conflicting information out there. But it's not something we can ignore as the land-men start knocking on doors and passing out checks. Even if we said "no", how would we know that they don't just reach under from your neighbor's property and steal the gas out from underneath you? Anyone in PA had any "real", first-hand experiences with Marcellus shale drilling?

Call of the fall

2011-11-01T20:58:00.000+01:00

We took a short drive to the "sunny south" over the weekend to visit with our friend in Eindhoven. True to form, the skies cleared as we passed through Den Bosch and by the time we hit the ring-road of Eindhoven it was deep blue sky and sun. The crisp fall air and changing leaves seemed to get everyone excited. Here are a few pics from a doggy-day in the woods.

I wanna go THAT way!

The two old biddies watching Tinus showing off.

Peak weekend in Holland.

Tuggin' with Tinus.

Jollie is being a chair hog...can you help me out here?

Weekendje weg

2011-10-17T18:52:00.000+02:00

With a fantastic historical center occupied by a very Bohemian population (and a subtle touch of anarchism), topped with world famous food, chocolate, and beer, puts Ghent on the top of our list for a short weekend away.

Beautiful weather brought everyone out to the old wharf to bask in the sun...we loved the urban dog culture.

Some of that beer, chocolate, and Bohemia that I mentioned.

A lovely mix of old and new along the canals made for some great exploring. And a mish-mash of bars being hosed out in the university quarter reminded us of Calico's back in good ol' IUP.

The 12th century castle towers at the edge of the city...ominous oversight of the medieval population.

Friday market at night. Approaching from the north through the heavy industrialized zone and ports operating at full traffic jam, stack-spewing capacity (don't these folks know that we're in a global recession?), we were pleasantly surprised when we crossed the river and the charm of old Ghent quickly unfolded. Our hotel was just off this market square. Ghent's gritty side keeps the tourists focused on the next town over (Brugge), but was immediately comfortable and "real" for us. It's a definite "redo" on our destination list.

All of this relaxation in Ghent paid off on Sunday when we headed into Amsterdam for the Marathon. It was a stunning day and we both stormed in with record 1/2 marathon times. Now, back to the grindstone...

Oldie but goodie

2011-10-08T21:31:00.000+02:00

I came across a bit of digital memorabilia while cleaning up an old computer hard drive tonight. Below is a long-forgotten trip report of our vacation to Belize back in 2002. At the time, I was still pressure testing some of my writing skills in preparation for tackling my first book, so it's a bit on the long-winded side. But now I'm very glad that I wrote it. It brings back many memories from one of our top-5 travel adventures ever. I can still smell that Belizian jungle. I'm posting here for posterity...the digital record of us. Cheers.

6 Days in Belize.

“Attitude - the only difference between adversity and adventure.”

Wow!! What a country!

Let me preface by stating that this trip was not well planned or thought out. Yes, Mr. Travel didn’t spend hours pouring over maps and researching all the details – down to the minute topography of individual trail systems and town layouts. This was a clumsy last minute escape from the prolonged winter that seemed to strengthen its grasp as January settled over Appalachian Maryland.

We’ve done most of our traveling in Europe over the past couple of years but have always had our eye on the Caribbean for a winter getaway. Specifically, we were interested in one of the Leeward Islands with decent scuba diving, hiking, kayaking and some good options for lively nightlife after a rigorous day’s excursion.

Belize only entered the picture after doing some cursory research on flights to the islands – most of which required multi-hour layovers in Puerto Rico. We just didn’t have that much time for this holiday and I didn’t want to burn it up with my ass in a sweltering airport waiting to get to or from our destination.

We were getting hammered with snow that day…it was coming down at about an inch an hour and the driveway was already impassible. I was fed up with searching the Internet and reaching dead-ends with travel agents when one of those annoying pop-up ads caught my attention. “Dive the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere”. I guess it was one of those “intelligent” ads that had keyed in on my previous searches.

I checked a flight on Travelocity. Pittsburgh to Belize City. Price – good. Times – good. Connections – good.

I quickly Instant Messaged Beth. “What do you think about Belize?”

“Sure” came the reply….I could tell she was busy and didn’t have time to discuss the topic.

So, I called up US AIR and booked the trip. Little did I know that we had just taken our first plunge into serious adventure travel.

Day 1 – the arrival.

Of course I was seated beside an obnoxious little 5 year old on the long leg of the flight from Charlotte to Belize City. Put me on a 4+ hour intercontinental flight and this just happens. It’s my life’s curse. And his mother, who was also sitting beside me, was obviously the obnoxious role model that had helped form his obnoxious little personality. But as the crystal turquoise waters of the Caribbean framed by the mist cloaked mountains of the mainland came into view in the little airplane portal window, all of the tensions of the journey, the prolonged and bitterly cold winter, and the stress of employment with Genesys seemed to be instantly washed away.

I looked over at Beth. “There she is. Look at the color of that water!”

---

80 humid, sticky degrees greeted us as we descended from the airplane onto the tarmac. Not until we returned to the plane 7 days later would we feel relief from the stickiness. We found our way through customs pretty easily and located the local outfit where I had rented a car. We were going to explore the country on our own. This is how we always travel in Europe and inevitably end up with a much richer experience as apposed to going with a pre-defined tour. Why should Belize be any different?

“Hmmm. Well sir, there seems to be a problem with the car.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“We don’t have one.” (long dramatic pause from both of us) “There are a few people who didn’t make it back because of the recent rains in the mountains.”

“Didn’t make it back?! …. Or didn’t make it back yet?” I asked nervously.

“No, no. It’s common in the mountains when it rains. They are fine, but had to spend some extra time. Don’t worry”, he said with a big shit-eating grin on his face. “Let me talk to the guy next door and I’ll see if I can get you a similar car and price.”

Nervous, I waited for 15 minutes while he haggled with “Jungle Drive” next door. He came back and told me that he had negotiated the same rate for me with his competitor and that I was all set to go. I went into the hot, 4x8 office of this new rental joint and started filling out paperwork.

An elderly couple came into the tiny little office to drop off their keys. They had spent 10 days in the mountains and had actually just returned from a border crossing over to Guatemala to visit the Mayan ruins at Tikal.

They must have been in their mid-60’s and really reminded me of my parent’s best friends the Healy’s. The woman immediately engaged me in friendly conversation and the old man almost as immediately started to give me a hard time – jokingly.

By the time that I left the rental office, I didn’t know if there really were “crater sized” potholes on the highways or if I was supposed to drive on the right or the left. He had me doubting everything that she was telling me and he seemed quite pleased with his ability to confuse me while at the same time exasperating and contradicting his wife.

I hope that I still have the energy to hassle young (yea, right) naïve travelers when I’m in my sixties. This guy was a piece of work – but very friendly and helped to put a smile on my face and take the edge off of the initiation into a new culture.

---

Five minutes after pulling out onto the “Western Highway” in the rented beat up, blue convertible Suzuki Samari (with balding tires), it became intuitively obvious that we were touring in a third world country. The “Highway” is one of two paved thoroughfares in the entire region. By “paved”, I mean “had some concrete laid over it in two lanes with no berm, no lines, and plenty of crater sized potholes scattered strategically across both lanes to minimize your ability to avoid them.” Oh yea, and all of this so-called “pavement” happened about twenty years ago and it hasn’t been touched since.

The shanty houses up on pylons, with no windows, junk abandoned cars, burning roadside garbage dumps, open-air school houses with screaming uniformed children chasing dogs across dusty playgrounds, and police roadblocks every 3 miles around Belize City rounded out the culture shock. (ok, so this could have been West Virginia - except for the palm trees). Interestingly enough, this sudden insight into our hastily chosen destination had a deliriously refreshing impact upon our attitude. As we looked out over the savannah-like plains and saw the approaching jungle covered mountains, we were both immediately invigorated for what lay ahead. This wasn’t going to be as easy as traipsing around Europe… this was going to be a serious adventure…and we were both eagerly embracing it.

---

San Ignacio was our destination for the evening. A great little mountain town near the Guatemalan border, it took us about 3 hours to reach it from Belize City. The sun was just started to wane on the horizon as we pulled in. All of the guidebooks that I read (of course I bought several books and maps AFTER I booked the trip…it’s like an addiction for me) indicated that this was a good launching point to explore the Belizean jungle, nature parks and Mayan ruins. In fact, there is a pretty impressive Mayan castle right above the town. We got a cabana about 1 block from the ruins – Cahal Peche…or “City of Ticks”. Sound inviting? We had just enough time and daylight to do a quick pass through these local ruins.

As soon as we entered the complex, we were “picked up” by two little scam artists. A brother and sister aged 9 and 11 were going to give us a tour of the site. Of course, there was bound to be an unspoken fee for this service. I was going to “shoo” them away when they started into some pretty interesting dialog on the place. It turns out that they are of Mayan decent and were very knowledgeable about the history of Cahal Peche. They led us all around and described the various activities that occurred in each quadrant of the city. They pointed out some of the original pigmentation that the Mayans had painted the one interior wall (1900 years ago!) that we definitely would not have noticed without their guidance. They also gave us some botanical lessons – showing us a nutty fruit that when broken open was just like Elmer’s glue-all. Really cool! This stuff was extremely sticky! They use it in their schools for art classes. Further on, they pointed out some medicinal plants and gave us a great overview on how to use them. All in all, not a bad tour for a couple of pushy little rug-rats.

We tipped them nicely and went back to the cabana for an early evening of Belkin beer, bar-b-que’d shrimp kabobs, and a beautiful view of San Ignacio lit up at night. The lights of the village were surrounded by black, dense jungle and the nighttime sounds were eerily sublime.

Day 2 – winging it.

Surely the greatest thing about this trip to Belize was the friendly and proud Belizean people. They are so excited to speak with tourists and show off their country. It was always very energizing to speak with the locals about recommendations for each day’s journeys.

We woke up pretty early to a rooster crowing from the nearby village. We were refreshed and ready to start our day by trying out some of the local culinary fare. A young, bubbly, but stout waitress brought us our morning coffee and menu’s.

“I’ll have the Belizean breakfast”, I said referring to a batch of scrambled eggs with salsa, refried beans and spicy sausage.

“And I think that I’ll try the Mayan breakfast”, said Beth. The Mayan was scrambled eggs with a local spinach leaf and other herbs mixed in. It also included sausage and refried beans…and something called a “fry jack”.

“What’s a fry jack?” Beth asked our portly waitress.

“Oh, you’ll love those! They are a corn tortilla with slightly less baking powder, deep fried in lard and sprinkled with sugar. I’ll also bring you honey and syrup to dip them in. Fry Jack” she said grabbing her rather generous love handles, “they are soooo good, but you don’t want to eat too many or you’ll end up like me!” She smiled a deep, genuine smile that lit up the entire veranda and then left to place our orders.

---

We were just swabbing out the honey cup with the last delicious fry jack and pouring over our travel guide, when a well-dressed local man came over to our table.

“Hello amigos! Are you enjoying your stay?” he bellowed.

“Yes” we replied. “We’re just trying to decide what to do today.”

That was all it took. He pulled up a chair, sat down and introduced himself as “Danny”, the owner of the cabanas and hotel where we were staying. He had been the first Minister of Agriculture for the newly formed country in 1986, but decided to resign (proudly insisting that he wasn’t even forced out of the position) to start up a tourist service in the mountains.

He promptly started to grill us on what types of activities that we were interested in – “I know a Mayan villager who lives in the hills if you like adventure. He’d take you out into the bush and show you how the ancient peoples lived. I also know the chief council over in the village of Seven Miles. There are some great rock formations and caves that are not on any tourist map that he could take you through.”

He seemed to know someone from everywhere, and virtually every point of interest in the western part of the country. 35 minutes later, he drew us up a map of the region, complete with landmarks, mileage, village names, lodges, restaurants, and oh yes, stream crossings.

We happily accepted his advice and planned out the itinerary for the day. It was to include a route that would take us deep into the jungle and give us a good feel for the natural beauty of Belize. We didn’t want to try and pile on too much…we learned that lesson the hard way 2 years ago in Spain. Better to concentrate on a few key places rather than spread ourselves too thin and end up spending the better part of the day in the car. So today was slated for trekking. We were saving the Mayan ruins for tomorrow.

---

Our first stop was to be Barton Creek. This was a cave that you could canoe through and check out some ancient Mayan ritual sites. Caves played a pretty funky role in Mayan culture. While they were terrified of the underworld, they often ventured into these caverns and performed rituals to appease the dark gods. Caves, canoes, skeletons, and ancient ritual sites - this sounded pretty cool.

To reach the caves, we headed back down the western highway per Danny’s hand drawn map. The trip odometer reading was 6.1 miles. “Damned if he wasn’t right on with that mileage.” Turning right, we had to navigate past a broken down tanker truck. The driver seemed to have abandoned the 18-wheeler half buried in a ditch on the side of the road.

This secondary road was appalling. There was a fine layer of gravel on top of a slick red clay base. The recent rains and speeding drivers had tended to bunch the gravel up into miniature speed bumps about 2 inches high that spanned the width of the road.

“W w w h h h a a t t t t h h e e e e % & # * iss t thhhhiss !” I tried to say. The little Samari with the balding tires bounced sideways as we approached a top speed of 25 mph. I looked at the map that Danny had drawn up for us. Only 14 miles – but then we would turn onto an even smaller road.

“I’m glad I wore my sports bra!” Beth chimed in between rumble strips.

We both laughed and quickly became immersed in the passing scenery of the countryside.

There were several small communities scattered near the road – none of which had any electricity. We gawked as a couple of women washed clothes in a nearby river and began stacking huge baskets on their heads as they started the ascent up the embankment back to the villages.

The road was quickly climbing into the Mayan mountain range and as we crested the first ridge, a break in the understory gave us a panoramic vista of the approaching wilderness. Thick forests and rolling mountains were spread before us as far as the eye could see. We were entering the national parks region of Belize. There were no more villages, no more towns for 100 miles to the Guatemalan boarder. The jungle was awesome!

---

“There are the pine trees!” Beth pointed ahead to a set of three pine trees marking the left hand turn to Barton Creek. I took the left and immediately brought our little rental to an abrupt stop. The road in front of us made our gravel driveway back in Maryland look like the autobahn. This “road” had not been graded in years and was badly eroded with 8-inch deep ruts that zigzagged wildly across the surface. Where the clay had not been solid enough, the runoff had exposed a layer of jutting rocks making me feel like John Wayne in the “Green Beret’s” trying to figure a way around the sharpened pungie sticks in the jungle.

“Whoa! Are we going down there?” Beth asked. There was no sign on the road, only the 3 pine trees. The road started a precipitous downward path ahead of us.

“This is 4-wheel drive”, I said. “It’ll make it….even with the bald tires.”

I started looking for the control to flip it into 4-wheel drive.

“Damn! It’s NOT 4-wheel drive!. We are screwed!”

One of those classic husband/wife debates ensued. Luckily, we both seemed to be in the right frame of mind and it didn’t take much back and forth banter to reach our decision. We were going down! It hadn’t rained since yesterday, so the road was drying out a bit. And even though we hadn’t passed a house or car for the last 20 minutes, we knew that at the low speeds we were driving it couldn’t be more than a couple of mile walk if we buried the little Samari at the bottom of the hill.

I revved the engine for dramatic affect….Beth shot me one of those “what a dork” looks that she is so good at. We laughed out loud and started down the goat trail.

It was another bone-jarring ride that included one hill climb that could have qualified us for a monster truck rally at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena.

We could tell that we were nearing the bottom of the road by watching the terrain on the horizon. I was a bit relieved because I felt that I could navigate the little rented piece-o-shit back up the goat trail that we had just descended. It would be a challenge, but it was possible….as long as it didn’t rain while we were in the caves.

The scene that greeted us as we rounded the final curve in the road can only be described as “classic”. I felt like I was part of a PBS documentary.

2 trucks (real trucks) were parked in the middle of the road and there were several people milling around discussing something. Some of these folks were obviously tourists and others were just as obviously locals. We couldn’t see ahead of the two vehicles and had no idea what the big topic of discussion was. One of the locals was wearing military fatigues. Is this what abduction in the jungles of Columbia feels like?

When in Rome and all that crap…..I parked the car as far to the side of the road as I dared. Beth and I got out and walked up to the gathering crowd to see what was going on.

We had reached the “stream” crossing. The only problem was that the recent rain in the mountains had swollen the “stream” to a raging torrent. It looked hopelessly impassible. Even the local machismo’s in the jacked up Toyota truck were wary.

A lively, and very interesting debate on the strategy of a successful crossing took place for the next 15 minutes. What a hoot! It was great entertainment to just be part of such a situation. The older local, with two young American adventure tourists in tow, was not going to risk it. His old clunker had seen better days but he didn’t want to lose it in the river (er, stream). However, he had no problem giving the 3 younger local studs a few jabs and pressure for THEM to try the crossing. He pointed them downstream.

“Go at an angle. The stream has washed a lot of rock up right in front of the rapids. It’s just like a submerged bridge. If you go straight across, you will be swept away.”

This advice seemed ludicrous, but the 3 young guys could not resist his ribbing. They piled into the truck and started across the stream.

The water reached the tailgate of the jacked up truck, but they made it.

---

We, on the other hand decided to park our 2-wheel drive piece-o-shit on this side of the “little brook” and walk the last mile to the Barton Creek Caves.

The older guide told us about a pedestrian bridge across the creek about 100 yards upstream.

“Pedestrian bridge? Here in the middle of the jungle?” Beth sounded a little nervous.

We gathered up a daypack with some supplies and left the car on the side of the road. The older guide and his tourists were doing the same, so we felt relatively safe. We got out ahead of them and went searching for the bridge.

---

“Holy shit! That’s it?” Beth exclaimed as she looked up at the ragtag rope bridge that spanned the creek. Several of the slats were missing and the rope was very wet and frayed.

I was about to launch into my own discussion of persuasion on how the ropes were fine and I’m sure that the locals use it all the time, when to her credit, Beth didn’t say another word and took the lead climbing up the ladder. For those of you who don’t know, Beth is terrified of heights. Little heights of 4-5 feet freak her out. This bridge was a good 15 feet off the river and it was rickety as hell!

The second board was missing, so the first step was the worst. It took a long stretch to just get your toe onto the next board. Then you had to hold up most of your weight with the flopping rope handrails and push off with your good foot hoping that your momentum put you forward and not back into the vacant slot…and defacto into the river.

I thought briefly of getting onto the bridge behind her and starting to jump up and down just for the fun of it. But then I realized that if I wanted to have any kind of “real fun” once we returned to civilization that I better just cheer her on from the ground.

---

The mile walk to the national park was great! It was so nice to be outside of the car and hear all of the sounds coming from the jungle. About half way to our destination, we passed through a small Amish community, complete with horse drawn carts with wary bearded drivers. They had hewn out a nice little existence in this remote part of the world. Their little valley was beautiful.

---

At last we rounded a final bend in the road to see a Belizean flag flying over a small park office sitting out in the middle of a large opening in the jungle. The only problem was that we once again were facing a swollen stream crossing – this time on foot.

I started looking up and down the stream for another “pedestrian bridge” when a park ranger emerged from the building and started to run toward us.

“I guess we’ll see what he has to say” I said to Beth.

The ranger quickly reached the other side of the stream and I yelled across, “Is there a bridge?”

“No, just come across right here”, he yelled back. “Right along the top of this rapid.”

“Again with the rapid” I shot sideways to Beth, being sure that he didn’t hear me.

I led the way this time and actually the going wasn’t too bad. The water reached mid-thigh, but the current wasn’t as strong as it looked. When we reached the other side, the ranger extended his hand with a big grin on his face. “Welcome…do you want to tour the caves?”

“Yes, we’d like to canoe through.”

“Perfect! Come to the office and sign in. A guide is about to leave now and you can go with him. But first, when you are in Belize you should cross the stream in the Mayan way.”

We both gave him a puzzled look.

He continued, “When you enter the water, all the heat from your body goes straight to your head and gets trapped there. You could pass out. You should wet the top of your head before entering the water. This will allow the heat to move completely through and out of your body.”

It made sense…at least there in the middle of the sweltering jungle. So Beth and I both dipped our hands back into the river and thoroughly doused our heads with water.

“Better, right?” he asked with an even bigger grin.

It did feel better. We thanked him and followed him up the hill to the park station.

---

The ranger had us fill in some paperwork that basically released him, his government, and anyone within a 1000 miles of any liability should we meet with an unfortunate accident in the cave. After signing our lives away, he introduced us to David the tour guide. David looked like he just got off of the boat from Jamaica. He was a short guy of about 28 and wore his hair in long dreadlocks that reached about mid-way down his back. When he smiled the bright sun glimmered off of a mouthful of gold intermixed with his ultra white teeth.

“I’ve got two canoes waiting to head into the cave. We can go straight over.”

We got into the canoes with two other couples (yes, it was a bit crowded) and started paddling up stream.

We again experienced this strange phenomenon of instant bonding with our fellow tourists. We all experienced the journey and excitement of what it took to get these freekin caverns. It was like a brotherhood or fraternity.

The younger couple was a John Bon Jovi look alike from New Zealand and an earthy girl from Scotland. They were taking six months to travel from the top of Mexico to the tip of Argentina and they were having a blast!

The older couple was from somewhere in Northern California – Santa Cruz I think. They were in their 50’s and seemed equally intriguing to tour a subterranean river with. They had high-tech backgrounds, but were burned out and looking for something a bit more “real” in their lives.

---

We had to paddle upstream for only 100 yards before we saw the entrance. It was like a Disneyland ride. It did NOT look real. I would have sworn that it was a large fake rock with plastic vines hanging down over the entrance for dramatic effect. Except…this was real. We were in the middle of the jungle about to enter a remote cave that had been used by the Mayans 1000’s of years ago for some ancient and cryptic rituals. Whoa.

We had a car battery and spotlight in each canoe. This was a really low-tech type of tour, but it turns out that David was of direct Mayan decent and he was the one who actually discovered and explored the cave for the first time in recent history.

“I was born in a canoe” was a favorite phrase of his…one that the guy from New Zealand razzed him about mercilessly.

The tour was fabulous. We got up close and personal with some pretty big bats, saw ancient pottery shards and stone bridges built across the water. We even saw a skeleton clinging to the main ceremonial bluff.

The cave was 7 miles deep, but only canoeable for about 1 mile. We went as far as the canoe would go and actually had to lay flat in the boat at one point to avoid the stalagmites that were only 2 feet above the water surface before the cave opened up into another huge chamber.

As we floated quietly through the cavern, David told us some wonderful local legends, including an evil little dwarf of the forest who had a fondness for Mayan children, and the goddess of the underworld who was frequently seen walking the riverbanks near this very cave.

. ---

When the tour was over, our newfound friends offered to give us a ride back to our car so that we wouldn’t have to cross the “pedestrian bridge of death” again.

We took them up on their offer and started walking back to their car. They were driving a very old and beat up Isuzu Trooper….but at least it was a real 4-wheel drive car. We sat and talked for quite a bit before piling in. David handed out some home-grown bananas that were incredibly sweet and we also raided one of the nearby Amish orange trees on the border of the park.

Since Beth and I were crashing their little tour, it was only right that we got into the back of the Trooper….the very back…as in trunk area. David held open the door for us and we climbed in. Beth ended up sitting on one of the car batteries that we had used on the tour and my seat was a bald spare tire. David closed the door for us and we headed down the goat trail.

---

When we got to the river crossing, tensions were a bit high. They had done the crossing on the way in, but even David mentioned that this was not a normal level for the stream. He apparently knew what he was doing, because he took the same funky path out over the top of the rapids. About half way across, water started pouring into the car where the bottoms of the passenger doors were below the surface.

---

After climbing out of the riverbed, David pulled up beside our car and I grabbed the handle to open the back of the Trooper.

Nothing.

I looked wide-eyed at Beth. The freekin door was broken … we were in the very back of the car. No windows….no way out. It was a deathtrap in that river!

David opened the door from the outside and gave us a big smile. It washed away my apprehension and we had a very congenial goodbye. We wished our fellow travelers the best on the rest of their journey and they rumbled up the road and out of sight. Their next stop was Guatemala.

“Wow. That was one hell of an experience. Priceless.” We both agreed.

---

We got all of our daypack back together and I pulled out Danny’s map. We had planned on hitting “1000 foot falls” next, but David had taken one look at our crappy little rental car and advised us against that particular road. “You won’t make it back up that last hill” he had said and after our drive this morning, we believed him.

So, we set our sights on Rio On Pools. It was another dramatic river gorge, with large waterfalls and swimming pools even further into the jungle.

---

The drive to Rio On was equally interesting. We passed through a 5-mile area where the jungle had burned in the past 10 years. It was kind of eerie in a way. We didn’t expect to see that in a tropical rainforest location.

The other main item of note was the delivery truck that had plunged 50 feet off of a bridge (yes, we actually crossed a real bridge!) and was lying sideways in a raging stream. It was obviously a couple of years old, so there was no need to search for bodies or anything. It was just very curious that they left it there and hadn’t hauled it out.

---

By the time that we reached Rio On Pools, it was late afternoon. It was still warm outside, but the heat had somewhat diminished and I no longer felt compelled to jump into one of the many beautiful pools. We had the place to ourselves and did quite a bit of rock hopping and exploring the surrounding jungle, but also settled in with our books and lounged on the rocks in the waning sun.

---

A final stop on the way home for another jungle hike at sunset left us entirely spent. We headed back to our hotel, had another excellent dinner in the lodge, retiring early with a few Belkins and our books. Tomorrow we were getting up early and heading to Xunantunich – a huge Mayan ruin just this side of the Guatemalan border. We would need our energy.

Day 3 – Ruins

More fry-jacks! This was a great way to start the morning.

We checked out of the cabana and profusely thanked all of our hosts for their help in making our jungle stay a very memorable experience. As we were loading up the car, we realized just how bad the roads of the previous day had been. We had to scrape globs of caked mud off just to get the back hatch to open.

---

$6/gallon!!!!! Yikes! We had stopped for gas about a mile down the road. Now we understood the joke that Danny had tried to explain to us the previous day. “Do you know how to make a small fortune in Belize?” he had asked with anticipation of a punch line.

“Bring a large one!” he bellowed. Of course you had to understand the context of giving his new manager a hard-time for bringing a Chevy Suburban to Belize. The manager was born in Argentina, raised in America (Phoenix), and had just come from a 5 year stint in Columbia. He looked like a burned out surfer dude, but was pretty well spoken and very friendly…one of the many, many interesting folks that we ran into in our short 6 day stay.

---

NOTE: The stickiness of the jungle took a devastating toll on our digital camera. It simply stopped working. We ended up buying some throw-away cameras for the rest of the trip. While these produce decent print pictures, the digital output is terrible. I’m still including the pictures, but they aren’t great from here on out.

---

Just as we were seeing signs for Customs and the Guatemalan border, we pulled over at the roadside flea market that marked the river crossing to Xunantunich. The state had opted not to build a bridge across the river here, mostly to protect the ruins on the other side. The ferry was a jury-rigged little raft that was strung with old wheels and cables to stop it from being swept down the river. A burly older man with 1 huge right arm would crank a set of cogs to pull the ferry across on the cable.

Although you could get 2 vehicles on the ferry, we opted to park our car on this side of the river, cross the ferry as pedestrians, and walk the 1.5 miles up the hill to the ruins. It was a good choice. We saw a lot of iguana’s scampering into the jungle and just really enjoyed the quiet stroll to start the day.

The ruins were incredible! This site is over 100 acres and contains 6 plazas and a 140 foot castle. By this time, we had become used to seeing soldiers in fatigues walking around with M-16’s, so we didn’t really pay much attention to them…funny (and scary) what you can get accustomed to.

We spent most of the morning exploring the ruins on our own and of course climbed all of the buildings. The main castle still had some visible frienze (symbols) on it that were really cool. From the top of that building, there was an unobstructed view of Guatemala and the jungle covered mountains to the south.

The “white blob” just above Beth’s shoulder is the other side of the ruin site showing how far the complex spanned. It was huge!

The “little blobs” on the first tier of the steps of the castle are people….tried to put the size of this castle in perspective but the photo doesn’t do it justice.

---

The ride back out of the mountains was a bit depressing. We hadn’t even scratched the surface. We almost decided to cancel our beach time in the Cayes and spend the rest of the vacation right here in the mountains – yet another rental car that didn’t make it back on time. But we had already paid for the puddle jumper flight over to the islands so we decided to push on. Besides, we hadn’t scuba dived in 4 years, so we were able to rebuild the excitement for what lay ahead with anticipation of exploring the huge barrier reef.

About ½ way back to Belize City, the call of the jungle became too much for either of us to resist. We had just passed Guanacaste National Park when we looked at the time and thought we could manage another 2 hour or so hike. I pulled a u-turn in the middle of the road (there is never very much traffic on the western highway) and entered the park.

The ranger was very friendly and gave us an overview of the trail system. There were two options. A short trail of about 1 mile that went along the river or a longer trail (2 miles) that went into the jungle. We decided to do the longer trail.

We slathered up with 95% DEET inside the ranger station, but avoided the interpretive display on the various snakes of the park – ignorance is bliss - although the ranger did advise me not to hike in Tevas. I grudgingly obliged and put on my hightop hiking boots and we started off. It turns out that this park is a gift from the European Union to help preserve the tropical rainforest.

Now that we were down out of the mountains, the air was a little more oppressive and the jungle was a little more dense. At one point the jungle closed in on the trail and we were briefly lost before circling back to figure out where we missed the turn. It was just after this edgy “lost in the jungle” incident that we rounded a bend in the path and two huge vultures erupted from the dense underbrush about 20 yards off of the path. The commotion and noise scared the shit out of us as we envisioned charging lions or rhinoceros. After gathering our wits, we watched the two birds ascend loudly up above the forest canopy, clipping many trees on the way. Then it hit me like a Mac-truck – the thick, almost palatable stench of rotten carrion.

“Oh man! Do you smell that?” I asked Beth.

Beth has allergies and usually cannot smell too keenly, but I could tell she picked this up by the nauseating look on her face.

“Let’s go check it out!” I enthused. “I bet it’s some cool, dead exotic animal that we’ve never seen before.” My boyish excitement to go poke at dead things was really coming through.

“Ohmygod NO! We are NOT going bushwhacking through the jungle in search of rotten dead animals that even I can smell.”

She turned and started back up the trail. End of discussion.

“I bet it’s a monkey. Or maybe a leopard!” I yelled up the trail. “It could even be a person!”

No response…just more distance between her walking away and me standing in the hot, stinky jungle.

---

She won’t live that one down. I followed her without ever knowing what was behind that incredible stench and I still give her a hard time about being “hair, makeup, and nails….i.e. no fun”.

The rest of the hike, while uneventful, was just what we needed as a last “jungle fix” before jumping on the next airplane for the outer cayes.

---Chapter 2 – No Shirt, No Shoes….No Problem ---

Stay tuned for chapter 2. You’ll get to hear about such exciting things as the “Jimmy Buffet porn song”, “Festival of paint”, and “Canadian girls gone wild”.

Edinburgh

2011-09-26T21:32:00.000+02:00

Beth and I have both been up to our necks in hectic work issues and haven't had much time for kicking-back and relaxing. The work-life balance thing is definitely out of kilter. We both knew that it would be a tough few months in the run-up to 2012, so we've hunkered down to keep ahead of some aggressive deadlines and demanding clients. But "all work and no play makes Dan a dull boy"...as they say. So, we hopped up to Edinburgh for a long weekend with Joe and Sharon to blow of a little steam. We didn't think it would work out, but we also managed to catch Nancy when she was in town. It's been a lot of years since we've seen each other and it took a lot of bottles of wine and wee hours of the night to catch-up in a proper fashion. Good fun! Here are a few pics from the IUP reunion...part I in Scotland.

Hmmmm.....seems to me that I've got a similar picture of Jim and Steve. Well, at least Nancy looks good.

The excellent dinner cooked in the tiny little kitchen and served on the tiny little table.

Tromping up the pass to the top of Arthur's Seat.....

....where the city and North Sea views were spectacular!

The crew at the top....

...and then at the bottom, basking in the sun.

Edinburgh is a really great city, with some views resembling old Rome...

...and others with their own unique Edinburgh character.

Whiskey tasting in the largest whiskey collection in the world. I FINALLY get single malt!

Cheers lads!

Turning back time

2011-08-15T21:51:00.000+02:00

It's not too often that you get a chance to step back in time and recapture a piece of your youth, at least in spirit. But when those chances do come along, I live by the philosophy that you've got to grab them, immerse yourself and savor them, at least in spirit. For those of you who knew me before I was 25, I'm sure that the first thing that came to mind when thinking "Dan Glasstetter in Amsterdam? Sure! That makes perfect sense." For those of you who only know me after 25, you're probably thinking "Dan Glasstetter went to the Landjuweel festival in Ruigoord? Really? You're kidding me!"

Well, let's just say that last weekend I grabbed a hold of one of those rare "turn back time" opportunities and took Beth on the August full moon pilgrimage to Ruigoord. We talked to the artists. We partied in the church. We danced in the mud. We were Hippies for a day - cool! Here are some pics from the festival.

Something tells me his old guy tell some stories about his experience at Woodstock. We saw lots of 50+ers around the party.

...but there were also a ton of kids, with plenty of puppet shows...

...and paper machete zoo's to keep them entertained.

What surprised me most were the twenty-somethings like this group hanging out in a tree platform. I don't know why, but I never really think of this age group as being interested in such an old-fashioned approach toward counter culture.

Into the mud pit for a really great Reggae band.

But I have to say that we didn't get quite as "involved" as some of the dancers. Some pictures wouldn't make it past the Facebook censors.

Hula hoops are all the rage with the hippies this year. It was amazing what this girl could do with it.

Chilling out at the central fire-pit with the lady-in-white keeping watch.

But what's Landjuweel really all about? Open expression. Music venues that anyone can take up....

...and as always in Ruigoord....funky art. Until the next August full moon...peace, man.

July jaunts

2011-07-26T10:52:00.000+02:00

Once you graduate from high school and leave the family home, it’s not very often that you find yourself with a full month of unoccupied time. No work. No searching for work. No stressing about work. No obligations at all. Back in June, when I was looking at the calendar of empty days that made up July 2011, it seemed like a really, really long month and that it would last forever. Sitting on the couch. Watching Oprah. Eating potato chips. I thought that I’d be bored out of my mind. So, I did what comes naturally to me when faced with so many free days in a row…I started cramming them full of stuff. Here is what I came up with.

It started out with a short trip up to Norway to catch up with Joe and Sharon. They're staying in a small little village just outside of Oslo for the summer. Something tells me that Levi will never be satisfied with just a can of "Bud" when he gets older. He's going to go for the imports.

Biking out to a favorite swimming hole...

...on a beautiful lake in the hillsides east of Aas. The water actually wasn't too cold...maybe because we were swimming so fast to get away from the monster leeches!

We also did a few day trips up to Oslo. (such a shame what just happened up there) This time was for an Expat 4th of July picnic in Vigelandsparken.

The real attraction of this park is the more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland depicting humanity in all it's forms. Here, "Throwing Babys".

And the famous "Angry Boy" who's bronze hand is rubbed bare by the tourists. Levi didn't seem all that interested.

It was great catching up with Joe and Sharon - it's been a lot of years since we've seen each other. And Beth has made a new friend with Lydie.

It seems like I only had enough time after getting off the plane from Norway to drop Beth off at the house and re-pack my bags to get back onto another jet bound for America for a solo visit to my folks. It’s always good to get back to Ligonier for a visit, swim in the pool, play golf with my dad, and get my mom onto the exercise bike – no small feat! The return flight between Johnstown and Dulles was a nightmare, skipping through the heavy wind and clouds. I made the mistake of trying to read and got a serious case of motion sickness, almost losing my breakfast into one of those little bags in the seat pocket. It took me two beers and a plate of nacho’s in Dulles to quiet my stomach down…go figure.

Then, after a few days of running errands around Haarlem and playing "boy toy" to Beth, we both headed to Italy for some hiking in the mountains. With an extensive network of well-maintained trails, rustic mountain huts (rifugio's), food and wine that is NEVER bad, and some of the most dramatic mountain scenery that I've ever seen, the Dolomites are fantastic!

Did I say rustic? Some of the rifugio's bordered a bit on the "posh" side. But, how posh can it really be if you can only reach it with a steep, sweaty trek of a few hours?

The approach to a more "typical" rifugio. These places are usually located at junction points of trails.

This particular one had it's own green house for fresh herbs for the kitchen.

And guess what's on the menu at this rifugio? Fresh trout! With pasta of course...

High mountain pass.

Building a bridge out in the middle of freaking nowhere. They must have packed in the materials with mules.

Surrounded.

All of the trails are rated for different levels of difficulty. They have set cables on some of the more challenging ones where you have to rope in to ascend/descend. A lot of these trails are left over from World War I army maneuvers. This particular trail was rated "moderate" and didn't require ropes, but I still couldn't get Beth to do it. In her defense, the photo is a bit out of context. This is a sheer cliff face with a 600-700 ft drop off to the right and no visible plateau above. But, there IS a rifugio up there less than 2 kilometers away!

We had lunch on the mountain side as often as in the rifugio's. It doesn't get much better than this.

We based ourselves in Cortina d'Ampezzo, host city of the 1956 Olympics.

The flower decked terrace of our hotel in Cortina was a great place to wind down with a bottle of wine after a day on the trail.

Playing with the new hotel mascot - Harley, a 4-month old British bull dog.

We rented as cheap of a car as we could find because we wanted this to be a hiking vacation, not a driving one. We only needed to get from Venice airport to Cortina and then out to a trail-head or two. Big mistake! Our little piece-o-crap Lancia promptly broke down. It was tough enough trying to find a mechanic who at least understood hand-gestures (let alone English), but now it's proving even more difficult to get the rental company to reimburse our expenses. Live and learn.

I can't end this entry about hiking in the Dolomite's without mentioning the trail that beat us both. The hike to Croda Da Lago was brutal! Our mistake was that we started at the wrong trail-head and after 2 1/2 hours and nearly 3000 vertical feet, we didn't have time (or energy) to make the last assent up to the lake and rifugio. Even the French family who had started at a higher elevation were struggling to climb the last pass. It was a frustrating decision, but we had to turn around and never got to see the lake...a good excuse for a return trip!

Now I've got 4 days left of holiday...where's that damned couch?!?!?

A good year

2011-06-30T22:21:00.002+02:00

This past year has been a grand experiment on the career front for me. After 22 years in the information technology biz, I found myself burned-out and needing to do something radically different to earn a living. Since the whole book thing didn’t exactly pan out as I had wanted, I needed to stay on someone else’s payroll. But I wasn’t prepared to step backwards. I wanted to leverage what I could from my prior experience while continuing to bolster my management skills, particularly on the revenue generation and marketing side of a business. So I did my research, I did my soul-searching and I deliberately pursued a job which would be well outside of my comfort zone. It was a hard adjustment for me, but I persevered. I learned a side of business that I hadn’t been exposed to before – defining new product opportunities, launching them into global markets, driving sales, and managing revenue. Way cool stuff! But after a year in the trenches of product management, it’s now time to take those new skills back to my IT roots and see if I can’t finally unlock the door to the boardroom.

But what has surprised me the most is how difficult this departure has been. Today was my last day and it has been one of the hardest last-days of my career…and that’s saying a lot with as many “last days” as I’ve had! I’m really going to miss these folks. I’ve always been an international person at heart, but this team has set a much higher bar for everything ahead of me. In our little corner of the thirteenth floor we had Americans, British, Dutch, Hungarians, Croatians, Spanish, Surinamese, Romanians, and Turks. In the whole European office of 200 people, we had over 40 nationalities! What an experience for a Pennsylvania hillbilly! From Roma’s excellent MS Outlook skills, to Noemi’s smelly lunches, to Sevgi’s smooth style with the customers, I now have enough material to create plenty of characters for at least two more books. I’m gonna miss all of you guys!

Good-bye dinner at the local Ethiopian restaurant.

Back at the office in the new pink shirt.

Double trouble!

The finance and baking teams.

Don't want to piss him off...he's IT!

Our resident fashion queen and Dolomite expert. Check out the photo on the white board in the background. Pretty funny stuff, huh Elena?

Heavenly Hemelvaarts

2011-06-02T20:40:00.000+02:00

I've been sick as a dog the past 6 days, muddling along with a foggy head made worse with buckets of flu medicine. So a beautiful, warm day off for Hemelvaarts is just what the doctor ordered - 23 degree's, laying in the sun, walking in the woods, and Bar-B-Que'ing E-coli-free veggies on the grill - I'm now finally feeling better for the weekend. The forecast is 28 and full-on sun! Bring on the summer!

Spring

2011-05-16T21:11:00.000+02:00

Normally this is one of the wettest times of year in The Netherlands, but this year we've been under an intense high-pressure system for the last 6 weeks. That means plenty of sun and virtually no rain...we're talking drought conditions, which in turn means lots of time in the back garden, at the beach, or on a south facing cafe terrace. It's been one for the record books!

Bloomin' Budda in the back garden.

The annual Zannen Park carnival. This year there were two walk through fun houses and an archery range.

Kayaking in a South Holland nature park.

...and of course the beach.

Zandvoort sunset

Queensday 2011 - Amsterdam

2011-05-01T11:04:00.001+02:00

The maid, the sheriff, the friar, and the thief

2011-04-21T18:29:00.000+02:00

Throw in some buffalo swimming around a flooded baseball field and it could be the title of another really bad Kevin Costner movie, couldn’t it? Luckily, Robin Hood has been around a bit longer than Mr. Costner, so even though Nottingham unabashedly exploits the legendary outlaw for commercial gain, and the first words out of my wife’s mouth when she saw this photograph were “It doesn’t look like Kevin Costner to me”, there were thankfully no references to that awful 1991 Hollywood version of the story in Nottingham.

This statue is placed just outside the gates to the castle occupied by the Sheriff of Nottingham…

….and just up the hill from the oldest pub in the UK, “Ye old trip to Jerusalem”, established in 1198. We stopped in for a pint and some fish-n-chips. It was an incredible atmosphere, with small rooms hacked out of the side of the cliff and furnished with rough wooden stools facing a modest, dank fireplace. You could almost hear the conversations of crusades and conquest.

Nottingham has a decent town center, although it was missing continuity in how it developed over the years which left some pretty desolate places that you had to walk through to get between these more vibrant bits.

The University of Nottingham campus was one of the finest that I’ve ever seen. Its sprawling grounds outside the city were filled with parks and classic buildings.

All of the technology conferences that I’ve attended in the past have been pretty heavily staffed with, well, let’s just say a different demographic profile behind the booth. So I was very surprise to be invited by our marketing team to participate in this conference. Does that make me a “Booth Boy”?

De Rusthoek

2011-04-12T19:09:00.000+02:00

Last week was some fantastic spring weather in Amsterdam. Sunny terraces. Sparkling white wine. Short skirts. Unfortunately, we were slogging it out in the rain, sleet, and snow back in mountain-top Maryland. Not that I'm complaining. We actually had a great time putting our backs into building a new game room for the rental house and are really happy with the results. Here are a few pics from the construction project.

We first cleared all of the hunting gear out of the pole barn and started hanging maps for wallpaper.

One of the biggest jobs was to get power down to the barn from the house. This was going to take some serious horsepower. So, I called up our local rental place and told them what I was trying to do.

They delivered this Ditch-Witch on Tuesday morning...just in time for a fresh coat of snow. What a wicked machine! It was a blast to operate, chunking through rocks and roots. But the thick, snow saturated mud didn't flow through the extraction auger properly and I had to run the ditch three times...ripping the hell out of the yard in the process.

But once the snow melted and the mud dried up, we were able to bring it up to some level of acceptability.

We had lots of help from family and friends on the whole operation. In Holland they bring their dogs on their bikes...in Western Maryland, they come on ATV's.

And the results turned out really well. Based on the game room alone, we just secured an entire month-long rental in July - a family of four with two dogs.

We named the game-room De Rusthoek after one of our favorite Dutch pubs in the nearby village of Bloemendaal.

It was an action packed week, full of hard work and satisfying results. We didn't really even have time to kick back a bit until the last evening. Now it's time to start planning a real, relaxing vacation.

Kupanaha Kona!

2011-03-01T20:59:00.004+01:00

Aloha allemaal! 22 hours on planes, trains, and buses is not usually worth a short 7-day holiday. But this time around was an exception! Beth earned a spot in the 2010 Winners Circle, an annual celebration held for the top-of-the-top contributors in her company. They pulled out all the stops, reminding us both of the free-wheeling dot-com bubble days back in Silicon Valley. With 6 nights in a 5-star resort, free activities like whale watching, scuba diving, and helicopter rides, full open bars (too many Mai Tai's), loads of top-notch food, and a present waiting on our pillow every night (including an Apple I-Pad), we didn't think that it could get any better until they piled us into buses on the last night and we found ourselves at a private concert with Elton John which was followed by some excellent fireworks. Whoa! What an experience! Here are a few pics from the trip.

The Mauna Launi resort was fantastic...

...nestled into a private bay...

...and built around an ancient set of lagoons created by the locals to trap and raise fish.

Even with the resort completely booked by the company (one of seven resorts fully sold-out to the company in the area), there was plenty of space to get away from it all for a romantic sunset....

...or lounge in the sun on a private little spot that the local dive shop recommended as the best snorkeling within 20 miles. They were right! It was loaded with coral and all of the accompanying fish, but the highlight was swimming with the sea turtles. We saw dozens of them, up close and personal! Curious little buggers!

The humpback whales were also here on their annual migration. We could see them breaching from our breakfast table. When we got out on this boat, they were surrounding us.

The land trips were just as good. This little 6-wheeler got us up into the rain forest...

Where we hiked into some secluded waterfalls and went for a swim.

There was also a nice little local hike through the bush...

...that led to an ancient sacred Hawaiian pilgrimage site loaded with petroglyphs.

Then it was up into the air for our first helicopter flight.

We were both surprised how smooth the helicopter was. Our pilot maneuvered us within feet of these sheer cliff walls.

On the bus to the concert....the glasses that they handed out gave the surprise artist away!

Elton John, playing for a company audience of 3500.

Benny and the Jets

The evening was capped off by some great fireworks.

Let's all cheer Beth on so that we can see what the 2011 logo looks like! :-)

Gezellig

2011-02-15T21:07:00.000+01:00

Even as I complain about the dismal Dutch winters, I've always liked the way that the culture embraces the long, dark evenings of January. Sometimes in mid-summer, when it's still light at 10:00pm, I find myself looking forward to these cozy evenings by the fire with a nice bottle of wine, or bundling up for the brisk bike ride into town to chill out in the local pub. Gezellig!

But the days are quickly getting longer and the annual construction of the beach bars is well underway. The crocuses are poking through the brown grass and there are even a few blooming daffedills along the randweg, all building my anticipation for switch to summer. The next beach pictures appearing on our blog will be very, very different! ;-)

Revolution

2011-01-31T22:03:00.000+01:00

All of Beth’s hard work over the past few years has finally paid off! It was early December and we were talking about our winter vacation. Skiing in the Alps is always a favorite, but after the crappy weather that we’ve had here in Holland in 2010 we decided to do something a little different. The key criteria were sun, temperatures above 70, and more sun - throw in some cultural adventure and we were onto something. We talked about several destinations like Croatia, Greece, or Portugal. But after a bit of research and a never ending drive to keep pushing boundaries, we settled on…you guessed it…Egypt! A couple days in Cairo then a cruise up the Nile to Luxor and Aswan then a camel ride into desert oasis before flying back to Amsterdam. Sounds great, right? Airfares were pretty cheap and I even dug up a local guide to help us with our itinerary. I was literally about to book the trip when I got an email from Beth at work with the good news – she was just awarded an all expense paid, first class trip to Hawaii! There are only a handful of non-sales employees in the company (>40,000) to get the performance award. It comes complete with whale-watching excursions, BBQ’s on the volcano at sunset, snorkeling/diving, waterfall hikes, and a helicopter tour of the island. I’m having to be extra nice for the next couple of weeks so that she keeps me on the list as her guest. Congratulations Beth…we’ll catch the revolution next time!

Blimey!

2011-01-05T20:03:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, Beth and I have been putting off exploring the UK until we're a bit older. We've always considered it an "easy" destination reserved for later-in-life. What a mistake that has been! We just got back from an extended weekend in London...Blimey! What a pleasant surprise! This is my kind of city. Minus the crappy weather, I could easily live here and will put it on our annual travel rotation right up there with the German Christmas markets. Here are a few pics from the trip. Happy New Year to all!

The Tower Bridge - the only tourist sight that we took in. While the weather was a bit dreary and bleak, it stayed dry which kept us on our feet and in streets instead of the museums and castles and churches and palaces.

The city is loaded with open-air markets, many of which were still decorated beautifully for Christmas.

Those sneaky bastards! We chose our restaurant in Chinatown based upon the amount of Asians who were dining there. More than 80% of the customers in this restaurant were Asian, so we walked in...only to be led upstairs with the rest of the pasty-whites, out of sight of the street. It was obviously deceptive...but the food was excellent, so we didn't complain.

Cozying up in a West End theater for Blood Brothers. Man, those guys can act AND sing! Incredible!

Beth, always a sucker for Hugh Grant, dragged me to Knotting Hill market. How much mileage can you get out of one lousy movie?

Contemporary art in the very bohemian Brick Lane.

More Brick Lane surprises...excellent street food! One of our favorite parts of the city.

Not my "cup-o-tea", but you've gotta love this sign.

Soho - makes the New York version look like a ghost town.

Scooter seating at Camden Locks...

...and of course the famous Camden Markets.

We took the long way back into the city along the Regent's canal....

...and then into Hyde Park where we stumbled across this massive mirror sculpture. That's us in the reflection. Very cool!

London, like New York, has a Starbucks about every thirty yards or so. But since we are Starbucks deprived in Amsterdam, we had to stop in to warm up after a long day on our feet.

Trier

2010-12-18T19:23:00.001+01:00

Beth and I kicked off the holiday season with an evening at the sauna then a long weekend down in Trier, Germany for the annual Christmas market. Here are a few pics from the trip.

Trier is a bustling little market town with an interesting Roman history. The streets were crowded with shoppers, with the ancient Roman gates in the background.

Porta Nigra (The Black Gate - 200 AD)

The third largest baths in the Roman empire are in Trier - it was an important city on a very hostile edge of the empire.

So important in fact, that emperor Constantine spent much time here (probably planning his actions that would lead to the eventual fall of the empire - IMHO). This massive, yet innocuous looking building is his original throne room - once part of a vast complex.

This part of Germany is all about wine. The hillsides were covered with highly improbable vineyards. Some of the hills were so steep that there were little cog train lifts to service the vines.

We then took a nice drive up the Mosel river to discover many class German villages and hundreds of vineyards.

And finally, a little video of the market for my mom...including cheesy animatrons...gotta love the goats at the end. Merry Christmas everyone!

Hobbits?

2010-12-01T20:25:00.000+01:00

Living in the country with the tallest people in the world, Beth had to stop and make a pose when we came across this itty-bitty door on our last trip into Amsterdam - it isn't often that she has an opportunity to feel tall around here...

...and even less often than to feel like a tall, Dutch sexpot!

Where's the kick?

2010-11-10T22:00:00.002+01:00

I’m growing restless… again. I wish that it were a simple midlife crisis. You know the cliché – big boobed coed’s. Fast cars. Hair transplants. But it’s not. This restlessness has happened many times before. I think that it’s time to just admit that it’s an integral part of who I am.

A good but-not-seen-often-enough friend put it in context for me a few weeks ago when Beth and I went into Amsterdam to meet her for drinks. She’s from Macedonia and has experienced the same feeling. Between us, we could finally articulate it.

We’ll call it The Expat Addiction, although for me it started very domestically. The cross country adventure right out of college. The move to Boise. The move to Virginia/Pennsylvania/Maryland (10 in total). All for the same restless reasons. And with each step, just like with any self respecting addiction, the dose had to be more extreme to get the same feeling.

It’s the kick that you get walking along a canal in a far-away city that you now find yourself living in. Taking in the architecture. Talking with the different people and learning their culture. Discovering the hidden places and discovering more each day about yourself. Pushing your limits. Testing your boundaries. It’s an experiential addiction that thrives on newness and uncertainty. It's the possibility to reinvent yourself, again and again and again.

But as you become more shore footed, and the newness wears off, and the views become “ordinary” and life becomes easy and you slip back into being you, then for me at least, it loses its appeal. It loses its kick. And for anyone who knows me, I need “kick” to survive.

So what the hell am I going to do about it? I need some serious therapy to help me figure out how to revive the kick in my life without moving another 3000 miles. And more importantly,how do we nominate Beth for canonization for putting up with this crap? Even though it has nothing to do with big-boobed coeds, she’s still a saint in my book!

Getting old doesn't suck (that bad)

2010-10-19T19:30:00.000+02:00

39 seconds...Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But after five more years of life’s relentless momentum pushing me toward “old fart”, I’m quite happy with it:

2005 Amsterdam Marathon, 3:52:39

2010 Amsterdam Marathon, 3:52:00

Strasbourg and the Vosges

2010-10-07T21:03:00.002+02:00

We took a little road trip and a long weekend down to the Vosges mountains for some hiking, then spent a few nights in ultra-international border town of Strasbourg. It was a great little getaway with many unexpected discoveries, like stumbling into some overgrown WWI trenches and watching a giant nutria begging for bread on the banks of a Strasbourg canal. Here are a few pics from the trip.

Funky mushrooms in them thar hills!

There were loads of abandoned castles. We picked this one as the destination for this little hike. We started out in some beautiful vineyards, then wound our way up the mountain along the original cart path - the only way up!

It was an interesting mix of disiduous forest and alpine terrain....we even rousted out a monster wild boar! But he scared the bejeebers out of us and I didn't get a picture.

Once we reached the top, the view out to the wild mountains was almost as beautiful....

....as back across the valley of vineyards and villages below.

And here is a link to a 360 video from the top of the highest tower.

Each afternoon after a day of hiking in the mountains found us on the sunny terrace of the only watering hole in the tiny village where we stayed.

Then it was into the city for a few days of great food, great wine, and great relaxation.

The famous Strasbourg church...tallest building in the world until 1876.

The narrow alleys, canal locks, waterfalls, and half-timbered buildings of Petit France....

....contrasted sharply with the ultra-modern EU government buildings on the outskirts of the city.

Gigantic sycamores on the banks of the river...

and plenty of hot French chicks!

Park Duck

2010-09-21T19:24:00.000+02:00

Quack! Quack!

It was me who threw the stone - at least that’s how I remember it - and I was very proud of that fact at the time. We had been fishing all morning along Loyalhanna Creek and were just hanging out near Long Bridge in Darlington waiting for my sister to pick us up. Like most normal 13 year old boys, we were bored and showing off and getting into trouble now that the fishing was over. It was me, Danny Klosky, Vic Merola, and three ducks floating lazily down the river. Not wild ducks mind you, but big, fat, white, corn-fed, domesticated ducks.

The stone skipped once off the placid water and caught the lead duck square in the head. It never had a chance. “Holy Shit! Nice shot!” shouted Vic as he went splashing into the ankle-deep water to get the limp duck before it entered the rapids. I had no idea why he would want a dead duck when he came out of the creek holding by its feet it like an African safari trophy. Danny asked him what he was going to do with it and Vic responding in that typical Vic matter-of-fact-what-a-stupid-question tone, “We’re gonna eat it!”

So we found a filthy plastic bag tangled in the brush along the river and shoved the dead duck into it just as my sister pulled into the Road Toad parking lot and beeped her horn. When we got home, Danny took the bag and dropped it in the bushes between our houses. The dead duck would be fine there in the sweltering summer heat until we were ready to eat it later that afternoon. We agreed to meet out in the woods at 3:00 to prepare our feast. I was in charge of BBQ sauce, Danny would bring the butcher knife, and Vic would bring a bag of potato chips.

At 3:00 we started a fire, built a spit, and cleaned the duck. Fifteen minutes later the duck was slathered with BBQ sauce and searing over the flames. By 4:00 the BBQ sauce was golden brown and our roasted duck looked ready to eat. We devoured it, not even noticing that the meat underneath the lovely exterior was barely warm, let alone properly cooked. Needless to say, by 8:00 that evening I was vomiting so profusely that the event remains a story of legend in my family even to this date. And people wonder why I never had kids…

So, why this story now? Because yesterday on the train I was reading the free rag (Metro) that is handed out at all the stations and came across an article on how to catch, kill, and prepare a Park Duck. The author (who remained anonymous because killing park ducks is illegal even in anything goes Holland) would put on a business suit so as not to raise suspicion and then go sit on a park bench, distributing bread to the witless ducks. He even divulged his strategy for getting the ducks close, then throwing a piece of bread just beyond the lead duck so that it would have to turn its back, thereby giving the “hunter” a chance to pounce, grab it by the neck, give it a quick “whirl” to kill it, then shove it into a waiting bag. Good stuff. But most importantly was the preparation bit of the article. This guy gave several of his favorite recipes for properly cooking the little beasts. Mmmmm. Park Duck. Lekker! Happy hunting!

So Incredible

2010-09-09T12:39:00.002+02:00

We managed to catch a few dry hours in between the incessant rainstorms last month and biked over to Bloemendaal for an outdoor concert. The venue is a small, intimate amphitheater tucked into the North Sea dunes. We’ve seen several shows here, and even with a sold-out crowd of 1000 people, there is never a bad seat in the house.

This latest concert was Ilse de Lange. We’ve always liked Ilse’s music, a blend of pop, folk, and country with heavy influence from James Taylor and Neil Young. But neither of us was prepared for her energy and presence on stage. Maybe it was the cozy outdoor setting, or the unique bond felt between residents of this damp, little country when sharing an evening of dry weather together, but when we biked home later that evening, we both commented that it was one of the best shows that we’ve ever seen. Not only did Ilse perform flawlessly, but she created a genuine connection with the crowd.

The sound quality is very poor on this home-made video, but it shows a bit of what I’m talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYBp3FotwRo

And the Dutch-Hollywood production version....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6MVcBM4P74&feature=fvsr

Summer Classics

2010-08-23T23:02:00.000+02:00

The summer’s weather has been pretty lousy here in Holland this year, but even the brooding skies couldn’t put a damper on this past weekend’s classic festivals.

We started on Thursday with the inaugural evening at Haarlem Jazz. They’ve swapped out the main tent for an open-air podium this year which we found much nicer, especially since the stage was transparent and you could see the historic city hall behind the performers.

Then on Saturday, we got up early to get Sage out into the woods so that we could leave her for the day while we joined our friends on their boat for SAIL Amsterdam. SAIL only happens every five years, but it is the largest festival in the country. To see it from a boat was really special - a once in a lifetime experience for us.

Boarding the boat in the quiet harbor at Penningsveer – the only calm waters of the day.

It was tough to find a mooring in the crowded waters and whipping wind as we waited for the sluice at Spaarndam.

In the sluice.

The boat traffic kept building on the North Sea Canal approach into Amsterdam….

…until it was a virtual traffic jam on the water. You could walk from boat-to-boat! Beth and I were stationed on the sides with grapple hooks to push boats away that might get too close. There were many shouts of "Full thrust reverse!!!"

Sail 2010 Video

This YouTube video shows a bit of the craziness of boats weaving in and out of the channel.

But seeing the tall ships against the backdrop of the city was spectacular.

Het Ij was filled with all kinds of boats…

…loaded with all kinds of passengers.

Then we did a daring dash across the Ij and made for the calmer waters of Amsterdam’s canal rings.

We found a great mooring by this old tower for lunch.

It was a great place to sit and watch the boats go by.

Beth and I hopped off the boat and said our goodbyes…

…then jumped on a train back to Haarlem where we got Sage out for another walk before heading back to the city center for an evening of funk at the music festival.

Now it’s time to recharge for next weekend – a proper sendoff for summer.

Smoked!

2010-08-10T20:36:00.000+02:00

Beth and I are ramping up our training for the Amsterdam Marathon in October. The last time that I ran this marathon, I had only trained at the bare minimum levels, which got me over the finish line in decent time but left my body in a sorry state for the next week and a half. I couldn’t even come down a flight of stairs without wincing in pain.

So this time around, I’m going to be much better prepared. In addition to already running between 25-30 miles per week-- well ahead of schedule for the October race, I’m also incorporating a day of cross-training with the bicycle into the weekly routine. Last weekend I managed to get Beth out on one of these workout rides with me. Normally she’s more of a “watch-the-scenery-go-by” cruiser on the bike, which is fine with me, but this time she agreed to break a sweat.

So we took off out of town on one of my favorite loops – into the dunes behind Santpoort, across Landgoed Beekesteijn, through the tunnel at Velsen, then a nice wide arc around Spaarnwoude and back into Haarlem through the village of Spaarndam. It’s a modest 40K, so I set a pace that would get a little burn into the muscles and sweat onto the brow, but not push her so hard that she wouldn’t enjoy it. She held up like a trooper and was all smiles at her accomplishment as we were coming back across the last dyke and pedaling hard against an angry headwind. We had the landmark radio tower of Haarlem directly in our sites and were talking about how good that first cold beer would taste.

And that’s when we heard the familiar “Ring, Ring” of bikes coming up on us from behind, wanting to pass. I pulled in front of Beth to give them room, expecting the usual suspects -- Lycra clad athletes on carbon-fiber racing bikes, tucked into a tight, drafting formation.

But instead, two late middle-aged riders, on grocery-getter granny bikes (complete with saddle bags and baskets), blew by us like we were standing still – pedaling effortlessly with their faces held high and their hair flowing majestically against the ferocious head wind.

The look on Beth’s face was priceless.

So priceless in fact, that I still haven’t told her about the extra-fat hub I noticed on their back wheels, the telltale sign of an electric-assist bike. She still thinks that we got smoked by a granny-fiets-- a fact that I insisted would NEVER have happened if I were out biking on my own. Fortunately, she won’t be reading this blog entry until I’m safely cruising at 30,000 feet above the Atlantic.

Fab Four (days)

2010-07-29T20:49:00.000+02:00

Oddly enough, I had never been to the United Kingdom before. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to go, it’s just that I always thought I’d save it for later on in life-- when I’m older and would appreciate the ease of traveling through a country where I know the language.

My UK friends frequently told me everything that I was missing – the rugged beauty of Scotland, the quaint countryside of Wales, the urban sophistication of London. Funny, but none of them had ever mentioned Liverpool as a “must see” UK destination, which is where I found myself this past week on a business trip. I think my friends would be appalled, but I actually liked it.

Rebuilt from the ashes of massive German bombing during the war, then rebuilt again after post-war industrial failure and dreadful urban blight, Liverpool is in the process of reinventing itself yet again. I snuck away from work one sunny afternoon to see what the city was all about.

A new multi-tiered city center serves as an anchoring hub between the older, eclectic shopping streets, the historic financial district, and the high-rises along the wharfs.

Bold Street - one of those eclectic ones with funky bars and shops. The church in the background...

...was destroyed during the bombing. They left the shell as a monument.

Liverpool also used to have the largest Chinese population in Europe. But again, the district was destroyed during the bombing and never rebuilt. All that's left is the gate, and one block of shops.

Crowd control at a street car rally? That's one tough crowd!

Rally car getting ready to rumble.

A view from the famous Albert Docks - the place where the latest reinvention started.

And of course, the reason for the trip - The University of Liverpool.

Creative Commuting

2010-07-16T17:25:00.000+02:00

As the tram slowed down and rolled into the Amstel station, I stood at the door on the north side of the carriage and leaned into the window, straining my eyes across the platform to read the overhead display to see if the NS train to Uitgeest was coming into the same station. My monthly pass on the NS doesn’t cover the tram, so I was riding illegally. But because I had missed my own NS connection back at the Bijlmer Station, I knew that I could hop the tram to the Amstel Station where-- if I was lucky, I could dash across platform and catch the Uitgeest train the rest of the way into Amsterdam Centraal without paying the tram fee. However, if I missed the train connection here (Amstel), then I had to still jump off the tram, swipe my OV-Chipcart across the payment post in the middle of the platform and then jump back into the same tram to continue on to Central Station. If I didn’t pay here, then it could get ugly once the tram went underground after Duivendrecht and the line no longer paralleled the NS line. I learned this lesson the hard way the first time that I tried this maneuver and got stuck in the underground at Central Station with an OV-Chipcart that hadn’t paid for the tram ride and I couldn’t get out of the gates. I had to wait for the next tram to unload and squeeze through the gates on the heels of a paying customer-- which still set off the alarm bells, but it was so crowded that the “GVB Cops” didn’t see who had jumped the gate.

Today I was lucky. The fast train to Uitgeest was just pulling into the station and I was able to make the switch without paying. The connection to Haarlem in Central station would be easy. It’s on the main line and there are always trains between the two cities.

And so it goes. It took me a few months this time around, but I have now solved the dilemma with commuting by public transport to my new job on the other side of Amsterdam – How to come and go whenever I want without being a slave to the public transport schedules.

And the solution doesn’t stop with the trains. I have similar options with the bus system. There is an express bus to Schiphol Airport (300) that stops just outside my office building. That bus happens to stop at Amstelveen Station where I can make the mad dash across the road and jump onto the bus to Haarlem (175). These busses run in a staggered 8 minute pattern, so the maximum wait is 4 minutes (during rush hours).

With a combination of all of these options, I can leave the office whenever I please and know how to make it back to my bike in Haarlem within 50 minutes with never more than a 9 minute wait on any platform or bus stop. Cool! So now I only use the excuse “Sorry. I have to leave to catch the train!” when I want to avoid that particularly nasty recurring meeting late on Monday afternoon.

Côte d'Azur

2010-06-30T18:50:00.000+02:00

This famous playground in Southern France, where the Alps tumble precipitously into the Mediterranean, lives up to every inch of its exaggerated reputation – both good and bad. An overdeveloped strip along the coast somehow preserves access from old fishing harbors to the uncanny blue water, and the Villa clad hills still manage to offer plenty of wooded hiking trails that meandered between the ancient perched villages, giving you a sense of quiet solitude.

It would be a tough call between “love-it or hate-it” if you didn’t go in with an open acceptance that the Côte d'Azur is one of the top vacation destinations in, and of, the world. There’s a reason it’s so popular…and a price (not dollars) that has to be paid because of it.

With all of that being said, I’d HIGHLY recommend a visit to this fantastic region. Here are a few pics from our short holiday with Sue and Tom last week.

We rented an apartment in the hilltop village of Vence, halfway up the mountain above Nice.

Its narrow, winding streets kept us cool during the blazing heat of the day ...

and cozy-warm for an evening drink at an outdoor café.

There are many medevial villages perched on the mountain cliffs. That’s one hell of a drop off!

Pockets of pristine nature dot the lower hills, but dominate the mountains further up.

Of all places on the Cote d’Azur, I was most hesitant about Nice – I didn’t know what to expect other than a very large, crowded city. It was large…it was crowded…and it was fantastic! I was very surprised at the vibe in Nice – a great mix between frolicking tourists and lively local fair – similar to Amsterdam. Nice yacht!

Even the rocky beaches couldn’t detract from the draw of the Med in the heart of the city.

A little mountain in the center of the city is always a good feature...

...and once at the top, the views were incredible.

There was plenty of eye-candy for everyone…Beth and Sue enjoyed watching “Jean-Luc” (as they called him), driving the parasailing boat for the tourists...

..while I preferred ogling the girls in red shoes...

Night Skate Haarlem

2010-06-16T21:17:00.002+02:00

Every summer Haarlem allows the inline skating club to take over the city streets for two evenings a month. Several hundred skaters typically show up and on a normal evening it's fun to watch them go by, led and followed by a car blaring music from a rooftop sound system.

But, as I'm sure we are all aware, this year is a World Cup year so the music is a bit more provincial and the skaters are a bit more flamboyant.

Sound quality sucks, but I caught a bit on video as well...

Night Skate Haarlem - WK style

Good fun...makes me want to pick up skating again...Hup Holland!

Scooter'n

2010-05-30T12:06:00.001+02:00

Beth and I have a very open, honest relationship with each other. It’s a "you only live once" type of agreement that works really well between us. Gotta dream? Go for it! Got an idea? Explore it! However, there is one, hard and fast constraint that she has set out for me. No motorcycles! I initially thought about challenging this rule until we took a road trip to the mountains of Quebec shortly after our marriage. It was a beautiful, clear blue day when we rounded a sharp curve and found ourselves the first on the scene of a brutal motorcycle accident (too gruesome to describe in this light-hearted blog entry). As we drove away after the ambulance arrived, I knew that my motorcycle days were over. It was a tough pill to swallow for someone who grew up on dirt bikes, but it’s all about give and take, right?

However, it didn’t take much convincing to get Beth onto these scooters for a weekend ride through the polders north of Amsterdam. Quiet, clean, and only able to obtain 25KM/hour, this was a great compromise!

These were brand new, state-of-the-art electric scooters. They were whisper quiet, could go 70-90 kilometers between charges, and were well equipped with horns, turn signals, and really nice headlights.

We hit many small villages in the polder, but Broek en Waterland was our favorite. It was crisscrossed with little canals lined with beautiful old wooden buildings.

This was a great terrace to sit on for lunch and look out over the polder. You can see the dyke beyond the house in the distance. Without the dyke, we’d be under a meter of water!

A typical view from my scooter…Beth eating dust!

Cosmic Relaxation Center

2010-05-18T22:04:00.001+02:00

We had the rare opportunity a few weeks back to witness an early performance of a rising star - Caro Emerald. She’s got a very unique style of sultry voice overlaying a hopped up 1930’s rhythm. It’s great music that seems to work for almost any occasion, from an afternoon basking on sunny terrace with a cool glass of wine to a hot blurry night in an underground urban club. Two songs that will probably start getting airtime outside of NL - Back it up (great example of a Dutch "brown cafe" in the video) and A night like this.

But what made the evening really special was the venue in which we saw her – Paradiso. This is the place of legend – a converted church in the heart of Amsterdam with a standing room capacity of only 1500 people. With the stained glass windows behind the stage, excellent acoustics designed for the pulpit, and ornate woodwork of the two-tiered balconies, it offers an intimacy that I’ve never experienced anywhere else, including the famous back alley clubs of lower Manhattan. Paradiso tends to cater to new talent, but it also attracts huge bands like The Rolling Stones, U2, and The Police because of the unique atmosphere it offers.

If you are ever in A’dam and have any affinity for music, this is a must-do evening, regardless of what band is playing.

Pain in the ash

2010-04-26T19:02:00.000+02:00

Our annual spring trek back to America to open the house for summer rentals was supposed to be a quick in-and-out this year. With me starting a new job and Beth smack in the middle of a major rollout at her work, we thought that we'd save our vacation days for a more exotic excursion this fall. But our plans were summarily dashed by the the volcanic ash cloud that engulfed Europe for the past two weeks. We haven't felt so helpless since being snowed in by a 4 1/2 foot dumping six years ago that stranded us for a week in our house in Maryland. Then, like now, there simply was nothing within our power that we could do to get out, so after a few frantic hours of trying to get everything under control (dog, cats, flights, etc.), we settled in and made the best of a bad situation. Here are a few pics from the adventure this time around.

On the lonely/lovely roads of western Maryland.

Our first order of business at the house was to FINALLY get the garage sided. White Tyvek flapping in the breeze just doesn't cut it with an upscale rental market. Between Beth's natural bossy tendency and my stubbornness, this little endeavor was an adventure in itself.

Even my parents were up for a little adventure this time around!

The night that our flight was canceled found us tucked in by a warm fire with snow flurries outside. Many others, stuck in airports across the globe, weren't so lucky.

We decided to take advantage of our extra time by driving down to Cumberland, MD and renting some bikes for a romp on the Allegheny Highland trail to Frostburg.

This is a really fantastic converted rail-trail (loaded with redbud in the spring) that I would recommend to anyone passing through Cumberland.

The cliffs of The Narrows.

Scenic views from the trail.

With such a great trail, and such an inviting city, we thought that we'd explore a bit more...

...and discovered some of the best architecture we've seen in America.

But even with such charm, the city -- like most others, was completely gutted by surrounding strip plaza's and malls. It was completely dead....such a shame, just like the Greensburg of my youth. I really don't get it.

Sitting on a terrace along the Potomac River with big grins on our faces when we heard the news that the first flights were finally resuming in Europe - Holland was the first to open up airspace, causing Beth to give a big "whoop" and garner some nasty looks from the locals.

The aftermath of the carnage in Frankfurt airport. Even with our luck at hearing about the cancellation while still comfortably settled in the mountains, we ended up spending 28 hours "on the road"' to get back to Holland in time to pick up Sage from the kennel. I can't imagine what the less fortunate folks who had to use these cots for 6 days felt like.

We got back home just in time for the annual flower parade in Haarlem. The floats this year were extraordinary.

This one was pretty cool, but I really put it on this blog for our ex-expat comrade Dave who is kicking off his racing season back in Wisconsin - good luck on this year's circuit! BTW, the float was from Italy, so there's something in there for you too Rene.

Platteland

2010-04-06T21:51:00.001+02:00

Spring has finally arrived! We took advantage of the long weekend and got out into the Dutch countryside for some hiking. Of course, one can not hike in Holland without first eating broodjes for lunch out of the trunk of your car...some things are sacred.

Then it was a mad dash into the woods!

While the woods were beautiful, the main attraction in this part of the country is the naturally occurring fields of heather. A little brown this time of year, in August they will be brilliant purples and whites.

After a hearty day of hiking, we decided to take the short drive up to Zwolle, the capital of Gelderland. This city was part of the Hanseatic League and has some rich history.

But I think that I'm really beginning to be spoiled over here. Even with all of this history and fantastic architecture, Zwolle left me a bit disappointed. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it felt een beetje platteland, or backwards/backwoods. Well, at least the hot chocolate was good.

Word Play

2010-03-17T12:13:00.003+01:00

One of my resolutions this year is to read a novel, cover-to-cover, in Dutch. I’m not much for watching TV, so this seems to be the best way to bring my language skills up to the next level. I decided to go with an American author that was translated into Dutch so that I would be familiar with the writing style and wouldn’t get tripped up by cultural differences in the approach to storytelling. I ended up paying dearly for the translation services-- the book cost a whopping 19 euros, but so far I have been very pleased with the results. With my trusty Dutch dictionary by my side, I am steadily working my way through the novel and learning all kinds of new words.

Dutch is not known for its brevity. They have a tendency to slam a bunch of different words into a single, monstrous linguistic amalgamation. It can be quite intimidating when you first encounter words like tweedehogewardwaarstraat, which is the name of a street (imagine putting that on every envelope you send) or stakingsverbodovereenkomst (non strike agreement). Then there are plenty of irrationally spelled words like angstschreeuwen (scream of terror) with its mind numbing eight consonants in a row! I dare you to use that word in a conversation without spitting on someone!

However, I’ve also been discovering some gems of words that cram a mouthful of meaning into a tight little package. My favorite so far – tevergeef. The meaning is simple enough – without success. But its usage is really compact, assisted by its placement in the sentence. You can simply say ‘Ik was tevergeef op zoek naar iets’, which would roughly translate into ‘I was looking for something but wasn’t able to find it.’ It's funny how I've hung onto that word and filed it away for just the right circumstance. Whenever I use it for the first time, whoever I'm speaking with is going to think I'm a nut because I'll be smiling ear-to-ear at having remembered the word and used it properly (I hope).

Its always the little things that keep life interesting and I’ve gotta say, as someone who barely paid attention to French classes in high school (or any classes for that matter) and then pissed away a great immersion opportunity for Spanish in college, I’m really enjoying learning a second language. It’s giving me a whole new perspective on how the world works.

Ski Ardennen

2010-02-25T12:37:00.000+01:00

With mud season taking a firm grip on North Holland, we decided to head for the Belgian mountains last weekend for one final romp in the snow.

Our rental cottage...

...was situated in the mountains above our favorite Belgian village of Malmedy...

...with an access point to the provincial forest less than 100 meters away.

There were miles and miles of groomed (and ungroomed) trails right out the front door ...

...with hidden treasures around every corner, like this classic 14th century Belgian castle - Reinhardstein. This castle is still in private hands and we could hear a woman singing opera from the depths of the stone walls. Her voice echoed through the narrow valley where our ski trail was. It brought back memories of San Francisco when we sat overlooking the city and listened to a pianist playing in his Pacific Heights condo just after Beth accepted my marriage proposal - it's been a very interesting 22 years.

We woke up Saturday morning to a fresh 8 inches of snow! You've gotta love that antique, concrete power pole overgrown by the forest. This could have been a scene from The Battle of the Bulge where my great uncle fought in these same snowy conditions not far from here.

The Belgian trail system continues to impress us. It is extremely well marked and is amazing how they can pack so much into such a small country. Losloopende honden welkom.

Flatlanders enjoying the snow. Can you believe that she is still smiling after getting SMOKED at seven games of ping pong in a row?

This fuzzy horse at the trailhead freaked Sage out. She gave him a REALLY wide berth, although it might have been because she was on edge from all of the wild boar scent in the forest.

Sacrificing a city

2010-02-15T14:44:00.006+01:00

The quaint little village of Spaarndam, only a few kilometers northeast of Haarlem, is built atop one of the primary dyke systems in North Holland. The village is world famous for the story of Hans Brinker, the little Dutch boy who supposedly saved a city beyond the dyke by plugging a hole with his finger. We’ve come to learn over the years that the city Hans saved with his chubby little finger was in fact our hometown of Haarlem.

We stop in Spaarndam frequently when we are out riding our bikes because there is a great restaurant that serves some of the best apple tarts in Holland. And on those frequent bike rides we always pass these curious structures out in the fields downstream from the dyke. I knew that there was an old fort built into the wall of the dyke and these concrete pylons looked to be about the same age, but I couldn’t for the life of me ever figure out what their purpose was.

I finally decided to research these things and was pretty surprised at what I learned. The fort and embattlements were created as part of the defenses of Amsterdam. When the country was attacked, the dyke at Spaardam would be broken, flooding the surrounding countryside and creating an impenetrable water-based fortification. In this section the water would be deep enough for boats so these concrete pylons were set to be just below the fortified water surface, making navigating the water with enemy boats extremely hazardous. It's kind of a cool idea and even has made the UNESCO list of world heritage sites, the only down-side being that Haarlem would be left on the wrong side of the defensive fortifications.

So after immortalizing the deeds of good ol’ Hans and his courageous rescue of Haarlem, the government decided that the city really wasn’t all that important and could sacrificed to the enemy in an attempt to slow them down before reaching Amsterdam. Bummer.

Steel Town

2010-02-01T08:14:00.006+01:00

I just returned from visiting my family in Pennsylvania where I also had chance to drive through Pittsburgh – something that I haven’t done in many, many years. The city looked to be doing well, continuing its long transition from gritty, blue collar steel town into a more modern and diverse city. There are very few remnants of the massive mills that used to line the banks of the river and dominate the landscape as you dropped out of the Squirrel Hill tunnels and made your approach into downtown. I still remember the smoke billowing out of the stacks and hanging thick with grimy soot in the narrow Mon Valley. As children back in the early seventies, we used to hold our breath when passing the gargantuan structures on the parkway east as we drove into Three Rivers Stadium to see a Pirates game. Even back then the industry was beginning its rapid collapse in America, shipping jobs-- and entire mills-- off to other countries with lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials, and no environmental regulations. Except for the sports teams, Pittsburgh was a very depressing place to be during those years.

All of those memories came flooding back to me, not as I drove along the redeveloped riverfront in Pittsburgh, but yesterday here in Holland. I was dragging with jetlag from the long trans-Atlantic flight out of Chicago, so we decided to walk Sage out by the old German bunkers in Ijmuiden to stretch our legs a little before I crashed hard on the couch for most of the afternoon. The bunkers were built as part of the Atlantic Wall by the Germans to protect the water entry into Amsterdam, 15 miles inland to the east.

As we crested the dunes above the bunkers, the industrious North Sea port of Ijmuiden unfolded in front of us with its fishing fleets, warehouses, and cruise ship docking bays. And on the northern banks of the port was the sprawling Corus steel mill. I’ve never given it much thought until this latest trip through Pittsburgh. The modern, expansive facility here was churning out steel at maximum capacity, on a Sunday, even in this limping economy. Come to think of it, in the six years we’ve lived here, I’ve never seen the stacks quiet.

So, how does The Netherlands pull it off where a powerhouse like Pittsburgh failed? How has this tiny, swampy country with virtually no natural resources, strong labor laws and union influence, high social tax structures, and extensive environmental regulations managed to secure a massive steel production facility where all of the inputs must be shipped in from other countries? It’s a curious situation…

Wall food

2010-01-18T10:27:00.009+01:00

Having grown up in the rural countryside surrounding the sleepy little village of Ligonier, I was not accustomed to having many late night options for satisfying the post-party munchies. Town pretty much rolled up the streets and turned off the lights at 10:00PM.

So I distinctly remember the feeling of empowerment when I was shipped off to university in Indiana Pennsylvania. This was a college town and we could order pizza for delivery until 2.00 AM (including the paper towels to mop the grease off the top) and the world famous Sheetz devil dogs (2 for $.99) were available 24-hours-a-day. This was the big time! There was something magical about being able to hop on my bike at 5:30 AM after an all-night bender of drinking-games and dancing on the kitchen stove to pick up bacon and eggs so that I could cook breakfast for some hot chick who only hung around us for the endless pitchers of free beer. She was so impressed by this act of breakfast chivalry that she wrote her phone number on my wall with a thick, black permanent marker and decided to marry me and hang around for the next 20 years. I’m still doing all the cooking and she’s never paid me back for the security deposit that my landlord kept for the marker damage she caused. Go figure.

But those days seem like the dark-ages now. Here in Holland they’ve taken the art of late night snacking to new, technologically advanced heights. Here, they eat from the wall. That’s right…from the wall. They have restaurants (and I use that term very, very loosely) that are set up like giant vending machines that you can get a hot, greasy snack virtually any time of day or night. There is a ‘chef’ who gets each portion fresh from the freezer and carefully prepares them (a.k.a. places into the deep fryer) before reloading the wall for your all-day dining pleasure. And the choices are extraordinary! Just click on this “Assortment” link to see such delicacies as Bami stuffed krokant, chicken corn dog, or this month’s special – Deep Fried Goulash for only 1 Euro! Mmmm….goulash.

The wall ...

...with technologically advanced distribution system.

I ate from the wall once in Amsterdam, just to try it. I plunked in my Euro and selected a wrinkly looking Frikadel. It was, um, how should I say this? Interesting. I'll leave it at that except to say that I wish I still had a stomach of steel like back in college. On a good night, if I had had enough to drink, I could eat 4 devil dogs. Maybe that was my problem with the wall in Amsterdam. I was sober when I tried it.

Holiday remnants

2010-01-04T11:43:00.012+01:00

I've just spent a bunch of time catching up my Facebook photo's for the past several years (much to the chagrin of Gracie), so I'm just going to post a few quick memories of the recently expired holiday for this weeks blog entry.

Grote Kerk

Haarlem's quiet market square on Christmas eve.

We had to delay our annual Christmas day hike this year due to miserable weather. But when we finally made it out to the Utrechtse heuvelring (Hills around Utrecht), we were not disappointed. This is a vast forest where you could easily find some privacy. I'm definitely going back with the mountain bike in the spring...there is actually a bit of elevation in Holland! (instead of really, really flat, it was just kind of flat).

The leaning pyramid of Austerlitz, tucked into the forest and marking the high water point of the French occupation of the Netherlands during Napoleon's time.

After the Christmas storm, the weather has been cold, but sunny. Plenty of time for lounging with a good book in between outings.

Battlezone Haarlem - New Year's fireworks. It still amazes me that they let anyone buy (and ignite) this type of firework in the streets of Holland. New Years eve (day) is filled with explosions. Groups of teenagers wander the streets with bags of fireworks, blowing up anything and everything in their wake. The Post Office even has special protective hoods for all their mail boxes and if there is still a plastic public garbage can in a park near you?...well, just forget about it being there by dawn. We're talking M80/M100 quality stuff.

You want to be sure to park your car in the right place for New Year's eve. Generally speaking you should stay away from the corners because people use the intersections for setting off fireworks. But this year our (whacky) neighbor had a new baby and wanted to set off the fireworks right in front of the house so his wife could hold the baby and see them. Ignited incendiary/explosive devices skittering under your car doesn't give me a 'warm fuzzy' feeling, let alone the probable damage to the paint job. But, the red car was his, so I didn't complain...

New Years day on the beach in Zandvoort. Just in time for the annual dunk in the frigid North Sea.

For those who don't use Facebook, here is a short video of the North Sea dunk.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-20T14:41:00.012+01:00

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.

Berlin

2009-12-14T09:13:00.009+01:00

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.

Choose wisely - your sanity depends on it

2009-12-02T09:02:00.011+01:00

Randstad - a tiny area home to more than 7 million folks

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 café 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!

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.

Caprera chainsaw massacre

2009-11-17T20:58:00.012+01:00

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.

Changes

2009-11-03T06:47:00.013+01:00

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.

Drukte

2009-10-16T10:47:00.006+02:00

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!

Chop Shop

2009-09-30T16:00:00.006+02:00

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…

Eire

2009-09-14T08:14:00.012+02:00

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…”

Festivals, firepots and fall

2009-08-31T10:59:00.004+02:00

I know, I know. It’s still the last day of August for crying out loud. But fall is my favorite season, and just like the long cool dusks of mid-September, I like to draw this season out as much as possible. Now, as I sit in our sunny back garden to write this week’s blog entry, a crisp, salty breeze is pushing in from the North Sea, expressing agreement with me for the change of season.

Seeing this guy out in the dunes on my last bike ride didn’t help matters much. The photo is fuzzy because I was so far zoomed in and couldn’t hold the camera steady (Can we all say buck fever!) Look at that rack! Of all the things that I miss from America, the fall hunting has to top the list. I still debate whether I’d enjoy a wild boar hunt down in Belgium. For me it’s more about the ritual and the camaraderie than the kill. I’m just not sure if I’d get that from a guided hunt.

We wrapped up the last of the summer festivals this weekend with a bike ride up to Ijmuiden for their annual Havenfeest (Port Festival). Ijmuiden is one of the largest trawler ports in North Holland and is known for roughneck dockworkers and fishermen. It’s a great place to come for unpretentious, fresh fish restaurants- the kind with newspaper tablecloths and cold beer. The festival was jammed on a sunny day, but we had a good time wandering around and sampling the local port culture and food (of course).

Dutch women in traditional garb. Also note the funky crane in the background. The guy operating this was a master at his work. He put on several demonstrations where he’d pick up buckets of water, swing them around like a lifeguard with a whistle, then fling them at passing boats. It was really cool to watch this massive arm moving with such suppleness, like a huge Transformer robot.

While not our taste, this one-woman folk opera performance of “The Flying Dutchman” was interesting.

Ride the bull? Not in a Haven’s festival! See the guy controlling the surfboard in the back? He’d let the kids build a little confidence before he’d really try to throw them off. This little girl was incredible. She held on for almost four minutes…better than any of the little tough guys we saw trying to surf.

And after the bike ride home we broke out the firepot for one of those beautiful, cool, long dusks that I mentioned. Somehow the wine always tastes better in front of a firepot.

Dorpsfeest

2009-08-20T11:29:00.007+02:00

Beth and I recently hit the dorpsfeest (village party) up in Santpoort. It was the 250th anniversary of the festival and I was a bit surprised to find out that after going up there for food, drinks, dancing, and general rabble-rousing over the last 5 years that the most famous event at the festival is a horse race through the village streets. We had never seen, nor heard of this before.

They dumped sand onto the only street that extended the 300 meters needed for the race. It was a very hot day and the streets were lined with rowdy people, placing bets, smoking cigars and drinking cold, cold beer. I had no idea what I was watching, so I didn’t place any bets and I quit smoking years ago...but the beer sure was good.

Later that evening we decided to go through the “Hotel of Traps” that was set up in the main village square. It was a great walk-through funhouse with all kinds of moving stairs, spiraling walkways, and blasting air canons. There was a conveyer belt floor that whisked you along at surprising speed and dumped you into wall of rotating punching bags that squeezed you (especially us adults) into a rubber net. Very cool! I haven’t had this much fun in a funhouse since Noah’s Arc in Kennywood…does that one even still exist?

Psychedelic groovy man.

This three story tight spiral slide was the most treacherous part of the whole funhouse. All of the adults that we saw walking through with their kids avoided this slide by opting to climb down a moving stairway. We decided to go for it. I went first, but since I was wearing short pants I laid mostly on my back and tucked my knees up so that I would go as fast as possible. Big mistake! The tube was too small for me and spirals were too tight. I did go bloody fast, but my right knee and right elbow were driven into and dragged along the the wall of the spiral and when I popped out the other side I had some of the deepest, nastiest brush burns that I’ve had since the time that I wiped-out on my skateboard at the bottom of Barkley Street when I was nine years old. My knee is still scabby today after two weeks!

At 30 kilo’s lighter and 20 centimeters shorter, Beth fared much better and came through the spirals unscathed.

The fun continues tonight with our favorite street festival in Haarlem. One last hoorah for summer!

Chateau'ing

2009-07-19T14:37:00.027+02:00

In English we can make a verb out of almost any word by adding "ing", right? Therefore, the definition of chateau'ing would be to tour one or more chateaux while on vacation.

And if that's the definition, then last week we went chateau'ing. We were in France on a short holiday that included the Loire Valley - famous for its many chateaux and world renowned white wine. This beautiful valley is where the French elite of yesteryear lived and played. After seeing the fantastic landscape, pristine trout-filled rivers, and endless vineyards, it is easy to see why the wealthy decided to build their chateaux here. And after seeing the decadent extravagance of these chateaux, it is equally easy to see why the French revolted against their monarchs and ended up hauling a bunch of these folks back to Paris where they were paraded in front of the peasants before having their heads lopped off to shouts of glee. But this is supposed to be a pleasant blog post so I won’t dwell on that dark (yet somewhat interesting) historical aspect of the trip. My camera was giving me grief, so I didn’t get that many good shots, but I’ve posted a few that should give you a good impression of this short holiday down in France.

We rolled out of Haarlem early on Saturday in order to beat the crush of traffic moving south toward the sun for summer holiday. One radio report put the wait to get into the tunnels under the Alps at 6 hours! But we avoided the worst of it by cutting across the Delta Works in Zeeland, dropping through a tunnel under the port of Antwerp and cruising out across rural Belgium before stopping for our first night in Rouen, the capital of Normandy. The city was MUCH bigger than we expected and getting the car into the medieval center via tiny pedestrianized streets was truly a challenge. But once parked in an equally tiny parking garage under the hotel (I had to do a three point turn just to round a corner), we settled in for a great evening of exploration. Rouen is famous for two things – the church often painted by Claude Monet and the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431...great stuff!

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in this square more than 500 years ago. A new church and monument was just erected in the past 30 years to mark the fateful event. It’s designed to look like flames, and the stark contrast against the other medieval buildings in the square made it really work. A produce market is also built under the flames...go figure.

Does this look familiar? This is not a painted picture, but Claude Monet's favorite cathedral itself at night with a fantastic light show of his paintings projected onto it. The square in front of the cathedral was packed with people-- even in the rain-- to see this very cool light show.

The same cathedral during the day. The black was caused by fire during a WWII air raid.

This shop was one of many on the cities “bargain street”. With such a prosperous city full of name-brand shops, we could only guess that the rents on this street are subsidized to allow small eccentric shopkeepers to be able to stay in business. You couldn’t move in this light store, but I bet if you needed a little gizmo for your antique 1935 art deco lamp, he’d probably be able to dig it out of there for you.

As with most European cities, Rouen had a vibrant, lived-in center. This lucky dog had a great view of the main square from his third floor window.

This administration building has been restored since 1945, but they decided to leave the pock marks of the fighting to serve as a reminder of the devastation of war. Rouen serves as a major transportation hub and was heavily defended by the Germans after the D-Day invasion. The allies ended up bombing the hell out of the city in order to liberate it, but there was also house-to-house fighting. From the looks of it, there must have been a machine gun nest in one of these windows that took heavy fire (including what looked like a bazooka blast just around the corner) to get past.

When in Normandy, any geeky American World War II buff is obligated to take a short side trip up to the channel coast and visit the D-Day beach landings. Now a seaside resort, they have also decided to leave the wreckage of the war in the water as a reminder of the price paid. I have to admit that it was a little creepy seeing kids playing in the water next to this stuff.

It’s a shame what happened here in the past because the Normandy coastline was fantastic! Beth and I hiked up over the top of the ridge and were given the beautiful view across the horizon.

Then it was on to Mont Saint Michel. This place is so famous that I won’t go into any detail here, but it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to get away from the crowds by walking 50 yards (or less) off the main path. We found a perfect solitary spot to sit on the river at sunset, drink a glass or two of wine, and read a good book (in this case the final, edited version of Going Dutch).

Spectacular at night!

We hit the abbey on top of the rock early the next morning and had the place to ourselves before the tour bus crowds arrived (Thanks for the tip Steve and Grace!!!). This ingenious medieval dumb-waiter was powered by a massive wheel that three people would get into (like gerbils) and walk on to bring goods up to the abbey.

The view from the top across the tidal pools was awesome. This lonely sailboat was marooned on the sand by the receding tide.

We then headed for Angers, another beautiful city where we toured our first chateau. I also have to mention the apocalypse tapestry museum in this town. Don’t laugh; I turned my nose up at it at first as well. But these 12th/13th century tapestries were amazing. They were so intricate and told some really bizarre religious stories of what people thought in those days. It is really worth seeing - one of the highlights of the trip, but understandably, no photographs allowed.

The French countryside was exploding with sunflowers, a truly spectacular drive. How do they get the flowers to all face the same direction? Plant the seeds really, really carefully...

We also stopped at a troglodyte village (cave dwellers) that was very well preserved and interesting to walk around. They were still living here as late as 1967. Another J.R. Tolkien inspiration?

And then it was on to Ambois for 3 nights where we visited a few more chateaux, ate at a lot of great restaurants (except for the Welsh pie...ugh!), and drank entirely too much white wine. Gezellig! This photo is from my cell phone, thus the poor quality.

Beth and I hired a local French chef for Gloria’s birthday. Beth and Paul relaxed while Gloria and I took the cooking lessons. We then got to eat everything that we created…delicious!

We also rented bikes one day to see more of the French countryside up-close and personal. Beth and I have been looking to buy a place in France as an investment, but we’ve been a bit surprised that the real estate prices haven’t come down much with the bad economy. We did find this "fixer upper" that we could afford. Nothing wrong with a little sweat equity, right? What do you think Sue and Tom…is this what you had in mind when you said you wanted to go halvsies? Maybe we could at least get it habitable for your horse…

We stopped in Amiens on the way back up to Holland. It was also a great city with a lot of modern infrastructure mixed into the medieval core, but unfortunately my camera was completely hosed by then so we didn't get any pictures. We were thinking of either a boat tour through the remenants of ancient Roman water gardens or a tour of the largest WWI battlefield . Needless to say, my ass ended up on a boat in the rain looking at flowers...it seems like Beth always wins these "discussions". But after driving across the beautiful Somme, even she was convinced to come back with the bikes and visit this area in more depth, and hit a battlefield or two....but that will have to wait till next year.

I’m off to America next week to visit family and was thinking of taking a holiday from blogging for a few weeks to wrap up one writing project and begin a few others. So the next post might not be until late August. Cheers! And enjoy the rest of the summer.

Michelin Stars

2009-07-10T16:57:00.001+02:00

Beth and I don’t really place much value on labels or rankings. Things like “Top 10 vacation spots” or “Best 25 places to live” can be so skewed based upon the survey questions or opinions of the surveyor themselves that they are nothing more than a passing point of interest. On the other hand, we find the hotel star rankings pretty good because they are based upon more concrete data and observation. Three star = good. Two star = have a look before reserving to make sure that it’s clean. 1 star = only out of desperation.

It was with this foundation that we signed up for the Taste of Amsterdam food festival with Johnny and Sandra and were thus more concerned with a night in the park with friends than the fact that there would be several Michelin star ranked restaurants there. We’ve never eaten at one of these ranked places, since they are always expensive and usually rather pretentious…not our style at all. But after tasting some dishes from a three-star establishment, now at least I know what all the fuss is about! The lamb chops from one of these places melted in our mouths and the pasta from Jamie Oliver’s restaurant was nothing short of outstanding. I still enjoy the ribs from our local eetcafe more than anything, but I now think that I’ll occasionally spring a few extra bucks for these culinary wizards. It was THAT good!