Ski Ardennen

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

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

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…