Things Dutch People Like

Trampolines. Every walk we've taken in a suburban Dutch neighborhood, we've found trampolines in the front lawns.
Usually, when you see one, two or three more will pop up in succession. Obviously, one kid got a trampoline, which meant that the kids next door couldn't possible live without one... which meant the kids next door to THEM got one and so on and so forth.
Poor kids in the bigger city didn't have a front lawn to trampoline on (does that work as a verb, too?) Luckily, street fairs, like this one in Haarlem, provide ample room to jump.
And a harness! For super trampolining!
Surely there wouldn't be trampolines at the beach, too. There's swimming and sandcastle building! But there they were in front of strandhuisje.
If you weren't lucky enough to have one, you could go to the trampoline park. Which is, apparently "Trampoline Park" in Dutch.
I could provide more pictures, but I think it may get tedious for both you and me. As tedious as, say, jumping in one place. Over...and over...and over again.

Dutch people also really like Cylindrical Meats a.k.a. sausages, wursts, hot dog and the ilk. They can be found in the meat section of the grocery store:In the packaged meal section:And, most impressively, in the canned food section:
Lastly, Dutch people really do love their hagelslag, which I've already covered, so I won't rehash it here. Though, check out this amazing box:Update: I just found out that there's a National Dutch Trampolining Contest. So, maybe that wasn't a Trampoline Park after all. Maybe it was a training camp!

Rotterdam at Night

This is the view from our hotel window in Rotterdam, the city every Dutch person we asked said "wasn't worth going to" because it was ugly and "too new." I felt like telling each of them, "I'm American. I can handle new." Rotterdam was bombed to smithereens during World War II, and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. So, it really is completely different than any of the other cities in the Netherlands - all those lovely little places with lovely little buildings that date back to lovely little days of yore.
Our room is on the 9th floor, which would be the 10th floor in America (in most of Europe, the ground level counts as '0'). So, this is, by far, the highest up we've been in this country - whose land lies mostly on sea level or below. You wouldn't find a view like this in another part of the Netherlands and, I have to say, I'm pretty glad there's no windmill lit up in neon in the distance.

Rural Holland

A lot of people who we've talked to have said that there's no nature in Holland. That's a bit of an overstatement, but it speaks to a truth about the country - its rural areas aren't really all that rural. They can still be very pretty. These pictures are culled from a few different places and towns. We came across the fields above as we were searching for a castle (that turned out to be more like a manor house) on our bikes in the rain. If it wasn't so misty, you could see a highway in the distance.
We fell in love with this little gatehouse cottage - it looked like someone actually lived in it. The lighter green strip in the picture is actually a canal, not grass. On a lot of the less-used waterways, the duckweed grows so thickly that it looks like dense spinach soup.
This is in Haarlem, which is a "rural city." The whole river, here, was dotted with boats on this Sunday.
This house was also in Haarlem. This part of the city seemed to be the "painted-house district." It feels like a small town in the center, though it does have its share of sprawl. The population density is very high here in Holland, so it's nice when you get a chance to pretend that you're in the countryside.

There are actually quite a few windmills. This one turned outside our room in Santpoort Noord. We were told that it ground grain. They are much larger than I expected.

I had always assumed that the reason that Holland had so many windmills was because it had a lot of wind. While this is partly true, there are two more important reasons why they built thousands of them. First, because they didn't have any swiftly moving water to power mills. Second, because they needed engines to pump water out of the fields to keep the land relatively dry.

Domesticity Abroad

Today, we did laundry. Travelers, they're just like normal people!

Hagelslag

"Hagel" means 'hail' in Dutch and is also their word for sprinkles. Now, I'm a big sprinkles person, as anyone that has ever seen me within 10 yards of a Mister Softee can vouch, but I was a little taken aback to discover that, here, they eat it for breakfast. It basically functions like sugary cereal in America.
We went into a supermarket to see just how many brands of hagel there were. Answer: a lot. Some had cartoon characters on the packaging and, I like to imagine, prizes in the box. Kiddie Hagel. Then, there were the classier looking boxes. Adult Hagel.
Of course, at the bottom of the shelves, there was hagel in a bag. Economy Hagel.
The next morning we decided to try some out at the hotel's breakfast buffet. Basically, you just pour it on toast. We played with the idea of using pindakaas (peanut butter, or as it literally translates, peanut cheese) as our binding agent, but opted instead for margarine. That way, we could be sure to taste the hagelslag.

This was Merlin's. He chose to cover half his bread with the traditional cylindrical chocolate ones and the other half with the more daring pink and yellow spherical hagel. Both were really sweet.
This was mine. It came from a box with a dinosaur on it. I thought it would be mint and chocolate and for the first few bites, my eyes deceived my taste buds. Green=mint. Obviously. However, upon further inspection, picking fallen green hagel off my plate with the wetted tip of my finger, I discovered that it basically just tasted like sugar.
P.S. We wanted to find a hagelslag commercial on youtube to post for you all but all I kept getting were Sen. Chuck Hagel interviews.

Strandhuisje and Sea

We biked to a beach near our little place in Santpoort and were struck by the utterly straight lines of the landscape. Looking down from the dunes, the shore and the horizon were exactly parallel for miles in either direction.

There were hundreds of these little beach houses - "strandhuisje," in Dutch. Most of them are made from old shipping containers, and we were fascinated by them.

We met Fritz (shown above, eating a sandwich), outside his girlfriend's (that's her inside, cooking) strandhuis. He said that it's really the end of the season, and that everyone is packing up their cottages for winter. They are apparently picked up by big tractors and taken somewhere in the dunes where they're more protected. Below, you can see a few that have been prepared and left - notice how the decks in front of them are hinged so that they can be lifted up and fastened over the front windows.

They're very cozy looking, and Fritz was very nice. He told us that he had been coming down from Amsterdam every weekend this summer.

The beach was pretty empty at this end, but a mile or so south of here, there were some major party preparations going on. Hordes of young people were getting ready for a big clubbing party at one of the discos.

We stood outside this little stand to have lunch - bakkevis, below, and some new herring, in the bottom picture. Both were delicious, especially the herring.

Blonde Kids

I was not a blonde kid. Therefore, I take a lot of pictures of them.

Blonde kids on bikes!




Loner blondes...

Haarlem Renaissance

It’s only our third day abroad, so it’s not like we really need a huge rebirth right now, but there’s something really invigorating about being somewhere we’ve never been before. We visited Amsterdam four years ago and Merlin had been back since, but Haarlem is brand new. We took the train here, which was a really easy process, and plopped down at a café to order lunch off a Dutch language menu, which was not as easy of a process.

Dinner in Santfoort Nord

We had a great time shopping for food here in Santfoort Nord - buying everything at different stores along the main street, smelling the roasting chicken at the chicken store, tasting cheese at the cheesestore ("L'amuse").

We laid out a spread in our hotel room on the ironing board, with Rebecca's scarf as a tablecloth. The dark red stuff in the black container is beet and apple slaw.

The cheese was excellent. We asked for all Dutch cheese, and told them that we liked stronger rather than milder tastes. We got (below, in order from top): "Wilde Weide Overjarig," "Machere" (third place, he said, in some recent cheese contest), "Lady's Blue" (first place in the contest!) and "Cumlaude Boerenkaas" (with the black and gold wax). All were good, but I think the blue was probably our favorite.

The chicken and pork pate was also delicious, as were the beets and the greens.

The kind lady from the "bar" downstairs, who also cooks for the "restaurant" and serves the few people that ate there (this is a small place, and there were only three people sitting and eating, with not much room for anyone else), lent us a plate and some silverware before we came up to bed. She also made us martinis, which we had to teach her how to make. Actually, we just told her to pour some gin in a glass and add a splash of vermouth. It's funny that they don't have martinis here - in the land of gin! Anyway, she is very, very nice. Thanks Trudy for helping us have a great evening!

Boatwatching and Biking

Last night, we stayed at Lukas and Judy’s houseboat again. We were originally planning on going to Harlaam, but couldn’t find a hostel with room on just a day’s notice. Some beginning rowers and what looked like a sailing school whizzed by as we sat outside for a drink before dinner.


Lukas suggested we all bike to dinner. I have to say, Merlin and I were as giddy as can be at the prospect of joining all of the Amsterdamians (I’m sure that’s not a real word) on two wheels. I also have to say that I was more than a little freaked out about getting on a fiets (Dutch for “bicycle”) for the first time in years and navigating my way through the city. It was amazing and I wish we had pictures, but we were a little too busy keeping up with Lukas and Judy (who sat on the back of his bike, as I was riding hers and Merlin was using the third they owned) and trying not to hit or get hit by any other bicyclists, cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists or scooterers (again, probably not a real word).

Waking up on the Amsteldijk

Last night we stayed with our new/old friends Lukas and Judy on their houseboat. I got up early and went up on deck (being on a boat begets boating terms, I guess) to get some fresh air and look at the canal. It was amazingly quiet - it doesn't feel like the city at all.

That big white building on the right, in the picture above, is a rowing club. Last night, as it was getting dark, we watched groups of skullers and rowers (I don't really know if there's a difference, or what the difference is) sliding past. Some of the boats came quite close to us, and it was fun to listen to the oars.

These are some of the neighboring boats. One has to lease the docking space from the city, and Lukas said that that's the most difficult and expensive part of obtaining a houseboat; there are a limited number of spaces in the city, so people sell their docking leases for exorbitant amounts.

Some of the houseboats are really just houses - not boats - with foundations built into the canal, and no way of moving about. Lukas and Judy's has a motor, though, (that's just a little outboard in the picture, the actual engine is quite a bit bigger) and it's been on a few trips. The previous inhabitant took it to Belgium and all over the Holland canals.

Too much coffee

If you look closely, you'll see Rebecca in the very center of the picture.

Sitting in cafes to work is a bizarre experience. If only cafes were only cafes! At home in the states, you sit with your computer and have a cup of coffee every now and then. Here, it's tempting to alternate between caffeine and beer - especially as the afternoon drags on. It's a strange ride, and I left this place very jittery and confused.

Excess Baggage

Today, we decided to put five bags into a storage unit, to be collected again once we have our car. It’s the same number of bags we checked through from Newark Airport and the same number of bags we’ve felt embarrassed to be carting around ever since. Once our car arrives on the boat from the US (Baltimore, MD to be exact – but that’s another story) we can pick up our things, throw them in our hatchback and merrily move along. For now, though, there was simply no way for us to explore Holland with it all in tow. The super-friendly owner of the hotel we’ve been staying at, Henk, offered to give us a space to store our belongings for as long as we needed. “It’s free!” he reasoned. While he had an excellent point, we felt like we were taking advantage of his kindness a little. So, we opted for a storage unit instead – a decision that one can make on the first day of their budget. If this were, say, Day 12, I'm sure we would have taken ole Henk up on his offer.

Henk set us up with a wonderful taxi driver, Eppo, who brought us all the way to the outer boroughs of Amsterdam, which reminded me of Queens, in search of City Storage. We had tried to reserve a storage space online and hadn’t heard back. Merlin figured, let’s just show up and see what happens. Well, what happened was we found a skeleton of a building right where City Storage was supposed to stand. Apparently, the place burned down a year ago. Makes sense that they never got back to us. At this point, our driver decided to call his mother and ask if she knew of any other storage spaces in the neighborhood. I call my mother for things like this all the time, so I appreciated him doing so. I also appreciated that he had her on speaker phone. She sounded like a lovely woman and wound up giving us some pretty great mom advice, “There’s probably another one right there.” Sure enough, around the corner there was.

We are now five bags lighter and ready to visit Lukas and Judy, our Amsterdam contacts whom we’ve never met. We’ll be spending the night on their houseboat and will no longer have to worry about sinking it.