The Netherlands!

no, this is not an open air museum or something. this is an actual city, Edam, not too far from amsterdam. we were there 2 weeks ago, just driving around a bit. it was so cute, but as usual these days, i hardly took pictures. i just snapped a few when we were in the car again already, so this one is a bit crooked.

the days are rapidly getting shorter. its now dark out when i leave for work in the morning. buuuhhhh. it wont be too long before i will leave and return while its dark. i should still tell you about my work! in fact, there is so much i like to write about. and pictures i like to show... but then its evening, and suddenly its time for bed and then.... im just too tired.... at the moments days go by so fast! i guess im still not in some sort of rhythm. i do think getting up so early is a little less terrible as it was in the very beginning... :)

Wind turbines

as i once wrote before, while driving through the netherlands, you see a lot of wind turbines generating wind energy. i am always trying to take pictures of them. sometimes, like above, i think they fit in the landscape. and sometimes i try to take picture as it looks so ugly!!

this was through the car window, which i didnt get entirely clean. whenever we stop for gas, i get out to clean the windshield, while tim fills up the car and pays (i guess i get the better deal here). i started doing this in the USA, on our road trips, as many of the pictures were taken while driving. just a few months back, the car was particularly dirty and we spent some time getting the windows clean. i even needed tim to help (it was not overcrowded at the station so we were not blocking the pump or anything). but then... when he went to pay for the gas, the lady said to him; "well well, you are not supposed to clean your car that long!!" it really pissed me off, he just spent over 60 euros on gas, and then we cannot use their bucket of water...? i do think it was a typical dutch reaction (3 years US made me a bit sensitive to that). somehow the dutch can never shut up, and always need to express their frustrations! how frustrating... ;)

Another canal

 i saw this statue in a city in the north of the netherlands (sneek). as you can see, just like amsterdam it has canals, and cars park next to them.... but i was more interested in the statue. isnt it cute? it was placed in 1981 (the year i was born), and is called "child with lamb". it is made by maria van everdingen and symbolizes the care of and for children.

in 2012, a group of idiots (i.e. some drunk kids) pulled so hard on the girl's arm that it was ripped off the pedestal. they just left it there, so at least the municipality could pick it up the next day to repair it....

Deserted roads

there are many things i miss from the usa now that i dont live there anymore. there are also things i do not miss at all, of course... :) but when i think back about those 3 years, i most often think about driving on empty roads in the middle of the desert. and if someone asked me what i wanted to do RIGHT now, it would be exactly that; driving on a deserted road somewhere in the USA. i would like some crazy heat with that, a summer dress and a hotel with pool at the end of the road..... i wouldnt even mind the cheap american hotel breakfast with tasteless pancakes that you make yourself in the wafflemaker. in fact, that is just part of the road trip experience....

at the moment, it is unseasonably warm (but no crazy heat like i know from boston) here in the netherlands. but i do miss the american apartment with the pool downstairs; right now all that comes up from downstairs is a constant stream of cigarette smoke/smell from our lovely neighbors (YUCK!). and..... every now and then you can drive on deserted roads here too! like you see above... if you take the small roads... (just before i took this picture quite some cars passed us, but well...)

Only rain

this weekend it rained. and it rained. and then it rained a bit more. ah, there was quite some wind too. beeehhh. we didnt do much. partly because of that... 

today there was a marathon in our neighborhood, and i really wanted to watch. but even for watching the weather was just too shitty (imagine those running!!). we did do the dishes, as they hadnt been done in quite a while (it felt a bit like a marathon, we had used up all the plates, and most of the cutlery, and we have quite a lot...).

as you can see, when we drove here it rained as well. driving in the netherlands is more frustrating than driving in the usa (except that the roads are much better here than in massachusetts); people are less patient and more aggressive. the speed limit varies constantly, and sometimes its not clear how fast you are allowed to go... and at exactly those spots (or so it seems), they check your speed, resulting in several tickets by now.... :(  whereas we drove a real big american truck in the usa, we now have a normal car, and i still feel small next to all these big trucks. i especially hate it when they are trying to pass each other. trucks are on a strict speed limit, 80 km/hr, but somehow they always need to pass each other, slowing down all the other traffic thats going 130 km/hr. like above, where i suddenly felt trapped between all those big vehicles....

Sample field

while most of the tulip fields were without tulips, at least the sample field still had quite some tulips (although i think also here about half was gone already). here we walked along many, many differently colored tulips. different shapes, leaves and sizes too. some hardly looked like a tulip anymore. some with simple names, fitting their looks, others with crazy names i cannot even remember. but all of them were labeled, a really nice display! it was a bit wet from the rain and i was wearing fancy shoes, but well....  above you see a coupld with their grand children. the girls kept asking question after question "but why....?" "and why do you think that...?" until their grandfather said: "well, not its enough with all these questions!"

today we had crazy rain too. nearly the entire day it rained without a break. some schoolkids were catching snails in the little greenery downstairs to our apartment and didnt seem to mind the rain. they all had little jars and when one showed us how many snails they got in there, they suddenly all got the urge to show how many they had. for some reason they were moving them to the next green spot across the street.... i hope the snails were as happy about that as they were... (i also wonder whether this project would have made me happy as a kid.... :D a few weeks ago some kids were cleaning the streets, they all got a tool to pick up trash and a bag to put it in. they were running like crazy when they saw a piece of garbage on the street, and very happy when they were the first to get it....)

Flower field

last week we drove amidst some flower fields again. unfortunately, most fields were empty already. i guess the weather has been too good. when we were there, it was actually quite gray, as you can see. i somehow expected warmer weather, and was not dressed for the chilly wind. of course i anyways had to get out and take some pictures of this field of white tulips...

Dog transport

dogs have their own place on a bike!! comfortable, in the fresh air and with a view....

Flower ladies

i just couldnt resist..... 

many of the tourists (especially the ladies) were almost diving into the tulips, and wanted to be photographed like you see above, surrounded by an ocean of tulips. somehow i didnt have this desire myself..... i also wouldnt know what to do with such a photo of myself.... :P

others had cameras on long sticks and were swirling around between the flowers, while taking pictures of themselves.... yep, at some point i was more fascinated by the people than the flowers.

Dutch tulips!!

ever since we are back in the netherlands, i have been wanting to go to the flower fields. as we hardly had any winter, and quite some warm days in march and april, the flowers are blooming a bit sooner than planned. to see flowers, you can of course visit the "keukenhof", the largest flower garden in the world. i guess thats something most dutch never did (at least i didnt). each year its only open for 8 weeks, and about 100.000 people visit it each week (!!). we are still dutch, so an entrance fee of 15 euros (about 21 dollars) is too much if you can just walk along a sea of flowers for free.....

here, we probably were the only dutch, and also the only ones that did not enter the flower beds. the sign was so cute, how could you disobey that?! there were so many fields, and just this one tiny sign at the start....

Hello spring!

the first day of spring almost felt like a summerday! it has never been warmer in the netherlands on this day before, although it was (and still is) very very windy!! it was around 20C in some places (70F),and many people visited the beach today.

the crocuses are already done blooming, the purple field i showed you recently is gone entirely... :( here, someplace else in the netherlands, you can still see some. i really liked this statue of the boy with a lamb he is somehow holding. yet i totally forgot to look at the artists name or the title of the sculpture...

Narrow bridge

up until the moment we got off this bridge, i wasnt sure we were going to fit. and then the second one came, as you see above. and that one was even more narrow!! 

it felt a bit like that one time we drove through a sequoia tree in califonia. that was something i somehow really wanted to do, even though we had to pay for it (theres my dutch mentality again!). the actual driving through the tree was quite disappointing and it was mostly just scary; the cut was clearly made when cars were a bit smaller. we had to flip the side mirrors and instead of enjoying this glorious moment of driving through a tree (really, what did i think?!!), we were just making sure we werent scratching the car. until i realized i wasnt taking pictures and well... uugghh... the car that came after us tried and tried, but really didnt fit and had to turn around.....

so... for this bridge we didnt have to pay, but it was equally scary, even though i realized that it was made for cars to drive on (right??!! or had we missed some sign, maybe? didnt we?!). and then we were on the other side.... :)

Early evening

this was saturday evening, when driving home. the sky was so pretty! and all the black dots are birds that were flying around in a huge flock.

right now its an early morning and the only color outside is grey. with lots of rain. beeeehhhh!!