Smoked herring

in the open air museum they smoked herring and eel. i remembered that smell and all those fishies from when i was visiting the museum years ago, and nothing has changed..... this is in the house on the left in yesterdays picture. when going home we bought one of each to bring with us for dinner with friends. i liked it less than anticipated (the fish that is), so many little fish bones and too much of a hassle to clean it all.... but it was so pretty, seeing all that fish lined up!

Dutch landscape

this is so dutch! the windmill, the water, the grey sky.... although this is a typical dutch scene that you can see around the netherlands (with a more modern boat perhaps), this is actually in an open air museum, the Zuiderzeemuseum in the city of Enkhuizen. here they recreated a typical dutch village as it existed over 100 years ago. many of the houses are authentic and were "just" moved stone by stone from their original location to the museum. the museum opened in 1983.

we went there this weekend, and it was really nice to walk around. i had been there as a kid quite a few times (at least thats how i remember it) with my mom and sister, but this was the first time i think i was there as an adult; the boat ride to the museum was less impressive than it was in my memory (and of course we had to pay for parking, grrrr). next weekend is the last weekend its open; after that it closes for the winter. everything looked so perfect and old, but not fake old as often seems to happen in such recreations of the past.

other than that, still nobody has come to check our leaking roof. luckily it hasnt been raining as crazy as the past weekend when the leak occurred, but we certainly wont be putting stuff there until it has been fixed. and thus the living room is even more a mess than it already was and im getting quite frustrated....

Crooked trees

i like this traffic sign for crooked trees! but i like the trees even more, its like you drive through a green tunnel, so pretty. and all trees are bending over at the same angle. there are tree tunnels for either direction of car traffic, and a tree tunnel for the bikes (which i have shown you before). it turned out to be difficult taking pictures, in real its so much prettier! we drive/bike here whenever we visit tims grandmother. im curious if fall colors are present by now.... (but perhaps i expect too much after experiencing fall in new england for the past 3 years)

Dutch dining

on my birthday, it was actually only the second time we went out to dinner since i am back in the netherlands. as i mentioned before, going out to dinner here is just so much more expensive, much slower (which can be a good thing), and the service... well... it can be OK, but often it is less than that or even plain awful. however, at least the food is usually much tastier :)

in the usa, it took me quite a while to get used to the overly friendly (and to me a little fake) "Hi, my name is ... and i will be taking care of you today. please let me you if you need anything, ok?" but it was not difficult to get used to the endless possibilities when ordering. at first it was a bit intimidating, and i was always jealous of the real americans ordering exactly what they want, without the waitress having to sum up all the possibilities (types of dressing, bread, size, types of milk etc etc). it surely took me a while before i could order like that..., and i was real proud when i could!! :D

so... now back to dutch dining. i guess it will be shocking for americans. it might take ages before they notice you are there and want to order something. you will not get water automatically (more often than not there will be a note on the menu saying that they dont serve water. unless you pay for bottled water). you will not be able to order salad A with dressing from salad B, and you will not be allowed to take your leftovers home (but the portions arent crazy big like in the US so thats usually not an issue anyways). moreover, you will have to pay for everything. see that bill above? it lists a 0.75 cents (about a dollar) charge for the mayonnaise!! here in the netherlands we eat our fries with mayonnaise, but you will always have to pay for it. this is even the case at mc donalds!! i liked that in the USA there was always a ketchup bottle on the table, and it was never a problem when we asked for some mayo, they would just bring it (and not bill it!).

now when we sat down, the waitress asked what we liked to drink. tim wanted a beer, and he could choose between a normal or a large (0.5 ltr) size. then i said to him; lets take the large and we will just share it! (i also still have to get used to the fact that now everyone can understand again what i say, although in the US sharing has never been a problem). when the beer finally came, the guy bringing it put it in the middle of the table and said "i understood you want to share this beer??!!" and then put 2 straws in the beer. only when he left i understood this snark... i actually should have called him back to explain himself, but i didnt want to make a scene. but thinking about it still pisses me off!! we were there to enjoy ourselves and drink as much as WE want, even if that means sharing one beer. and as you see, 2 entrees, 1 beer and 2 coffees came down to 37 euros, which is 50 dollars (at least there is no 20% tip as waiters here get a normal salary. you can tip as you  like, or not tip at all, although they will not appreciate no tip at all)

Sinking ship

when i took this photo a few weeks back i didnt want to post it, since its so grey. but currently the weather is like this.... or its raining. beeehhh!

the amsterdam canals are filled with little boats. somehow tim got the impression that you can put your boat anywhere for free (and he kept saying, i want a boat too!!), but thats not the case. just like for your car, you have to pay to park your boat. i read somewhere 30 euros per meter of boat (but im not sure). anyways, its not free, and if you do park your boat without paying, they can tow it, just like your car. they also periodically remove boats that look like the one above, so after heavy rain etc you should definitely check whether your boat still looks fine...

as for the leak in the apartment; someone was supposed to come today. and then didnt... they were swamped taking care of apartments with leaks much worse than ours. today it rained, but luckily not inside. its not sure yet when the will come, but i hope it wont take too long....

It's time...

for my american red shoes...! unfortunately not to trudge through mountains of snow, but to avoid wet feet. it has been raining like crazy the entire weekend (as well as friday, and perhaps thursday, i dont even remember), and it will rain tomorrow as well.

while tim suddenly had to come into work for a few hours today, i was deciding whether i would just spend the entire afternoon on the couch or do something useful.. that was until i suddenly saw quite a puddle of water in front of the old-fashioned heater. water? is the thing now spewing water?? hmm, highly unlikely. is it perhaps condensation....but from what... the drying laundry? (i can be a little slow) then i finally looked up and saw it was coming from the ceiling.... buhuhuhuhuh. water was dripping down and quite a bit!! its coming down from that ugly plastic ceiling that tim cleaned back in july. for once it was a good thing we have been extremely slow with filling the cupboards we bought a little while ago. they all needed to be moved to not get wet. it has been dripping all afternoon and evening (worsening a bit). for once i was also happy we werent out all day, i think we would have come back to quite a mess! tomorrow someone will come and check. no, they couldnt come before dark today. and as he said on the phone "you know, its the rain. there is a lot of rain coming down right now, and lots of rain gives lots of leaks, but its just the heavy rain you know". hmppf. great...

(and no, i dont know whether the neighbors really have better stuff. i do hope for them its less wet than in our place..., i also hope the ugly ceiling wont come down or something... you never know...)

Fall colors

i really liked fall in boston. so many colorful trees, the cold but sunny mornings that warned you it could very well get much colder... driving to new hampshire in the weekends to see even more colorful trees....

so... this is a picture of the cemetery behind our apartment. now we dont have a cemetery behind our apartment anymore... buuuhhh... there is one, but its a 5-10 minute bike ride away, so i most definitely miss going there for a short walk... the cemetery here is pretty too, but much smaller, and it specifically states at the entrance that photography is not allowed. ah well... perhaps someday i will take some pics there anyways.... but for now you have to make do with a picture taken one year ago at the american cemetery... :)

It's closing!!

of course i still follow the news from boston every now and then... but the news that the above restaurant is closing i first saw on facebook... when i saw it posted here as well, i knew it was true... this is on route 1, in saugus, not too far from our apartment, and so we drove by it quite often in weekends. the lawn is decorated with lifesize cows, and the place (just like the cactus) is gigantic. at first we were hesitant to visit the place (after the cows and the cactus we were afraid what would be inside), but once we finally did, we kept coming back every now and then. for me it was not so much about the food (the vegetables were absolutely awful, even the corn!! but tim loved the baked potato), but more the "experience". i think the decor has never changed since it was built (the 2 story restaurant opened in 1961), and i wouldnt be surprised if the waitresses were still the same as well (once our waitress asked tim when we got seated; "whats the matter son, you hungry or somethin?!" with that typical boston accent). there is crazy carpet on the floors, beautiful booths to sit in and weird cowboy-stuff on the walls. i think some of the guests had been coming there since its opening as well, so every time we were there i just couldnt get enough of watching around... if only i had been brave enough to take pictures from the inside, had asked people for portraits... but well, i didnt... (here is the last burger i had there).

according to this article, at its top days, the hilltop employed 50 cooks, 180 waiters and served 5000 meals a day. when we were there, it was usually not too busy (except the one time we took someone there and had to wait over an hour). this picture was during our last drive on route 1, we had just had to bring our couch to the dump and i was frantically photographing all that crazy american stuff on route 1 one more time... for us foreigners, this was really a typical american place, like we see in the movies, and if we were ever to visit boston again, it would be a place to go back to. but.... they are closing october 20th already!! i wonder what will happen to it. i hope at least the cactus will stay.... (and they should make a museum out of the place!!)
here you can see a video about the closing (they interview 2 guests inside the restaurant)

Giant man

just like the last photo, this one is taken in the province flevoland. this is at the waters edge, and from many points you could see this sculpture. its truly gigantic; 26 metres tall (85ft), weighing 60.000 kilos. officially its called exposure and was made by antony gormley. but "the crouching man", or even "the shitting man" is what most people say when referring to this piece.

i found an interesting article that told me more about the background of the sculpture. it took 6 years to complete and was revealed in 2010. it is at the waters edge, right where the dykes are to stop the water and where the new land (flevoland) begins. to make it, the artist first cast himself in plaster in this crouching position. then this solid form was translated into a geometrical one using special software. all the metal was placed such, that every single piece was necessary for the construction, and they come together in nodal points like the heart, brain, etc.... his idea was that from afar you can clearly see the human shape, but the closer you get, the more abstract it becomes...

unfortunately, the sky was really grey when we were there, i think it would be really cool to see this sculpture on a brighter day. i didnt know whether we were allowed to walk up to it, there was a road block from where i took the picture... but maybe walking was permitted...

Wind turbines

i noticed that the netherlands has a lot of these wind turbines. often i dont really think they fit the landscape, but here it was sort of ok. this is in the province of flevoland, the province with the highest number of wind turbines. wind power is one of the renewable energy sources. building such "wind farms", as they call them, is quite expensive! a wind farm built out on the sea in 2008 cost over 500 million euros (but sufficient to power 125,000 homes).....

Dutch desert!!

no, not a dutch dessert... but a desert! there actually is some desert in the netherlands and we walked through it on wednesday during our little getaway. its about 14 square miles and aside from sand, there is quite some vegetation at some places, as you can see here! usually this area is called the Loonse and Drunense dunes, but dunes we have enough, so i think its more impressive to call it a desert :) in the tiny netherlands...... on summer days it can really get hot here (especially for the dutch).

we had a really pretty and oh so quiet walk, so very nice. even though it was october, it was warm enough to walk without a jacket, a real treat. the wind makes sure this landscape is changing continuously. we didnt see too many people, only one other couple. they were exhausted after trudging through the sand. it was indeed pretty tiring, but for us it was fine..., although the lady mentioned that we had it easier as we brought our cameras; a nice excuse to stop every now and then to catch your breath (eehhm, to take a picture..).

Hoop rolling!!

sorry for my absence.... this time i had a good reason... it was my birthday and we went exploring the netherlands a little bit! (we got a car! i do have to say; having a car in the netherlands is something completely different than having one in the usa. paying for parking literally EVERYWHERE is something we kind of hadnt taken into account). 

first stop was castle loevestein, above, which was built between 1357 and 1397. especially after having lived in the US, seeing that buildings can be THAT old is really impressive to me... unfortunately, it turned out to be closed from october onwards (then only open during weekends. grrr). at least the hoops were still there, so i tried to play the game; not easy at all! (wikipedia tells me the ancient greeks already played this game....).

Details, details....

recently i wrote that you always have to lock your bike to something immovable, and in addition, you always have to lock your front wheel to the frame. here you can see what happens when you forgot that little detail; they take your bike without the front wheel.... all the other bikes are locked properly, as you see. unfortunately, you see this rather often. of course it is sad that you have to lock your bike with at least 2 locks in the first place, but thats just another detail....

tim has some days off since he worked crazy hours during the weekend. so that was nice... we went to 2 photography museums today, both on the same canal. the above we saw while walking from one museum to the other. the exhibits in both museums were a bit disappointing, but so were my own pictures...

this is one for theme day! to see the other participants, go here!

Real roses

we were at a cemetery today and somewhere i saw this beautiful heart of real roses.... so very pretty!

Het Rijksmuseum

2 days ago i showed you the pond overlooking the museum square. turning around, you see the rijksmuseum. to the left there is still some construction going on so you cannot really see how huge the building is! it opened in 1885, and was built to mainly display the paintings of the 16th and 17th century dutch masters. 

as i mentioned before, the building has been closed for 10 years for renovation (financial troubles and what not), and re-opened just a few months ago. there is a passageway underneath the museum that you can see here, which was originally built for a tram line, but that never happened. motorized vehicles were allowed until 1931. after that, only bikes were allowed. but... while the museum was closed, bikes werent allowed either. in this picture you can see how huge the museum is, and the red lines indicate the more dangerous routes bicyclists had to take while the passageway was closed. there are 2 main museum entrances under the passageway on either side of the street, and the new director of the museum wanted to keep the street closed for bikes; it would be too dangerous for especially tourists. eventually in court (!) it was decided that the underpass should re-open to bicyclists.

to me, biking in amsterdam is still a challenge! tim says im behaving like an old lady, but i never biked in amsterdam before. that, combined with not biking at all in the usa for the past 3 years makes me indeed a little hesitant at times. but.... there is just sooo much traffic! you have to watch out for cars, trams, buses, pedestrians, other bikes... then you also have to be careful not to get stuck in a tram track (im still extra carefull when crossing the tracks, and there are a LOT of them), the crazy fast scooters that are allowed on the bike path (luckily they are banned from the passageway above), and all the construction going on everywhere so that sometimes the street literally stops in front of you and you have to either bike through the sand, over shaky boards or have to take another route altogether. on top of all that, the city center is full with tourists on bikes (who clearly do not know how to bike), and people (accidentally) stepping on the bike lanes.... causing peak stress levels for someone who is used to biking in utrecht, a much smaller city, with less crazy traffic...

Oooops, more....

.... shoes! ah, and another manhole cover. as you can see, this one is in an outlet shopping center. as far as i know, we have only one outlet center in the netherlands (but i could be wrong). for sure this one was the first to ever open, in 2001. its in lelystad, and there is not much else around (except for a nice museum about the history of lelystad; this province was reclaimed from the water, as you might know).

just like an american outlet center, this one has a lot of parking. but.... even here in the middle of nowehere you still have to pay for parking (aaarghhhh!!), just like you have to pay for everything here in the netherlands (including visiting a public toilet). we werent really looking for something to buy, but the shoe shop had very cheap shoes (really cheap!). so i got those pink shoes above (and blue shoes... perhaps i show you those some other time). i really didnt need those... but well....

Museum square

we went out today and got to take some pictures! it was a really nice day, not cold at all and rather sunny. perfect weather for biking... 

here you see a part of the museum square in amsterdam, which was reconstructed in 1999. this should be a little pond, but i dont know why there is so little water in it right now! in winter it apparently is a skating rink? (i really dont remember ever seeing that. wikipedia just told me... ). there are 3 museums located at the museum square. right behind is the rijksmuseum (which is huge and was just reopened after having been closed for 10 years; its renovation cost just 375 million euros..), and then there are the van gogh museum, and the stedelijk museum. right in front you could see the famous "concertgebouw" (concert building, with its highly regarded acoustics), but that truck is blocking the view. buuhh...

in the usa we visited many museums for free, either because at a dedicated time and day each week there was no entrance fee, or because we could enter for free with our bank card. in the netherlands there is no free entrance, i think... but my parents gave us a "museumjaarkaart", with which you can visit most dutch museums for free (or a small fee) for an entire year (you do pay for the card, but if you go frequent enough, its more than worth it). so.... we went to the rijksmuseum! we saw a lot of interesting things, but not everything, as we can now easily go another time with the card....

More pictures...

i need to take more pictures! im currently not taking a whole lot of pictures and every evening im very indecisive as to which picture i should post. sometimes i spend an hour looking at folders and folders of pictures, only to not post any of them... (like yesterday). 

so... perhaps today we will take some more pictures. lets see. most certainly, the above is in a diner in the usa (close to boston). the booths, the ketchup bottle, the ketchup itself (the dutch give you mayo with your fries..), the burger... all so very american!! a burger is something you can get in every american restaurant (if not the only thing), but thats really not the case in the netherlands (unless you goto mcdonalds)... so a picture like the one above i probably wont get anytime soon... :)

Our pets

i have shown you these birds before, but since we hung some food for them, we can often admire them right in front of our living room window! its like having pets, but without the hassle! usually they come in the morning and the afternoon, sometimes they try to be on that little wire with 3 of them... they eat quite fast, but a lot falls on the ground (messy eaters! good they are on the other side of the window). it seems like they often peek into our living room, and as soon as i come too close, they fly away. when there is no food anymore, they still come and sit on the wire, every now and then, but much less then when there is food! to me its really interesting how quickly they figure out there is food....

Tiny kitchen...

here it is... our tiny tiny kitchen.... as opposed to our kitchen in the usa, this one is in a separate room, and not overlooking our living room. no fancy high countertops with barstools... just a tiny place with too much stuff.... cooking several things at the same time (like making dinner and cookies) is really a challenge, as there is not enough space to put your mixing bowls, cutting board, etc etc. and then there are the dirty dishes that need a place too as we dont have a dishwasher (and we dont do the dishes every day, then we could make do with just 2 plates, and we have several!!). in the usa we had so much space that we could keep appliances like toasters etc on the counter, but here we have to put them away after use.

as opposed to the usa, we separate our garbage here, so there is the general trash can, a plastic bag for all the plastics, a paper bag for all the paper, and then we have the glass bottles and the bottles with deposit. 

when one is in the kitchen, its not that easy for the other to pass, and that sometimes really gets on my nerves... as i have mentioned several times, the oven is also much tinier than the one in boston. on top of that, theres not a lot of space to maneuver, so i am not very good at putting a very hot, very heavy cast iron pot into the oven; i usually make tim do it. then i open and close the oven door to make it all go faster. however, to do that, i need to step onto the balcony, as tim is standing on the other side. when we bake bread its usually in the morning and more often than not i am still in my "robe" (such a funny word), so i guess it must be a pretty weird sight when i step outside just to open and close the oven door... :)