How do they get the Bikes out of the canals in Amsterdam???

Ode to Tacheles

I came across this article recently in the NY Times.

R and I went to Berlin for his birthday in July. He's a Berlin expert and made sure to show me (a first timer) Tacheles as one of our stops.

Here a result of that visit...

Dutch news: Anne Franks's tree

from NY magazine:

Tree Immortalized by Anne Frank’s Diary Topples

It was the rare indication of nature visible from Anne Frank's attic window in Amsterdam, but earlier today the 150-year-old tree was felled by a heavy wind. "Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," Frank wrote in an entry dated May 1944. Her hiding spot was discovered the following August. [Reuters]

Kamperen in Noord-Holland

R has the month of August off and since we are spending most of the time visiting family we thought we'd do something new for just the two of us first. So we spent a fun afternoon running through the aisles of a large camping store and experienced our first camping trip together.

We chose North Holland as our first destination. It's been so easy to travel from where we are now, needless to say we love doing it but I haven't been able to land work yet and our mileage points for free hotel stays are dwindling. We kept our fingers crossed that we'd love our camping experience; it would allow us to continue to travel and save us money on hotel rooms.

We booked a spot at the Kennemer Duincamping Geversduin and took a train up to Castricum, North Holland. At the train station we rented bikes and biked the rest of the journey to our campsite. The only camping gear we had was our tent, sleeping bags and a camplight so traveling without car was manageable.

Kennemer Geversduin is situated as close to the dunes of the North Sea as you can get. The area (Nationaal Park Zuid-Kennemerland) is protected and we had miles and miles of trails winding through the dunes to bike (horseriding and hiking are also options). We loved the area and spent our first day biking through it until the rain clouds started threatening.

On the second day we explored some of the smaller villages in North Holland. We visited the Alkmaar cheese market on our last day. Those photos to follow. Until then, enjoy these shots of our camp ground, the dunes and the North Sea...

Oh, and good news re camping, we are hooked!



this reminded us of Northern California
sheep grazing in the dunes

our bikes parked at the beach

offshore windfarm

storm clouds gathering

Oranje! Pregame

Seen in and around town today...

Oranje! preparing for the event

I never thought I'd cheer "orange" again, but eight years after graduating from Syracuse U, my host country has made it to the World Cup finals!

The morning is still blissfully quiet, and finally the heat wave has cooled, but it won't be long before we start hearing the vuvuzela's* as Holland does some last minute preparing. Most of the houses and buildings are covered in orange. Some had little sprinklings of it as the World Cup was getting started a month ago today, but they've been steadily adding to it as Oranje continued to advance.

It's been 32 years since the Netherlands have had a chance at winning the cup. The first time they made it this far ended in a loss against Germany, so we'd all been hoping Germany would make it again, but sadly no luck. Would have made for a more exciting game and a chance at revenge for the Dutch.

Other events have been shifting their schedules after Oranje made it to the finals and once it was clear that the country had gone oranje gek (orange crazy). In the semi-finals match, this country of 16.5 million had no less than 12.3 million watching! Among those not watching will be residents of the Dutch bible belt. (I had not idea NL also had a bible belt...the things you learn thanks to football)

We still have nine hours to go, I'll soon be getting out my orange T, purchased originally for the Koninginnedag celebrations (so far the best Dutch party I've ever been to) and will probably hop on the bike and take a few pictures of the orange "ivy" covering most homes.

Of course I am hoping this will turn into the other best Dutch party I've ever been to. Predictions are being made by parakeets and octopi, but I've heard that no team that's ever lost the first game of the matches (hello Spain) has ever won the World Cup. Oranje hasn't lost a match yet.

We'll be watching the game from one of two places, both outdoors: the site of Blaak Market or in front of the Stadhuis (city hall), both marked in the map below. Our local cinema is showing the game in 3D with English commentary but I can't imagine it being as fun as the outdoor screens and forget about getting tickets this late.



View World Cup Finale in a larger map

Enjoy the game!!!


*vuvuzela: those annoying horns that have resulted in job loss and cause that swarm-of-bees like drone that put my husband to sleep in front of the TV

zeeschildpad = sea turtle

Amazing video by a sea turtle who found a Dutchman's lost camera in Aruba and filmed part of his journey to the Florida Keys.

Keukenhof

visited on 10 May 2010
more here

Fireline/Brandgrens

Before my cycling days, my metrostation was the Gerdesiaweg stop. I'd get out to walk home at night and notice these glass discs in the sidewalk, glowing an eerie red. A string of them went by the station, in the direction of our apartment, each several feet apart. They soon crossed the street and turned the corner; I often wondered if I should follow them, what they would lead to. By day I'd have forgotten about them as they blended into the stone pavement but each night I wondered what they were as their red glow escorted me part of the way home.

A friend soon explained it was the fireline or as the Dutch call it, the Brandgrens. Before May 1940, the architecture of Rotterdam would have been identical to that found in Amsterdam. It is a modern city today because in May 1940, it was severely bombed by the Germans. The fire that resulted destroyed what the bombs hadn't already. Rotterdam was virtually flattened.

The Brandgrens today, ties Rotterdams modern streets with the memory of this fire. Memorials created since World War II have been thoughtful, even beautiful and this is now one of my favorites. In 2006 the Rotterdam City Council decided to permanently mark the perimeter of the fire, Adriaan Geuze of West 8 won the project. The first parts were unveiled May 14, 2009 and the 12km project is expected to be completed this May on the 70th year anniversary of the bombing.

The lights show within a flame the bombing of buildings and Ossip Zadkine's sculpture, De Verwoeste Stad (The Destroyed City), my other favorite memorial. Soon I will have my own photographs of this guy (along with a dedicated blog entry...I do love him), for now enjoy the borrowed one here.

I was at a friend's today who is friendly with someone at the Rotterdam Council. This person had prepared a slideshow about the history of the bombing, the destruction (including many before and after photos), maps of the perimeter and information of the memorials created since. It was fitting for today and the inspiration of today's blog. He had also given my friend a large print of the 2007 light installation by the Mothership, the Bombardement Periphery. The pictures are pretty impressive and the installation will remind anyone of the beams of light that in the past have shot into the sky to commemorate the twin towers. Here, the Mothership used 128 lights to outline the perimeter, sad to say this will not be repeated.

I should note that the Netherlands had quite a few holidays this week. I've mentioned Queens Day. Yesterday was Remembrance Day. At 8pm everyone stopped for two minutes of silence to honor those fallen during World War II. Today the Netherlands celebrates Liberation Day, marking the day, 65 years ago, when mostly Canadian troops liberated the country from Nazi Germany.

It's an humble day. Rotterdam today was created by these horrific events and exists as it does thanks to it. Nothing anyone should ever wish to happen again, but remember this anytime architecture is celebrated here or an art installation admired. Makes it even more precious, doesn't it?
Happy Bevrijdingsdag.

Happy Queen's Day!

Language Fun

Learning a new language, especially one which shares so much with German and a bit of French (with a lot of English) has me excited again about all the languages in my repertoire.

German is my "mother tongue" but thanks to moving to the US at age 5, and having my entire education in American school systems, English comes much easier to me.

French I took throughout high school and a little bit in college. (I also took Spanish in middle school but can only remember "hola" and how to count to ten. There was also sign language in elementary school but I've only retained the ABC's and a few verses of Bette Midler's "From A Distance"...don't ask)

These days I find myself excited to improve and refresh both French & German while becoming (hopefully) fluent in Dutch. Dutch level one is coming to an end at the end of next month and if I pass the exam I immediately start level two.

To regain my comfort with German I've been following German news feeds through google-reader and occasionally watch our one German TV channel. My mom gave me a German book for Christmas which I've been reading and I requested German speaking friends and family to send me a list of their favorite German reads.

Even better of an exercise have been the translations I've been working on for my grandfather. He wants me to translate his memoirs from German to English for our relatives in the US, and he wants me to do it quickly as he feels it's "his time"... which sort of reminds me of a story of a girl who would make up stories for her grandmother, the "to be continued" type, so old granny would hang on another day. It worked for her so I think I'll take my time too.

For French I'd need a bigger refresher. Another "partner" here is not only French but a French language teacher and is excited to help me brush up. I haven't taken her up on it yet but she does speak to me in French whenever she sees me (I mostly respond in English).

What is really cool are the cinemas here in Rotterdam. Thanks to discount cards I go all the time and last week I tested out two foreign language films to see how I'd do.

The first was Coco & Igor; a French film about the affair between legends Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. I understood bits of French and was helped along by the Dutch subtitles which I mostly understood as well. Stravinsky was Russian, so there were also a lot of Russian bits. Dutch subtitles were most useful here but I understood one word (other than thank you) which was used a few times...krasivaya.

Krasivaya (beautiful) I can recognize thanks to the partners' meet ups I'm constantly going to. The "partners" are the other wives, girlfriends and fiancees of the students in the MBA program. A few have kids and in spending so much time with them we are all picking up a few words in each language. The other day my Chinese born & raised/German married friend picked up a pink baby bottle and waving it called out to our little Israeli girl (who was looking for it) "MAH-yim!". The girls mother was making salad in the next room. My Chinese friend realized what she was doing, laughed and remarked how cool it was that we are all able to communicate to the children in their native tongue so it was okay for mom not to be around. ("MAH-yim"means water in Hebrew.) And so I've been picking up a bit of Russian, Hebrew and Mandarin (although less Mandarin as I speak German to our little half-German half-Chinese guy). I have the opportunity to pick up some Hindi but don't see our little Indian friend as often.

The second film was a Dutch movie. I knew it wouldn't be a great film but I thought it would be a good first Dutch movie. It took place in South America, so I knew there'd be a lot of Spanish speaking, which meant there'd be Dutch subtitles. Dutch reading comes very easy to me, it's the listening I am having a hard time with. All in all it went pretty well, although as predicted, during Dutch spoken scenes I still had a bit of trouble distinguishing words but generally I got the point and feel ready to start going to Dutch language films more often.