Rotterdam (At Last)

On Laura's final weekend in The Netherlands, we stopped for a night in nearby Rotterdam. Although Rotterdam is only a little farther from Delft than The Hague and MUCH closer than Amsterdam, we went nearly a full year without really venturing into the city. (Well, we tried to see the city back in winter, but were confronted with wind so cold that we basically walked out of the train station and right back into it.)

Rotterdam doesn't get the international pub of Amsterdam or The Hague, but it has some bragging points. It's always in competition for "busiest port in the world," though Wikipedia says it is currently second to Shanghai. It's also known as a tremendously young city - sometimes called the youngest in Europe - and is the 2009 European Youth Capital. Also, there's a bit of a rivalry between Rotterdam and Amsterdam that is manifested primarily on the soccer field.

A vast majority of Rotterdam was destroyed in May of 1940 when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Since the war ended, Rotterdam has been the center of a lot of architectural experimentation, which makes it both strikingly modern in some respects and obscenely ugly in others. (The Netherlands is in fact a modern architectural epicenter, and it wasn't long ago that I encountered a whole train car full of US architecture students touring the country.) The part of Rotterdam that all the guidebooks tell you to see is Delfshaven, which is the historical part that looks like every other city in the Netherlands. Now, I like the canal looks of this country a lot, but to those guidebook writers I have to ask, "Why am I going to go to Rotterdam, unique for the fact that it doesn't look like every other Dutch city, to see the part of it that does?" (Delfshaven wasn't one of our stops, though I'm sure it's nice.)

Our visit centered on the waterfront, which we saw by pannenkoek boot - that's "pancake boat," a boat that serves pancakes. The pancakes were mediocre but the view was very nice, with towering, colorful buildings and creative bridges. We set off from next to the Euromast (above right), the tallest structure in Rotterdam. We didn't go inside it, but it offers food and drink, a panoramic view of the city, and various creative ways for visitors to plummet from the tower's apex.

Erasmusbrug ("Erasmus Bridge"), nicknamed "The Swan"
We were particularly excited to stay in the "cube houses" one of the aforementioned architectural experiments that was recently converted into a StayOK hostel. As you can imagine from their shape and unconventional orientation relative to the earth's gravitational field, the rooms are awkward. (That doesn't make staying in one any less cool.)

Cube Houses
Near to the Cube Houses in Oude Haven, we had a nice view of the harbor area while we enjoyed some Heinekens.

Willemsbrug is near to Erasmusbrug and both span the Nieuwe Maas
Witte Huis ("White House"), the tallest "skyscraper" in Europe when it was built in 1898
You can find a few more pictures on Flickr.

Goodbye, Amsterdam

I can't imagine that there are many cities in the world that can match the personality of Amsterdam. It is an endlessly entertaining place with its unique canal-house looks, frenetic pace, diverse culture, and a population of people who are dedicated to walking their own path in life. It's an awesome city, and speaking from experience, it grows on you every time you emerge from Amsterdam Centraal and look out over the narrow, crooked buildings.

I'm leaving the country in two weeks, so yesterday I went to Amsterdam for the last time. I spent the day enjoying the sunshine, the crowds, and the atmosphere. I went to the Amsterdam History Museum to learn a little more about the history of the city. I walked miles and miles. I watched street performances. I paid €3 at Cannabis College to stand in front of a 5 foot tall cannabis plant just for the novelty of it. I laughed at Darth Vader and the Grimm Reaper and Batman on Dam Square. I walked the streets of the revived Jordaan, the neighborhood that many of the 100,000 Jews killed by the Nazis, including Anne Frank herself, called home. I slipped into an art gallery showcase and admired the urban artwork. I ate an awesome Ethiopean dinner, in which I scooped my food from the plate with Injera bread and drank my Ethiopean beer from a coconut shell.

Yeah, I'm going to miss Amsterdam.

Outside the Jordaan.
A [legal] cannabis plant.

Iranian Conflict Viewed from the Netherlands

Unless you live in a major population center in the United States, I think it is easy to view many world events as isolated and faraway. The conflict in Iran, for instance, may well not touch your life beyond the appearance of headlines on the newscasts that you watch. Iran remains a mysterious and hostile place in the minds of Americans, but much of this dissolves when the people and their government are separated as they have been recently.

The peoples' protests for freedom in Iran, when viewed through the prism of the populous and internationally-flavored Randstad area of the Netherlands, have proven inescapable and highly intriguing for me. There have been frequent demonstrations close by, including in Delft. Here, I see the struggle far from its origin, but still "up-close" in a way, including: the ongoing difficulty for Iranian expats to reconcile their national pride with the grave injustices that they see done to their countrymen; their yearning for freedom and desire to support its cause while cautiously clinging to the ideal of a safe and prosperous life in Iran even under the current regime; and of course the contention between religious moderation and Islamic fundamentalism, which is at the core of conflicts far beyond just those within the Islamic Republic itself.

Yesterday in Amsterdam there was another such demonstration. There is nothing particularly exceptional about this one (which I happened upon through CNN's iReport), but it does show that there are still large numbers of Iranian expats attempting to do the work for their countrymen here - in a free country - where their voices will not be silenced.

The Eternal Moonwalk

This has only a marginal connection with the topics of our blog, but it's too cool not to post. Go visit the Michael Jackson Eternal Moonwalk, where you can see videos of people from all over the world doing [mostly terrible] moonwalks.

There are tons from the Netherlands: just search for Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Utrecht, Eindhoven, or any of the other big cities. My personal Netherlands favorite is the bike moonwalk (#910) in front of the I amsterdam sign on the Museumplein in Amsterdam. Don't forget to add sound effects with the SDFJKL keys!

Amsterdam

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Matt and I goofing around in the Amsterdam letters set-up by the city tourist department.

The Heineken Experience

From the moment one first steps foot in the Netherlands, there's never any doubt that the "King of Beers" here is Heineken. Its roots are in Amsterdam, where in December 1863 Gerard Adriaan Heineken bought an old brewery in town and started the Heineken company. Like any good global beer brand in today's age, Heineken has a very nice propaganda experience in one of their original brewery buildings. It's entitled The Heineken Experience.





The experience was a mix of historical information, old brewery equipment, multimedia presentations, and beer drinking. Below you see Laura getting a good look at the inside of a "copper," which is where wort (the liquid that results from mixing barley and water) is boiled with hops.



Another cool part of the visit was the Brew You Ride, in which you see the brewing process from the beer's vantage point. This was less of a ride than a cool multimedia movie that participants watch from a shaker platform. So today Laura and I have been roasted, boiled, fermented, bottled, and poured. At the end of the ride, we emerged from a Heineken box on a warm, sunny beach somewhere that I'm guessing was not the Netherlands.

Maybe the coolest things - from a technology perspective, anyway - were the tables at the Heineken bar. They were digital screens that produced virtual coasters whenever a beer was set down. Better yet, the entire room gave a 360° view of several selected cityscapes and the tables displayed accompanying world maps. The map was interactive, but it would only respond to the Heineken glasses being placed in the right spots. Below you see the table and virtual coasters. Very cool.

The rest of our pictures from the Amsterdam outing can be found here.

Posted by Matt

Queen's Day

Today Laura and I ventured to Amsterdam for the yearly Queen's Day celebration, which honors the queen's birthday - just not that of the current one, Beatrix. Instead, they celebrate former Queen Juliana's birthday, mainly because it's more fun to get a day off of work in April than in January. Queen Beatrix still feels the love though, I'm sure.

I cannot even begin to express the enormity of Queen's Day in Amsterdam. It absolutely dwarfs any event I've seen before, including the more familiar St. Patrick's Day in Dublin. The city was completely packed with people from Amsterdam Centraal all the way to Museumplein, 3.5 km away - and probably much further than that. The massive crowds donned orange (the color of the Dutch Royal Family, The House of Orange) from head to toe, including orange suits, orange earrings, orange hats, etc. We were, at least for a moment, reminded of a game day in Gainesville^*... but then we'd walk through a cloud of marijuana smoke and snap out of it.


Because Queen's Day is the only day of the year that people can sell stuff without a permit in The Netherlands, we passed street vendors (and regular people) selling everything imaginable. Scattered among the soft drink and beer vendors were people selling purses, stupid hats, bed sheets, orange face masks (for the swine flu, of course), cultural outfits, and bathroom time. Amsterdam residents charging € 1 for access to their bathrooms surely made tons of money from the ladies, who don't benefit whatsoever from Amsterdam's infamous street urinals.

Laura and I spent most of the day walking aimlessly around Amsterdam, like leaves drifting in an orange stream. Most of the excitement not related to buying street junk was centered around various musical acts throughout the city. The coolest place to be, though, was on a boat in the canals. Party barges regularly grabbed our attention, with their dancing passengers and booming music systems.


Figuring we had surely spent more than enough time in the enormous international crowd to ensure we'll be suffering from the swine flu next week (it's just the flu, people!), Laura and I headed back to Delft around dinnertime.

In fact, it wasn't until we got home that we discovered there had been a lunchtime attack on the royal family in Apeldoorn. During an event there, some lunatic crashed his car through a barricade - killing several people - en route to ram the royal family's bus. He ended up smashing into a monument instead. It's a terrible event to have happened on a day of celebration for the people of the Netherlands.



^*Many of you might be wondering why I said Queen's Day reminded me of game day in Gainesville and not Clemson. The answer lies in the tackiness of the crowd - sorry, fellow Gator fans, but the blanket insult, "Gator fans wear jean shorts" didn't come out of nowhere.

Amsterdam and The Muiderslot

On Saturday we welcomed Laura's mom Pam and her boyfriend, Tony, to the Netherlands. We picked them up at Schiphol airport early that morning and headed into Amsterdam for some brief sightseeing. We walked the usual path from Central Station, past Dam Square, down Kalverstraat and through the Begjinhof, then onto the Bloemenmarkt (Flower Market). We also walked out to the Albert Cuypmarkt, Amsterdam's busiest market, which took us briefly by the Heineken Experience. You can see our route below, and if you view the larger map, you can use Google's street view to virtually walk parts of it; just drag the little orange guy in the upper left corner onto the route. (Unfortunately, the best pedestrian parts, along Kalverstraat and the Bloemenmarkt, don't currently have street views.)


View Larger Map
The main event of the day, though, was our trip to nearby Muiden to see The Muiderslot (Muiden Castle). The castle is situated on what used to be the main route from Amsterdam to Utrecht on the River Vecht. The castle as it is today was built on the remains of a previous fortress in the year 1370. There are gardens on the castle grounds and the open area inside the castle walls provides a good place for all the children, dressed in their knight costumes, to see the frequent falconry show. We saw part of a show, in which the falconer instructed her falcon to dive bomb a group of children in near-miss fashion.


We briefly toured the castle interior, which is restored with 17th century furniture. Our English tour, unfortunately, turned to Dutch when a large number of Dutch children joined the group... so I can't really tell you anything else about the interior of the castle other than, "It looked old."


On the way back to the bus stop from the castle, we stopped for an ice cream cone in downtown Muiden and watched boats navigate through the lock system there. Then it was off to Utrecht for more adventure!

The rest of the castle pictures can be found here.

Posted by Matt

Late Night @ The Van Gogh Museum

On any given day The Van Gogh Museum is stocked full of Van Gogh's bright, vivid paintings arranged in a wonderful chronological story of his life, however, currently the exhibit Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night brings a whole new set of gems to the museum. In collaboration with the MoMa, the museum has put together an extraordinary collection of Van Gogh's and his contemporaries' paintings of nighttime scenes - including the famous Starry Night.
We journeyed to Amsterdam to see this special exhibit during their weekly Friday nights at the museum event. While gazing at Van Gogh's amazing paintings, we were treated to the sounds of Jazz vocalist Fay Claasen.

Last Day of Indoor Competition

Yesterday was the last day of the indoor competition season. Since my arm is still in a cast, I adopted the role of team photographer for the day.





You can find the rest of the photos here. The team won all four games and was very pleased to end on such a high note!

Moeder Komt

Mom's Whirlwind Tour of Amsterdam:

Mom inspecting bulbs in the floating flower market

Tulips in the flower market
Flower Booth
Mom & me eating raw herring, onions, and pickles

Mom & me "skating" in Vondel Park
Matt & me on a frozen pond in Vondel Park

Mom & me outside in the Rijksmuseum in the sculpture garden

Mom finishing the night with a chocolate waffle

Weekend ice skating

Last weekend saw the best ice skating conditions in the Netherlands in more than a decade. Laura and I were very much hoping to join all the Dutch skaters on the frozen canals and lakes, but after spending much of Saturday afternoon in old town Delft unsuccessfully inquiring about skate rentals, we were forced to give up. The Dutch were not caught similarly unprepared, and thus the weekend contained all manner of organized ice skating tours, races, etc. throughout the country. Below is a nice video from a Dutch marathon race held over the weekend, and here's an unrelated but very nice picture.



All of the ice skating fun has also resulted in a doubling of hospital business, freaked out train operators, and the rescue of ten people and a dog who walked across the ice to Pampus Island in Amsterdam but weren't able to walk back because of a newly formed rift. If you look at a map, you'll see that Pampus Island is something like 2 miles from land. Having grown up much closer to the equator, I can't even fathom that amount of uninterrupted ice.

On Sunday we met Laura's mom, Pam, at the airport and spent the day walking around Amsterdam, where we were fortunate to stumble upon some very nice natural ice at Vondel Park. The closest we got to skating was walking across the ice there, which was rock solid (though the three of us still shared fears of falling through).

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective), the weather is warming this week (it was a balmy 41°F today!) Thus, the Elfstedentocht looks increasingly unlikely. Maybe next year.

Bollywood Bijlmer

In celebration of Amsterdam India Festival month, we attended Bollywood Bijlmer last night at the Koninklijk Theater Carre. The performance was a combination of an urban Indian dance performance and an Indian short film. Even though the film was in Dutch, the classic love story was easy to follow.

Some interesting notes about Dutch theater:

1. Right before the start of the performance, they let you move to whatever seats you like. If you happen to be late and someone is in your seat - tough luck! I think this is wonderful - no one is trying to move in front of you after the show has started.
2. Apparently flash photography is okay during the performance. Don't worry, I'm sure the blasts of light are not bothering the performers or your neighbor...
   

Decription of the film from the film website:
"The Bollywood film Bijlmer line with the rising popularity in the Netherlands of the Hindi film and Indian culture. In Bollywood Bijlmer is a dramatic story, full of romance, interspersed with large dance scenes. The film offers a mix of the dream world that is so typical of Bollywood and the daily reality of life in a big-city district in the Netherlands, with all its cultures, lifestyles and contradictions. The story is about a boy who as a minor asylum seeker from an African country has come to the Netherlands and for years with a foster family lives in Amsterdam. He is in love with a Hindu girl with him in the classroom. He has daydreaming about her, but the other is tormented by nightmares from his childhood. At school he has struggled with violence and bullying. Both the bullying as the nightmares escalate until he turns his so that he gets home from school and walk away. He and the girl find each other?"

Amsterdam

On Sunday we gave my dad the whirlwind tour of Amsterdam. This, of course, included starting the day with chocolate waffles.After starting in Dam Square, we walked through the center of Amsterdam, through the Jordaan District, past Anne Frank's house, by the Homomonument, around the church where Rembrandt is buried, and through the floating flower markets.

Next up was lunch, where we introduced my dad to Indonesian Cuisine at Restaurant Kantjil en de Tijger. Indonesia was once a colony of the Netherlands, so there are quite a lot of Indonesian restaurants and stores around. Lunch was delicious! We ate huge bowls of noodles, vegetables, rice, and meat. Matt's came with a coconut sauce and Dad's and mine came with a peanut butter sate sauce. And of course, it was washed down with a round of Belgium beers.After lunch, we visit the Dutch Resistance Museum. It was a wonderful, informative museum that told the story of Dutch from the late nineteen-thirties until after liberation. The museum was exceptionally well put together, with interactive displays, a multimedia guide, lots of artifacts, informative text, videos, and sound recordings, and tons of photographs. I would highly recommend this museum to anyone visiting Amsterdam. After over two hours, we found ourselves being ushered out by the docents as we had stayed past closing.

And then, it was back to Delft...

Botel

Boat + Hotel = Botel

This weekend we stayed on Botel Christina in Amsterdam Inner Harbor. While not an experience for the light sleeper, it was definitely a place I'd go back again. The rooms were small and the beds short, but the atmosphere and breakfast made up for it.

And for all you wondering, the showers were vastly superior to the one in our apartment. Some genius sloped the floor so the water flows to the drain and does not flood the entire bathroom floor. The knobs also had temperature markings so you could precisely choose your water temperature, as opposed to continually tweaking the knobs the entire shower to avoid cold bursts and scalding moments. The pipes were also set up in way that allows someone to use the shower, someone to use the toilet, and someone to use the sink - and no one gets burned, frozen, or is lacking water. Maybe the genius could come redo our bathroom.