Week 2 in the books!

Oh what a glorious day!
At long last, we received our air shipment today!!! You just can't believe how bad it is not having your stuff (we're dealing with true first world problems here)! Our furniture and other big stuff is still en route (next Wednesday), but at least we have all our clothes, kitchen stuff, and my road bike!

Sadly, it was attached to my favorite car of all time in this picture.
The one that I no longer own.
The one that might be replaced with (sniff, sniff) an SUV!

The delivery guys were great. They got our stuff unloaded, carried down our street (no room to park the van in front of our place without blocking traffic), and up one, two, or three flights of stairs in well under two hours despite all of Eliza's and Daisy's help! And got all of the packaging materials out of here - and were incredibly friendly. We got everything put away reasonably well, but there's still quite a lot to do. Hard to believe how much stuff a family has.

We got around quite a bit more this week. We made the trek to the main library (Central Station) and found a reasonable selection of English books for the girls. Eliza chose Puss & Boots, which Holli has been reading to her at night over the last several days. It stays pretty close to the movie, which was pretty entertaining! I got a kick out of seeing this poster in the window:

Misery: A Feel Bad Musical.
Too bad for me that it's in Dutch!

We also made it over to Vondelpark, where they had some very interesting art on display (which is pretty common there I believe). Here's one finger-lickin' piece that reminded us of home:

May be hard to see, but that's an 8 foot tall mama bird feeding
her baby birds in the KFC bucket.
And that's also a typical number of bikes in any picture taken in the city limits.

Lilli has taken a liking to making shelters - or at least working on them. She started one that same day while her sisters were kicking it in the "water park" in Vondelpark:

Lilli's friend didn't speak English, but they had fun anyway.

On Friday we decided to rent a car for the weekend so that we could get out of town - and maybe pick up a few things. At our eccentric neighbor's suggestion, we went straight from the rental place (at Central Station, so another long walk) out to Zaanse Schans. Turns out, this place was very cool. They make cheese, cast pewter, carve wooden shoes, and they have windmills! Real ones, that were built in the 1600's and still work & make products. We toured two of them.

The blade behind/ above them in the photo above was turning pretty fast. Fast enough that the skull on the sign was as telling as the gate itself: There are not a lot of safety precautions in Holland compared
to the US - apparently they assume that people have sense! The video below gives a good sense of the proximity (from the other side of the platform).

The first windmill that we toured (De Zoeker, featured in the above video) was built in 1672 (300 years before me) and relocated to this site in 1968. The wind powers equipment (generally gears, etc. all made of wood) that drives massive stone wheels that crush peanuts into a moist meal.

Remember I said something about limited safety precautions?

The meal is heated and stirred (you can see the top of the "stove" and the agitator towards the end of the second video above) and then manually loaded into canvas bags. The bags are squeezed by an ingenious device that is also driven by the wind. Thankfully, that device was not in operation the entire time that we were touring. The very loud noise that sounds like a large post being dropped several feet onto a piece of wood IS exactly that. You can see the upper portion of the post in the first video above. I am 100% sure that many of these mill operators lost their hearing.

As the pressure inside the canvas bags reaches some astronomical amount (20 bar? 200 bar? I can't recall exactly), all of the oil from the meal runs out of the canvas into a pan, where it is collected and manually transferred to drums. Peanut oil, processed with near zero carbon footprint (not quite zero: they do heat the oil by burning wood, and the mill worker may have been a little gassy).

The second windmill was named Het Jonge Schaap, and it is an "exact" re-creation of a 1680 mill that was demolished in 1942. Various interests collaborated to measure the old mill prior to its demolition, and to use those prints to build the new one - largely by hand - in 2007. Het Jonge Schaap is a sawmill that uses the wind to pull the large tree trunks from the water, drive the multiple blades up and down, and pull the wood through the blades. Although it only moves about 2 millimeters per stroke (the stroke speed being largely determined by the wind speed), it makes multiple cuts simultaneously, so an entire tree can be processed in about an hour or two. Not blazing speed by any means, but again - no electricity, gas, coal, etc. required to pull this off. All of the wood is available for sale at the same price as you would find from a commercial mill.

Logs awaiting processing at Het Jonge Schaap.
De Zoeker in the background.

I didn't say much about the car we rented, so I'll take this opportunity. It was a Fiat Panda. "Fiat" I'm thinking when the rental guy "hooks me up" with an Italian speed machine that brings back memories of uncle Larry's sweet ride from back in the late 70's (early 80's?). Reality set in before we got out of the garage. Granted I'm used to my 335 with its 350 ft-lbf of torque, but come on! The Flintstone's car had better acceleration than this "sporty hatchback." It did get us around town, but the second severe shortcoming became apparent shortly after we got out of the garage - no AC. Normally in a location this far north, AC is not that much of a necessity. However, the temperature last weekend reached 34 C - that's 93 degrees American! To put this in perspective historically, the average HOTTEST day of the year in Amsterdam is 21 (July 16th). That's 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So it was 23 degrees hotter than normal last weekend. Thus the carbon footprint comments above...

And us with no AC, nor enough gerbils under the hood to develop a breeze strong enough to keep our faces dry. And yes, I do get the irony of complaining about a lack of horsepower in the same paragraph as complaining about the effects of climate change. But what's the internet for if not to complain with ill-reasoned logic?

Just to see how hot we could get, we decided to take a trip to the beach on Saturday. The three girls crammed into the back and we drove about 45 minutes to a nice - and big! - beach on the North Sea.

Lucy was paying attention!

The beach was a little different than the southern US. The water was chilly (reminded me of our summer trips to Maine), the men's suits were distinctly smaller, and there was some (thankfully limited) nudity, but all in all we had a great time. The girls loved it and are excited to go back - just need to buy a car (with a big engine that can drive the AC compressor so that we can fight this heat!)

Since we had the car, we decided to hit a few stores on Sunday. Praxis (think Home Depot in various sizes - all smaller) and IKEA (my first experience there) were the big winners. We managed to cram nearly $300 worth of plants from Praxis into the back of the Panda; fortunately we decided against buying anything further at IKEA - I don't know where we would have put it.

We made another trip Sunday morning before returning the car to Central Station. Got this pic on the walk back. Some of the architecture here is awe-inspiring (Eliza, however, was not inspired):

We found my new favorite park today after lunch: Rembrandt Park. It's less crowded than some of the other big parks, has open spaces, a couple of playgrounds, and a petting zoo. And a Lamborghini!!!!!

I had to get this pig video in here too - lots of personality:

This thing was in the park too - these two were at the top before I could stop them. Again, not something that I would ever expect to see in a park in the US. Unless there were safety harnesses.

More next week - I have lots to say about driving in this city, just too tired to continue tonight!

Our First Week (14-July-15)

We made it!

The five of us (plus one) arrived in Amsterdam almost a week ago. The sun had been up for a half-hour (we landed at 06:00) and would be up until after 22:00. We are still struggling to get the girls on a "normal" sleep schedule, which is hard enough back in the states where the summer day is long - but at least it's an hour and a half shorter than here!

After catching a nap Wednesday afternoon, we met up with the Writer family at "Escape" on the Rembrandtplein to watch the Netherlands-Argentina World Cup match (that started at 22:00 local time). The Writers are from Louisville and the children went to school with Lilli and Lucy. They were visiting family and friends in the Netherlands (Mrs. Writer is from here). The game was not nearly as exciting as the atmosphere. Everyone was decked out in orange, and the streets were loud! Unfortunately, Holland didn't play their best game and lost by penalty kicks after the game ended in a 0-0 tie.

We spent the better part of this week getting settled in as best we can (neither of our "stuff shipments" have arrived; hoping to see them later this week but not looking good). I purchased enough tools to get Holli's bike reassembled (her air shipment arrived some time ago), and we have plenty of clothes to get us through for a while. Most of the other stuff is rental - couch, table and chairs, toaster, utensils...

We have gotten out to explore the area every day. There are dozens of parks and probably hundreds of public "courtyards"shared by the surrounding houses that have playgrounds or common gardens. This seems to be a really nice way to interact with your neighbors. We have come across several of these in the immediate area.

Lilli got to spend some time with her favorite teacher on Sunday. Mrs. Beck and her sister (who I believe both married Dutch men) were in town and collected Lilli for some sightseeing. Mrs. Beck stopped in Amsterdam on her way back from her trip to Africa where she was helping out with a school and drinking water supplies, along with another couple of teachers from Collegiate. Lilli had a great time!

We got over to the local library branch on Monday. Unfortunately the selection of books in English was not too large. The large selection is located in the main library in the city center, which is a pretty long walk from here for Eliza (2.2 km). The girls did each get something however. Lucy's choices were the most interesting as she chose some abridged versions of darker classics (Dracula, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Mummy, and The Island of Dr. Moreau). Should be interesting discussing those with her...

Holli is getting settled in to work and so far has been able to maintain more reasonable hours. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue!

I'm learning about the differences between American and European homes and appliances... Some of them have options to put the menus to English but others don't. Some just work differently. The clothes dryer for example does not have an exhaust duct - it just spits the air back into the room.

We also battled a plumbing issue with the master bathroom shower drain. The Dutch places that I've seen so far are all very modern in their design, and our place is no exception. The shower drain is a sleek-looking piece of rolled stainless steel about a meter long by 15 cm wide (apparently I have to get used to the metric system - might as well get started!). Water rolls over the steel into the catch basin below, where it drains to a round funnel that was clear of obstructions. I poked around looking for the P-trap, only to find none. What I did find was that the funnel was removable, exposing a cup that the bottom of the funnel goes into. So in effect this is a weir system that serves the same function as the P-trap (keeping sewer gas out of the home) with the great improvement that the entire thing is serviceable without tools! I was easily able to clear the clog and put things back together in 2 minutes, compared with possibly having to get behind drywall to do this state-side. It's a wonder that some things don't get "copied" from one place to another!

Obviously not everything is better-designed here, and there does seem to be a certain amount of common sense (or at least attention) that is required - or assumed - of the Dutch that just may not fly in America. The traffic system is a good example.

The girls and I rode around for a few minutes last Thursday with Dorte, our incredibly nice and helpful "relocation counselor." After trying to figure out the rules of the road for a few minutes, I finally had to ask what was going on at the intersections. It appears to me that there are generally no controls on most of them (in other words, there are no stop signs). The rule/ law is that the person coming from the right has the right of way. So as you approach an intersection, you need "only" to check to your right and if no one is coming you continue through. While this allows for a very smooth and free flow of traffic, it requires a great deal of attention, and I just could not see it working in the US.

There are of course stop lights at the larger intersections. Actually two sets of them in many cases - one for cars and one for bikes! Not to mention the multiple pedestrian crossing lights (there are sometimes 2, 3, or 4 individual lights to allow you to cross for example the first car lane, then the tram lane, and finally the another car lane). Bikes - and bike lanes - are everywhere, and it is easy to see why. It is SO easy to get around the city on one, and car parking spots are so limited that it is just faster and easier to bike.

Another thing that struck me both on the Spring Break trip and during our first week here is the flora. Flowers - obviously tulips, but others as well - thrive here and seem to grow anywhere and everywhere. But the really impressive things are the trees! Sycamores and Willow trees are often massive and continue to grow - for years - even after they have fallen over! I'm sure that this is due to the fact that essentially all of the "land" in Amsterdam used to be under water, so the trees are able to get all the water that they want without sending the roots too deep.