A Diversion

Well, my friends, the time has come since I last wrote to you that my classes have ended and I am now in the long stretch of No-Man's-Land time between the last class and the exam.

My last "class" (actually part I of an exam) was last week Thursday.

My exams are on Wednesday night and Friday afternoon.

It is Monday.

***

sigh.

See, every moment between last week Thursday and this week Wed./Fri. has now become a "should" moment. Either I am studying, or I think "I *should* be studying." Truthfully, most moments have been the latter. But before you get all worried, don't be. I haven't been letting the guilt get to me too much.

Which is what brings me to the topic of this blog post: diversions. I believe I wrote about much the same topic in March when I had a similar situation while studying for my History final/STNL midterm. Enter the story-time about diversions from studying I have created for myself, contained in a blog post that is itself a diversion from studying as I write it (there's a circular argument in there somewhere). Although this is not a comprehensive list, it will cover some of the more exciting points. Here we go:

1) Picnic

Today the Berlin group (aka: girls) had a picnic outside. The weather has been gorgeous, finally, and the grassy green meadow behind Anna's building called for us to come sit for awhile. Picnics are delightful. This picnic was delightful. Altogether a --yep-- delightful experience.

2) Eel

Another experience came at the Aay's apartment last night, and like the picnic it also involves food. We finally had the traditional and "required" Dutch meal of herring and eel on white bread/rolls. I had the eel. It was served cold, tasted salty, and looked somewhat snake-shaped. The verdict?

...

Not bad! Also not something I would choose to have again (I put other seafood waaaaaay above it!), but not horrible all the same. Honestly, not horrible.

I didn't try the herring, though. Is that something I still have to do in the next two weeks, or does the eel give me a pass? :)

For the record, I think all twelve people at dinner tried either herring or eel. The NL2010 group is an adventuresome bunch!

3) Rotterdam

Three cheers for Rotterdam!

Hip hip hooray!

Hip hip hooray!

Hip hip hooray!


I have no idea why I just wrote all that. My mind must be going, I'm telling you.
No, mind, not yet! I still need to use you to take two exams!!!!!!!

See?

A-N-Y-W-A-Y, on Saturday morning Anna and I made the trip down to Rotterdam to see the lovely sights. We have both wanted to go to Rotterdam the entire semester, and we realized that Saturday was probably our last chance. Plus, Saturday was a day much like the past few days here have been: sunny, clear skies, upper 60's...in other words, perfect.

And what were the highlights of Rotterdam, you may ask? Well, would you like them in photographic form?

-the Erasmus Bridge




















-Taking a cheesy picture in front of the Erasmus bridge with a photo of Mink Faber, my great-grandfather who sailed from Rotterdam to Ellis Island when he was three. I brought him back!




















-Those crazy cube apartments








































-Drinking refreshing beverages at a restaurant that overlooked the crazy cube apartments







































-A miles-long market filled with hundreds of people. It really was miles long, I promise you.



















-The Maritime Museum




















Now, although this museum ranks only slightly above the Bijbels Museum and is in the "only go there if you can get in free with a museum card" category, it had one exhibit that redeemed the museum for me: the "Animals on Board" exhibit. It taught us about shipping camels to Australia, had different stations where we could collect stamps of cartoon rats, let us match an animal to its...excrement, and, best of all, had a room of giant stuffed animals to play with at the end!























































The seal was my favorite. How often do you come across a stuffed animal with no limbs? I felt sorry for it.

But the animals, and Rotterdam in general, were all a big hit.

...

That's all for now as far as diversions go. I will probably update soon, as soon as the urge to take a break from studying hits again. And who knows what I will find to write about next time?! Until then, stay classy!

The End of an (Excursion) Era

In 25 short hours, I will be five minutes into a 10 hour bus ride to Berlin. Scary thought. To take my mind off of the impending trip in a confined, public space, I will hark back to a simpler time: this weekend's excursions.

Saturday
Our second-to last excursion
Location: Drenthe and Germany, making this our first and only international excursion

I must first say that this excursion to Drenthe meant that I have now been to all 12 Dutch provinces! Woohoo! To show my newly acquired geographical prowess, I will list them all now in the order I visited them:
Noord-Holland
Zuid-Holland
Friesland
Groningen
Flevoland
Utrecht
Gelderland
OverIJssel
Noord-Brabant
Limburg
Zeeland
Drenthe

Some of them (Friesland, Noord-Brabant) have only been seen from a moving van/train. But I plan to fix that in my free time after classes are over. Perhaps I will make a pilgrimage to Friesland, home of my ancestors, and I also very much want to go to Noord-Brabant and visit Efteling! (Theme park. Oh yes).

Anyway, on Saturday we went to Drenthe to learn about peat colonies. Summary: the peat colonies harvested peat like it was nobody's business. Peat was the fuel source back in the day, and the peat colonies made it happen. End of summary.

Our first stop was at a nature preserve-type area where we took a walk through the peat lanscape. The day was not very sunny, but at least it wasn't raining. The walk was quite pleasant. A few picture highlights:

Prof. Aay explains it all



















We venture into the unknown



















Prof. Zylstra (who is leading this semester next year and came to Amsterdam this week) explains sphagnum moss



















Traipsing around



















After the walk, it was time to drive around and look at linear villages and such. This included our (drumroll)...excursion into Germany. I will now utilize photos to convey the tale of our journey into another land.

As you can see, our route is about to take us off the edge of the map



















Germany is at the end of the trees...



















The little blue sign on the right says "Welcome to Germany" (in German, of course). Almost there...



















In Germany
Oh, yeah
(Bad picture)



















In Germany, wind turbines have orange stripes



















German signs



















We almost drove onto some train tracks in Germany. Whoops.



















And that is about the extent of our time in Germany. Some people jumped out of the vans when we pulled over at an industrial area, just to say their feet touched German soil, but their stay on the ground lasted for only a few seconds. We were, after all, in Germany to learn about peat. Extended stays in Duitsland are for another time (like Berlin in two days!!!).

After making it back to the good ol' Netherlands, we stopped in Ter Appel for a bit. Wandering around Ter Appel proved that there is not much to see there (besides a cool old monastery), however the girls (myself included) managed to find this gem:



















The full name was the Any Tyme Snack & Dine Three Musketeers Cafe/Restaurant. What a mouthful. We stopped there for sustenance, and I had koffie and appelgebak. Very appropriate in the town of Ter Appel!



















Then it was back in the vans for a tour of more linear villages and an eventual stop at the Colonial Peat Museum:



















Some highlights of the peat museum:

These creepy coats. The museum is in an old school, so the flying coats were supposed to represent former students. But they just look like ghosts!




















This "charming" story our guide told us. Really, she started off the story by saying in was "charming".
























The story is, a man from Veendam (city where the museum is) and his wife were at sea when the wife died. The man wanted to bury her in Veendam, so he put the wife into a barrel filled with alcohol and took her all the way back. And rumor has it that the sailors drank the alcohol out of the barrel. And when they got back to Veendam, they buried the entire barrel in the ground.

Not such a charming story, if you ask me.

Last highlight: the potato room! The giant potato displays taught us about making potato flour. We watched potato movies on the potatoe TV while sitting in the potato chair. Potato, potato, potato.






































Then with the help of chocolate lollipops, we climbed back into the vans and made the 2.5 hour trip back to Amsterdam. End of Saturday's excursion!



















Sunday
Our last excursion
Dune walk to the North Sea

Before we got to the dunes on Sunday, we took a small detour around the bulb fields:



















We were a little late. Most of the fields had been cut down already, but we still got to see splotches of color here and there. It added some excitement on the trip to our ultimate goal, a combo nature park/water treatment facility that we would walk through to get to the dunes.



















We saw some of the water treatment in action:



















And began to once again traipse through a landscape. To amuse ourselves we sang songs along the way, picked inchworms off of each other's jackets (they were everywhere!), and contemplated the meaning of life. Well, maybe not the last one. After about two hours, we made it to the dunes and the sea!
























































We enjoyed some time at the dunes and then began the trip back to the entrance for the real excitement of the day -- Pannekoeken Restaurant! Since it was our last excursion, we were all going to stop and have dinner at the restaurant in the park. And what better food to have than a delicious Dutch pannekoek? The trip back took only about an hour, and we were rewarded at the end with these tasty treats:





































A great way to end our STNL excursions. It's hard to believe we are finished with all ten of them...we have come so far since the Afsluitdijk and the terpen! And now that the excursions and this short week are over, we only have one more week of class before exams begin. Ahh!!! I don't want to think about it!!!

Guess I will just have to escape to Berlin for the weekend :)

One Excursion to rule them all

Why, hello everyone! It's been a few days, but I have an explanation for that. You see, our Calvin group went on the excursion of all excursions. I say that first because the trip was a two-night overnight-er (Friday evening to Sunday evening), and also because we traveled quite far (by Dutch standards, at least), about 2.5 hours south to the province of Zeeland:


















(And, just so we're on the same page: New Zealand is far away. ZEEEEE-land is in Michigan. And ZAY-lahnd is where we were at. Ok, cool.)

But this was the excursion of all excursions for many more reasons than the length of the trip and extent of the travel. I have come up with ten reasons why.

TEN REASONS WHY GOING TO ZEELAND WAS THE EXCURSION OF ALL EXCURSIONS

10.
Feats of engineering

Let me start with a story. In 1953, Zeeland experienced a horrible storm/flood, considered to be the "Katrina" of the Netherlands (which doesn't make sense -- this flood came first!). Anyway, to ensure that a storm never caused such a devastating flood in the delta of the Netherlands again, the Delta Plan was initiated. Delta plan = many impressive feats of engineering capable of stopping a lot of water. We visited three:

-The Haringvliet Dam



















-The Oosterschelde storm surge barrier



















(Here is a better picture that I did not take)




















-The Maeslant Barrier



















The thing is so big, it fits very poorly into pictures. Here's a better one:






















These were impressive sights. They took years to build, cost billions, and have the likelihood of being overtaken by a storm once every million years, or something crazy like that. The engineers were loving it, I could tell.

We ventured into the two dams on Saturday. The inside of the Haringvliet Dam felt very triangular:




















At the Oosterschelde, we were allowed to "take a stroll:"





































And the Maeslant barrier had a free museum with special exhibits, like this hologram about...dike building? It took several tries to get this picture:



















9.
Host families

For the two nights that we were there, groups of us stayed with different hosts in the city of Middelburg. Sarah, Anna, Deborah, and I all stayed with Prof. Aay's friend Renate, a geology professor at the Roosevelt Academy in Middelburg. She was an extremely gracious host -- she fed us well (more on that later), gave all four of us comfortable places to sleep, and showed us the local sights. From what I've heard, everyone else in our group also stayed with wonderful families for the weekend. The people of Middelburg are amazing!

And, since it fits best here, I will tell you now about one of the sights Renate showed us. The first night we were there, we went for a walk around her new, modern, and incredibly stylish apartment complex. One of the homes there is a FLOATING HOUSE! We saw it and instantly recognized it, because the house is somewhat famous among us as the header on the website about our semester program! Check it out here!

8.
Beach

We only spent a quick half-an-hour here, but our detour to the beach on Saturday was a trip highlight. The weather was beautiful and the sand felt great between the toes. A few guys even ventured completely into the water...





































7.
Veere

On Saturday night, Renate took the four of us to the nearby town of Veere. We saw other Calvinites there, too; I think it was a popular destination for hosts to take students :) This is said to be a very touristy village, but we were there with hardly any other people!























































6.
Middelburg...and the Queen!

We also spent some time exploring Middelburg, the town where we stayed. Renate took us there on Saturday night:



















And we also went on a walking tour of the city on Sunday afternoon, led by one of the members of the church we went to.



















Now, as some of you may know, this coming Friday is Koninginnedag, or Queen's Day, the ultimate Dutch national holiday. The Queen traditionally visits a few towns/villages on that day each year, and this year she is going to...Middelburg! Right now they are busy preparing for her arrival, and we could see signs of that everywhere. Store windows are especially decorated. This store is ready:
























The eyeglasses store is VERY ready:



















And this fountain has been dyed orange just for the Queen!



















5.
Food & Drink (a.k.a., coffee)

This was an excellent weekend in terms of coffee consumption! I think I had four cups after church alone. We also drank coffee at Renate's house, at a cafe in Veere, at a cafe in Middelburg...you get the point. But the food was delicious as well, especially in Middelburg when we went out for appelgebak (apple tart/pie). Delicious! Between five beverages and five slices of pie, our table was crowded!




















4.
Neeltje Jans

I need to back track a little bit. Remember the storm surge barrier? Well, it was surrounded by a water/amusement park called Neeltje Jans. How do I describe Neeltje Jans? Well, after going through the actual storm surge barrier, we experience 135km winds in a wind tunnel,



















saw a seal show,



















and got swallowed by a mussel,
























Among MANY other things (Aquapolis, a jellyfish beach, water playgrounds...). Hooray for Neeltje Jans!

3.
Movies

We also spent time at both the Haringvliet Dam and Neeltje Jans watching movies about the Delta works. Who doesn't love sitting in a theater for a class requirement?



















2.
Church

The church service we went to in Middelburg on Sunday morning was held in Dutch, but the church members knew we would be there and were very accommodating. The main points of the sermon were put on powerpoint in English, we sang an English song in honor of our group (the lyrics were familiar, but the tune was new! Oh well!), and...two among us were subject to a spontaneous interview. Props to Andrew, who went up in front of the congregation when the pastor called for a volunteer to talk about our group. Props also to Deborah, who was called up when the pastor asked who among us knew some Dutch, and who then had to give a spontaneous speech in Dutch in front of the congregation! They both completely rocked it :)

Last but not least...

1.
Ferry

We rode on a ferry! True, it was about a five minute journey, but it brightened our trip to the Maeslant barrier nonetheless. As a Washingtonian and a sucker for ferries, I think this part of the weekend is well worth mentioning.






















So there you go! Trips to dams and barriers, staying with host families, a stop at the beach, a trip to Veere, walks through the Queen-ready Middelburg, delicious food, an amusement park, movies, spontaneous speaking in church, and a ferry ride. What a weekend! We only have one excursion weekend left, on May 8 and 9. Will it be able to compare?