Haarlem Netherlands

Public transportation is very efficient here (except on snow days as I found out yesterday!) which makes it easy to just jump on a train and head to a small town not far from Amsterdam.  One Saturday, Keith & I  went to Haarlem which is about 20 minutes west of Amsterdam by train.  It's a quaint village (suburb???) with a nice outdoor market, less expensive shopping, museums, another huge beautiful church and mostly local people.  We wondered around the market where you can find everything from cheese, fish, salami, nuts, olives, flowers, clothing, purses, fries with mayo, trinkets, to fresh bread.  We found a tiny little spot to get a sandwich, which is the standard for lunch.  In one of the pictures you will see a McDonalds in an old building.  That's about the only US franchise you see over here.  Starbucks is located at the airport, but that's it.  We went to the Fran Hals museum.  I liked the display of the Delft pottery, which is made in Delft (go figure!) not far from Haarlem.  We also went into the big church where they were having a used book sale.  The church floor is made of tomb stones, so the church essentially sits on top of a grave yard.  Those with status were buried 'IN' the church, literally.  I was amazed by the pipe organ.   Here are a few pics from our day in Haarlem.

Typical street in Haarlem

7 Bike Garage (rhymes with marriage)

Love the fresh flowies!!

Not your typical McDonalds store front

Jen in Haarlem

Saturday errands

Cute Haarlem Home

Amazing Pipe Organ

Interior of the church

Church from the market area

Roadtrip Part II - Brugge Belgium

Since I last posted, much has taken place.  I have some catching up to do, so my hope is to make a few posts to get up to date.

After Jerome, Keith & I left Antwerp, we drove for about an hour to Brugge Belgium.  I really didn't know what to expect other than a few of the guys at work said to go here if I got the chance.  Well now I know why.  WOW!!!  This place was awesome...everytime we turned a corner there was a new WOW.  It's an old medieval village that was not destroyed in the war so most of the ancient buildings are in tact and have been preserved and well maintained.  We spent the afternoon walking all around the village.  There's an old church....AMAZING, beautiful canals, more chocolate stores, interesting and beautiful old building structures with artistic detail hard to comprehend.  We ran into another Grand Pubah parade, Belgian girls practicing a cheer routine, the village square, and lots of tourists.  The Europeans are into fries met (with) mayonnaise, so I had to take a pic of this little fry guy in the window of one of the stores.  Ick, huh?  They serve fries with mayo; you have to ask for ketchup and then you get charged for it.  I didn't even know about Brugge until I came to Europe this time.  If you ever get to Belgium, I highly recommend making a trip to Brugge.  I could have spent much more time wandering around....it was a very enjoyable excursion.  I have a ton of pictures and would love to share them all, but instead will share the highlights.

Christ's Church...gorgeous

Village Square at Dusk

  

Beautiful Canals



Viewing 1713 building as hot air balloon drifted by



Busy Street in Brugge



Me in front of the municipal buildings



Love the stair step roof line architecture

                                            

The 1713 Building

Grand Pubah Parade #2

Girls will be girls

Me again in Village Square



Team USA - Keith, Jerome, Jen



Roadtrip!!!

We usually meet in the lobby for work at 8am to catch the train.  Last Saturday we met at 7:30am, a little blurry eyed, to take the train to the airport to pick up the rental car.  Schipol airport is less than 10 minutes away by train...hard to comprehend for the Denver crowd reading this.  I was elected to be the first driver, so off we go in our zippy 6 speed manual tranny small car. I still don't read Dutch, so highway signs are a challenge.  The two backseat drivers get me pointed in the right direction and we're off. Destination...Antwerp and then on to Brugge. Thank goodness I know that a 10K = 6.2 miles, so I can do the calculation in my head to figure out about how fast we are going when the sign says 90KM or 120KM.

Last year I visited Brussels, so this was not my first excursion to Belgium.  I really didn't know what to expect in Antwerp, but I did learn there is a legend of how Antwerp received it's name, which literally means 'to throw a hand'.  Back in the Roman days, there was an evil giant named, Druon Antigon, that controlled the river Scheldt.  He forced the people in boats to pay a steep fee to pass by, and if they could not or would not pay it, he cut off their hands. When Antigon tried to collect the toll from Silvius Brabo, a Roman soldier, Brabo drew his sword and chopped off the evil giant's hand and threw it into the river.  Hant = Hand and werpen = throw.  The 'h' dropped off over time and it's now Antwerpen, or Antwerp.

The medieval architecture in Antwerp is amazing. 

Keith and Jennifer in front of the Antwerpen sign.

Amazingly beautiful retail area

Many buildings are dated in the 1400 - 1700's.  The city was quite busy with Saturday shoppers.  We saw a line of local people standing in front of a bakery.  We found the hot spot on a Saturday morning.  Then we wandered down a narrow road trying to get to another area and all of a sudden we hear drums.  We stumbled into a parade that was marching through the city.  It looked like the future olympic gymnastics team was leading along with a small drum line and then several Grand Pu-Bahs and their wives dressed up in capes with long feathers in their head dress.  Come to find out, it was carnival day. 

Grand Pubah...notice the smoke. 

A beautiful face of Antwerp.  This lady was peaking out her window to see what all the commotion was about when she heard the drums of the parade.  I asked if I could take her picture and she obliged.  Love this picture!

Notice the cross between the two buildings.  An old church was located back beteen the two buildings.

Onze Lieve Vrouwe - Gothic Cathedral

This is a shot of Grot Markt. It's the town square where city hall is located.  Notice the red fox on top of the building second from the far right.

Forest Gump quote, 'Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you'll get'. Well Antwerp is all about chocolate and from the number of chocolate stores, it's all good!  Keith was on a mission to find a specific chocolate store, Del Rey Chocolates.  His mother requested some specifically from this store. Del Rey only has one store, and it's in Antwerp.  We found it and it was like an expensive jewelry store.  There are food snobs, wine snobs, shoe snobs, car snobs...well this is the place for chocolate snobs.  I don't mean that in a negative way, they just know high end chocolate (or cars or wine or food or shoes or whatever).

Beautiful desserts....like art work!

Ladies bagging up Keith & Jerome's purchase.

I have never been a big chocolate connasuier, but I did buy a few with caramel in them and some pricey chocolate powder for hot cocoa.  I'm the person guilty of picking up a chocolate from the box and sticking my finger in the bottom to see what oozes out.  If it's not caramel, it goes back into the box.  Some of you can relate, right???  I have always told John, 'do not buy me chocolates. I prefer jewels!'

As we were walking back to the car, we came across a performance by Piano Paul.  He was jamming away on his mobile piano on wheels with a bike attached.  As you can see, there was quite a crowd gathered.  Piano Paul provided a passionate performance for all the people!
We thought Antwerp was awesome and then we drove for about another hour through the Belgium countryside toward our next stop, Brugge.  Don't miss the post on Brugge!  Coming next.

 

50K = ~30mph construction zone. 

New Amsterdam - The Apartment

One of the Dutch guys at work asked where we lived, so we told him and his response was, 'Oh....expat village.'  I didn't realize it was called that, but it is known as that by the locals.  Since we are expatriates, I thought it seemed appropriate.  Come to think of it, I have heard many different accents in the laundry dungeon.  Yes, I miss having my W&D close by so I can toss a load in while I do stuff.  But on the other hand, I'm thankful I don't have to ride the tram to deal with my dirty laundry. (Reminds me of a Don Henley song..)  You can tackle it quickly with 12 machines.  One Sunday afternoon I went down to do my laundry and then Jerome (my US colleague) showed up and was moving his stuff from W to D.  I found myself stalling until he left because it's just wrong trying to sort your laundry and throw it in the washer when the guy you work with is standing there!   Yesterday I took 3 pair of slacks to the dry clearner.  The cost, 27 EURO, or $37 USD.  UGH....YALE CLEANERS, I MISS YOUR DRIVE UP WINDOW AND COUPONS.

Here are a few pics of the expat palace.  It's really quite comfy.  I have a control pad on the wall which is how I turn lights on/off, control temp, and open/close the blinds.  Very cool.  You will also see a floorplan picture from the control pad.

Here is my living room....

Next is the dining table and kitchen taken from the living room. 

This is the Sun Room.  There's a little terrace outside my window with plants, so I would never know I'm not on the ground level.



Bathroom double sink...looks like a horse trough.

Floor Plan taken from the touch screen control box on the wall.

Stuff I can do with the control box.  It does not make the bed or take out the trash!

My bed...two twins pushed together = a King???



You all are snoozing away.  I just got up and need to get myself out the door to catch the train to Hoofddorp.  As we have been saying, 'Another Day....Another Euro'.  Have a great day. Coming next...our day roadtrip to Antwerp and Brugge. 

Weekend Warrior

Since I was here in July and already did the touristo tour of duty, I'm trying to immerse myself in as a local as much as possible.  Last Saturday I took the tram to this awesome area on Beethovenstraat (Beethoven Street) and looked around in the shops.  It's about 5 tram stops from my apartment, so very close.  I don't have a bike YET, but still hope to get one soon.  Jerome, one of my US colleagues, bought a new bike last weekend.  I'm in the market for a used bike for quite a few less EURO than what he paid.  It would be an easy bike ride to the shopping area on Beethovenstraat from my apartment.  Saturday is errands day in Amsterdam.  Most shops are closed on Sunday except for the grocery store.  I like that concept.  I noticed the locals were out on their bikes and making purchases for the upcoming week.  As you can imagine, shopping choices are clearly thought out based on what you can take back on your bike.  This is not an impulse shopping trip at Sams or purchasing enough toilet paper to last for the next 3 months!  Here is a picture of a woman with her young child in it's 'bike seat' out shopping, and then a bike parked with the daily purchases hanging from the handle bars (the tram is in the background).

The grocery store I go to is on this street.  There aren't huge parking lots for the cars, instead the parking scene is simply a row of bikes. 

There are many specialty shops along this street...fish market, cheese shop, butcher, produce stands, coffee shop (not you know what) interesting book stores, upscale clothing stores.  NO CHAINS!  It's wonderful.  One store I went into which was as close to a Target as I've seen reminded me of the Ben Franklins store we had when I was a kid.  They had about everything, but not a gazillion choices like you see in the US.  My favorite of the day was a corner flower market.  I found a bouquet of fresh tulips that had not bloomed yet.  I spent 15 Euro (20 USD) and had beautiful fresh tulips on my table all week long.  That's the best purchase I've made so far.

 

First 2 Weeks

Tomorrow marks two weeks since I arrived in Amsterdam. I have been very busy getting acclimated to the city, my groovy high tech apartment, my project, new modes of transportation, new money, sights, sounds, a funky Dutch oven, grocery, the weather....ok you get the picture. Everything is new. After being here in July, at least I am in the same general area, so I feel like I do know my way around and where I'm at.

I decided to blog about my assignment to Amsterdam to document my experience here and to help stay in touch with family & friends back in the US. I've learned from my travels that if I don't write it down, I forget the details. I want to remember the details. I need to document some of my past excursions as well. Since 90% of the TV is in Dutch or something other than English, I should have some time when I'm not out exploring!

My apartment is two buildings away from the Accenture office, which is in a very nice group of high rise buildings. But, we don't go to the Accenture office for work. The apartment is located within a 5 minute walk to the Zuid train station, which is a great central hub location. It seems like 'Grand Central' on a busy weekday morning. Most people are commuting into this area for work each day. We get on the train and ride for about 10/15 minutes out of the city to the Hoofddorp train station. We then walk about 20 minutes to our office near our client's location. Each morning as we go over the bridge to the train station there are two men (in the dark) playing a clarinet and an accordian...serenading the bustling workforce as they pass by. Charming. It appears most people take the train or bike to work even when the weather is cold, windy & rainy. I am amazed at the Dutch people. They bike everywhere...in suits, heels, skirts, on dates, young, old you name it. That explains why you don't see any chubby people here. We are looking into getting bikes. We've been told it is cheaper to just buy a second hand bike and donate it when we leave rather than rent one for our stay. I'm going to check it out this weekend. I'll try to post some pics of the apartment this weekend. Lot's more to tell, but it is time for bed. Good nite!