What I did on my summer vacation part 3

 

No, you didn't miss parts 1 and 2, I am planning three posts and I am starting with the most recent and working backwards.

I am back in Istanbul where it is hot.  From what I hear it has been a very hot summer and the humidity hasn't helped.  Fortunately, it is not so humid right now so even though it is in the 90s during the day it cools down to the low 70s at night which gives a bit of respite and a chance to cool the apartment down.  The days are also getting noticeably shorter so the sun is only beating down on my windows until ~6pm which means I am in my cave for less of the day as well.  All this being said, I think I have decided not to get air conditioning.  It is a big hassle, very expensive and there are now several people in the building who have it so if I need to cool down I have an escape.  I do think I will invest in ceiling fans if I can find them on the shopping trip tomorrow. 

I first got back to Istanbul last Monday August 13th and only a few campus folks were back.  Actually I noticed a difference with the number of people in Istanbul as well, the bus was not as crowded and the streets had slightly fewer cars (as measured by the time it took the bus to get from the airport to campus).  I am sure that I didn't notice this dip in population last August since it just seemed like a lot of people.  My house was a mess.  Marshall's stuff was in the entry way (he was told they would move it up to his apartment before I got back.) There were all sorts of mystery food items in my fridge and the whole place was covered in fur and dust.  Pekka was happy to see me and I was very happy to see her.  See seemed no worse for the lonely summer and even though there seemed to be more orange off the cat then on it, she was still plenty furry.  I spent the first evening reclaiming the bed, washing sheets and sweeping the first layer off the floor.  By Tuesday I had decided I didn't want to sit in my apartment for two weeks waiting for school to start.  I sent a message to my friend Steve in the Netherlands and asked if his offer of a guest room was still available.  His response: "Book it" so I did.  I spent the rest of the week unpacking, doing laundry, cleaning and packing again and on Friday morning I was headed back to the airport.

Since I made my plans so last minute, the only reasonably priced flight was on Lufthansa, which by German Law, must stop in Germany on the way to anywhere.  But that is ok, airports are air conditioned and I checked my backpack, so was happy to wander Munich on the way and Frankfurt on the way back with just my satchel.  I had already worked out with Steve what train to take from Schipol to Enschede where they live.  Three cheers for any country with a comprehensive rail system that is easy to use and an extra high five if there is a train station in the airport.  [I wonder what aspect of America or Americans makes this not the case for much of the US?  I know it is a big country, but wouldn't that make trains make more sense? and people love their cars but is that cause or effect?  I have spent a total of maybe 60 hours on American trains in my whole life, including several long distance trips up and down the west coast.  I would bet this is way more than most Americans but way less than many Europeans do in a year.]  When I got to the train station on the far side of the Netherlands, there were Kim and Steve waiting for me!


 We walked back to their house though the town, passing as many people on bicycles as people in cars, although a lot more parked bikes than parked cars.  One highlight of the walk was when we went on the fountain street.  The city had decided to pave over a small stream that went though town, but to remind people that it was still there, they painted a blue strip on side walk and arranged for a series of jets of water to shoot up out of the pavement in a gentle arc and back through a grate and into the stream under ground.  Using colored lights and properties of internal reflection, they even color the water as it goes by.  I really like this sort of public art, but be careful if you decide to have a water fight, Kim says they put bleach in it to kill off bacteria and to make pretty white dots on all your clothes.

A day light picture of the street fountain.

After eating a little of everybody's favorite Moroccan pasta in salad form and chatting with Kim and Steve for a while, I climbed two flights of narrow and winding stairs up to the guestroom in the attic.  It was a bit cooler in The Netherlands than it was in Turkey, but you wouldn't know it from the temperature in the attic, fortunately there was a fan and a big window to open so it cooled down quickly and I was able to sleep. 

In the morning, Kim when to feed their horses and Steve and I had a leisurely breakfast and then walked to the train station where we got on an east bound train for Munster in Germany.  Steve got his PhD in Munster and still has friends there.  We started at the Saturday market where we met up with Kim's dad and Stepmother who were visiting friends of theirs.  We ate fried potatoes kind of like hash browns and I also got a flat bread pizza thing with cream cheese instead of tomato sauce and with bacon and onions on top. 

The pizzas came from this booth.

Unfortunately the church and museum were closed for renovation so we could only see them from the outside, but we also walked through a flea market and around where they were setting up for a horse competition to see the palace building, which is now part of the university. 

This is the statue of a priest who was opposed to the Nazi's in 1941.

We made our way to a cafe to meet up with a friend of Steve's from grad school with her husband and some other friends.  They mostly spoke in English in consideration of me and one other lady, which I appreciated, but it reminded me of how impressive so many Europeans are with all their languages. 

Well, blast.  All the writing I did last night has disappeared despite the auto save being on every 30 seconds.  I had almost finished Amsterdam and now I am back in Germany.  Not that writing these things isn't a labor of love, I just don't like to do it twice.  Alright, so where was I...

Steve and Kim pose on one leg each with ice cream.

We had seen signs advertising the Slut Walk, but hadn't realized that it would be the very day we were visiting.  How lucky can one person get?

After the cafe we headed to the Munster museum which was recommended by Kim's step mom.  The first two floors were devoted to the history of the area, starting from prehistoric times and the first evidence of settlers.  Most of the captions were in German and Dutch, but each room had an introduction card in English which helped me get the gist of what was going on.  In the first couple of rooms they had a short video animation that showed the growth of the area spanning thousands of years.  It showed where settlements started and then left, returned in a slightly different place and left again.  Once the first permanent settlement was established on the spot that became Munster, they switched from animations to dioramas.  These were models of the city where a 2 story building might have been 5 cm tall and the whole expanse started out maybe a meter square but by the most modern was maybe 3 meters square.  After walking around the city for most of the day I had seen many of the main churches in the center of town and it was neat to use them as reference points as time progressed in the models.  The city got bigger and smaller, grew walls and a moat, then another set of walls.  When there was war a star shaped fort grew out of one side of the wall.  When peace came (and cannons made walls less useful) the walls came down, the fort became a palace and the moat became a public park.  I was really into the models by the end and if I had more time I would have gone back to the beginning to pay more attention to the early ones.  Unfortunately pictures were not allowed in this museum, so I had checked mine in a locker on the way in and I have no evidence. 

This metal model was outside, near the flea market and other than the subject matter has little in common with the models we saw int he museum.  I did think it was cool that there was Braille in the streets.

I don't know what the conspiracy theorists don't hop on this one, Jesus and his pals clearly have antennae with which to communicate with their home planets.

I was pretty tired by the end of this so our next (and last) stop was dinner.  The Italian place that they wanted to take me was unexpectedly closed but we had passed an alleyway with a new restaurant near by and decided to try it.  They had a garden in the back and also served Italian food.  I had truffle ravioli and caprese salad to go with my apfelscholer.  It was all delicious.  We headed back to the train and back to Enschede.

Truffle ravioli, yum!

On Sunday, Kim and I went to the horses while Steve had his guitar lesson.  They have two Icelandic horses on a field just outside of town, right now, a 6 year old male and his 3 year old daughter.  I guess you can start riding Icelandic horses when they are about 5 but their 6 year old has had some health problems and has been slow to mature so they are just starting the process now.  While Kim worked, I sat in the shade and breeze and read my book.

The horses eat the grass of the field during the summer and Kim and Steve make hay out of the rest which more than covers them for the winter, but the horses like the treats they get in their buckets when someone comes for a visit. 

These poor sheep are shorn only once a year, in April, so they get to live through the heat as their coats grow back.  I wonder if they would be too cold if they were shave again in August?

A stereotypical Dutch landscape near where the horses are kept. 

 When Steve picked us up again we headed back to Germany, this time to the castle in Bad Bentheim, starting with a very nice and traditional German lunch, we explored the castle including the wall, tower/keep, dungeons, alchemy lab, and living quarters. The most interesting parts were the 'forget me' hole where prisoners could be left and the well, both of which you could look down into because they had installed lights on timers for that purpose. I am particularly interested in castles right now since the books I am reading partially take place in them. I appreciate having an image in mind when the characters are talking about their castles. 

Lunch of potatoes, sausages and salad.

The forget me hole was 13 meters deep and now is a 'wishing well' that helps to support the castle.

The keep is the tall building and the barracks are on the right. 

This is 3000 years old!

This was over the entrance to the living quarters for the lord.  I liked that the dogs all looked a little different and I wondered if they were patterned after real dogs.

I am not sure if I should be impressed with the waste not, want not attitude displayed here.

The alchemy lab.

This picture was taken at 3:38, so this sun dial was only off by about 40 minutes.  Not bad for being 350 years old. 

 


We took a scenic way home but were still back early.  Kim got ready for a few days in Groningen for work and Steve and I chatted.  After dinner we walked to the old industrial part of town, dropped Kim at a bus stop to take her to the train and we continued on to the site of a huge fireworks disaster in 2000.  There had been a warehouse which stored fireworks that caught on fire and then exploded.  Here is a news report that includes video, if you fast forward to about 2:30 it gets much worse, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks5X0N8M_o8.  In the explosion 23 people were killed and ~950 were injured.  Given the magnitude of the explosion, I am surprised it wasn't more, but I think Steve said it was a weekend.  In the last 12 years the area has been revitalized, there is now a large park, new houses, businesses and museums.  It was really awful, but they have done a good job recovering from it. 

The park is the site of the ware house and all of the houses across the street are new.

This is the 'memorial' blast crater at the center of the park. 

A 360 panorama taken with my iPod.

We walked home and did a little planning for my trip to Amsterdam in the morning, Steve showed me some star craft and we called it a night.

On Monday morning we had a slightly too leisurely breakfast and I just missed my train. It wasn't a big deal because there are lots of trains that go to Amsterdam, but there are several different stations to transfer at and I had only taken note of the one I planned to get. Fortunately when you buy a train ticket it isn't for a particular seat, or even a particular train, it is good on a particular day and between to stations. As long as I stayed between Enschede and Amsterdam and headed west I was ok on any train. I only had to transfer twice and the trip was maybe 15 minutes longer than normal before I made it to Amsterdam Centraal. Again, three cheers for countries with useful rail systems and cities with train stations centrally located.

Amsterdam Centraal station.

Steve had shown me the street view of the train station on google maps so I knew just which street to go down for the most efficient route to the Dom square where my hotel was. During the ~20 minute walk I passed all sorts of touristy shops, places to buy tickets, t shirts, tulips, wooden shoes, breakfast and alcohol. The t shirts certainly reflected the reputation that Amsterdam has for the easy availability of activities and substances illegal in the US but not in the Netherlands, but I saw no direct evidence of either marijuana or prostitutes for sale. (I found out later that I was about two blocks from the red light district. I thought a lot about whether I was going to go and see but decided not to, choosing to preserve my innocence.) Many of the tourists looked of an age and temperament commensurate with these activities.

The square was easy to find and so was my hotel. They let me check in even though I was three hours early, which was very nice. I heard later that they were full, but that might have been for the up coming weekend rather than for the current week. My room was small but efficiently laid out so it was very comfortable. I checked my map and headed out for the museum district.

The view from the front step of my hotel: Dom square.

Both Germany and the Netherlands are full of Turkish restaurants and I was trying to avoid them since I was going to have 10 months of Turkish food ahead of me, but when I passed a falafel place, I decided that this would be ok for lunch since there is no falafel in Istanbul. It wasn't as good as Aladdin's in Hillsdale, but you could add as many vegis as you wanted and the pickled beets were pretty good. I sat at the window bar and watched the world go by. 

The view from my falafel lunch.

Rijksmuseum will completely reopen in 2013.

I made it to the Rijksmuseum just after 1 to find that most of it is closed due to renovation, but that important stuff was still open. I can only take so much art anyway, so I paid my 14 Euro, got the audio guide and checked my bag. It turns out that cameras were ok (as long as you didn't use the flash) but I didn't have mine, so the only pictures I have I took with my iPod. I understand that the world is a better place because of art. I am even beginning to take into consideration aesthetics as well as functionality when I evaluate things, but a lot of art, I just don't get. Fortunately this museum was mostly portraits and landscapes which make more sense to me. I especially like the ones that are very realistic and life like.

I didn't take this picture of Rembrandt's Night Watch.

After I finished in the Rijksmuseum, I wandered through the park to the van Gogh museum. It had a long line and also cost 14 Euros. That seemed like two additional strikes (the first being it was another art museum) and I walked away. Before I got too far, I had talked myself into returning, reasoning that I was there, I had nothing else to do, I might as well get it done, it isn't like the guy is going to paint more and i will have to come back to see the next lot on some future date. So I went in, again got the audio tour, but this time I didnt' check my camera, only to find out that pictures were not allowed. Grr. I was impressed that van Gogh was largely self taught, but surprised that he was diagnosed with epilepsy but not depression. The audio guide read to us from his letters and he clearly seemed depressed to me, but I guess diagnosis is probably very different in this century than in the last. By the end I was arted out, but glad I went. 

 

I want to know how a perfectly delightful dessert snack food became socially acceptable to have for breakfast.  Once I know that I can get the ball rolling to do the same for ice cream.

It would be cool to have a private boat to tool around Amsterdam with.  Parking didn't seem to be a problem. 

See picture below for method of use.

See device above for actual item

To reward myself for being so cultured with two art museums in one day, my next stop was the Torture Museum. I had seen posters for it, so when I noticed the street that the posters mentioned I turned and found it. It was going to cost 7 euros to get in and I tried to ask they ticket taker if it would be worth it without sounding rude. He was clearly board sitting in his little cabin with out a lot of clientele. It looked like it was a one man show as the museum really runs itself. Inside it was dark and red, every few steps there was a placard that reminded me of a place mat with a description of some method or device for torture written in 6 different languages. Nearby was a picture and/or an instrument of said torture. Of course most of the pictures were drawings and most of the instruments were replicas (can you imagine the factory that makes replica torture devices for cheesy torture museums world wide?) There were some types of torture that were new to me, so that was interesting, but it was not the best museum I had been to (and perhaps not the best torture museum in Amsterdam, I later saw signs for the Medieval torture museum somewhere else...) As predicted by the ticket taker I was in there for about 45 minutes, making it about the same value (in terms of money/time ratio) as the other museums I had been to that day, but did it enrich my life in the same way? Time will tell.


I was well tuckered by this time and was heading back to the hotel. I have always struggled with what to do with myself in the evenings when I travel alone. Fortunately there were some street performers to entertain me in Dom square which delayed my return to the room. I have great respect for street performers. They work hard for uncertain pay and put themselves out there in front of potentially hostile crowds. I am sure they have practiced for many hours to learn how to juggle 7 balls and folks may or may not be impressed. The first guy I watched was a contortionist from Ethiopia, he had a microphone and his patter was pretty good. I did think it got a bit long when he was leading up to his final trick, putting himself through the head of a tennis racket. The second guy, whom I watched start to finish, was a juggler. He did the balls, the flaming torches and the unicycle. He talked about being drunk since his last show, but since he ran out of money he had to do another show. I guess he might be being honest, but it didn't make me eager to give him money. The next night I watched a guy escape chains and saran wrap but he was more talk than trick and then I started to watch another juggler, but he seemed to be nothing special so I went in. I wonder how much these guys make for a 30 minute show. I gave 1-2 euros and if half the watching crowd gave a similar amount, I bet they got upwards of 100 euros. It isn't a bad rate, except that I don't know how often you can do it. If they can do it an average of once per day, with maybe an extra show thrown in on Sunday, 800 euros in a week, 2400 euros a month, $3000/month or $36,000/year. Certainly no way to get rich, especially if you drink it all, but if you had another job as well during the day...

It was a warm night and this guy was working hard.  He rung out this shirt when he freed himself and the sweat dripped off.

It was unclear why this guy stripped down to his underwear before he got up on his unicycle, but I guess it was part of the show. 

 On Tuesday I went out to breakfast (the hotel has a lovely buffet breakfast in an historic garden room for only 29 euros, which I declined) at a place I had seen the day before near the flower market. I wondered if a Dutch apple pancake in Amsterdam would be the same as in Los Altos. I have to say I like the Los Altos one better. The one I had that day was more like a crepe with very thin slices of apple embedded in it. It was a good thing I ordered a mango smoothie as well or I wouldn't have had energy for the day, but at least the total (including tip) was only 10 euros.



Real Dutch Apple Pancake

I had been warned to go to the Anne Frank house early in the morning but I couldn't quite get going, so by the time I got there it was 10:30 and the line was probably 20 meters long. It moved quickly and I had my book, so it wasn't a big deal. I had read Anne Frank's diary in high school and was familiar with the story, but being there and seeing the rooms while reading excerpts from it was an entirely different experience. All of the furniture had been removed at the request of her father, Otto, when it was made into a museum in the early 60s, but they had refurnished it and taken pictures so you could see just how cramped it was. There were 8 people staying in that small apartment with no chance to go outside or even really look outside for two years. It would be good training for a mission to Mars, but even then there is more communication and not the same fear of being discovered. Anyway, the museum was very well done and very powerful. If I ever get in a funk about how limited my life seems, I hope I remember this experience and shut up.

After the house I knew I wanted to go on a canal tour (even writing about this seems pretty silly after writing about the Frank family experience, the juxtaposition in my day was even more surreal). There were several different companies offering canal tours and I had asked the concierge at the hotel if there were any differences. He said, besides the ability to hop on and off, there were no significant differences. I knew I just wanted a tour, and there was one starting from the museum and I went with it. This boat looked much the same as the others, although it had a roof covering the whole length with some panels removed rather than some other boats which had the entire roof off in parts of the boat. There was a commentary broadcast to the entire boat that repeated itself in at least 4 languages: Dutch, English and French for sure and I think there was German and maybe Spanish as well. The information was not all that interesting and to have to hear it four times seemed wasteful. I believe other companies offered personalized commentaries, perhaps with more to say since you only had to listen to the language of your choice. As advertised it took about an hour to make the full loop around the city. It was interesting to see the city from below street level and to see behind the cetraal station, but I would have liked to learn more about the history of the city and why there were canals there in the first place. There was some mention of them being for defence, but from whom? When? Why canals and not walls? Clearly the land is low, but the ground must be firm, or they wouldn't be able to build this tall buildings on it. I was ok that the tour was only an hour as I had seen enough by then.


I am a fan of public art with a sense of humor.

I need to figure out how to hold focus when changing the shot on my new camera.  It was so easy on my old one.

If the canal's were originally for defense, why did they build so many bridges?

 I went back to the hotel to see if I had had any contact from a friend of a friend who was in Amsterdam and may have been able to meet up with me.  He had to work but was going to see the Shins that night at a theater near the museums.  I was interested but didn't know about tickets.  I was also hungry and another friend had suggested an Indonesian place (Tempoe Doeloe) for lunch.  I went in search of that while mulling over the concert situation.  It was an awkward time for lunch by the time I got there (3:30) and the place John had suggested was either closed after lunch, or not open yet for dinner.  There was another place a few doors down that was open and so I went there.  I got a sample platter which was very tasty.  I was amazed how differently the different dishes tasted. 

While I was back in the hotel I had looked up the concert venue and it was my next stop.  I had been doing a lot of walking in the last four days so I was not in a big hurry to find the venue, but I did.  I even got up the courage to go in and ask if there were any tickets left for the show that night.  The woman said she was sorry but they were all sold out.  I was disappointed, but not that disappointed because I was tired and foot sore.  I made it back to the hotel and took a bath before going to bed.

I already had plans for Wednesday because I had bought a discount all day rail card at the supermarket in Enschede and Kim had helped me activate it and chose a day to travel.  I bought breakfast at a bakery in the train station and my first stop was Leiden for the science museum.  I have known about Leiden for a long time as Leiden jars were the first batteries.  If you could generate electricity you could store it in a Leiden jar.  Ben Franklin did this before he knew what electricity was.  Apparently they have a university there with quite a reputation for scientific discovery and the museum was a monument to that.  Officially it was a history of science museum, which I didn't realize until I got there, but which really explains both the lay out and the emphasis of the museum.  It was arranged chronologically starting in about 1700.  In each room there was astronomy, cartography and biology/medicine.  They seemed to be all jumbled together.  In later rooms there was some physics as well, but not very much of it was actually explained.  There were a lot of apparatus and they were well laid out and labeled.  There were original texts and anatomical drawings which were protected by heavy leather shades that you could lift up to see but would protect the artifact from the light when you weren't there.  It was a very different type of museum than either the art museums I had seen a few days earlier or even the natural history museum or science museum I saw in London.  Perhaps because it was fairly recently set up with a very narrow purpose (the history of Dutch science) it seemed to have been very nicely and deliberately laid out in a confusing way.  In many of the later rooms there were hands on exhibits where you could run a machine or look through a microscope that made it more interesting. 

Early anatomical drawings.

The physician as saint when you are very ill

The physician as angel as you recover.

The physician as man when you are better.

The physician as devil when he give you the bill.

It was the quality of the glass that limited the first telescopes.  You can see all the bubbles in this lens.

One of van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes.

Leiden jars in Leiden!  Kind of like tall trees in Palo Alto.

One of Fahrenheit's own thermometers 1727.

I am not sure why I have been fascinated with the history of measurement.  According to this the French had big feet.

Awesome chemistry kit

Artificial kidney

I had lunch on the main pedestrian drag near the museum, fries and a kroket.  Kim had suggested it as something uniquely Dutch.  You can say that again.  I am not sure what it was supposed to be, but it was about the shape and size of a twinkie, with bread crumbs on the outside, deep fried with a mush on the inside, that might have been egg plant.  A quick google search suggests it might have been potato, but it wasn't the consistency of any potato I have ever met.  I ate it, I have had that experience, but it wont be something I seek out again.  From there I got back on the train this time for Utrecht.

Fries and Kroket.  Doesn't it look like a fried twinkie?

I couldn't remember exactly what I was supposed to do in Utrecht, so I wandered a little.  There was a big crowd in an arch way and it looked like they were celebrating four or five people.  Before I could get into a good place to take a picture they were off, at least two were running and two on bikes.  I couldn't understand any of the announcements and didn't have time to watch long enough to figure it out.  They did bring me to one of the things I was supposed to see in town, St. Catherine's Cathedral.  Sometime back in the day a hurricane came through town and wiped out the middle of the church so now only the nave and the altar area stand.  They have been bricked up such that there are two separate buildings and a walk way in the middle.  Strange.

St Catherine's church(es?)

Not the most beings I saw on a bike, but close.

Not remembering what the other thing I was supposed to do, I walked for a little bit and found a statue in a sort of intersection/round about.  I sat there for a while watching folks ride by on their bikes.  All sorts of people ride their bikes.  Old and young, student and professional, big and small.  Many folks ride the same bike, the most I saw was a man pedalling with two kids (one behind and one between him and the handlebars) with a dog in the box on the front of the bike.  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of this one.  The best picture I could get was a woman with two kids.  One young lady must have seen me taking pictures of bikers because as she went by on the back of a friend's bike she waved to me.  This made me laugh and my timing for her picture was off, so she is behind a pole.  I was getting cold (!) and running out of space on my memory card so it was time to go back to Amsterdam.  The trip back was uneventful and I returned to the hotel early.



Friendly person, waving, but I was laughing which through my timing off and I lost her behind a light pole. 

Thursday was my last day in Amsterdam.  I checked out early and found an English Breakfast on the way to the train station.  English bacon isn't quite the same as American bacon, but since it is the last bacon I will have for a while I enjoyed it very much.  The train to the airport leave every 15 minutes or so and even the 'slow' train takes less than 20 minutes.  The airport was easy and I was very early for my flight.  I checked my bag, so again I had only my satchel.  Unfortunately between two flights and the hour or so lay over in Frankfurt, I finished both the book I brought and the battery on my iPod, this meant I was left to my own devices for the last half of the second flight and the entire bus ride across Istanbul.  Oh well, creativity is supposed to be born from boredom, right? 

I almost made the pilot turn the plane around when he said it was 35C (about 94F) in Istanbul, but it didn't feel quite that bad when we landed.  Schools are still on vacation so as many folks as can are still out of town and the bus wasn't that bad.  I was back home to the beast by 8.

Now that I have been back for a few days I have had time to finish cleaning my apartment, buy groceries, write this blog, read more in The Game of Thrones, go out with folks, make a peach pie and get really bored.  I can't say I am looking forward to getting up early, but I am ready for some structure in my day, people to see and things to do.

Next up: What I did on my summer vacation, part 2: The Olympics.