Friends, Francs, and Fahrvergnugen

This latest is a post about friendship as much as it about travel.  So I’ll attempt to keep from getting too mushy, but no promises.  Why?  Well, we were welcomed into the home of three longtime friends and were visited by a fourth in three of our next four stops along the road.  That simple fact has made a significant difference in our collective mood on this odyssey.  It has also made me hopelessly behind in my blog as I actually had something better to do at night than to sit in front of a computer, but I digress.

People are social animals, and the San Rafael Thies clan is no exception, despite the anti-social behavior of its alpha-male.  We’ve badly needed interaction with more than just our immediate family, to the point that each of us was in danger of shriveling up and becoming an emotional zombie.   While it is a not-so-insignificant truth that we have made some new friends on the trip (Singapore, Thailand and Morocco especially come to mind) we were still in dire need of time with old friends as we hadn’t seen a recognizable soul since we left the Western hemisphere back in January.  Skype, Gmail, Facebook, Kik and Instagram notwithstanding, we were all in need of some real contact with good friends, and we finally got it.  Hopefully this will sustain us for the rest of the trip, as we are now again, on our own.

We left the bunnies in Austria and headed west to Lichtenstein. The itty-bitty country treated us quite well.  It had been pouring rain for the entire drive, but the clouds took a break just as we parked.  Then we were provided with a nice park bench to stop and eat our lunch. The little country even provided an especially convenient post office once I realized that the keys to our previous lodgings, over a hundred miles behind us, were still in my pocket.  I mailed those off.  I bought a hat.  We partook in the obligatory photo-ops, and after about twenty minutes of walking around town, we had officially seen the entire country, ready to move on to Italy.  Now if you are keeping track, yes, we’d already spent much time in Italy.  But our final Italian destination was Lake Como, in the very northern-most part of the country.  It was as close to Austria and Switzerland as it was to anywhere we’d been in Italy.  So we saved Lake Como for later in the spring, when the weather would be the warmest, and when we could get the most out of the region.  Lake Como is often chosen by Hollywood producers as the locale for exotic scenery, and we wanted to wait it out for the sunshine.  In fact, Carol and I had chosen this spot for our tenth anniversary back in 2008, only to be thwarted by ridiculous airline rates.  So we had been looking forward to this stop for a long time.

Lichenstein.  On the right is the royal palace.  That dood has more official power than any other monarch in Europe.

We drove through ice and snow still on the road in Switzerland, and we arrived in Como in the pouring rain.  In fact, six of the seven days we were there it was either pouring rain or threatening to pour at any second.  It wasn’t quite the sunny paradise that we’d hoped for.  But we loved it any way.  It is one of the few places we went that I’d visit again in a heartbeat rather than seeking out a brand new destination, which is usually my preference.  Como had everything, including the first of our afore-mentioned friends.  Ray (yes, the same one who had already visited us in Costa Rica) hopped a flight from St. Petersburg where he had been living for the last six months and crashed with us for six days of fun.  Not only did he take my place as Josh’s perpetual wrestling partner, but he also became our chauffeur, our fourth for cards (Chloe is not much of a cards lover), our boat captain and our dishwasher.  What’s not to love?  Carol got more conversation in during those six days than she does with yours truly in a month.  I’m a lover, not a talker.  On one overcast day, where the rain threatened more than it actually fell, we rode the ferry around the lake, checking out the itty-bitty medieval lake towns and the ritzy villas and the ever-present gelato shops.  On another we took a crazy-steep funicular up the mountain to verify that it is indeed not possible to see through rain clouds from the top-down any better than from the bottom-up.  We ate pasta, we watched DVDs, and we enjoyed each other’s company while we waited out the rain.

And then, finally, the sun came out.  For one glorious four hour stretch we motored around the lake in a rental boat and basked in the sunshine.  It was everything we hoped Lake Como would be, if only for an extremely short stint.  We took a zillion pictures and used up a hundred dollars worth of diesel in the blink of an eye.  It was glorious.  Even the kids couldn’t find something to complain about for a few hours.  There is a reason that the Bellagio hotel in Vegas is named after one of the towns on this lake.  I’d gush more, but it doesn’t make for good reading, so instead I’ll just tease you with a few pics.

Josh is driving and Ray and Chloe don't look worried.  Do they know something I don't?

Yeah.  Lake Como doesn't stink.

The lake is pretty cold, as it is fed by snowmelt, but it is not so cold that people don’t swim in it during the summer months.  Our Como home had a dedicated dock with beach chairs and water toys.  So diving in should have been a very real option if hadn’t been raining continuously in Italy since the fall of 2012.  But if you ask Josh how cold the water is, he’d give you a different story.  You see, he did dive in, though not because he’s a glutton for punishment.  He didn’t mean to get wet.  It just sort of happened and he was neither prepared for it nor able to deal with it in a calm and controlled manner.  Here’s the heart-wrenching story:

Carol and I were determined to enjoy the lake, despite the incessant rain.  This was the day before Ray showed up.  There was a break in the weather, so we all geared up in the most water-proof clothing we had, and decided to take the inn’s kayaks out for a spin.  Now if you’ve been a regular reader, you are already shaking your head.  Not kayaks again!  Didn’t we learn our lesson in the perfect storm episode back in Costa Rica?  Obviously, no.  In our defense, this was a narrow lake, not the ocean.  So even with the weather, the waves were no more than a foot high.   What could go wrong?  Well, as in Samara, nothing went wrong for the girls.  They were paddling around with smiles on their faces.  I had finished helping them off the dock and onto their kayak, and I had successfully boarded my own.  But then Josh had to board in front of me.  Let’s just say that he had trouble understanding my instructions as to how best to do this and leave it at that.  It wasn’t totally his fault.  The craft that we were attempting to use for two was only designed for one.  But that wasn’t stopping Carol and Chloe.  We never made it past the dock.  At one moment I was relaying boarding instructions and at the next Josh and I were under the kayak.  The next sixty seconds were the some of the longest of Josh’s life.  He insisted that he couldn’t swim to the dock’s ladder because he had frozen solid on the spot.  Needless to say I was a little too annoyed by my own situation to be very sympathetic.  He did eventually make it out and he immediately ran to the hot shower.  Chloe also decided to get the hell out picturing her own imminent drenchitude.  But Carol and I continued on and paddled around (me in my thorough soakiness) until the lightning started to make the rain seem a bit more menacing and we called it a day after maybe ten minutes of adventure.  It was a good thing Ray showed up the next day, because Josh was not pleased with me after that.

Carol managed to stay dry, until it started pouring rain again.  Notice the beach chairs at our little villa.  They were just there to taunt us rather than to be actually useful.

For two different reasons that I feel the need to share, I was even more grateful to have Ray as we left Como.  First, there was the fact that the elevator out of the inn was suddenly no longer functioning.  At this point on our trip, I am quite used to carrying all of the luggage up any steps at place after place.  The suitcases are just too heavy for the kids when climbing stairs.  We’d had four flights of stairs in our last place in Austria.  I just took several trips.  No real problem, there.  But this was something completely different.  The inn was at lake level.  The road was at the top of the cliff many stories above.  Even without luggage, each trip to the market had been a real trek.  First you climbed steps.  Then you scaled a steep ramp.  Then you boarded an elevator which took you up the cliff wall for about three stories.  Then you climbed some more steps, and finally you hiked up a steep driveway to the road. Each time, I broke into a sweat, even without luggage.  The mere prospect of taking three or four trips with luggage would have put me into cardiac arrest.  But thank goodness our Sherpa was with us and much of the heavy lifting was off of my back and onto his, because the elevator couldn’t have picked a worse time to go on the fritz.  Ray is my hero.

The most excellent view out our private elevator.  The view straight down.  Now you can see why carrying all of the family's luggage up by myself seemed a bit daunting.  That path isn't flat either.

The other instance that elicited my sincere gratitude for Ray’s presence came just minutes later.  Safely back in the car, it was time to drive to Switzerland.  We’d just plug in instructions to the ole’ GPS (Marge) and we were good to go, right?  Not necessarily.  As tends to be the case with Marge, things are rarely as easy as they should be.  But this time Ray was driving, so I got to watch him go six shades of purple instead of me for once, as she led him badly astray.  It should have been a simple matter of finding the expressway and driving off to the border.  Marge decided that we needed a little extra adventure and led us into some industrial truck station border-crossing.  Suddenly we were surrounded by eighteen wheelers and guided onto truck scales and through customs gates until finally we hit a manned toll-booth where the guy just laughed at us and told us we had to go back because there was no way we were crossing the border this way, and what the &#%^ we were doing there in the first place?  Our Italian being about as good as our Klingon, we gestured and pointed at Marge and tried to convey that we’d been duped by a machine, but all we got was head-shaking and smirks in return.  After what seemed like a dozen poor guesses and wrong turns, we finally were shown the way out by armed guards, but not before Ray put a voodoo curse on the next six generations of Marge’s descendants.  Since she wasn’t about to show us the correct way to Switzerland, insisting instead that we must simply try the truck route once again, we had to navigate by the position of the sun, the direction of the wind, and the feeling in our bones.  But we did eventually make it out of Italy and into the land of the chocolate chalets.

More Como pics.

Still more Como.  On the right:  The Greek statues had been temporarily removed from those spots at the villa.  Josh and I thought we'd fill in for the interim.

Carol read somewhere that the only thing the Swiss like milking better than their ubiquitous cows and goats are the tourists.  My udders are still raw.  A week in Switzerland is more expensive than a month in southeast Asia.  But it may just be worth it.  Holy crap, are those mountains awesome!  We did a quick stop in Lucerne, trying to suck in all of its beauty in a couple of hours.  Ray downed more chocolate than my kids do on Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and Easter combined.  We climbed castle towers.  We meandered down cobblestone streets, we crossed ancient bridges, and we got the hell out of there before our wallets spontaneously and irrevocably emptied themselves. 

Lucerne.  The pic on the right is from the top of a medieval castle tower.  Where else?

Seriously, just standing in Lucerne can cost you a pretty penny.  I fed one parking meter about ten bucks worth of Swiss Francs only to learn that the parking spot was only for buses, and could we please be on our way.  I guess the best part of Lucerne is the scenery on the lake, but we had just had that in Como, so we decided to forgo and move on to the snow-capped peaks of the Alps.  The drive was gorgeous, if not a little too windy (as in zig-zaggy, not breezy, pronounce the "i" with a long "eye" sound.. wIndy).  Just to show how crazy the mountain roads were, at one point I took a picture of the GPS map as the road actually circled around upon itself twice in a sort of figure-eight type path including a bridge and a tunnel,.  But the views were so breathtaking, and I was so happy to not be the driver for once, that the trip to Interlaken and finally Lauterbrunnen seemed to go incredibly fast.

Yes, that is the actual single road route as the GPS mapped it through the mountains.  No funny business was utilized.

Lauterbrunnen is a super fun word to say out loud.  Hang on the OOWWW in LAUter and really punctuate the OOOO in brUnnen, and you just can’t get enough.  We rented a large home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a dining room table big enough for can-pong.  There were comfy couches to spare and the kitchen was bigger than a breadbox for once.  We were loving it, which was good, because the weather wasn’t too great for most of our time there either.  We did get one glorious day, when we did a hike through the mountains that boasted some of the best scenery anywhere in the world.  I felt like we were the VonTrapp family scaling the mountains to skirt the Nazis, only Ray took the place of the other five children.  The hike was in Gimmelwald, which is a tiny village high enough above the valley floor that one needs to take a gondola to get there.  The particular gondola in question was actually used in a James Bond movie, just to give you a sense of the quality of scenery that I’m talking about.  The ride came complete with the 007 theme music piped in through the speakers.  Once at the top of the ride, you can continue to hike up the mountain for miles until you are well above the tree line and into the snow peaks that stay white year-round.   We didn’t hike quite that far, but even though the altitude didn’t literally take our breath away, the scenery sure did so in the figurative sense of the phrase.

These views didn't stink either.  Except maybe for Ray's bald spot. :)

Lauterbrunnen is in the valley below Gimmelwald, and only a short drive from Grindelwald, another up-the-mountain type destination.  Carol and I drove into Grindelwald the day after Ray left.  We also drove around one of the lakes that flank Interlaken nearby.  But none of the other little towns was quite as quaint and homey and wonderful as Lauterbrunnen.  So once again, Carol chose wisely.  Other than the Gimmelwald hike, I’d say my favorite Switzerland experience was going out for fondue in our sleepy little village.  Ray, the kids and I downed a pot of cheese faster than you can say “Lauterbrunnen Ementaler” and we liked it so much that we scraped all of the cheese off the bottom of the pot to the point that the dishwasher came out to personally thank us for doing his job for him.  We of course followed the cheese up with some chocolate fondue because well, we could.  When we hiked home, we stopped to personally thank each of the cows for making that moment possible.  In fact, we spent quite a lot of time watching the cows, as Carol seems to have a thing for cowbells.  I hadn’t known this particular fetish of hers existed.  I’m beginning to think she’d like me better if I wore one of those things around my own neck at opportune moments.

Bells off of cows, and bells on cows.  There you have it.

The only other blog-worthy news from Switzerland, aside from a bowling game not quite for the ages, a clock made of plants, paragliders on parade by the dozens, and five pounds of spaghetti with only two itty-bitty pots to cook it in, was a side trip that Ray, Carol and Chloe took to an outdoor museum somewhere beyond Interlaken.  Josh and I stayed home having had enough of museums for a bit, whether they be inside or out.  So I can’t really report much of what went on.  You’ll have to ask Carol about it if you are curious.  All I know is that when they came back nobody could stop talking about rabbit jumping races.  I wonder if the rabbits were wearing cowbells?

Carol both took this shot at the outdoor museum and chose it for the blog.  I'm not making this stuff up!

The bunny races.  Looks like the owner is doing most of the work.

When Ray left us after three days in Lauterbrunnen, all of us were a bit sad.  The kids had lost a playmate, Carol had lost a conversation partner, and I’d lost my Sherpa/chauffer/dishwasher/best man.  The last day in Lauterbrunnen was a little soggy, and mostly uneventful.  Although of note is the fact that Josh finally beat me in a fair-and-square game of can-pong.  The day had to come eventually, and it is all downhill from here.  Soon he will be pounding me on the hoops court and schooling me on the tennis court.  It is bittersweet indeed when your own spawn overtakes you on the ping-pong table of life.

These shots were taken from what was basically our front yard in Lauterbrunnen.

We left the Swiss via Bern, the capital.  It is a wonderful city, and I’m a bit sad we only had a few hours there.  We did manage to squeeze in the Einstein museum, which curiously enough also had a travelling exhibition of the terra cotta soldiers from Xi, China.  The kids got both a social studies lesson and a science lesson all for one low price ticket.  Okay, maybe not so low, this was Switzerland after all.  But it was convenient!  We saw the brown bears whose ancestors have graced the city for over a century as their mascots (pic below).  We walked along the river, we went statue hunting, and we had a brilliant time.  But Germany beckoned, so by 2:00 p.m. we were out of town.  That gave us five hours to make the four hour trip before the hotel check-in deadline in Rothenburg, Germany.  Now why would I bring up such an innocuous detail?  Could something perhaps be amiss?

Uhh, yup.  We were destined to “amiss” that deadline by more than an hour.  About halfway along, we got stuck in a traffic jam that lost us a couple of hours.  So we called the hotel and the manager said there was no way his employee was going to wait around for us to show up.  I begged and pleaded and got my best contrite voice on and he said he’d look into it, but we should probably make other arrangements and not get our hopes up.  I was to call him back in an hour.  Well we couldn’t really make other arrangements.  We were at a dead stop in traffic on the expressway.  We had no internet abilities with our phones without wi-fi.  I don’t think 411 works in Germany.  Does it even work in the U.S. anymore?  We were stuck.  Either there was going to be good news in an hour, or we were going to be knocking on hotel doors after dark.  So what eventually happened?  Was this to be our first real lodging snafu of the trip?  Did we end up sleeping in the car?  Did we just have to give up on Rothenburg altogether and keep driving until we could find a hotel that would take us?  Did the car turn back into a pumpkin and leave us on the side of the Autobahn with only one glass slipper?  Inquiring minds need to know!  

Go Bears!  This if one of the Bern mascots.  Personally, I think they ought to stick with Bernese Mountain Dogs.  I only put it down here in the running commentary to add to the suspense of the hotel story. 

There was no problem.  We lead blessed lives.  I guess we create enough of our own problems with our “stupid gringo” tourist moves so that fate need not compound that with bad luck.  We sweated it out for an hour.  I called the hotel manager back.  He said somebody would be there to meet us.  No worries, no good stories, just good fortune.  Although the room was a bit of a laugher.  It was listed as a “quad room” meaning there was room for four.  It turned out to be a normal double room, with a single queen sized bed.  They just shoved two cots in to fill up the only floor space left, so there was no room to walk.  You simply had to shimmy from bed to bed if you wanted to get to the door or to the bathroom and that door only had enough room to open halfway.  But we weren’t about to complain at that point!  Get your shimmy on, people!   

On right: our spacious quad room.  I'm actually in the hallway, out of the room, taking the photo.  Carol's right foot is on the bathroom tile.  On left: the entrance to the town.  The photo is taken from a typical suburban thoroughfare just like any you'd see in Marin.  We suddenly came upon this and questioned the GPS.  Really?  We are actually supposed to drive in there?  Yup.  Hope we don't get shot at.  Cannonball dents won't be covered by the insurance.

Rothenburg kicks all sorts of ass.  It is another one of those walled-in cities where the medieval walls are still standing all the way around, and they keep out the bandits and trap in the cuteness.  Cobblestone streets and colorful little buildings make even the rainiest of days feel full of sunshine.  Although in some ways, it feels more like a winter wonderland.  They sell these things called “shneeballen” which are just strings of dough rolled up into a ball and fried and then rolled in any sweet topping you can think of.  Powdered sugar is the standard, but chocolate or caramel or vanilla or nuts or pretty much anything else is possible.  “Schneeball” means snowball.  And between the ever present snowballs and the dozen or so year-round Christmas stores in town, you want to break out into a chorus of “Jingle Bells” at any given moment, even in June.  The town is almost too cute.  But the top-notch torture museum and the super-cool castle walls make up for it.  You can actually still walk along the top of the wall all the way around the city.  We did, constantly peeking through the holes where the archers could do their thing without being picked off from below.  And that torture museum was a hoot.  Iron maidens and chastity belts and shame masks and bone-crushers and limb stretchers; they had it all.  We spent over an hour in there gawking and shaking our heads.  I could have spent two or three hours more, but alas, there were other sights to see.

Schneeballen, anyone?

The kids got hung up outside the museum.  On right: one of the shame masks they made you wear if you committed a minor offense a couple of hundred years ago.  Those crazy Germans love their law enforcement!

One of my personal favorites was the bell-tower.  As in almost every European town, you can climb a few hundred steps to the top to get a breathtaking view of the city below you.  But this one was a bit different.  First of all, the entryway was nowhere near the bottom of the tower, so finding it was difficult.  Then, once you’d gotten directions from two or three different locals, you’d begin walking through an empty warehouse and become convinced you were in the wrong place.  Then you’d hit a turnstile with no ticket taker, and cross an indoor bridge between buildings until finally you started to climb.  A couple of hundred steps later, and fifteen steps from the very top, there is a tiny little gift shop with a woman who takes your money for the climb.  Then you have to scale a precarious ladder to squeeze through a less than large hole in the ceiling until you come out into the fresh air and get blown away by the view or the wind or the combination thereof.  In the gift shop there is a painting of an obese woman attempting to scale the ladder and squeeze through the opening, with a man (presumably her husband) pushing on her rump to lend a hand.  I had visions of being stuck up there, unable to pass such a woman who had lodged herself in the opening.  The whole thing was quite humorous, but the views were spectacular and worth every step and every penny.

Rothenburg from on high and then again from a cobblestone point of view.

Other than that in Rothenburg, we got lots of hearty German food, and I drank lots of German beer.  We sampled German bakeries, and we shopped for hours.  For once, I was actually invested in the shopping phenomenon.  Rothenburg is world-famous for its shops and especially for its cuckoo clocks.  They sell hundreds of different models, each one more intricate than the next, all with beautifully detailed hand-carved wood and sometimes visible clockworks and often moving parts.  I grew up with a small unpretentious cuckoo clock in my home and I was very tempted to buy one for myself.  But I never committed to a purchase and on the last morning before we had to move on, when I finally decided to go for it and buy one, it was an obscure national holiday and all of the shops were closed.  It was fate.  I was not meant to own a cuckoo clock.  I’ll live.  On to Leverkusen!

“Leverkusen?” you ask.  No, I hadn’t heard of it either, though it does rhyme well with Lauterbrunnen.  I ought to write a song… The town is a glorified suburb of Koln (or Cologne, depending on who you’re talking to).  We didn’t really care where we were though, because this particular destination wasn’t about the scenery, but rather about the company.  Our long-time friends, Jessica and Kevin, have been stationed in Leverkusen for the next few years by Kevin’s company, Bayer.  They used to work in Berkeley and live in San Rafael.  Now he works in Germany, and they live in Leverkusen.  So we crashed at their place for five nights, and luxuriated in the conversation, game-playing, and just flat feeling at home amongst good friends.  We watched movies, we ate home-cooked meals that we didn’t have to cook, we got shown around town without having to consult a map or a guidebook or a bus schedule.  It was heaven.  They did take us into Koln on one day and showed us around.  It was fairly cool.  The cathedral was impressive.  The belltower climb was epic.  The restaurant they took us to in the city was over-the-top German and something we wouldn’t have found without a local to find it for us.  But I preferred our walks through the park in the suburbs to the big city, and our curry-wurst stand outside the local Home Depot to the big restaurants.  It just felt more like home.  And even though I am still loving this whole traveling gig and all of the new experiences, it is nice to feel at home on occasion.  Kevin and Jess were gracious hosts and though we’ve only been gone a week or so, we already miss them.  But on we march!

Rompin' through the 'burbs with Kevin and Jessica.

A couple of shots of the impressive cathedral in Koln.

Our next stop was Amsterdam, or more specifically, Haarlem.  Carol’s friend from college, Jason, lives there with his beautiful family.  So again, we got to stay in a place we didn’t have to book through TripAdvisor, AirBnB, or HomeAway.  We stayed in what was Jason’s home until only a few months ago, when they moved across the street to a bigger and better place.  The house was perfect for us.  But I do have to mention the WCs, because they cracked us up.  The shower/bathtub and sink are in a separate part of the house from the toilet.  A Dutch toilet is no different than an American one, except that it is placed in a room no larger than the toilet itself.  It is really not so much a room, as a sectioned off corner of a hallway.  The door has a vertical hinge down the middle of it so that it “folds” around your legs as you sit on the pot.  I didn’t really fit.  And all of the people in the Netherlands are super-tall.  I’m shocked Holland isn’t a powerhouse on the international basketball circuit.  So how these people manage in the loo is beyond me.  But there you have it.  At least they don’t bother with the bidet like most other European countries.  What a waste of space those are!  But that is enough about the John.  What about the country?

Notice the wooden floor molding that separates toilet room from hallway.  Also check out how steep the steps are.  Six inches to a step, maybe.  I banged my head on the overhang every time I climbed the steps.  Not up to building code, I'd say.

Well, Amsterdam is certainly different.  There are more canals there than in Venice.  Although it is a much larger city, so on a per-square-meter basis, I’m not sure which town wins.  The architecture is stunning.  The parks are gorgeous.  The museums are top-notch.  The people-watching is better than pretty much anywhere we’ve been.  But on the whole, I didn’t love the town as much as many of the other big cities we’ve been in.  There was something a little less friendly about the locals, and the streets were just a little too crowded.  We did two full days of site-seeing in Amsterdam to really give it a chance, but I came away a tiny-bit disappointed.  The story doesn’t end there, however.

On left: the Amsterdam train station.  On right, one of many local pot shops.  It's legal!  But dig the shop name.

Remember, we didn’t actually stay in Amsterdam, we stayed in Haarlem, which is a city in its own right, but which has sort of become a suburb of Amsterdam as urban sprawl swallowed it up.  But Haarlem is actually older than Amsterdam and it was a booming power in Northern Europe in its time.  And more important than all of that, Carol and I loved Haarlem!

A typical street in Haarlem.

Granted, Haarlem doesn’t have Anne Frank’s secret annex.  It doesn’t have the Van Gogh museum (awesome!, see below) or even the red light district (there is one red bulb in a back corner in Haarlem, Jason pointed it out to us).  It doesn’t have most of the spectacular tourist draws.  But the tourists in the know will definitely visit, because it does have amazing architecture, it has beautiful parks, and it has the same network of idyllic canals.  But it also just feels like a place you could live comfortably.  It isn’t too big to have outgrown its coziness.  But it is definitely big enough to feel like a thriving modern metropolis with a grand history written on the walls of its ancient edifices.  Yeah, I could live in Haarlem, but not in Amsterdam.

Vince V.G.'s got game!

Josh’s favorite part of Haarlem was Jason’s house, because Jason’s two sons, who are just a couple of years younger than Josh, have access to their dad’s big-screen TV and Wii console.  Josh was in heaven.  He had video games and someone to play them with.  What could better than that?  Chloe took her turn on the Wii as well.  She’s not above doing the Mario World thing.  So the kids were happy.  Check.

The Dutch are a funny bunch.  Their cities are fantastically clean.  Everything needs to be just so.  They love their rules and enforce them just as maniacally as their neighbors, the Germans.  They all ride bicycles everywhere, and on any occasion.  You are just as likely to see a woman in a formal dress, shoes and all, flying by on a bike as you are a school kid.  There were hundreds upon hundreds of bikes passing us at all hours of the day and night.  It didn’t get really night-time dark until nearly 11:00 p.m.  Carol and I were walking home from dinner one evening, and it was getting to the point where I would have preferred to have a flashlight.  But there were still endless streams of bikers passing us by.  And the bikes have the right-of-way in almost every situation, even over the cars.  And they won’t stop.  We regularly found ourselves diving out of the way of crazy bikers at the last second because we simply weren’t used to looking out for them from every direction.  You’d think with all of the canals and levees and such, there would be more boat traffic.  But for every one boat, you’d see fifty cars and for every one car, you’d see ten bikes.

We also happened to arrive smack-dab on the first day of a four-day national holiday that seems to have no significance other than promoting a long walk.  At 6:00 every evening, every kid in the school district between the ages of about four and twelve starts at a prescribed location and then walks with his her or her parents for a five kilometer stroll through town.  The route is different each day, and is kept a secret until it begins.  Thousands of people march along in only semi-organized chaos.  Jason and his kids walked each night.  We went with them on the first night, but opted out after that.  My ears are still ringing from being in a tunnel under the railroad tracks with hundreds of screaming Dutch kids.  The last day, was more of a parade.  There were marching bands (both children and adult groups) and cheerleaders and baton twirlers and well, you get the picture.  They all paraded right past our front door, with traffic cops holding up what little traffic there was as nearly everyone in the entire city was taking part in the parade.  Our car was cordoned off in its little parking lot and we had planned on using it, but gave that idea up real fast.  You’d think it was their independence day or something like that.  But really, the only reason given for the holiday in all of the research we did, was that people just wanted a reason to walk.  

A couple more Haarlem shots for good measure.

That was the first four nights in Haarlem.  And supposedly, the same scene goes on in every town around Holland.  Our fifth and final night was a little kooky too.  Apparently, Haarlem’s shops all close down fairly early each evening, year-round.  Except on the one night of the year, when they stay open until midnight and make a party of it.  Fine, I find nothing too strange there.  But I’m not done.  They actually roll out miles of red carpet and tape it to the sidewalks up and down each street with any kind of commercial zoning.  Apparently, the carpet attracts the customers!  Earlier in the day, before we were privy to the knowledge we have now about what was going on, Carol and I speculated as to the purpose of this carpet that they were laying down as we walked to the train station.  Perhaps the Dutch Royal Family was planning on paying a visit to Haarlem?  Perchance another parade was in the works, but this time the route was being carefully laid out for all to see ahead of time?  Nope.  They just wanted locals to come shop for a few extra hours, and they figured the red carpet treatment would do the trick.  No matter that miles of the stuff was laid out and that it would all be pulled back up the next morning.

And then there is the dress code of the Nordic types to discuss.  There is absolutely nothing to report except that apparently fifty degrees Fahrenheit (or for them, ten degrees Celsius) is the cutoff temperature above which spaghetti straps and short-shorts are the only reasonable attire.  The second that sun pops out from behind a cloud and your shadow is visible, no matter where you are or what you are doing, all limbs must be laid bare immediately!  And if you are on the beach, which we were on one fine afternoon, clothing is optional, period.  Our family was dressed in jeans and fleeces and everything that we felt was appropriate for the current weather conditions.  Meanwhile, the locals were sunbathing in all their naked glory.  The kids didn’t seem to notice.  They were far too involved in sand sculpture to care.  And I’m thankful for that as I didn’t really feel like explaining the female anatomy to Josh at the time.  Now I understand that in Europe, modesty is less of an issue, and I’m all for it.  But it was pretty freakin’ cold on that beach!  It was the North Sea we were staring at for goodness sake!  So the Dutch are taller than your average bear and apparently more equipped to deal with the cold winters as well.  Crazy.  

On the beach with Jason's boys, Skye and Ryan.  Ryan actually buried Josh's croc in the sand and we never found it.  I kind of like the idea that an ever-present bit of rubber will forever grace the lowlands, attesting to the fact that we were there.

The only other sight-seeing story of note from our time in the low country was a side trip to Zaanse Schans, which is sweet little village with five or six working windmills.  We visited a couple of them, one was used for grinding chalk for making pigments for dyes and paints.  The other was a working saw-mill still cutting lumber with thousand-year-old technology.  They put the kids to work shucking the bark off of a tree so that it could go through the mill.  Josh pointed out that we had paid for the privilege of seeing the mill work and that is was odd that he was now the one doing the work, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to wield his blade for another ten minutes or so.  In the village, we got to try on the traditional wooden clogs and got to taste the local cheese straight from the sheep and goats on the premises.  Really, the only Holland cliché tourist go-to that we didn’t get to partake in was the tulips.  My tiptoes were primed, but the flowers were gone.  Apparently the last blooms had been pulled up just days before our visit.  Now that we’ve missed the lavender of Provence and the tulips of Holland, I guess we are just going to have to plan another trip next year!

J-Dawg is doing his thing at the saw-mill.  The bird remained unimpressed.

Jason was a wonderful host and tour guide.  Being able to just hang out with him and his boys did us all a world of good.  We enjoyed meeting his lovely wife and his three beautiful children.  He has a young daughter in addition to his two sons.  She is still just a baby and her daddy basks in her glow and dotes on her like he’s never had a daughter before!  What’s the big deal?  Uh, just kidding, Chloe.  Yes, I do understand that it is a big deal.  I was just going for irony, really… <ahem>

Some Chloe shots, just to get her back on my good side.  She's got it rough.  I mean look at what big shoes she has to fill!

So now we are in Bruges, Belgium.  At least we are as I write this.  We’ll be in Paris by the time you read it. That blog post will have to wait.  After Paris, it’s England.  And then we’re home.  I can’t believe it’s all coming to an end so fast.  If I were working and this much time had gone by, it would be only about February now and I’d be knee-deep in ungraded lab reports.  I swear the months are only fifteen days long in Europe.  Of course, as sad as I am that this fantasy is about to end and that reality is coming like a locomotive, the kids are even more emotional on the opposite end of the spectrum.  They simply cannot wait to be back home and to see their friends.  But I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.  After all, that is what I said this post was all about.  Ray, Jessica, Kevin and Jason have reminded me that there really is no place like home, because that is where your friends are, and no scenery in the world can beat that.