Two Beers and a Pretzel

Driving in the dark last night, Ingrid promised me that the hostel was in the middle of a nature preserve.  She was not lying… when I got downstairs the next day for breakfast (after a ‘refreshing’ cold shower), there was a nice view of dawn over the canals.  I went for a walk thru part of the park.

After I got back to the hostel, I tried texting Ingrid to no avail.  She was apparently in church with her friend.  So I found a map of the area and decided to walk to the city center for the Christmas market.  I didn’t realize it was roughly 6 miles from the nature park to the city center.  Luckilly, I caught a bus a little after 1/2 way – because my daypack was loaded with toiletries, my PC, a change of clothes, books, etc…  it weighted about 20 pounds (9 kilos) and I was getting tired.

I made it into town and the Christmas market was hopping.  People everywhere – and lucky for me, food vendors.  I started with Dutch Fries.  Note:  ‘French’ fries were actually developed in the Flanders area of Belgium, and the fries in Belgium and Holland are fried twice, then have the sauce (usually mayo or mayo with mustard) slopped on top, then eaten with a small fork or toothpick.   Just past the kiosk with the fries, there was a place serving hot ham and mustard sandwiches on fresh baked bread… so I had to have one of those too.

Then I just people watched for a while.

I wandered thru the market to the Grote Kerk (big church).  Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland.  Holland is actually a kind of county within the Netherlands.  It’s just tourists that call the entire country Holland.  Being the oldest city, they were the first to be able to build their own church independant of outside rulers.  It also has near perfect acoustics to carry the sounds that eminate from the bell tower.

Speaking of the bell/clock tower, I climbed it.  The tower is actually about 7 ft off plumb and is kept from falling with a 26.5 million pound counterweight on the Northwest side.  I didn’t learn that until after I climbed it…

And looking back on the old town of Dordrecht with the river in the background.

Then back to the fair to take in some of the street musicians and some Glühwein (hot wine).

I eventually got bored with the market and wandered the old town.  Just before sunset I caught a nice shot looking back at the clock tower.

After a few phone calls where I completely failed to explain where I was, I met up with Ingrid and her friend for a while.  They were going to her friend’s house for dinner.  I had been snacking all day, so I cruised the market for a while longer before meeting Ingrid back at her place around 8 PM.

So on Friday I decided to recover from 4 days of walking tours and museums.  I slept in, went to lunch with Ingrid and some of her co-workers, posted the Belgium update on the blog. I looked into going to Berlin, but it was going to be cold, so I decided on Madrid (warm and cheaper). Then Ingrid got off work and we went out on the town.

First we stopped by her home town and had dinner with her parents.

I had a great time chatting with her parents.  Her dad is a big whiskey and cigar aficionado (even after his recent heart attack), and he likes rowing and old cars, and they drove route 66 a few years ago, so we had plenty to talk about.  Her dad recommended Barcelona over Madrid, so I decided to book that instead.

After a great meal, we went back to Dordrecht.  I booked Barcelona,  and we caught the train to Breda – the local college party town.  We had a 30 minute wait in the station, so we made some goofy videos on my camera to entertain ourselves.  I’ll post a few when I get them edited…  In Breda we met a bunch of Ingrid’s friends and former co-corkers at her previous job.  Went dancing and drinking until about 4:30 AM.

When we got to the train station around 5 AM, the tracks were being maintained on our planned route, and the next train wasn’t until 7:30 AM.  So we stayed at one of her friends houses (the guy on the right) for a few hours.  I was exceptionally tired with a light hangover.

Around 9 AM we caught a train back to Dordrecht.  Ingrid fell asleep.  I had breakfast and had to get ready for my 1:40 PM flight to Barcelona.  The train is usually 45 minutes between Dordrecht and the airport, so I left at 11:00 to catch the 11:12 inter-city.  NOPE!  The work on the tracks had screwed everything up.  It took me 2 and a half hours to get to the airport – just as they closed the gate on my non-refundable $220 flight.  I spent an hour or so unsuccessfully trying to get a refund on the airport taxes, then another 2.5 hours to get back to Dordrecht – where I fell promptly asleep.

About 2 hours later Ingrid woke me up and said that since her apartment has open access to the doctors office where she works, part of her ‘rental’ agreement was that friends are not allowed to stay there without her… and she still had plans to go out drinking and crash at her friend’s house.  She found a nearby hostel for me.  Decent enough, $30 and clean. No hot water in my shower – that kinda sucked.

Literally, the only good thing about that day was that my iPod battery lasted exactly long enough for me to get back to Ingrid’s place.  I seriously thought about and looked into catching the next plane home – but it was a $250 change fee and $600 fare difference.  Ouch!!

Despite a snoring Frenchman in my room (earplugs are awsome), I got about 12 great hours of sleep and feel pretty good today.  Ingrid’s having more friends over to chill out today – since she was planning on me being away.  I’ll probably check the train schedules and see when the track maintenance will be done – and plan my remaining day-trips in Holland and possibly visiting Kirsten in Cologne, Germany.  We’ll see…

Back before the Brits took over, New York was known as New Amsterdam, and Harlem was named after Haarlem.

I took the train to Haarlem after lunch and explored the town for a few hours before heading back for a home cooked Dutch meal.  The town has 2 main highlights.  The Frans Hals Museum, and the main Market Square.  The square looks very picturesque and old, but you realize how old when you go the museum and see paintings of the square from 1680 that look nearly like it is today.

There’s also lots of pretty, blonde Dutch girls everywhere…

Then I had a classic Dutch lunch – fries with mayo…

So, when you see a museum dedicated to a Dutch portrait master, you see lots of old paintings of people in black clothes with white frilly collars, and the men accessorize with black hats.  All very realistic, but somewhat monotone.

There’s also a historic windmill in town.

I had to get back to Dordrecht in time to have dinner with Ingrid – which included a surprise bike ride to the grocery store.

And then she slaved in the kitchen to cook me a home made batch of Boerenkool.

Someday I’ll put the video of Chef Ingrid online…

Ingrid had to work, and most museums in Europe are closed on Mondays – except in Amsterdam… so I hopped on the train and made a day of it.

I started at the Óur Lord in the Attic’ Church (Amstelkring Museum) and bought an I-amsterdam city pass for 38 Euro.. 

If you don’t know the story:  Laws were passed in the 1700′s to ban Catholocism from Holland, so Catholics had to worship in secret.  A German merchant bought 3 adjacent houses and built a hidden church on the upper floors.  Law enforcement decided to ‘look the other way’as long as the church was not obvious from the outside.  The museum was in the middle of a rennovation, so it was not easy to get decent pics.

From there I wandered around town a bit, thru some shopping streets and the redlight district.  The whole thing with the prostitutes is exceptionally strange – especially since they all look – um – ‘Well Worn’ might be how you describe it.  Not too enticing.  The Cannibis College and Marijuana Museum were pretty cool.  Both places specialized in touting the medicinal value of pot, and the economic benefits of hemp fiber.  As you can imagine – they were staffed by some very friendly and laid back people.  The highlight for me was seeing an electric guitar made entirely from hemp…

One museum I walked by had an exhibit on Oman and was part of the i-amsterdam pass, so I checked it out.  However, no photography allowed.  Interresting because some of my family live in Muscat.

I ended up at the Anne Frank House.  That was really sad.  I can’t imagine being Otto Frank and living thru a concentration camp to discover the rest of your family died.  Actually being in the house really made you feel like you experienced that history yourself.  Again, no pics allowed inside…

After leaving there, I was kind of depressed – so I opted for a long walk to the Van Gogh museum and saw some nice scenes along the way.

Once at the Van Gogh musem, there were no photos allowed (go figure), but it was included in the i-amsterdam pass.  The museum had a very cool exhibit of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother and linked his mental state to many of the paintings on display.  It was very interresting to be able to match his life story to his work and see as his style developed.

Once I left the Van Gogh, it was dark, so I wandered town for a while…

…and decided to swing back thru the Red Light District to see if it got any more interresting.

There was a lot more tourist activity, but the girls didnt look any better’- still not sure what the big deal is there…

The biggest shocker was the sheer number of White Swans hanging out in the canals – and the fact that they would swim right up to you to bed for food.

I stopped in a bar and had a few beers (and got a good 2nd hand buzz) waiting for my train.  I accidentally took the Sneltrain (slow) that made about 12 stops between Amsterdam and Dordrecht, so I didn’t get back to Ingrid’s place until 11:30 PM.

With the 3 museums I saw using the i-amsterdam card, I think I got my money’s worth

Today I’m catching up on the blog and other travel plans before taking an afternoon trip to Haarlem and coming back for some home made Dutch cooking. 

After work on Friday we got in Ingrid’s car and drove 6 hours to Hanau, Germany - the fabled home of the Brother’s Grimm.

With a few traffic delays, we arrived at Erinn & Chris’s house just after 11 PM, caught up with Erinn, got to see baby Annika, and went to bed.  On Saturday morning Ingrid and I went for a walk around town before getting back for lunch.  Later in the day we dragged Erinn out to the Christmas Market.

That night Erinn & Chris were exhausted from baby duty, so Ingrid and I hit the town without them, had some interresting conversation, then got back at 2 AM and found both of them awake, so we all stayed up until 4 AM talking.

The next day we hung out until after lunch.  Then Ingrid was anxious to get back home to rest up for her motorcycle riding exam on Monday.  I’m kinda bummed that we missed visiting my friend Kirsten in Cologne, Germany, but Ingrid made up for it by proving that she can cook a pretty tasty curry rice with chicken – so I suppose I’ll have to whip up some Thai food in the near future.

I think I’ll head into Amsterdam tomorrow since all the museums everywhere else in Europe are closed on Mondays…  Then Tuesday it’s off to Belgium for 2 days to hang out with one of my surfing buddies, Arnaud.