Exotic Animal Sightings

OK, maybe they're not all exotic, but some pretty interesting animals have been spotted right on our own street. The other day Erin began walking down our street to make a quick trip to the store when what did she see coming toward her on the sidewalk? An old man walking a horse. Yep, a big, saddled horse. Mind you, we do not live in the country somewhere; we live in Amsterdam, the most populous city in the Netherlands. Obviously this is not usual, as proved by another neighbor who said something to Erin in Dutch, but Erin is pretty sure it was something like "What in the world is that?" based on her curious facial expression. Erin just shrugged and laughed along with her.

The past week or so we have been awakened by a quite strange noise, a bird call of some kind we presume. It is a high-pitched, very loud "eeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeee" that Erin at first thought sounded like a noise a dinosaur on Jurassic Park would make. John now calls it the "horse-goat" noise. It really is indescribable. (Now is where the "exotic animal" part of the story comes in.) This morning while eating breakfast Erin happened to look out the window and see a bird that looks remarkably like a large green parrot with a ring of red feathers around its neck alight on a tree. She thought this unusual bird could be the culprit of the unusual bird call, but the parrot didn't utter a sound before it flew further down the line of apartments to another tree so Erin still has no verified identification of the "horse-goat" noise.

And of course there's always the heron, though not so unusual in Amsterdam with all the water we have around here. The heron spends each afternoon, from about 4 or 5 p.m. onward, sitting on the exact same light on our street. Eventually Erin will get used to seeing a 3-foot tall bird sitting atop a street light, but for now it still amuses her when she's walking back from the store or the recycling bins.

Money and Buses

A fellow expat commented on the ATMs here in the Netherlands in a recent blog and that reminded Erin of the new things she learned about retrieving money from an ATM in the past couple weeks. John is usually the one to get cash out of the ATM. Since there are no bills here smaller than a 5 and John despises carrying coins around, Erin can usually survive by just picking through the change he leaves on the table, sometimes adding up to €10-15! Besides, most of the shopping Erin does can be paid for using her Pin card anyway. However, with John working all the time lately, Erin has had the task of going to the ATM for him.

When choosing how much money to take out of the ATM, one must decide carefully because if you decide later in the day that you really need more cash you will be out of luck. There is a limit to using your card to get cash from an ATM: only one transaction per day. Erin found this out the hard way after accidentally pushing the wrong button and getting much less cash than John had asked for. Luckily, he didn't need all the cash the same day so Erin just made another trip to the ATM the next day.

Also, it is luck of the draw what kind of bills you will receive out of the machine. For instance, when asking for €50, you could get a €50 bill or perhaps two 20s and a 10. It is quite frustrating that many stores expect customers to have exact change and seem very put out when all you have is a €50 to pay for a €26 item or a €20 to pay for an €8 bill. So of course receiving smaller bills is preferable to receiving large ones from the ATM (unless, like our fellow expat, you happen to get 25 €10 bills that won't even fit in your wallet). After pressing your cash choice, you wait anxiously while the machine whirs and clanks, finally spitting out your cash. It is a happy moment when multiple bills appear and you know you will avoid the wrath of some sales clerk because you now have a €10 bill.

In case anyone needs a tip on public transportation in Amsterdam, Erin has one: trams run more often and closer to their scheduled departure times than do buses. Actually, Erin has yet to find a bus schedule that means anything. Since bus times are few and far between to begin with, once the buses get off schedule there is no telling how long you might have to wait for one to appear. Trams, on the other hand, while not always accurate, run more often. Even if the trams are not on schedule, one will usually show up within 8 minutes.

We heard this week that temperatures in Texas reached the 100s...and it's only April! And we thought our weather here was getting warmer! The mid-50s we've been enjoying seem downright frigid in comparison! Such hot temperatures in Texas are certainly no motivation to return. The redeeming qualities of Dallas definitely have nothing to do with the weather. People speak English and there is an abundance of great Mexican food - now those are redeeming qualities!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

In honor of our anniversary, John got to take Easter Sunday and Easter Monday off work and we traveled to Maastricht to celebrate. Maastricht is in the southern part of the Netherlands, in a small area that juts out into Germany and Belgium. The area is called Limburg, and it is the first time we've been to an area of the Netherlands that is not completely flat! Our trip was short, but complete with a stay in a castle, tour of Maastricht, hikes in the hills, and even a glimpse of the cyclists taking part in the famous Amstel Gold Race as they started out from Maastricht's Centrum.

This stay in Maastricht had been planned long before we even knew there was such a thing as the Amstel Gold Race, but two days before we left, John discovered that this famous Netherlands race, in its 41st year, was set to take place on Easter Sunday, the morning we were planning to arrive in Maastricht. About 300 cyclists entered the race this year, but we figured since it's a 2-hour drive to Maastricht and the race was set to start in the morning, that we wouldn't be bothered by the crowds. Just as we got into the city and came to our first stop light to take us to the Centrum, the light turned red and police began arriving to block the intersection. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, we were excited to see that it was just a couple minutes past 10 and that this traffic blockade was likely for the Amstel Gold rather than a funeral procession or an auto accident. Sure enough! A few minutes later we had front row seats to see the start of the race. We witnessed sponsor cars with ads all over them, medical vans, cars carrying about 10 bikes each, and radio trucks speed past ahead of the racers. Then we honked the car horn and snapped a few pictures as the 300 or so cyclists whizzed by us on the start of their 253 km race. It was perfect timing, only took about 10 minutes to watch, and we got to sit in the comfort of our warm and dry car for the show!

About the time we decided to take a self-guided walking tour of the Centrum and found a parking spot, the rain that had pelted the car all morning let up. It would continue to rain, off and on, the whole time we were in the Maastricht area, but we had our handy rain coats so it didn't bother us too much. It was a bit warmer in that part of the country than it has been in Amsterdam, so less wind and warmer temperatures made the rain very bearable. We spent the morning wandering around Maastricht, seeing the old cathedrals, the famous city wall, Maastricht University, rivers, and shopping streets. Maastricht is much smaller than Amsterdam, less crowded (especially on Easter Sunday), and the area has plenty of hills and valleys so we could look out onto entire cities and villages. One of the art museums, the Bonnefanten Museum, happened to be open on Easter Sunday so we decided to visit it with our handy museumjaarkarts, which made the entrance to the museum free. We were starving when we got there and thought getting something to eat at the cafe there would be a good idea. It would have been a good idea, however when the waitress came over John was still deciphering the menu and Erin decided to just order some tea while he figured out what he wanted to eat. Bad idea. The waitress never returned. We never got anyone's attention and even going up to the bar, where people went to pay their bills, didn't get us any attention from the staff. Finally, after Erin finished her tea, we decided to just leave the money for the drink on the table and go have a picnic in the car (luckily we had brought some snacks with us from home). We figured bananas, crackers, nut bread, and grapes should tide us over and we could have an early dinner. Our experience at the museum cafe was really the only bad one of the trip, thank goodness! We went back into the museum, saw all the art, and then decided to find our hotel.

We were both very excited about staying in a castle. Hotel Kasteel Geulzicht was a bit outside Maastricht, in Berg en Terblijt, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. We booked the room through a discount website (or course!) so we figured we'd end up with one of the smaller rooms. The castle only has nine guestrooms to begin with. As it turned out, we got the largest room in the place! We had a beautiful view, the bed was more comfortable than it looked at first, and we even got a buffet breakfast with our stay that was really good! After checking in and thoroughly admiring our room, we drove back into Maastricht to eat dinner. Being Easter Sunday, most restaurants were closed, but we finally walked around and found a Thai place that was on Erin's list of "top 10" restaurants in Maastricht according to one website. It truly deserved it's place in the "top 10." We really enjoyed the set menu we ordered, with samples of lots of different dishes, and we ate waaaaay too much!

Easter Monday is a holiday in the Netherlands, so we saw people biking, hiking, and travelling around everywhere we went! We spent most of the day hiking, after spending as much time as possible just hanging around in our room in the castle before check-out. There were several trails around the castle that we enjoyed, but eventually we decided to head out and try to find Mount Sint Pieter, a high hill in the southern part of Maastricht that affords great views of the cities and towns all around. We hiked up the hill and around the area for several hours before finding our way back to where we started and the cafe for some lunch. Sometimes it's fun to start hiking around without a map, though after going one direction for over an hour we decided we might need to turn around since this trail was obviously proving to be quite lengthy! After lunch, we noticed the office was selling trail maps and decided to see exactly how far we had gone. Yes, the trail we had decided to follow would have taken over 4 hours to complete, so turning back around had been a good idea, especially since it took a little longer to drive home to Amsterdam with all the holiday traffic. We'll have to return to Maastricht someday to tour the caves at Mount Sint Pieter and spend more time hiking around there. Even with rain and fog, the views and the forests were beautiful!

Maastricht is definitely a place we want to go back to, when John once again has more time off of work. Unfortunately, today John is back at work and Erin is back to her semi-normal routine of life in Amsterdam. Hopefully John will again have regular weekends without work sometime in the near future and we can go on more little trips. This weekend was a much-needed break. Happy Anniversary to us!

"Thatch" is an Odd Word

Some things are the same all over the world. And then, some things are not.

Erin went to the grocery store on Friday, as she does practically every day here. Actually she went twice because as she was making dinner she realized she did not have enough ketchup to make sauce for the meatloaf and had forgotten to get any on her earlier trip to the store. There is a store just around the corner, so while the meatloaf was still in the oven Erin left and then realized she really had no idea how much longer the meatloaf had before the timer went off. Quickly glancing at her watch she figured she probably had about 15 minutes. No problem. She sped up the pace, arrived at the store, grabbed some ketchup and chose a check-out line. Just like in the U.S., and assumably every other country in the world, Erin happened to choose the one line where the customer at the register had problems swiping her card in the machine. The cashier had the woman keep trying....and trying, and trying, and trying. Seriously, the woman tried to use her card to pay about 8 times before eventually giving up and pulling a wad of cash out of her wallet to complete her transaction. Of course, this only happens to Erin when she is in a hurry. Luckily, she got home just in time to walk into the kitchen and see the timer count down the last 3 seconds before she had to take the meatloaf out of the oven. No matter where you are, the experience of picking the longest check-out line with the most customer issues will invariably occur and is always frustrating.

Something you don't happen upon just anywhere is a building with a thatched roof. In fact, we drive the same route to church every Sunday and just this morning noticed an apartment building with a thatched roof. There aren't many, if any, of those around Amsterdam that we've noticed. John commented that he doesn't think he would probably want to live in an apartment building with a thatched roof. As he said, "If I was a rat, that's where I would live. I mean, it's like a built-in rat's nest." Hmm. He's got a point there.

Even though we don't have a thatched roof, we still have mice. We encountered another one, or maybe the same one, again last night. At least it's not a rat. And it's for sure not living in our thatched roof...since we don't have one.

Strange Weather

Today it has been completely overcast, completely sunny with bright blue skies, sunny with large black clouds hanging around overhead, partly cloudy, and rainy. Of course, for all these various weather conditions to occur it is very windy as well.

Sometimes the weather reminds us a lot of our life: so many changes that make life a little chaotic, unexpected dark clouds, and the realization that the sun is there whether you can see it or not. As John thrives on the chaos and excitement, Erin is learning to just look forward to the bright sunny times when things seem calm and secure. Actually, those times come more and more frequently the longer we live here in Amsterdam. Although John has had about as much work as he can handle the last couple months, he is looking forward to time away from work over Easter weekend. Erin is learning to appreciate this short time in which she does not have to work. She loves being able to get so much exercise riding her bike and walking all over the place. She loves walking down streets lined with little shops, seeing water almost everywhere she goes, not being in a hurry for anything, feeling safe traveling around the city by herself - even at night, and smelling fresh-baked bread wafting from the bakeries that sit on almost every corner.

Even on days, like Saturday, when John was working and Erin had yet another encounter with a salesperson at the market who tried to converse with her in Dutch and did not speak any English, there are still little spots of sunshine: beautiful weather, blooming flowers, hyacinths in our apartment, a friendly English-speaking neighbor, an entire outfit to work out in for only €9. Life will always be chaotic and a little messy, but that's a fact of life no matter where you live. We're grateful to be here right now...and we're grateful for Spring!