No Rain for Three Days!

We have survived our week apart. John's plane arrives back from California tomorrow morning.

Amazingly enough it has been sunny here in Amsterdam for the past three days! That's right, three entire days and nights with no rain. God must have known Erin needed something to boost her spirits a little bit this week, and sunshine was just the thing. For most of you, especially those of you in Texas, this is probably not a very amazing or exciting event. We have definitely come to appreciate sun more in this country where wintertime means the sun moves low across the sky and can be seen (when not obscured by clouds and rain) for only about 8 hours a day. Yeah, sun for only 8 hours a day unfortunately means John rarely sees daylight during the work week. He's hoping he got a good enough dose of sunshine while in California to last him a while.

Christmas is only 15 days away! Can you believe it? After Sinter Klaus Day last week all the stores and flower stands started putting out their Christmas trees for sale. We have always bought a real Christmas tree so we hate to not get one this year, especially since we do have family coming to visit right after Christmas, but our apartment is quite tiny. As Erin has been riding her bike around this week, she's been trying to figure out how small of a tree one can purchase. There are some pretty small ones out there so we'll have to be sure and take a picture of our "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree when we get it, hopefully next weekend.

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

On Saturday we saw chestnuts roasting on an open fire, browsed through stall upon little stall of Christmas crafts, walked along narrow streets bedecked with Christmas lights, and enjoyed our fill of bratwurst. After a two-hour drive with relatively no traffic problems we arrived late in the morning in Düsseldorf, Germany to discover the Christmas markets there. Germany, especially, is famous for its Christmas markets. Although there are towns with more elaborate set-ups and many more tourists, Düsseldorf was the closest town in Germany suitable for a day trip…and there were a good number of tourists. We heard lots of people speaking English from the UK, the US, and Australia as well as some French, Spanish, and of course Dutch. Spending a day at the Christmas markets will really put you in the Christmas spirit! We came home all ready to buy our Christmas tree, put up decorations, and get all of our remaining Christmas shopping done.

We also visited a pink palace near Düsseldorf called Benrath Palace. We are much smarter now and did not bother to pay to go inside with a tour group as all the tours are in German. We did walk around the grounds though, which were pretty and are probably even more beautiful when the weather is warmer and there are actually leaves on the trees. We could have walked around a bit longer, but we couldn’t figure out where to park the car. The last think we needed was for our car to be towed leaving us stranded in another country the day before John had to leave the continent for a business trip! We just parked on the street in a very fancy neighborhood next to the palace that did not seem to have any signs indicating restrictions on parking. (However, experience in the Netherlands proves that just because there are no signs posting the speed limit or dictating how far away from a curb you must park does not mean it is OK to do what everyone else seems to be doing without severe consequences.) When we returned after our walk around the palace grounds our car was, fortunately, right where we left it with no tickets plastered on the windshield. The day was a success!

Just before heading out of town (which was quite a feat as we really had no map of Düsseldorf, just some Mapquest directions and at atlas with a map of Germany in it) we had to pay a visit to the Wal-Mart Supercenter! Yes, Wal-Mart is taking over the world – except in the Netherlands, where, as John points out either there are laws in place against such huge commercial enterprises or there is sufficient bureaucracy, to the point of being ridiculous, that Wal-Mart refuses to waste its time operating in this country. Apparently Wal-Mart has many stores in Germany, so we decided to stop and remember what it is like to shop in a place where you can get underwear, motor oil, and bananas under the same roof. Of course, Wal-Mart in Germany caters to the culture and needs of Europeans, so we did not find the things we would normally buy at Wal-Mart in the US. We did purchase some super glue to glue the handle back on our dishwasher. (Gotta love IKEA appliances!)

By the way, John is in California this week, our trip to Munich next weekend has been cancelled, and Erin is finally driving the car (it’s a manual transmission and Erin has never had to drive one before) with much trepidation and lots of prayer!

Sunny Spain

Last Friday, after an eventful Thanksgiving, we headed out of the country once again. Barcelona turned out to be a beautiful and interesting vacation weekend. After enduring near-freezing temperatures, constant cloudiness, and continual rain almost all last week we were looking forward to the warm weather and sunshine Spain promised. While we were blessed with three days of sunshine and cloudless skies, we didn't experience the typical warmth of Barcleona. Even the locals were complaining about the unseasonably cold weather they had last weekend! Instead of daytime temperatures in the upper 60's, it was more like low 50's, which was still considerably warmer than in Berlin, London, or Amsterdam. Overall, we were extremely pleased with the weather. It's amazing the difference being in the sun for a few days makes!

John did not exactly print out the hotel itinerary for our weekend, but he remembered the name of the hotel. When the taxi picked us up Friday evening (after being delayed, delayed, and delayed some more because of the fog in Amsterdam), John found the hotel name in our travel guide and showed the address to our driver. Since our flight was late, we got to Barcelona just in time for rush hour. After spending 45 minutes in the taxi, our driver dropped us at our apparent destination. However, it seems the driver decided to let us off at a side door of the hotel. After wandering around aimlessly for 15 minutes, we finally found the front lobby and reception desk. By this time, Erin was so tired of traveling, she just wanted to get to the room to take a shower a little nap before dinner at 9. To our dismay, the hotel we arrived at did not have reservations for us. Hmmm. Apparently there are three different hotels in Barcelona owned by this hotel chain. Who knew? The hotel was kind enough to call the other hotels to help us figure out to which one we really belonged and then hailed a cab for us. (The doorman took forever to hail a cab, so Erin had a good long cry wondering if we would ever reach our destination after traveling far too long that day.) This taxi ride was only about 5 minutes, and ended happily. To our surprise the hotel we were staying in was nicer than any hotel we have ever stayed in, or probably ever will stay in again.

We both had to try out the super fancy shower in our hotel room and got to rest a little before meeting some other people for dinner at 9. We ate with a group both Friday and Saturday nights at extremely nice restaraunts, though we are not completely sure we would choose to eat octopus or duck liver if we had our choice. It is indeed true that the Spanish people eat pretty late and enjoy their meals over a long time period. Our reservations at 9 were about an hour early than most people start eating, but we're glad we started at 9 since meals both nights lasted about 4 hours! Besides the octopus and foie gras, the food was really excellent!

Saturday we took a van tour with the group we were in Barcelona with. During a few hours we saw everything on our list to see in Barcelona and learned all the history and interesting facts there are to know about those sights. It turned out to be a good thing we saw so much on Saturday because after dinner Saturday night John started a fit of throwing up everything he'd eaten in the past two days, which was to last all night Saturday and through the day Sunday. We don't know quite what the food poisoning was from, but we're guessing the shellfish salads that we ate as appetizers on Saturday evening. Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep Saturday night. Erin was feeling fine, just tired, when she woke up Sunday, so she went downstairs to eat breakfast and returned to take another nap. Sunday afternoon Erin wanted to take a walk to the big park nearby the hotel and also go out onto the beach. John insisted he felt better and went along too. He only got sick once, in the Parc de la Ciutadella, which Erin will now always remember as the park where John threw up in the bushes. Fortunately after sitting with Erin at dinner that evening John felt completely better. We say fortunate because Erin started feeling pains in her stomach after dinner Sunday. She never lost any of her food, but she sure didn't sleep well Sunday night.

Ah yes, Saturday afternoon. This was the afternoon at the spa. We do not know how to "spa." Erin has had massages before, but never full spa treatment. It turns out the package Erin got at the spa included time in the steam/sauna/ice fountain/jacuzzi room, a massage, a manicure, and a facial. This was too many hours of sitting for Erin so she cut out the facial at the end. When the woman left her in the changing room she was not quite sure what to do. She had not brought a bathing suit with her since it is obviously not swimming weather right now. So, wearing the cotton bathrobe provided, she stood around in the sauna/steam/ice fountain/jacuzzi room wondering what to do. The sauna and steam room were just too hot to stay in. She still has no idea what to do with an ice fountain. Yikes! Fortunately soon after the masseuse came in to get her for her massage. Even John got a manicure and massage! While Erin enjoyed her manicure lying down, eyes covered, with a hand and arm massage, John had his manicure while getting his hair cut. John also enjoyed his very first massage. It was a unique experience, but we are definitely not "spa" people.

In summary, Barcelona is absolutely beautiful and sunny. In fact, Spain is so beautiful we would really love to travel back there sometime, hopefully without any illness to disturb our vacation. Our trip was stressful, fun, relaxing, and miserable all rolled up into three days. It is good to be home. If you go to Barcelona watch out for the shellfish.

Zwarte Pete

If you get your Christmas gifts wrapped in paper with pictures of little black men on it, it's because Erin has yet to find any wrapping paper not featuring the head of Sinter Klaus' little black elf-like helper with a fro. Zwarte Pete is black, we think, because according to the story he was the elf that delivered gifts from Sinter Klaus and got all black from going down chimneys and landing in soot. We realize this would never meet U.S. standards for civil rights and equality so we wish to apologize in advance if we indeed fail to find any other wrapping paper before gifts have to be shipped over for Christmas.

French Fries for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week has never been quite like this before. Erin was actually out of town until Wednesday visiting some friends from the US that happened to be in Cambridge, UK. England was cold, rainy, and foggy as expected, but Cambridge reminded Erin so much of the time she spent in Oxford during college that she absolutely loved it! Really just being in a country where everyone speaks English is all that is necessary to make Erin's vacation perfect - even if they do drive on the wrong side of the road! We even had lunch one day in a great pub complete with leather furniture, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and Guinness and beef pie. Mmmmmm.

Thanksgiving Day had no Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade or turkey...though we tried to get turkey! We took our friends to Harlem, a city only about 20 minutes away from Amsterdam where we got to take a tour of Corrie Ten Boom's house...eventually. When we arrived at the house the first time, the sign said an English tour was to begin in about 30 minutes. So we decided that, rather than stand around in the rain and cold, we would walk the short distance to the town square and see the church where Mozart and Handel played organ concerts. Well, then we ran into a cheese store on our way back to the Ten Boom House and had to buy some cheese. This took longer than expected and when we arrived, only a minute or two late, at the door for our tour, the sign had again changed to read that the next tour would not take place for another couple hours! Ah well. We toured the church and introduced our friends to a real Dutch lunch: coffee, tea, croquettes and toasties. We made sure to get to the door of the house about 10 minutes early so as not to miss the tour.

It was well worth the wait. Corrie Ten Boom was a Christian who organized safe hiding places for Jews and Dutch Resistance workers during World War II. Her own house had a tiny hiding place where seven people ended up being hidden for two days before being rescued and escaping to other hiding places. Corrie Ten Boom and several of her family members were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Corrie survived, miraculously smuggled a Bible into the camp with her and led Bible studies, and then spent the rest of her life evangelizing all over the world and writing many books about her faith and life.

Traffic on the way back to Amsterdam was horrendous. By the time we got home it was about time to take the trams into the centrum for Thanksgiving dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, one of the only places in Amsterdam that serves Thanksgiving dinner. We apparently got there too early since our reservations were not until 7:40, so the hostess would not seat us. We wandered around the canals of the centrum for about 20 minutes and then returned to eat dinner. We must have set a world record for the longest time a party has stayed in the Hard Rock Cafe. Once seated it took a while to get our drinks and for the waitress to return to take our orders. Unfortunately, she told us the last of the Thanksgiving dinners had just been ordered. We assumed the table of 38 next to us had something to do with that! Oh well. We had all decided that if the turkey was gone, we would all be OK with ordering other things. We did ask if there was any pumpkin pie left. Our waitress went to check and indeed there were some pieces left, so she assured us she would reserve four pieces for us. Everyone ordered hamburgers and french fries (except for Erin - chicken pasta for her) and sat back to wait.....and wait, and wait, and wait. I think we waited about an hour and a half for our food. Our friends were about to chew their arms off they were so hungry! When we finally saw our waitress again, we asked for some crackers or something, which she promised to bring but never got around to. The manager had to visit our table several times to apologize for the slowness in the kitchen. The food was good when it finally arrived, but then we waited again for our desserts to appear. Once again, the manager visited our table to explain something about a mix up in the kitchen: no pumpkin pie! Actually there was one piece left, which we let one of our friends have and the manager gave the rest of us free desserts. Our waitress showed up after the fact to explain she was too upset to come talk to us herself. Apparently she and the chef were having an argument and not talking to each other so the pies got sold to other customers without her knowledge. She offered us any coffee or tea we wanted on the house, so we got some free coffee to go with our free brownie sundaes. After four hours, no turkey, and no pumpkin pie, we got a bill for our meal cut in half with free desserts and free coffees!

Even though dinner was much longer and not quite as holiday-ish as we had planned, we had a great view of the canal and boats and a long time to catch up with our friends from the US. All in all it was a good Thanksgiving. (Erin definitely prefers chocolate brownies to pumpkin pie anyway!)

Brrrrrrrrrr - lin

A little over a week ago, almost two weeks ago now(!), we left for Berlin. The last 12 days have been a whirlwind. Thursday afternoon we left for Berlin and arrived home Sunday night. Monday morning Erin left again for Cambridge and returned with some friends Wednesday afternoon. She was home for less than 48 hours before we both left again Friday morning for Barcelona. We got home yesterday afternoon for good. Well, at least for this week. John leaves next Sunday for a week in California and Erin leaves in a couple weeks to fly to Munich; she'll meet John there for more adventures. But we're jumping ahead of ourselves.

Despite the freezing temperatures, heavy winds, and various types of precipitation, we really enjoyed Berlin! It is a much larger city than we had imagined. It is a shame most of it was destroyed in World War II, but that allows it to have many more open green spaces than most cities that just continue to be built up with more and more buildings through the years. While there are cranes, construction crews, and boarded-up windows everywhere you turn, there is also such a reminder of recent historical events around every corner. We were amazed and incredulous to be standing directly on top of Hitler's underground bunker where he spent his last days, to see the very train tracks where so many were carted off like cattle to concentration camps, and to be just feet away from the Berlin Wall. Thanks to our guided bike tour in English we learned more history, or should we say we were reminded again of all that history that somehow lodged into the recesses of our brains during many years of elementary, middle, and high school, and saw more sights than we would ever have been able to had we been walking around on our own. We highly recommend Fat Tire Bike Tours and Mike's Bike Tours if you're ever in a city over here in Europe.

Ahhh, the varying precipitation! Erin experienced snow flurries and light rain on Friday while John was cozy and secure in a small meeting room for 8 hours learning about really exciting accounting updates. Luckily during the heaviest snow, Erin and Annette were eating lunch (in a Schlotzsky's! yea for Schlotzsky's!) with a beautiful view of the city being covered in snow. Then Saturday during our bike tour, we witnessed hail followed by snow flurries. Again, we happened to be enjoying some potato soup, chili, and hot chocolate while trying to thaw out our frozen hands and feet in a biergarten when the sky decided to drop a lot of hail. Once back on the bikes, we only got rained on a bit. This is not to say the biking was by any means comfortable since we were so cold we were beginning to wonder what the signs of frostbite might be. It's funny how even the most uncomfortable situations are balanced out by the fact that you are seeing astounding historical sites and beautiful buildings and are learning interesting city facts!

We do not think it precipitated much on Sunday. We spent much of our afternoon at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum discovering all the ways people attempted to cross the border between East and West Berlin. It was a great museum. Everyone else thought so too; it was so packed that at times Erin was thankful she is not claustrophobic.

After Erin spent so much time walking around Berlin Friday with Annette, she decided the maps make things look deceptively closer than they are in reality. The rest of the weekend John and Erin traveled as much as possible by the U-bahn and the S-bahn. Erin read in her literature the difference between the two: the U-bahn is the underground rail system that sometimes travels above ground, not to be confused with the S-bahn, which is the aboveground rail system that sometimes travels below ground! We only suffered one unfortunate mishap. Erin knew from riding to the center of the city on Friday which U-bahn line to take from the hotel to get to the radio tower where the bike tour was supposed to begin Saturday morning. It seems the city decided to do work right in the middle of this line beginning Saturday morning. About five stops right in the middle of the line were inaccessible. When our train got to the last stop possible going toward the center of the city, an announcement was made, in German of course, and most of the people on the train got off...not everybody, just most. (We later found out that the only people left on the train were those who couldn't understand German!) After sitting on the stopped train for about 10 minutes, we finally started moving again...in the direction we had just come from! When we arrived at the first stop back, we decided to get off. Fortunately for us, just as we arrived in the station, another announcement was being made about the line in English! This is when we understood that this U-bahn would not be able to take us where we needed to go. With expert public transport map-reading skills we ascertained that we needed to go back almost to where we had started and take an S-bahn to the radio tower. We hesitated several times about which S-bahn to take as not all the stops were posted when a train arrived at the station, but we finally figured it out. By this time, of course, we were going to be very late for the bike tour. The brochure had said it starts at 10, but if you're late it's OK since they spend the first half an hour or so just talking at the meeting point. Well, making it by 10:30 was cutting it close! Who knew 45 minutes would not be enough time to travel just into the city center. What took 25 minutes on Friday took us over an hour on Saturday! We did make it to the bike tour meeting point just a few minutes before the group was about to set off. We think all we missed was a chance to chat with the other participants and have some coffee and tea.

With a more comprehensive knowledge of the public transit system and an expectation that temperatures are very cold in Berlin, we would definitely like to visit there again. Perhaps next time in the spring or summer when it might be, oh, 40 or 50 degrees farenheit.

Berlin

We returned from Berlin a few hours ago, and are getting ready for a very busy week. Erin goes to Cambridge tomorrow to visit some friends for a couple of days. She'll then bring them back on Wednesday for Thanskgiving dinner before we leave for Barcelona on Friday. We enjoyed Berlin very much and would like to return sometime soon. John had training on Friday so Erin and Annette explored the city during the day, and they met up with John and Jacob Friday night for dinner at a nearby mall. On Saturday we took a five-hour bike tour and learned quite a bit about the city. We also enjoyed some tasty hot chocolate and soup at an East Berlin beer hall. We saw snow and hail during the tour, and had lost feeling in most parts of our bodies by the time the ride was over. Make sure to visit our photo album to share in our experiences. We have a whole lot more to say, but we have to rest up for the rest of our adventures this week.