We Highly Recommend Switzerland

Erin’s parents are here…well, they’re not actually here right now; they’ve been in France for the last 5 days and are returning to Amsterdam this evening. Her parents stayed with us for about 4 days before heading off to a tour of the Loire Valley in France and will be in Amsterdam again for the rest of this week until they leave Saturday. John took last week off work but is back to work this week. However, he's just in the Amsterdam office and will be working normal 8-hour days. Thus, we are in the middle of a vacation, kind of.

Since Erin’s parents left Thursday morning for France, we decided to take a 4-day weekend trip to Switzerland. We drove, so that took up two of our days. The drive was a bit longer than the computer directions had estimated: closer to 11 hours than 8 ½. Perhaps this had to do with road construction and the fact that, at one point on our way to Switzerland, it took us almost 2 hours to drive 12 km! The drive was definitely worth it. We didn’t get to see much of Switzerland, but the Geneva and Lake Geneva area is absolutely gorgeous! The weather was perfect, too. After the last couple weeks of cold, rainy weather in Amsterdam we were ecstatic to enjoy weather in the upper 70s and lots of sunshine! We definitely want to visit other areas of the country and stay for longer than a couple days sometime.

We stayed almost on the border of France and Switzerland right near Geneva. While the apartment we rented was cheap and very convenient to Geneva, staying right on the French side of the border meant that we had to cross over and go through the border patrol each day. Yep, Switzerland is not part of the EU so there are still border patrols. After arriving the first evening the border patrol just waved us through. However, the following morning they motioned for us to pull over to a parking spot. The guard did not speak any English and it is a wonder we even figured out what he was asking for. We had our passports ready to hand over, but then he wanted something else having to do with the car. After unloading everything from the glove box and extracting every sort of important-looking piece of paper we finally found what we thought was the insurance, but that’s not what he wanted. We then handed him what looked like something saying John is legally renting the car with an official signature on it at the bottom. That must be what he wanted since he took it, along with our passports, inside the tiny office. He came back a few minutes later, returned our things, and waved us on. Whew. All the car documents are in Dutch so we don’t really know if he actually figured out what he was looking for on that piece of paper we gave him. The second day the guards stopped us and started saying something to us in French. John told them we speak English. Then they asked if we speak German or Italian (we guess those are the only other languages some of the guards on duty spoke). We said “no” and they just let us continue on our way.

Another down side of Switzerland not being part of the EU is that they do not use Euro currency. When we went into Geneva the first evening we were there to eat dinner, we ended up parking in a parking garage. It was actually really cheap since it was a week night, but when we were ready to leave at about 10:30 we discovered the parking garage does not take credit cards. Soooo, we walked around for a while until we found an ATM and took some cash out. After returning the second time to the parking garage we found out that the machine also did not take 50 franc bills unless the total amount owed is 30 francs or more. We owed only about 3 francs. Hmmm. Of course the ATM machines do not distribute amounts less than 50 francs so we decided we might just have to buy something at McDonalds to break our 50 franc bill. We hadn’t had dessert so we thought a McFlurry would be perfect…and it was. We ate the ice cream on our third walk back to the parking garage, now with appropriate change in hand, and finally got our car out of the garage. Thank goodness for McDonalds – it was about the only thing open that late at night!
Our first full day was pretty uneventful, if you can believe that. Well, except for being stopped by the border patrol. We toured Geneva in the absolutely beautiful weather. The old part of town is really pretty. We love the Mediterranean architecture, red roofs, stone streets and fountains everywhere. Jean Calvin, the famous Reformer, was from Geneva so there are lots of things to see involving the Reformation in the city. We went to Bastions Park and saw the Reformation Wall with statues of all the famous Reformers. We also saw a chaotic group consisting of about 15 2-year olds with 4 adults and several strollers built to hold 4 kids at a time and a few people playing chess on the giant chess boards in the park.

We visited the Espace St-Pierre which includes the cathedral where Calvin preached for about 30 years and a tower you can climb to see a great view over the whole city and lake. There are some archeological ruins underneath the cathedral and plaza that were really interesting. Some of the unearthed ruins date back to the 1st century before Christ! The International Museum of the Reformation is also in Espace St-Pierre. It’s housed in a really pretty, large old mansion and is very informative. We didn’t actually go through the entire museum since we were getting hungry and Erin was starting to get really tired, so we left the museum in search of sustenance. We had baguettes for lunch every single day, but they were so good (and easy to find). There’s a park, the Promenade de l’Observatiore, near the old part of town that is on a hill and overlooks some of the city and the Jet d’eau, Geneva’s famous fountain in the lake. We decided to eat there and lay down in the shade for a short rest before going to see the Jet d’eau, which shoots 7 tons of water 140 meters into the air and was built in 1891, up close.

We got to the Jet d’eau just in time. After we walked out on the dock, got a bit wet, and took pictures of the famous landmark we headed to the other side of the city across the water. Soon after reaching the other side we noticed the fountain was no longer on. We read that sometimes they turn it off during gusty winds. We think it might have been getting a bit gusty just as we were on the dock near the fountain because that’s why we got so much wetter than the previous tourists. It was so sunny though that we dried pretty fast. The rest of the day we just walked around the city, enjoying the sights and the parks and noticing all the expensive cars: Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls Royce…we saw them all! People in Geneva have some money.

Our second day involved driving around Lake Geneva. We stopped at the Chateau de Chillon, a castle dating from Roman times and built up a lot in the 11th-13th centuries. The castle sits on a rock right on a cliff of Lake Geneva and there are great views of the Alps from the towers. It’s quite a big place and we spent several hours wandering around. We stopped again further around the lake in a town called Vevey. Saturday was the day for weddings in Switzerland. We saw a few wedding parties as we were walking along the lake shore in Vevey and passed a couple vehicle processions as we were driving. The processions always begin with a car covered in flowers and everyone honks to wish the bride and groom congratulations. Absolutely everyone we saw in Vevey was eating ice cream. There were even people eating ice cream standing in line to order more ice cream! We decided to join in and got a couple cones ourselves. Apparently the west and north shores of Lake Geneva are good places to grow vineyards and some good wine comes from that area. It has something to do with being in the area between the lake and the mountains. We passed a lot of vineyards on our drive back to Geneva. We arrived in town just in time for dinner and Erin finally got to try some of the “famous” filets de perches that we kept reading and hearing about. It was OK. Maybe the place we decided to eat at wasn’t exactly first class, but we got to sit outside while we dined.

Oh, Erin almost ran into a motorcycle while trying to reverse out of a parking spot at a rest stop just as about 50 bikers pulled into all the spots surrounding our car, but we won’t go into that. Nothing too alarming happened, other than a few bikers getting a bit angry at Erin before she finally got the car out of the spot and sped away.

So, in summary, our trip to Switzerland was beautiful! It was all about being outside and soaking up the sunshine before returning to Amsterdam, where it is rainy and cold…still.

Belgian Chocolate

Though everywhere in Europe is starting to get really crowded because tourist season is upon us, we feel oddly more comfortable traveling about not being able to speak the native language. Even though we do live here, it is sometimes easier to pretend to be a genuine tourist, completely ignorant of all things European. And now that there are tourists everywhere you look, it's much easier to fit in. :-)

Last Saturday we visited Antwerp, Belgium. It is still amazing, especially being from Texas, that in a matter of an hour we can be in a different country and then be back home in time for dinner. If we were to drive an hour from home in Dallas, we might very well still be in Dallas! Antwerp was very nice. The weather there on Saturday was beautiful, warm and sunny. We got to eat some Italian food for lunch outside watching the tourists pass by. We also walked around the city discovering the quiet little courtyards and gardens that mysteriously hide among buildings right in the center of town. We witnessed two wedding parties and a funeral and, of course, indulged in some Belgian chocolate (some of which we are saving for our next visitors, Erin's parents - you're the lucky winners!). Apparently Antwerp is famous for chocolate hands. That's right - hands. According to local museums and chocolate shops, it's a symbol of friendship and kind of a motto for the city, so we now own a box of chocolate hands. (Although, some research has turned up that it might actually symbolize the hands of Congolese that King Leopold II of Belgium had cut off when Belgium ruled a colony in Congo. We can understand why, 100 years later, the town has decided to reinvent the symbolism. How often do we wish we could rewrite history?) In any case, chocolate hands are one of the weirdest things we've ever seen.

Erin's parents are coming this Saturday for a couple weeks. It's strange that when family comes to visit us here, it's like a vacation for us as well! We would never have taken time off work just because family was coming to visit us in the U.S. Come to think of it, no one would come visit us for two weeks in Dallas! But now that we're living in Europe, people come for much longer and it affords us a great reason to stop counseling and accounting for a week or two and travel around seeing and doing fun things. We're looking forward to it!

It's Hot!

The past week or so has been sunny and humid with temperatures in the 70s. Erin is always so hot that one would never guess she actually moved here from Texas!

While jogging in Beatrix Park this morning (a regular activity for Erin now since it is much more pleasant outside than it is in the stuffy gym) she discovered that the big white swan, whose picture is on our flickr site, hatched her chicks! Mom, dad, and the seven fuzzy babies were milling around in the water near the nest.

We noticed it has been quite a while since we last wrote. This means two things: John is still working all the time and Erin's life has become pretty routine and normal. Erin loves her volunteer work as a counselor and is enjoying being the team leader for the ministry leading meetings, sending out e-mails, and basically supporting and caring for the other counselors in the ministry. She's also still singing in a praise team at church so that took up a lot of her time last weekend.

For those of you worried about John, he has had a couple of weekends off and actually got his hair cut last Saturday. Let's just say this experience is making him reevaluate a lot of things. It is true, for both of us, that living overseas is teaching us a lot more about ourselves than we had imagined. Normally one thinks they will move to a foreign country to learn all about other cultures and places. While this is true to an extent, much more learning has been going on in relation to our own personalities, reactions, and desires. John will get a break in about a week when Erin's parents come to visit. Two weekends ago we finally got to visit the famous Keukenhof gardens to see the tulips, and last weekend we visited a street market in an area of Amsterdam called Jordaan and biked around a huge park almost across the street from where we live. Since we haven't written recently, hopefully everyone can look at the pictures to get an idea of what's been going on.

The last couple of days Erin has been using her limited Dutch to ask for things in stores. People seem to know what she is saying so apparently she is not completely off base when she speaks, but everyone so far has replied and spoken the entire rest of the conversation in English. Being so short and probably speaking Dutch with an American accent is a tip off. Even though people will usually continue the conversation in English, they seem much more friendly just knowing that Erin has tried to say something in Dutch.

That's about all for now. John has a really funny story about spreadsheets and coffee so stay tuned!

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.