Whine and Chocolate or The Great Ghent Christmas Disaster

My kids love history… sometimes.

It’s hard to predict when they will embrace something, or when they will start marking the minutes until we return to the car and start the journey home.

Yesterday was a freak show.

Ghent is this lovely little Flemish city. It is filled with charming 16th century architecture, three rivers, medieval bridges, gothic churches, and art masterpieces. It was even rated one of Lonely Planet's Top 10 Cities to see in 2011.

I tried to sell this little Belgian daytrip to my kids by offering a trip to a castle, a climb of a historic tower, Belgian chocolate, and later, as my arguments fell on disinterested ears, french fries.

I knew we were in trouble when we had not even left the parking garage before Jack started asking how long it would be until we could go back home.

In their defense, it was cold: damp and cold.  But surely we should be able to see a few things?

The castle Gravensteen is everything you’d want in a medieval structure. It was rough and ragged around the edges, “a Keep” Jack called it. It was built for defense, but later used as a prison.

Unlike the Tower of London, there were was no glossing over of the Gravensteen’s gory history here. They made it very clear that this place was used for torture and execution. They had a very informative display of torture devices, how long the torture could be endured, and which room was used for which application. When they started using life sized manikins to make their point, I had to get Audrey out of the room. They did have a cool guillotine complete with a burlap sack to catch the head. You don’t get an education like this every day. Any questions, kids?

Guillotine

The whole place made me glad that we live here and now when places like Gravensteen are museums and any form of capital punishment is debated, considered and reconsidered.

My kids, on the other hand, were wishing themselves dead.

The whining had been a background noise throughout the castle, but now we were back out on the street. The thought that we would just wander around the old city until we saw a few things was too much for Jack. He started to plan a mutiny. When Audrey started crying because her hands were cold, I thought it was time to pack it up and go home.

Thank God for Belgian chocolate. We ducked into a little shop called Van Hoorebeke on Sint Baafsplein. This Victorian chocolate shop had curved glass counters and shelves filled with fresh chocolates. The aroma from the kitchen below was absolutely divine. While Audrey warmed up, Jack and Jordan made selections from the counter. For five euros in chocolate, I had bought myself some time.

We ventured in to the Gothic church of St. Bavo, where I had heard the Flemish masterpiece “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” had recently been restored. Access to the side chapel with the “Adoration” was four euros per person. I approached Walt and made my pitch. “Walt, there is a very famous early Flemish masterpiece here. It’s four euros to see it.” I watched Walt’s eyes glass over as I spoke.

There is an advantage to 15 years of marriage. You tend to be able to read your partner. I changed my tact and offered, “We could pay that four euros, or I could show you pictures of it on-line when we get home.” Walt broke into a large grin and we moved on.

If you’ve seen the “Adoration” by the van Eyck brothers, let me know if it was worth the money. I’m dying to know.

So that was our afternoon. The kids outright refused a trip up the belfry of the Cloth Hall, a world heritage site. We spent a few minutes at the merry-go-round. Then it was time to pack the kids up and head home. Jack smiled for the first time that afternoon.

Later, I had an interesting conversation with the kids about what kind of travel they like to do. They agreed that all trips should involve an amusement park with roller coasters, oh, and lots of kitty cats.

I think Flemish and Dutch Medieval cities are done for while. Too bad considering that there are about 50 amazing cities just like that around here. Sigh…

The Christmas Market in Aachen, Germany

 I spent yesterday in Aachen, Germany enjoying the Christmas Market there.   Here are a few images of my visit.

Hand cranked Street Organ.  Don't be fooled by his big smile,
this guy was working hard.

The window displays here were so beautiful,
I had to include a few.

Lekker!

Fresh Roasted Chestnuts!  Despite their lovely aroma,
I've learned they are the one food I can't stand.

In this ancient city, this modern fountain added some whimsey.



Detail of fountain



Hand blown Christmas Ornaments

Candy Shop

These Springerle molds remind me of my Grandfather and his
rock hard anise Christmas cookies

The patterns haven't changed much in the last 200 years.

Aachen Cathedral - Contruction of inner octagonal
church completed in 800 AD.



The Throne of Charlemange



Ossuary of Charlemange

Hope you enjoyed the photos.  Aachen was just amazing.  I'm looking forward to going back sometime soon with the whole family!







Duinrell: A Campy Little Amusement Park with a Bad Rap

It’s funny how a place can get a reputation, especially in a community as small and encapsulated as the American ex-pats here at the school. Duinrell, for some reason, has a bad rap with my crowd. People avoid it like the plague, and they will drive an hour or more to go to a different theme park. This summer I was pleasantly surprised to find Duinrell’s reputation was largely undeserved.

Originally a royal estate, the park is still owned by the Count Van Zuylen Van Nijevelt. Fine ancient birch trees line every path. The park designers managed to nestle the rides in amongst the mature trees. I love the cool, breezy, and soothing effect of the shade. In direct contrast to other theme parks I’ve attended, the rides here are almost silent. The cool green of the shade and the quiet rides create a most relaxing experience.

Like Dutch Wonderland back home, Duinrell is old and maybe a little campy, but I find it charming. I spent six fun-filled hours there yesterday with four girls under the age of seven. We could have stayed there for days.

Jordan loves the children’s rollercoaster. I love the Water Swings. Audrey is now the master of the towering sack slide.

If you are looking to wear your children out, take a picnic lunch to the tables at the bottom of the sack slide. I let my kids eat for the three minutes they remain interested in their cheese sandwiches and then watch them tackle the slide. The assent to the top is a real calf burner, and my kids wear themselves out tearing up the ramp and launching themselves back down the slide. The slide is much faster if you leave the “sack” at the bottom of the ramp and slide down on your bottom. Watch out for friction burns, though. Yesterday, Jordan suffered just such a burn and then asked me to kiss her little tush to “make it better”. I declined.

10 meter slide

We spent over an hour in the two large playgrounds. Each, in Dutch style, offers a variety of absolutely fun, potentially dangerous, play equipment. Jordan fell about six feet off the bridge of a wooden jungle gym. It was a bad fall and I was relieved to see that no limbs were twisted. Within minutes, though, she was hobbling over to the other playground to climb the spiral stairs to the 10 meter sliding board. Today she is sore, but not at all sorry. Tough girl.

The Water Swings

The whole back of the park has rides for adults and big kids. “The Falcon” is a small but thrilling rail roller coaster guaranteed to leave you breathless and smiling. There are multiple water rides as well as a full blown water park.

There is a ton more to see and do than I have time to put down here. To plan your visit or peruse the rides, more information is available at http://www.duinrell.com/. Entrance is 18.50 euro per person over three years of age.  A Season Pass is a steal at only 52.00 pp.  Parking is 5 euros, but if you park in the small lot across the street from the park entrance, parking is free. There are many fast food type restaurants available. The food is adequate but expensive (Warning!  The coffee is terrible). Picnic lunches are recommended. Have fun!

The Apenheul

Small primates roam free in the park.

Let me start by saying some things in Europe are just MORE FUN.

I attribute this directly to a general lack of litigation lawyers and judges sympathetic to whining. The legal burden is directly on each individual to look out for his or her own personal safety. Like winners of the “Darwin Awards”, if you get hurt or killed doing something stupid in a public place, the Dutch legal system assumes you were not smart enough to stay in the gene pool.

This in mind, the owners of public attractions are not at the mercy of liability insurance policies or fear of litigation when they design their facilities. Things are allowed to be fun.

The Apenheul is a very special primate park. It was the first such park in the world to allow the animals to live in a forest-like setting and walk among the visitors. As an American, it was truly shocking to see these little guys in the bushes or trees right next to me.

I asked one of the zoo attendants if people ever get bitten. His response was, “Yes, of course, especially if they try to touch or pick-up the monkeys.” How long do you think this place would stay open back in the States?

Interacting with the animals was absolutely stunning. Walt and I had never ever experienced anything like it. The trees were alive with animals! We could hear troops of monkeys calling to one another as they watched us walk past. If we were very still, they might come down to see who we were.

The children were mesmerized. They stood in awe of these little creatures: fascinated by their speed, enamored by their play, terrified by their fights. Everything happened all around them, right where they could see it, sometimes even at their feet.

The designers of the park included many playgrounds for children. These lovely wooden and rope structures were not all that different than the habitats for the monkeys. Made for human primates, these playscapes towered two stories or more from the ground. Huge rope net tunnels ascended to long spiraling steel slides. Complicated rope jungle gyms, sometimes requiring the child to travel hand-over-hand with feet dangling three meters in the air, lured my kids ever upward. The children were reluctant to leave one area to see what might be in the next.

Did we get bitten? Yes, twice. Walt and I were both nipped when we let the squirrel monkeys get a little too close. (Walt would like me to place a disclaimer here that he was innocently repacking our bag when a monkey came up behind him and nipped him and was not being foolish in any way). I should also add that none of the children were nipped. This is most likely because they had enough sense to step back when the monkeys came in for a closer look, not shove a camera in their little faces like their mommy. I also had a ring-tailed lemur use my head as a springboard on his way to another location. Was it all worth it? You bet!

This is the little stinker who nipped me.

The whole day was magical. Upon leaving, our son (who had received a punishment for a poor attitude during the Great Alkmaar Disaster, 2010) hugged us both and thanked us spontaneously for a “perfect day”. This is high praise from a 10 year old. Exhausted and happy, the children slept the whole drive home.

If you would like to plan a trip, more information can be found at http://www.apenheul.nl/. Since the park is set up in a circle, we avoided the large crowd by visiting the exhibits in reverse order. This worked out perfectly. We had the park to ourselves for half of our visit. We brought a picnic lunch which we carried through the park in a special "monkey proof bag" provided for free by the entry staff.  There were many nice picnic areas along the way to choose for a lunch location.  The day was not cheap. Tickets for the five of us were 88.00 euros. It was money well spent. Our time there was priceless.

More photos, taken by a fellow blogger with a wonderful eye, can be found at  http://www.tigscreations.com/blog/2010/08/15/apenheuls-squirrel-monkeys-like-diamonds/

Whine and Cheese: A Brief Visit to the Alkmaar Market

Ok, so things don’t always go according to plan. I broke one of my cardinal rules for traveling with children: avoid all places where the kids are forced to stand still.

In my defense, I had no way of knowing. It all started out with the best of intentions....

The city of Alkmaar is famous for cheese.

On Friday mornings during the summer, this medieval city holds a traditional cheese market. There has been a cheese market here on this square just like this one every summer since 1693.

In the market square, 28 tons of farm cheese wheels are laid out in front of the Waag, the weighing house. Buyer, seller, and exporter meet to inspect and taste the cheese. A group of lab coat clad gentlemen, the inspectors, core random wheels of cheese and assess it for taste, texture, color, and fat content. This is good work if you can get it.

The whole transaction is done in the tradtional Dutch style; the buyer and seller even rhythmically slap hands to negotiate the price of the cheese.

The very best part is the cheese porters. These twenty-eight men carry the cheese to and from the weigh house on beautiful colored curved stretchers. Wearing special uniforms of white with colored hats representing their guild, they run with a special loping gate to accommodate the weight of the cheese and the shape of the stretcher. The whole plein is a flurry of movement and color: the bright yellow cheese, the men in white with their colored hats, and the colored stretchers all moving among the rows of cheese wheels around the plein.

Ah, yes, certainly worth a visit. But what they don’t tell you about in the guide books is the crushing crowd. News to my ex-pat ears, the Alkmaar Cheese Market is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Holland. The tour busses full of persons from every corner of Europe descended on the Waagplein like locust. We got there early and had a lovely spot at the edge of the square. I had brought a small picnic blanket for the kids to sit on as they watched. We had a backpack full of snacks. But the crush of the crowd became too great. The kids could no longer move. We patiently waited the hour until the market started, but by then the crowd was twelve deep. The children began to whine.

I don’t know about your family, but when the whining starts here things go bad in a hurry. Mom and Dad start by cajoling, move on to bribery, and finish with threats. None of these measures can stop the inevitable descent into anarchy.

After 10 minutes of watching the proceedings, the kids had had enough. We stayed for an additional 30 minutes because I really wanted to see the porters do their porting thing. But at such a cost!

To the joy of the people trying to take pictures over our shoulders, we left the Waagplein and searched for another distraction in the city. It was too late though, the damage had been done. The sulkiest child was unable to pull out of his tail spin of darkness. We had a quick lunch on the edge of a canal and then headed back to the parking garage.

As we drove away, Walt and I considering which babysitters we could hire to watch the kids for the next outing, the sulky one cheered up considerably. When he lamented that he did not get to see the Alkmaar Bier Museum, I started to channel Miss Hannigan from the movie Annie. But my parenting skills are frequently challenged like this. It was time to think more about taking deep breaths.

Today we are laughing about the whole thing (ok, except the sulky one who got a punishment). We wonder what would have happened if we had brought along and released the field mouse we had recently caught in the kitchen. Or maybe a box full of mice?

In any case, we have some great pictures. Today we are off to the zoo: a destination with a much more reliable outcome.

Haarlem and the Picnic Lunch

Holland has been full of surprises. One recent surprise was the city of Haarlem. I honestly knew a lot more about the Harlem in New York City than its Dutch namesake. But there we were, after a mad dash for the train, standing in Haarlem’s art nouveau train station, wondering which way was the town Centrum.

About 12 miles west of Amsterdam, this city is a treasure trove of European history. Occupations, sieges, public executions, black plague, huge fires, divine interventions: Haarlem has it all.

Ahhh, yes, the history, but today we are traveling with small children, so no history for us. We will settle for a pleasant walk.

First stop was the Grote Market. Pretty as a jewel box, it is well appointed with the brick and slate of 16th century Dutch architecture. At one end is the town hall. Behind that is the building that was once the Count of Orange’s Hunting Lodge. Very cool. By chance, today was Market Day, so the town square was bustling with 40 different vendors. The stalls were filled with produce, meat, chicken, fish, cheese, and clothing of all kinds. There was even a stall for bike locks and accessories. We found a “World Market” stall selling fair trade hand crafts from around the world. The kids fell in love with an Indonesian thunder stick and an African animal skin drum.

Next stop, The Grote Kerk of St. Bavo. There has been a Christian church on this site since the 9th century, but this Gothic structure was consecrated in 1559. I loved it because it had an amazing herring bone wooden ceiling dated 1509. The kids loved it because they could spread out and explore. The floor of the cathedral contains about 1600 graves, each one marked with a full body sized floor stone. Jack and Jordan amused themselves by jumping from grave to grave, saying, “Sorry… Sorry… Sorry...”. I pulled Jack aside and told him that he just needs to watch out, because at some point a hand could reach out from under a stone and “GRAB HIM AROUND THE ANKLE”. At this point I grabbed him on the ankle and he jumped about a mile. Gotta love being a parent:)

This day I planned ahead and packed a picnic lunch. Every time I pack a lunch, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. We spread our blanket out on the steps of the statue of Laurens Janszoon Coster and ate cous cous salad and/or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A Spanish guitar player serenaded us as we ate al fresco. We enjoyed the sunshine and watched the crowd go by.

After quick walk to the VVV (tourist information bureau), it was time to go home. The kids were getting tired. We’ve learned that it’s better to leave a half an hour too early than a half an hour too late.

Haarlem is a great little gem of a city. I’m looking forward to going back, maybe without the kids, and seeing the inside of those antique buildings.

Walt and I saw someone on the train with a bakfiets (Dutch cargo bike) like mine. I wouldn’t have thought that my bike could fit on a train, but his did just fine. Bakfiets by train…. The possibilities are endless.

Fall in The Netherlands

After six months abroad, I can say that we are finding a sense of routine here in Holland. We are adjusting to small town life where you might see an acquaintance three or four times during a single day as we all run our errands. I’ve grown accustomed to buying my meats at the butcher and my bread at the bakery and reading store labels in Dutch. The kids assume we will be traveling everywhere possible by bike. We’ve learned to plan ahead in a country with no fast food, no convenience stores, and where almost everything closes from Saturday night to Monday afternoon.

Jack has started saxophone lessons with his soft spoken Greek teacher. Jordan has started ballet with no less than five of her little girl classmates.

Jordan asked me the other day how long it will be until she is fluent in Dutch. I said I didn’t know, but why was she concerned? She stomped her foot and complained, “I’m the ONLY one in my class who speaks just ONE language!”. She is not, of course, but she is one of just three.

Walt has become the seasoned traveler. He just returned from a week long adventure in Nigeria. His itinerary this Fall includes: Qatar, Oman, Siberia, and Florence. He’s had to request extra pages for his passport as well as a whole second passport to ease the logistics of acquiring new visas.

As normal as this strange journey has become, there are still days that remind us that we are VERY far from home.

There was the day I took the kids into an innocent looking gift shop in Amsterdam to purchase some postcards. Down one side of the shop was a selection of bongs, down the other was a selection of sex souvenirs. At the counter were lollipops. This is when the kids decided they wanted a treat. “We have not had a treat all day!”, they complained. Looking closely at the suckers, I realized they were cannabis lollipops…. The saleslady rescued me. She assured the kids, “Oh those? They taste TERRIBLE”.

There are pleasant surprises, as well. We have recently discovered the town of Leiden. This little gem of a city is only two miles away. As beautiful as Amsterdam, it is filled with 15 century architecture, antique drawbridges, and rings and rings of canals.

On October 3rd each year, they celebrate the liberation of their city from the Spanish occupation in 1574 with the making and eating of Hutspot. The Spanish had laid siege to the city. At the brink of starvation, the Leidener’s breached their own dikes, flooding out the Spanish armies. According to legend, the citizens found a huge cauldron in the deserted Spanish camp filled with three ingredients: parsnips, carrots, and onions. They created a soup or mash called Hutspot eaten to this day. This year they have a pot where they hope to cook enough Hutspot for 13,000 people. A world record!

If you have read the book or seen the movie, “The Tale of Despereaux”, you know the tale of Leiden celebrating their soup!

One or two days a week, we bike to the local dairy farm to buy milk, cheese, and eggs. In the little farm house shop they speak no English, but are patient with me as I point to what I need and gesture how much. It is a beautiful ride to the farm. The girls love to stop and visit the calves, goats, kittens, and swans. Jack, on the other hand, complains bitterly that we have to go to the farm again and we couldn’t just go straight home from school…. Some things never change.

Since the loss of our Casey-dog this summer, we have been a pet–free family. The kids have been begging for a pet to love here in Holland. I have been resisting, knowing what all mother’s know, that this pet will be my responsibility. As if in an answer to a prayer, a neighborhood cat started visiting our back garden. This lovely Siamese is painfully shy. The kids talk to her and coax her with milk and (of all things) hamburger, but she only flees from their affections. Lately, though, she has become more bold. She approaches our patio doors and looks in. One night we looked up from the living room to see her standing in our kitchen waiting for us to notice her. And so, in a way, we have a pet. The children plan what to put out for her to drink or eat. They watch carefully for her arrival. They celebrate any attention she might pay them. Everyone, even the cat, is happy.

I should go. My house is in painful need of attention.

Please write to us. Another wave of homesickness is upon us, and at one time or another in the past week, the children and I have been lost in longing for things familiar.