Obligatory Windmill Entry

I just realized, almost 2 ½ months of blog and not a single entry devoted to Windmills? Shame on me, my readers must be thinking I was “hit on the head by a windmill” to quote a famous Dutch saying. Yes, I do shamefully admit my blog on Holland does not contain even a single entry on windmills (or one on clogs, tulips, dikes or cheese even!) Well, now you can all rest easy, finally an entry devoted to windmills.

Today, Rob and I visited one of the famous windmill parks in the area. It is called Kinderdyke (“child dyke”). There are 4 different legends about why it is names such, the most interesting being that during a famous 14 century flood, a baby cradle was floating down the river, Moses-like. A cat was perched on the top of the basket rocking it so the baby would not drown. No, I did not make that one up just because I love cats, really!

Anyways, Holland has so many windmills because they were often used to drain excess water to create more land. Kinderdyke has about 19 windmills. People still live in many of the windmills, so Holland’s love of windmills continues. A lot of live revolves around windmills, and many sayings such as “he is as crazy as if he was hit on the head by a windmill” that I used before.



When a windmill is not being used, the positioning of the 4 still blades can be varied for different messages. Tilted one way means a “blessed event” such as a baby or wedding in the resident family, and in the opposite direction means a funeral. I think there are even more positions to interpret in “windmill-ology”, but these are the 2 I remember. Defiantly a country “gek op” as the Dutch say, or “crazy about” windmills!

A visit to Antwerp

To see all the pictures from the trip, look here

On Sunday I went to Antwerp, Belgium for the evening with Rob and friends Andre and Astrid. It is still very strange to me to think of going to another country for an evening jaunt. Antwerp, the largest Belgium city near us, is about 1 hour away by car from our house. Sometime, people go to Antwerp just to see a movie as they have the largest movie theater in both Holland and Belgium. Some day soon I will post a blog entry saying “I popped over to Belgium to see the latest movie for a quick afternoon visit”.



In this case, we went as tourists, or tried to. Where the Americans have blond jokes, the Dutch have Belgian jokes. “How many Belgians does it take to…., 3 Belgians walk into a bar…”. In this case, they organized a “car free day” in the city center, blocking all the roads to the center, and also it turned out the 3 largest parking structures. There was no extra parking or shuttles, so we drove in circles for 1.5 hours before we found a parking spot. I think we used more gas to find that spot than if they had left the center open.

We did get a little sight-seeing in before things closed. We visited the oldest castle in Antwerp, built originally in the 11th century and remodeled after. There was a boat exhibition there, so of course we had to visit!

We then walked through the lovely old streets of Antwerp, to the main city square. We saw the largest church, from the 16th century, and the city hall displaying flags from over 100 countries. We also took a horse-buggy tour through old Antwerp. They showed us a synagogue-turned church – turned convent, the oldest restaurant (250 years old), and the high fashion street with Hermes, Cartier, and the top designers. After the tour, we went shopping in all the high fashion houses….OK, window shopping, but a girl can always dream….



We ate a very tasty dinner at an Italian restaurant. Strangely, though only an hour south of us, Belgium has a totally different food culture. The Dutch eat out much less frequently that the Belgians, so there is less variety (and many say quality) than in Belgium. Well, anyways, it was a very fun little “day trip” to a foreign country

My 35th Bday

This was my first birthday in Holland. I have an blog from about 3 weeks ago with my birthday party, but this last Tuesday was my actual party. It was my first birthday in a long time away from my US family and friends. I received many wonderful cards, email and e-cards, and calls from the US, so I feel distant but not forgotten. I do wish there was a supersonic leer jet to wisk everyone from California over the Holland for an evening in just half an hour. Oh well, maybe Rob will design one for me for my next birthday.



I celebrated with Rob and my new friends I made here in Holland from my language program. Since today was a school day (yeah, still hard to think of my self as a school girl again with backpack and tests to study for)…



After our class ended at 3:30 PM about 8 of us from the course headed over to a local bar in Delft to celebrate the my bday and the last week of the first section of the course. It was one of the most international parties I’ve ever attended. We had (OK the obvious first) one girl from LA a few of you may have heard of, and a charming Dutch man named Rob…. And for the others there is Juliana from Brazil, Jeanette from Germany, Delilah from England, Elena from White Russia, Ladin from Turkey (and her Dutch husband Eric joined later), Hasan from Iraq and Mohammed from Iran. Not able to attend , but also in the course, are Sena from Togo, Bimo from Indonesia and Murgugayan from India.



Well, anyways, we have a regular UN there, with people from almost every continent in the course. We tried to speak some in Dutch, but also a mix of English and French for some of the other students. Elena does not speak English, so all conversation with her

Old MacDonald's Bike Path

This last August was the wettest August in 300 years of recorded Dutch weather history, so it rained almost every day for the past few weeks. Finally we have a break in the weather, so Rob and I went on an hour-long bike ride this evening.

Biking in Holland is a different experience in Holland than in Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, you bike along a busy street to get to the beach bike path, or even put your bike in the car to take it there. Then you bike along the path with many other cyclists , joggers and bladers to see the pretty ocean on one side and the city scape on the other. You always know you are in a city though.

In Holland, go 15 minutes outside your city and you are in farm land. We biked over small embankments with dykes and farm land on either side. You go right up next to fenced grass enclosures with ponies, horses, cows, sheep, goats. The dikes form little streams, so you also see ducks and geese, and even a swan.

We biked through a suburb of our city that was founded over 600 years ago as its own town. As ours grew, it became part of hours, but it still has old historical parts. We passed a 300 year old gate entry to what used to be a castle. Now it opens onto a little wooded park.

There is water EVERYWHERE in Holland! After biking along the little dykes and streams, we passed a large river ferry station. Our city of Dordrecht is the juxtaposition of 3 major rivers, and was a major shipping port in Medieval Holland. We passed some modern ships still transporting goods up the river.

As it was getting dark just as we got home, we could see the beginning of mist rising from the meadows. I could smell the moist fog and freshly mowed hay (luckily not fresh manure like another bike trip!!). If I was on a horse insead of a bike, I would think I was 100 years back in time.

A bike trip in Holland can be an adventure back in time as well as exercise!