Amsterdam

What a city!!!!!! It's a city that I really think any traveler to Europe has to experience. It really is such a strange city with such gorgeous old architecture, beautiful canals, legalized prostitution (Benjamin just ignore that, I'll explain when you are much older) and a really cool bohemian feel. It reminded me somewhat of New Orleans, the whole rowdy interior with a posh cultured exterior.

The city itself it full of more people than I've seen since New York. There are 4 bikes for every single person. The bikes are absolutely everywhere. At the beginning of the day you see the bikes and you think, "Ah, how nice they ride bikes instead of taking cars around the city," by 3 hours in you are cursing the inventor of the bike and trying to devise a way to somehow walk down the road without being ran over by one of the stupid things. In Amsterdam you have the street that cars attempt to drive down, you then have a wide bike path and then the walking path. Bikes however seem to believe that they should and will drive in any area they darn well please and they do just that. You have to look both ways, cross your fingers, pray to the patron saint of not getting smashed by 2 wheeled monstrosities, hold onto your belongings and run across the street before another gang of wandering bikes comes by to try to use you as a human speed bump.

The first thing we did when we got to the city is head to the Flea Market. I had heard that the flea market in Amsterdam is one of the Top 10 shopping streets in the world. It was a lot of fun walking through and seeing all the goods for sale. They had everything from cheese and olives, to bra's and panties. Shoes and purses and tons of flowers. We picked up a few things but mostly we just walked around and did some people watching. It's also a great place, as our tour guide on the canal ride pointed out later, to buy back your stolen bike at very reasonable prices.

We hopped back on the bus and headed back towards the city center. We got off near the Waterloopian Flea Market. It had a decidedly different feel than the first flea market. The first flea market had things that the every day person in Amsterdam needed to live. The Waterloopian flea market had tons of African/Caribbean items for sale, lots of Rastafarian type things, bongs and pipes (again, Benjamin just ignore that) and then lots of yard sale type items. I don't think we actually purchased anything there.

From there we started walking all over the city. We decided that instead of spending our time going through museums we were going to just walk around and get a feel of the city. If you've ever been anywhere with Kyle (aka, Mr. if there is a sign you must stop and read it, re-read it, re-read it a third time just to make sure you didn't miss anything, memorize it in case there is a pop quiz at the exit of the museum Kohlhaas) you will see the wisdom of my suggestion that we skip museums. The man can spend 2 hours at the base of the arch which everyone else would be bored in 30 minutes tops and that's if you've never left your house before. So we walked. . . .. . . . .and walked. . . . . . .and walked. We sat at an outdoor cafe and had a couple of drinks then we walked. . . . . .and walked. . . . . . .and walked.

We took a nice relaxing hour long canal tour all through the city. It would be very nice if the seats reclined. Since you are in a boat in the canal and the buildings are very tall your neck is killing you by the end of the ride just from looking up all the time. The canal ride was one of the best parts of the whole day. It was relaxing, my feet got a nice rest from the walking. . . . .and walking (yeah, I think you get the point) and a nice view of a lot of different parts of the city.



The day was quite cool and it sprinkled on us a few times despite the fact that Weather.com claimed we had no chance of rain that day. It was a high of about 65 and really windy (or perhaps that was just from all the (*&%(& @#*&#@%$^ bikes speeding past trying to mow down innocent walkers). I lost my jacket a few days ago and I was really glad I grabbed a sweater before leaving home.

We walked around forever trying to find a restaurant with an open table outside so that we could sit and eat and watch the freaks. .. I mean people walk by. It's kinda funny that in all the cafes with outdoor seating the chairs are all on the same side of the table facing the sidewalk. The restaurant owners realize that you want to watch the people walking past.

After dinner I would have been fine to just go back to our hotel but Kyle, being the red blooded American man that he is claimed that as an American tourist in Amsterdam it was his obligation to walk through the red light district. He said there is a major fine for Americans who visit Amsterdam and do not walk through the red light district. I checked the guide books and I couldn't find that listed anywhere but he insisted that it's a little known fact and the authorities supposedly have a secret way of checking to see if you actually fulfilled your legal obligation of gawking at the women who are innocently selling their wares.

The most surprising part of the red light district was that the girls, who were dressed rather modestly in bikini's were all very very good looking. There was one girl that was very obviously a man, a couple of kinda scary chics but the rest of the women were youngish (20-30) gorgeous, girl-next-door looking women.

I hear there are cigarettes and other smokable things for sale legally in Amsterdam as well. I did learn that last weekend was the last grand hurrah for pot in The Netherlands. As of July 1st there is a smoking ban in all of the Netherlands. Marijuana isn't exactly legal in the Netherlands. It's simply tolerated and not prosecuted. As of July 1st all smoking must be done outdoors and the police may start cracking down on it. At least, that's the rumor on the streets. So, the last weekend in June would have been a good weekend to be in Amsterdam, if you are into that sort of thing.

After about a hundred miles of walking, and dodging those dang bicycles it was such a relief to get back to our hotel. We got to the train station about 5 minutes before the last train of the night left the station. We walked around the city for about 14 hours!!! It was crazy, insane, wild Amsterdam. I woke up Sunday morning realizing exactly how old I really am, and that I'm just too dang old for Amsterdam.

Friday-the neverending drive

Our Garmin GPS unit, mapquest and all the locals claim that it takes about 2 hours to drive to Amsterdam from Antwerp. They all lie. . . . .or maybe they just aren't driving with Kyle.

We left our hotel around 5pm to head towards Amsterdam. We were out of cash and decided we should probably find an ATM before leaving Antwerp. We looked up the nearest bank and luckily got stuck in some major grid iron traffic in the middle of the city. Kyle, who hates traffic more than most other things decided that the Garmin had an evil plan to ruin his life and started turning the exact opposite way than the Garmin told him to. This, surprisingly led to a rather fun "conversation" between myself and my dearly beloved. We spent a lovely 90 minutes driving in 4 block circles about 3/4 of a kilometer from our hotel. We got to see the same streets about 100 times. The best part is, we never found an ATM.

When we FINALLY made it out of the city and about halfway to Amsterdam we decided we had better stop for dinner. There is no grabbing a quick bite to eat in Europe. You can grab a sandwich at a million shops during the day but at night all quick shops close and you are left with McDonald's (or McDrive as they call it here), gas station grub (4 year old sandwiches that are mostly just bread and more of their beloved mayonnaise) or a sit down restaurant.

Europeans dine out completely differently than we do at home. Here, going out to dinner is an entire night thing. You go out to dinner and you expect to spend at least 2 hours at the restaurant. You really need to grab a snack on the way to the restaurant if you are hungry. You go in and have a seat and order drinks. Wine and soda (Coca Cola Light is what they call my beloved Diet Coke) are normally about the same price and about the same amount. No one has fountain drinks here and when you order a soda it comes out in a 6.5 oz bottle. It's normally about 2 Euro's (about $3.20 US dollars) for that bottle of soda. You get a small glass to pour your cold soda in but it's never served with ice. If you are really lucky you get a single ice cube in the bottom of your cup. At $.53 per ounce you make that soda last. If you want water at a restaurant it's bottled mineral water. I prefer mine still (without sparkles) and that's a much better value at about 5 Euro for a 1.5 litre bottle. But wine tastes better.

So we have dinner in a small town on the way that takes about 1.5 hours. We finally get to our destination about 11pm. The only problem is the hotel we show up at isn't the right one. We were actually on the wrong side of Amsterdam. I put in the street address and Amsterdam as the city. I should have put in Zaandaam, Amsterdam and the address and I would have ended up the right place.

They also do addresses weird here as well. If I were to put our address in the standard European way it would be:
Floraville Road 6064
62260 Millstadt Illinois
It's crazy confusing when trying to enter things into the Garmin that way. We were supposed to go to Provincialeweg 15, Zaandaam, Amsterdam but instead we went to Provincialeweg 15, Amsterdam, Amsterdam which is 30 minutes away. I was really loving the city at that point.

We finally got to our hotel about midnight. Luckily Amsterdam doesn't get started early so we were able to sleep in on Saturday morning.

Thursday, tour and dinner

Thursday we were invited to spend the evening with the group from Monsanto again. We were told to meet in GroenPlaatz at 6pm for a tour of the city. I wasn't sure exactly how long the bus would take so I ended up down there about 5:45 so I had plenty of time to grab some friites and sit and people watch until Kyle and the rest of the group showed up.

Friites (french fries) are a national obsession here. There are Friite stands on every corner. They are served mostly with mayonnaise or curry ketchup. I've only had them with mayo. It's kinda funny that even in the nicest, fanciest places they serve fries with their meals.

So I met the group next to the Cathedral. We went on a walking tour throughout the city for about 2 hours. It turns out the city Antwerp means Thrown Hand. There is a legend that there was some large creature that live in the river and would require all ships that pass by to pay a large toll. If they couldn't pay the toll the creature would chop off one of their hands as payment for using his river. Then someone named Brabo came along and instead of paying the toll or losing a hand he chopped off the creatures hand and threw it into the river. Brabo is very popular here (many parking garages are called Brabo's). The fountain in the photo above is a sculpture of Brabo. You can see Brabo holding a hand above his head and the water squirting out is supposed to represent the blood. Beautiful, romantic twisted Europeans.

We walked though much of the old centre of Antwerp. We found out the reason there are so many religious scultpures on the street corners. It turns out that Antwerp used to be a city similar to Amsterdam or Venice, that there were canals running in the middle of the streets. The citizens wanted to put in street lights to be able to see the canals after dark so they wouldn't fall in and drown. If you put in a neighborhood street lamp you had to pay a very very high yearly tax in order to have your street light. If you put in a religious statue (normally Virgin Mary and baby Jesus) the city would give you a light for free. There are still around 75 statues on corners throughout the city. There is only one that has been restored to it's original painted colors. All of the rest of them are white or very pale.

We then went to the oldest restaurant in Antwerp. It's only been in business for 250 years!!! The other thing that Belgium is known for, in addition to Friites and Waffles are their mussels. Since we were in the 250 year old Rodden Hoed Restaurant that serves traditional Belgian food, I had to get the mussels. I chose the curry flavor of mussels. I first thought it was kind of odd that so many traditional Belgian places serve curried items. The fact is that Antwerp has been a major shipping port for hundreds of years. Most of the spices traded throughout the world came through Antwerp. Curry was one of the most expensive spices so they kept some of it for themselves and they use it in many dishes. It's a very very mild curry flavor, quite unlike Indian style curry.


Kyle went with another Belgian delicacy, eel. It was served the traditional Belgian way, in some green herb sauce. I was in happy little mussel land and I didn't feel like trying his weird green eel dish. We, of course, had big bowls of friites served next to our entrees.

Yes, the mussels are served in a large bucket. It's really strange to see your dinner come out and served to you in by the bucket full.

I was sitting next to the local wine expert and he was ordering lots of great bottles of wine. He has some amazing taste in wine. At home, I like an occassional glass of red wine but that's about it. Here, I'm becoming addicted to the wine. Not only is the food absolutely amazing, the wine is exceptional. In Belgium they drink mostly French wines. I've tasted the beer a few times but I'm really not a beer kinda gal. I do however, love me some wine now.

I'm not crazy

I found out yesterday that my little freak out at GroenPlatz (getting off the bus and then turning around and running right back onto the bus) wasn't completely unwarranted. Since we've been here we've been noticing trash piling up on the streets everywhere. It turns out that all the civil servants in the city were striking over some tax issue. The protest rally that I stumbled upon ended up being some sort of confrontation between the civil servants (dressed in red) who oppose some tax and the people dressed in green who are for the tax. At least that's what I've pieced together. There isn't a local news in English so the only way I'm able to get news that is going on is to find a Dutch website and translate it using Babelfish. I'm just guessing that the direct translations aren't perfect because there are a lot of things that it says in the newspaper online that just do not make sense at all. So here's me (yes, an actual real live photo of me, sorta)


On Tuesday night Kyle and I took the #17 bus and went down to the Central Station, the main train station area. It also happens to be the fashion and shopping area of the city. All shops close down at 5pm here. They stay open late on Thursday night until 9pm but every other night they all just close up and go home at 5. Strange. So we walked around that area for a long time. I found some really great pieces in some windows but for some reason Kyle told me I wasn't allowed to buy any of them. There was a really great Chanel dress in the window of a store that was only $4395 Euro's. (only $6916 US).

We had dinner at a nice little Italian place. I know, Italian again. There are Italian restaurants on every corner. I'm not sure exactly what Belgian food is since all we are finding in all the areas are foods of different nationalities.
After dinner we found another gelato place (have I mentioned I'm in love with gelato?!?) and this gelato place also had waffles. Belgium is supposed to be famous for their waffles but all the waffle shops close at 5pm so we haven't had them yet. The waffle was sweeter than the ones we are used to in the states and the outside of it had a little bit of caramelized sugar on it. The outside of the waffle was super crispy and the inside was nice and soft and chewy. It was one of the best desserts I've ever had. The fact that it gets dark so late takes some major getting used to. We were walking around and Kyle happened to look at his watch and it was 10:30. It felt (and looked outside) like it was about 7:30.






Yesterday I ventured out on my own and did a little window shopping and hit a grocery store and picked up some lunch. There was an "excursion" planned with the group from Monsanto and they sent a taxi to pick up me and the boyfriend of another engineer. The limo picked us up at the hotel at 4:30 and we headed over to Monsanto. Traffic was light so we ended up getting there early enough to have a chance to drive through a small village of Lillo. The entire town was about 50 buildings. There were 2 roads with a small round-a-bout in the middle of the town. We stopped at the river and I took a couple of photos of the new Antwerp harbour they are building and will be opening in 2 years. I also got a shot of a Nuclear power plant that is next door to Monsanto as well. It's so strange to see nuclear power plants everywhere. I was talking to the taxi driver and he was surprised that the US uses oil and coal for power. He couldn't believe that we don't have windmills or nuclear power.






The only thing we knew about the excursion was that we were to wear shoes that we didn't mind getting dirty. We ended up doing something that was totally more our speed. We drove out to the country in Holland (which I learned is actually not a country of it's own but a part of The Netherlands) and we played Farmers Golf. We were broken up into teams of 4 (there were 16 of us) and given a ball and a mallet per team. Throughout this large field, with cows, a horse and a donkey grazing you hit the ball with the mallet (the mallet is a stick with a wooden shoe on the end) and try to get it into a bucket on the other side of the field. There were a total of 9 holes. We also had the added fun of trying to watch out for cow patties and horse poop. There was a small strip of "green" from one hole to the next but a great deal of it was "rough". I think our team ended up winning but we didn't keep super close track. It was a lot of fun though. The fields were bordered by small creeks. I kept mouthing Kyle telling him not to hit it into the creek. So of course, I smacked it right into the creek. Luckily Kyle and his freakishly long arms was able to get the ball with a little help from Tony. After a few beers we were taken to a nearby restaurant for dinner.




























The restaurant was absolutely gorgeous. We had some amazing food (some of the best smoked salmon I've ever had in my life) and wine and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had a taxi back to Antwerp and got back here a little after 11pm last night. Notice how light the sky is in these photos of the restaurant. It was about 10:30 pm when I took these!!!













A few things I learned today:
People really and truly do wear wooden shoes. A couple of the guys who work at Monsanto brought their wooden shoes to wear during the game. We bought a pair for Benjamin and Morgan. I keep joking that I'm going to wear them everywhere I go from now on.

People here don't think twice about riding their bicycles very long distances, even in winter. There are many people at the plant that live over 20 miles from work and ride their bikes!!! One of the men we rode with last night was telling us that if he rides his bike to work it takes him about an hour and a half each way to ride his bike. I can't even imagine anyone at home riding a bike that far. I tried to convince Kyle that he should start riding his bike to work but we decided that riding a bike through Cahokia and Sauget probably wouldn't be that great of an idea.

Old versus new here is a much different concept than at home. We were talking to another guy here about the rest of our trip. We mentioned going to Germany/Austria to see castles. He said, "Oh, the modern castles." The castles we are going to see were built in the 1700's!!!! They consider them the "modern" castles.

Tonight we are going on a walking tour of downtown Antwerp.

Some People shouldn't travel

It's so much easier to be a wild crazy brave traveler when you are sitting at home in the good ole USA. Yesterday I was a bum all day and got caught up on sleep. This morning I decided that I was going to go out and see the city. I planned to go back to the GroenPlatz (City Center) where we were last night. Kyle and John pointed out that if I got on the #22 bus then there was no way I could get lost. Of course, in true Christie fashion I got on the bus going the wrong direction. So my 20 minute ride down to the GroenPlatz turned into an hour and a half ride to there through the entire bus route. I did get to see a lot more of the city.

So I finally got down to the GroenPlatz and got off the bus and started to walk around. I noticed that there was some very loud music playing and a rather large police presence. All of the sudden there were thousands of people dressed in red from head to toe coming out of several side streets. They were chanting something very loudly. It was difficult to tell if it was a Pride march or a Protest march. Suddenly there was the sound of something going off, I couldn't tell if it was fireworks or a gun. About 30 seconds later I hear sirens coming from all different directions. So I took my happy little, I-only-speak-English butt and got right back on the bus and came back to the hotel. I have no idea if it was harmless fun or the makings of a riot. Since I couldn't understand a single word of it and there were so many people I decided the best/safest thing for me to do is go back to the hotel.

So, my first trip out in Europe alone was me riding a train for close to 2 hours, walking around for 10 minutes and then coming back to my hotel to hide out again.

I did see a very cool looking flea market in my round about way. I think I'm going to put on my big girl panties and go check that out in the morning.

People watching on the bus is pretty interesting. There is a very large Hasidic Jewish community in Antwerp. The men look so interesting in their beards, hats and the long banana curls hanging down over their ears. There were very few cars on the road and it was so interesting watching all the older men and women with their shopping baskets getting on and off the bus.

There are also a ton of bike riders. It's not at all uncommon to see a mom riding a bike with a toddler on the back whipping in and out of traffic. People seem to walk a great deal everywhere we've been. It's quite the change from St Louis where people drive to go 1/2 a block.

Another very interesting thing I've found is that I saw probably half a dozen middle aged women pushing baby carriages. That wouldn't be so odd except the baby carriages held dogs!!!!

Things I've learned so far:
European toilets are weird. I was so glad when John mentioned how much they freaked him out too. Kyle and I were afraid it was only us that were intimidated by them. There is a basin (with almost no water) at the top of the toilet that collects waste. When you flush (using a large button the wall) water comes from the back of the toilet and washes out the waste leaving the basin at the top dry again. (I know Benjamin is finding this very interesting.)





Not speaking the language is difficult. Especially in very crowded strange situations.

Bus drivers here are CRAZY. They have no problem squeezing a bus through a space where they don't have 3 inches to spare on each side. The citizens of Antwerp don't even seem to notice this.

Meters/Kilo's all that metric crap is way difficult. Although it is kinda cool seeing a speed limit of 140 even if it is in kilometers.

Ditto for the Euros. It's so weird paying for things using coins. They have 2,5, 20, 50 cent coins then $1 and $2 euro coins. The paper money is very thin and feels like Monopoly money. We can't seem to find any rhyme or reason why the coin sizes are the way they are. The $2 and $.50 coins are almost the same size. It's just weird.

They use military time here. So right now the clock in our hotel room says 13:42 or 1:42 (It's like 7:45 in STL right now). I just don't want to have to subtract 12 when I look at the clock after noon.

Trying to get onto a normal sleeping schedule is hard when it's only dark for about 6 hours tops per night.

!nbev is everywhere here. Last night Kyle and John ordered a Stella beer at the Greek restaurant and discovered when it arrived that it is an !nbev product. I promptly took away their St Louis residency cards. They are now strictly Pabst Blue Ribbon guys now.

Okay, enough belly aching for me for now. The city really is very beautiful and slightly exotic to my uncultured self. It's also intimidating. The people seem very friendly but I'm still trying to get up the guts to venture out on my own.

First day in Europe

I'm finally rested enough to type a little about our trip over to Europe.

Our flight to Chicago was completely uneventful and we arrived in Chicago on time with 40 minutes until our flight left for Frankfurt. Right before we arrived in Chicago they made an announcement that the flight to Frankfurt, Germany was delayed 15 minutes. We arrived in Chicago and grabbed a bite to eat before our flight which ended up being delayed almost 3 hours!!!

We finally left Chicago after they brought up a new plane in from Philadelphia. It ended up being a smaller plane and we were packed in like sardines. The flight was uneventful and very very very long and uncomfortable. We finally ended up in Frankfurt, Germany at 1:30 pm on Sunday afternoon. We had left our house at1:30 pm on Saturday.

The Frankfurt airport is not air conditioned and most people do not use their air in their cars either. It was very hot and humid and after such a long flight we were pretty tired. We picked up our tiny rental car and we were on our way to Antwerp by about 3:30 pm.

Our new Garmin GPS is brilliant. I'm not sure how we would have gotten along without it. At one point in the trip we got stuck in a major rain storm and ended up pulling off of the highway onto a side road. It was hailing over marble sized hail. Our great GPS managed to get us through this little German town and back onto the highway.

The little German towns was one of the weirdest/coolest things we saw all day. The storm seemed to come up very quickly and was quite severe. We pulled out of our spot right off of the road as soon as it stopped hailing (and I got a few pictures). It was still raining a little bit but as we drove through this town there were huge groups of people outside sweeping the leaves that had fallen off of their driveways and off of the street. The streets were quite flooded and at one point we went through some pretty deep water and we were worried we wouldn't make it through the water. The thing that astonished us most was that it was still raining a little and the German families, young and old were all outside in their golashes cleaning up the debris from the storm before it was even fully over.




We drove past tons of windmills and I found them really beautiful. We stopped at a small town right before the Belgium border and had dinner in a great little Italian place. We walked through this sweet little town, down brick streets, had pizza then walked down the street to get gelato. I'm now totally in love with Gelato.

We got into Antwerp, Belgium about 9pm last night.We are staying in the Crown Park Plaza on the edge of Antwerp. It's a really nice hotel and the shower is one of the best ones I've ever used in my life. I'm pretty sure it's strong enough to strip paint. Of course, after all that travel a shower was wonderful. The beds have great thick comforters in nice washable duvets. I had one of the best nights sleep ever.

This morning I went down and had breakfast with Kyle before he left for the plant. They had all of the normal American breakfast items plus a large yogurt bar with all sorts of granola and nuts for it. They also had a large assortment of breads and cheese and lunch meats.

While Kyle worked I took a nice long nap and read quite a bit as well. It was nice to relax for the day. Tonight we went with John, a guy who works for Kyle, into Antwerp on the bus. The city center has a huge church. I didn't take my camera with me tonight but I will be sure to take it tomorrow when we go downtown.

We had dinner in a Greek restaraunt. It was very interesting trying to order. The guy at the restaraunt spoke only French and Flemish and we spoke only English. We ordered using lots of hand signals, the waiter bringing ingredients out of the kitchen to show us, and us trying to decipher words in the description of the dishes.

We ended up having an amazing meal. Everything was absolutely delicious. We sat and talked for quite a while and realized that it must be getting kind of late but it wasn't getting dark. We started walking back to the bus and realized that it was almost 10pm and the sun hadn't set yet. At 10:30 tonight it was still light outside and the sun is up again about 4:30 am!!!

Here are a few photos of our trip in yesterday: