Tuesday-Antwerp Day 4,309

My love affair with Antwerp officially ended today. Kyle had to go to the plant extra early today so I didn't get up and go to breakfast with him. I decided to sleep in and I slept past breakfast. He got back to the hotel about 11 am and he had to do his monthly closing for work in the hotel so I decided to go out exploring the city.

I went out and took the bus down to the outdoor market and grab some lunch. I took the bus down and the outdoor market that looked so interesting from the bus last week turned out to be a big dud. It was mostly underwear sales and lots of vegetables. I love veggies as much as the next guy but there's really not a lot of fun of making a picnic lunch out of a big bunch of leeks and some onions. I walked around for a few minutes then went into a few of the shops nearby. None of the shops were particularly interesting so I started to head back to the hotel.

I walked back to the bus stop and went to the other side of the street (another thing I've learned, if you want to go back to your original destination you have to get on the bus on the other side of the street, I'm so well versed in public transportation now) and waited and waited and waited. There were about 4-5 other people standing there waiting too. It was then that someone noticed a sign taped to the bus stop about 3 inches from the ground that said the bus was going to be on a different route for a few days. This is what I figured out from their wild hand gestures and the strange loud discussion that commenced. Apparently it said there was another bus stop it would be stopping at but it was several blocks away. Several of the people started walking the same direction so I stalked them to the new bus stop. I was waiting for bus 22 but I finally gave up and just got on a bus going to the Centraal Station. I knew that I could get back to the hotel on bus 17 that left from the Centraal Station.

I was also out of bus tickets and picking up another bus card is easy to do at Centraal Station. A single ride (with transfers good for 1 hour) is $1.60 if you buy it when you get on the bus. At the Centraal Station you can get a ticket good for 10 rides for $8.00. I walked around the Centraal Station and finally found a cafe to grab some lunch. I was starving. It was about 2pm and I hadn't had anything since dinner about 8 pm on Monday night.

I finally got back to the hotel around 3 and Kyle, aka lazy bum, was taking a nap instead of working. We were supposed to go do laundry when I got back because I thought he would be done working by then. Instead he napped and I got to go do laundry by myself. We had passed a laundry mat on the bus and I was just going to have him go drop me off at the laundry in the car. He claims not to remember the exact bus route and thought it would just be easier if I took the bus and a 40 pound suitcase filled with stinky dirty clothes. So I took my happy little self and my huge suitcase of stinky clothes and got on the bus. The bus stop nearest to the laundry mat is only about 3 blocks away. But they are very very very very very very long blocks.

Another thing I learned today: Luggage wheels do not roll easily over cobblestones.

I got to the laundry mat and I had to first purchase some detergent from the vending machine on the wall. I really have no idea at all what I washed our clothes in. I could have washed them in Anthrax for all I know. I stuck with the powder since I figured I probably wouldn't bleach out our black clothes too badly with powder instead of liquid. I bought 2 different kinds of detergent in hopes that not both of them were bleach. I got some really strange looks from the other people in there when I opened both packages of laundry detergent and started sniffing them to try to make an educated guess of which detergent to put in with my whites and which to put in with my darks.

I then got the fun of trying to figure out how to work the machines. All the washers are front loading washing machines and luckily they had 2 of the extra large capacity washers so I could just get away with doing 2 loads, one dark and one white. I stuffed our laundry into 2 washers (they were $7 each load so I was trying to get away with as few loads as possible) and noticed that there wasn't a spot to put money in them. On the wall was the machine that controls all the washers and dryers in the whole place. You add your money and then you select which machine you want, which wash or dry cycle and then push start on that machine, go push start on your washer or dryer then return to the control machine to retrieve any left over money. Oh, and did I mention all the instructions were in Dutch?!?! Luckily those words weren't to difficult to figure out. The word for wash started with W and the one for dry started with D. There was some medieval torture device or ironing table or something that some lady was running a sheet through. I'm not sure exactly what it was or how to use it so I just stayed as far away from it as possible.

Europeans for the most part don't use air-conditioning like we do. When we turn on our air at home we expect it to cool things down. Here they just cool it enough that you won't die of heat exhaustion. The laundry mat was not air conditioned at all. It was really really pleasant in there too. It was a 12x20 room filled with about 15 washers and 15 dryers (mostly all going), a scary rolling hot iron device and no windows. The good news is not only did I get our laundry done I lost 37 pounds doing it.

When our laundry was finally done some 2 hours later (they have a nice little soak built into the middle of the wash cycle) I got to pack it all back up into my luggage and drag it back down the cobblestone sidewalk to the bus stop. I finally got back to the hotel just as LazyButt was finishing up his work and we invited John to head down to the Centraal Station to grab some dinner.

We head back out to my beloved bus and wait again and head to Centraal Station. We get there and walk around a bit and we decide to go to the Windsor Restaurant. They had a nice set-up outside and it seemed somewhat busy. We should have known to just leave when we sat there for about 10-15 minutes before the snooty waiter even acknowledged us to give us menu's or take a drink order.

We order and John and I both order steaks and girly man orders shrimp. Turns out Girly-Man was the smartest of us all. We get our steaks about 45 minutes later and my steak which is supposed to be cooked medium is so past well done it's stringy and tough and tastes like shoe leather. Not just any ordinary shoe leather but shoe leather that's been worn while cleaning out a pig barn. I take one bite of it and decide there is absolutely no way that this steak can be eaten. John tastes his steak and he is just as repulsed as I am. They insisted on cooking me another steak and it came out cooked better but still tasting like the inside of a septic tank. I decided to just stick with my fries and when we left the restaurant there were 2 completely untouched steaks at our table. The snooty waiter insisted that the steaks were fresh today and they are very very tasty. I suppose we maybe didn't read the menu correctly and we somehow ordered the goat testicle steaks or something.

So I ended up having a very yummy warm waffle with 2 scoops of gelato for dinner instead. I was really missing the kids so badly today as well. I'm kinda tired of being in this city . We've seen most everything and while Antwerp is a nice city it's not a city I'd suggest visiting for 10 days!!! I keep really trying not to think about the kids too much. A few days ago I hit something on the Garmin and it popped up that I'm 7,400 miles from home. I know the kids are in great hands with my parents and when we do talk to them they tell us what a fun time they are having. In fact, they are normally too busy to even really want to talk to us. I'm so unbelievably appreciative that Kyle's mom kept the kids for a few days last week and that my parents are keeping them for over 2 weeks while we are over here. I'm fairly certain I may have to visit my parents in the loony bin when we get home (not only do they have my 10,8 and 4 year old they lost their minds and invited my sisters 4 & 5 year olds too).

When we got back to the hotel John couldn't get back to his room fast enough. I think my rough day of fighting buses, strange Dutch languages, stupid washing machines, hot weather and the fact that you can't get a drink larger than 7 oz here was getting to me.

Other things I've learned in the past few days:
There are several dialects to the Dutch language. The further North you go the heavier the Flemish dialect is. The proper spelling of Flemish is actually Phlegmish. They call it this because in the majority of the words you sound like you are trying to cough up a fur ball. It is possibly the un-sexiest of all languages in the world. Even Kyle commented that even the most beautiful woman in the world could not make Flemish sound sexy. I've begun referring to Dutch as "I wanna HokaLoogie" language.

ManPri's are just stupid. There is this crazy obsession here with men wearing capri pants. I'm not talking the long board shorts like the guys at home wear I'm talking full out man capri-s. Men wearing capri's should be taken out and shot. There is no amount of hotness of man that can handle wearing manpri's.

Socks with sandals just looks stupid. It looks even stupider if you happen to be wearing manpri's.

Women lose their minds over here and do crazy things with their hair. I've seen probably 30 women who have at least part of their heads shaved down to a buzz cut then have ponytails off some part of their head. There are also a ton of women with dreadlocks. Blond hair in dreadlocks is not an attractive look. Apparently Europe did not get the memo that the Mullet has been banned by the UN as causing you to look like you're an in-breed and confused about your sexuality. Just say "NO" to Mulletting. Please write to your local European governments and request that they put a stop to these horrible hair-do's. They are making all us humans who walk fully upright look like crazy over-achievers.

Monday-Antwerp

Monday I decided to go out on my own and see the city. I've decided I like the old city center much much more than the modern Centraal Station area. The Centraal Station is where all the diamond shops, high end designer boutiques and touristy things are. The Groen Plaatz is the old city center with the old cobblestone roads, the old churches and just cooler scenery.

I headed down to Groen Plaatz and started walking. My original goal was to go down to the river front. When we were on our tour last week we could see the old fortress (castle) by the river but we didn't walk down to it. I started walking and of course, didn't find it. I did stumble upon an amazing old church though.

The outside of the church was nothing really special but I decided to go inside anyway. I walked in and immediately felt my eyes fill with tears. It was one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life. It is a baroque style of church which means it's heavily decorated in ornate statuary and wood carvings everywhere. Walking through this church I couldn't help but marvel at how many people must have spent their entire lives carving the pieces in this church. Even as I was photographing it I knew that there was no way possible that I could really capture the essence of the grandeur of this church.

There is a large carved pulpit on the side of the church. The preist would walk up the side and could preach his sermon from the middle of the pulpit. On the bottom of the pulpit there are life size wooden sculptures of Jesus and 2 of the desciples catching fish. They are standing in a boat and there is a carved net and several fish caught in the net. There are wooden leaves growing out of it everywhere. It really is one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen in my life.

I walked all over the place and then headed back to the hotel to meet up with Kyle. We headed back down to the GroenPlaatz and walked around some more. We headed down to the river front to see the old castle that is on the banks. Kyle was doing the navigating and we walked forever completely parallel to the river. I don't want to hear again how it's just me and my bad sense of direction.



The castle itself was closed for the night but you could still walk around the outside of it. Kyle, of course, knew much more about castle fortification than I did. He was pointing out all the little holes where they would have had archers shooting at people trying to get into the fortress. It's so strange to think that all those things you grew up seeing in movies and reading in fairy tales really happened. Because Antwerp has been such an international port for hundreds and hundreds of years it was a very desirable port to try to overtake.

After walking around down by the river for a while we headed back up near the GroenPlaatz and had dinner at a fabulous French restaurant right across from the Cathedral. The Cathedral was absolutely amazing in the sunset lighting.


At the French restaurant the entire menu was in Dutch and the waiter had to help us to order everything. Kyle picked out the starter on his own though. He ordered Kip Formage Foccacia which he though was going to be a type of bread with some cheese and chicken on it. (kip means chicken, formage is cheese) The waiter looked at him a bit strange when he said he wanted it as a starter but went ahead with it. We about died laughing when he brought our our appitizer and it turned out to be a grilled chicken breast SANDWICH!!! I've been giving Kyle a very hard time about being such a fatty he needs a sandwich before he can start his meal.

I had probably the best steak of my entire life. Kyle had some sort of curry pasta that was really good from the bite I stole. We then walked over and had some gelato before catching the bus back to our hotel.

Amsterdam area Day 2

Sunday morning arrived way way too early. Luckily people in the area realize that Amsterdam will exhaust you and check out is at 12 noon!! We somehow managed to drag ourselves out of bed and checked out a right around noon. We decided that we had done all the damage in Amsterdam we could do and headed out to hit Haarlem, Netherlands.

Haarlem is a completely different world than Amsterdam. Amsterdam is wild crazy with adult shops on every corner. Haarlem is a quiet picturesque city with a lovely city center, lots of quiet outdoor cafes and beautiful canals. We took a ferry to get to Haarlem and had a nice relaxing lunch in the city center. There was an outdoor book fair going on and we walked around for a couple of hours just enjoying the beautiful city and taking in the scenery.

Europeans really do know how to relax. From the plant last week Kyle learned that there is NO overtime whatsoever in Europe. People are simply not allowed to work overtime. If you work more than 40 hours they have to give you time off equal to that. They receive at least 30 days of vacation a year plus 10 holidays.

At Monsanto here they work 37.5 hours per week and take an extra 3 days off per month!! The pay scale is also quite different here than at home. We are used to getting raises every year based on performance. They receive raises that are dependent on inflation. If inflation goes up 2% every one's income goes up 2%. They don't really get yearly performance raises. Of course, with all that time off who needs raises?!?!

There is an old fortress/church in the center of Haarlem that was just gorgeous. There was a great little Dutch pancake stand in the middle of the city center. The pancakes are a mixture between regular pancakes and a funnel cake. They were really good. They serve them with a huge pat of butter and lots of powdered sugar.

After we walked around for a while (all the shops are closed on Sunday and Monday) we decided to head back to Antwerp. Our Garmin decided we needed a scenic route and took us all through the countryside to get back to Belgium. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life.

They have cows everywhere. I thought that the canals in The Netherlands were just in Amsterdam. It turns out that the canals run all through the country. They use their canals for everything. There were cows, horses and sheep everywhere and after several miles of this I finally figured out what was missing from the scene. There were no fences at all on any field.

They use their canals as fences. The fields are about 100 meters (approx 100 yards) wide and about 1000 meters long with canals (about 2-3 meters wide) running along all the sides of the field. They would have corn on one field, sheep on the next field, a couple fields of cows then a few empty fields, ready to be grazed next. Some fields had a bridge between the fields with a gate in the middle of the bridge but most of them we couldn't see a bridge at all. We think they probably have a portable bridge system they bring in via tractor to move the cattle to another field.

There are small roads next to the larger roads where there were people out for bike rides (of course). I could totally see spending a couple of weeks just in the Netherlands biking around the countryside. It's a beautiful beautiful land.