The Hague

March 13, 2011- Today was our Sunday excursion to The Hague, or Den Haag in Dutch, which is the governmental capital of the Netherlands while Amsterdam is the official capital.  Den Haag is where all the government buildings, the Queen’s Palace, and the International Court of Justice which is also known as the Peace Palace.  

Professor Hoeksema joined us for this excursion since he finally arrived in the Netherlands.  Upon arriving in The Hague, we first started walking around the city.  This city had a much different feel than the other cities I have been too.  For one, this city had trees everywhere!  

Trees are very rare in downtown Amsterdam and it is nice to see a change of scenery in a city.  We first walked to the Binnenhof which is where all the parliamentary buildings are located.  

Inside of the Binnenhof

Outside of the Binnenhof

This is the equivalent of the capital building with MUCH less security as we could freely walk in the center courtyard.  

At the center of the courtyard was the Ridderzaal, or the Knight’s Hall.  This building looks like a large church but is primarily used for as the place where the Queen makes her annual speech on Prince’s Day.  All the parliamentary buildings are located around the Ridderzaal.  Next we went to the Mauritshuis, a museum which paintings from various artists.  

The most famous painting there is the Girl with the Pearl Earring which is apparently made famous through a movie that came out recently.  There was absolutely nothing special about this painting in my opinion.  There were only two cool paintings in that museum which made it worth it.  The first was Adam and Eve in Paradise.  This painting so many details and symbolism in it that it was fun to look at and was easily my favorite.  The second painting was The Bull.  This painting was really interesting because it seemed almost life-like.  The bull looked 3D and seemed as if it was actually in the room!  

After the museum, we walked to the Peace Palace.  

This is the International Court of Justice where all international crimes are tried and is also the judicial location of the UN.  Afterwards we walked to the Palace.  I did not get a good look at the palace itself but I saw the Royal stables.  

These stables were not ordinary stables as it looked like a huge mansion.  We walked through the park located behind the stables.  

There was a pond and also a bunch of flowers growing.  

Today was the first day where flowers seemed to be blooming and it was beautiful.  After walking back to the van, we continued on our way to Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague.  This place was a huge resort town along the North Sea.  

We walked on the pier and went to McDonalds.  I hope to come back here in a month or so when the temperature warms.  This excursion was my favorite thus far because I love walking around new cities and exploring.  Plus these cities are completely different from any place I have been before.

Grass rooftops and Fish

March 12, 2011- Today we went on our second excursion.  We first went to a city called Almere, which is a pretty cool town.  All the apartment buildings were located above the stores.  

Hema, a large retail store in the Netherlands, had a huge building where each side of the building was a different color.  We also went to the top of the V & D store.  

There was grass on top of the building and a couple other apartment buildings had grass on the rooftops.  The city is one of the fastest growing cities in the Netherlands with a population around 200,000.  The night life seems like it would be a lot of fun.  

Next we went to a small town that had a shipwreck museum.  

This museum started out really boring but turned out to be a lot of fun because it had a lot of hands on stuff.  I felt like I was in a children’s museum.  Next we went to a small town called Urk.  This is primarily a fishing town since the city used to be an island.  

This town was very homey and had a cozy feeling to it.  The people were really nice and the town looked really cool.  

We walked on the docks and looked at all the boats. 

I wanted to stay longer but we had to leave.  On the way back, we ran into a castle called Muiderslot which was located in Muiden.  

Unfortunately, the castle was closed.

Polders and Dikes

March 6, 2011- Today on our second excursion, we looked at the drained lakes in Noord Holland, or “polders.”  While on the trip, we looked at a lot of open land used in a different way from the previous day.  

This land is different from the land that we saw yesterday since this was only used for pastures while the land yesterday is used for farming.  This is because the myriad amount of canals in the land.  Many dikes are necessary in this area of the Netherlands because all the land used to be underwater.  “Polders” are land that has been reclaimed from the sea.  Dikes and windmills are the primary ways to create a polder.  Because of this, we also stopped at a windmill museum and toured the inside of a windmill.  

This windmill was quite different from the windmill I toured earlier.  

This windmill was used to pump water to a higher elevation and used an Archimedes screw to do so.  A series of canals and windmills drained the water to create polders.  This also means that the land is below sea level and protected from the sea with dikes.  We drove on many dikes where the water level on one side was much higher than the pasture land on the other side.  This was an interesting sight to see and proved the knowledge and engineering of the Dutch people.  At the end of the trip we went to a beach on the North Sea.  Way off in the distance were located many modern day windmills used to create power due to the high winds out on the North sea.  

Although there are some of those kind of windmills in the United States, I have never seen so many before in my life!

Terps, Dikes, and Mud Flats

March 5- Today we had our first excursion for our STNL class.  For our field trip we went and looked at Terps, dikes, and mud flats.  For those of you who don’t know, Terps are essentially just elevated places of land.  We began our journey to Friesland by traveling across the Afsluitdijk.  The Afsluitdijk is a massive dike that separates the Ijsselmeer from the North Sea.  

This dike stretches for 30 kilometers with water on both sides. We also stopped and walked around.  This was actually the same place that my family and I stopped when we were in the Netherlands four years ago.  Went continued on to Friesland, the providence where my ancestors are from.  The land is mainly farming land with miles upon miles of green fields, which was a nice change from the classic old city brick look of Amsterdam where there is absolutely no green.  

This part of the journey was my favorite because it offered a really nice and relaxing car ride through a seemingly different country from what I am used to.  

We also stopped at a number of other dikes and looked around.  Our first major stop was in Dokkum.  It is a small town in Friesland where we learned a little about the history of Dokkum and also toured the church which is located on the highest Terp in the country.  

As we continued, we saw the mud flats in Friesland located on the North Sea.  

During low tide, people can walk on the mud and with the help of a tour guide, can actually walk “on water” to one of the islands in Northern Holland.  This was the last stop on our trip.  This was the first really leaving the urban settings of Amsterdam or Haarlem which was a very nice change in pace.  The rural farming country offered a calming feeling that I have not felt in several months and it was nice to feel once again.

Van Gogh Museum

February 26- Today I went to the Van Gogh museum.  

Once we arrived at the museum, the line was very long.  But since we have these amazing Museumkaarts, we could just skip the line and walk right past everyone.  I felt like a VIP since we didn't have to wait.  We got right into the museum within about two minutes without having to pay anything.  But unfortunately, we could not take any pictures, which is true in most museums in Amsterdam.  The museum had a floor dedicated to Picasso, and a couple floors dedicated to Van Gogh.  Paintings from other painters that influenced him were also dispersed throughout the museum.  Several paintings that really stuck out to me were Van Gogh’s Japanese inspired paintings.  These paintings were just so different from the rest of his paintings that they were really memorable.  I also enjoyed seeing paintings that I recognized from books. It is fun to see the real authentic paintings that I have seen before.  I was sad when I discovered that his most famous painting, ‘Starry Night’, was not located in the museum.  This is the painting:

http://www.lip.pt/~catarina/starry-night.jpg

It turns out that painting is actually located in New York.  But that describes American culture, always wanting the biggest and best things for ourselves.  Afterwards, we went to a small restaurant which was very good.  We then proceeded to bike to the Anne Frank Huis, but the line was too long and it was raining.  We decided to bike back to the dorms in the rain.  By the time I got back, I was soaked but it was an enjoyable bike ride and day.

African Dinner

February 25-  Today, there was an international group African dinner for international students.  The whole night was focused around Africa and African culture.  Surprisingly there were only about 3 African people out of a group of 20 people.  A couple people from Africa made some African food for us.  The food was super spicy!  The food was some fish like thing, I actually have no clue what it was, but despite the being spicy, the food tasted very good.  There was also a quiz on Africa.  I felt somewhat bad that I knew basically none of the answers but I guess that was the point of the night anyways, to learn more about Africa.  I enjoyed the night because I learned a lot about Africa including current events happening in Africa.  I also learned more about African culture and met some new people including a man from Ghana. 

Flower Auction

February 23- Today we all went to FloraHolland, the largest flower auction in the world.  First of all, the flower auction was not what I was expecting at all.  I was expecting a giant greenhouse building but instead it was a giant warehouse.  I thought the whole system and way things worked was pretty cool.  Everyone had a job to do and everyone was doing their job.  There were a ton of workers driving little carts around pulling carts full of flowers.  

The main area looked like mass chaos watching from above.  The flower carts were then put on a track that leads into the flower auction area.  The auction rooms were huge and filled with people buying large amount of flowers.  

The carts of different flowers slowly entered and exited the auction room giving buyers enough time to purchase whatever type of flower desired.  (This can be seen in the picture above)  The auctioning process was fun to watch, especially watching the projector screens where the different prices and amount of flowers left remaining changed frequently.  

Even though I am a guy and don't really care for flowers that much, the flower auction was a lot of fun.  Overall, the flower auction was an enjoyable experience.

Cheese, chocolate, and windmills!

February 19- Today a large group of Calvin students and other international students went to a place called Zaanse Schans, a small town nearby Amsterdam which had several windmills.  The weather was quite cold so we tried to spend as much time inside as possible.  We took a tour of the village and first saw how wooden shoes are made using the machines pictured below.

The rough build of a shoe is made in only 5 minutes.  The next place we saw was a replica of the first Albert Heijn in the Netherlands.  Albert Heijn is a large grocery chain in the Netherlands, similar to Meijer only a third of the size.  But this store was very small and had a very wide selection of coffee along with just the bare essentials.  Next we toured an actual windmill.  The inside of the windmill was very cool.  There were two massive 2000 kg blocks which were spinning as the windmill was also spinning from the wind.  

These large blocks were rolling over what looked to be flour and turned it into powder.  We also climbed to the very top of the windmill and could walk outside.  The way windmills are made is very impressive.  There are so many huge parts and gears all moving due to the wind.  

Next we were shown how cheese is made.  We also were able to try about 12 different types of cheese, some of which included goat cheese, a green cheese called Pesto, smoked cheese, and other types of older and younger cheese.  

The process of making cheese takes a very long time and also depends on whether the cheese is young or old.  We also got some free samples of chocolate.  This was my favorite part of the tour, tasting different types of cheese and chocolate all for free!  After the tour we had some free time before the next bus arrived so a bunch of us decided to look at the museum there, since it was free for us anyways.  The museum was really cool actually.  There were a lot of hands on objects, whether we were supposed to touch them or not is still unknown.  The museum seemed to be a large collection of random objects.  The museum had quite a few models of ships and random gardening tools hanging from the ceiling.  There was also a chocolate factory in the next building.  We learned the process of how to make chocolate while also playing games.  I felt like a kid in a chocolate factory.  

Trip to Haarlem

February 18- Today I decided to go on a long bike ride to Haarlem with Jacob, Ian, Dan, Andrew, and Anna.  The bike ride took us 2.5 hours to bike 20 miles there.  Haarlem is located about 15 miles west of Amsterdam, but we took a 5 mile detour on accident.  We followed a river for most of the way to Haarlem which made it a nice and peaceful bike ride.

On the way there we stopped at a Turkish restaurant for lunch in a town called Halfweg.  I ordered a Donur, which is like a gyro and looked like this:

The food was really good and the owner of the small restaurant brought us a large plate of fries for free.  After lunch we finally made it to Haarlem and began to explore.  We were greeted with a huge stone entrance that looked like it belonged on a castle.

We biked to what seemed to be the center of the city because an extremely large cathedral was right in the center.  

There I found the hotel that my family stayed at previously 4 years ago on a two week trip through Europe. 

The hotel was located right next to the giant cathedral.  We walked around more and stumbled upon the Corrie Ten Boom museum.  The Ten Booms were watchmakers and lived above their store.  But what they are most famous for was hiding Jews during WWII.  Corrie also wrote a book called "The Hiding Place."  

The Ten Boom's hid the Jews behind a brick wall in one of the rooms in the house.  In order to get behind the wall, a small secret sliding door was hidden in the bookshelf.  

The picture above shows "The Hiding Place"  with some of the bricks removed in order to see better.  After the tour we decided to start to head back seeing that the time was around 4:30pm and it gets dark early this time of year.  So we biked back and took us 1.5 hours instead of 2.5 on the trip to Haarlem.  It was also snowing as we got back to our dorms.  Overall the trip was extremely cold but very enjoyable once I could feel my fingers again.  I will most likely do the same bike ride when the temperature warms up.

The Rijksmuseum

February 14- Today I decided to go to the Rijksmuseum with Dan, Ian, and Tyler.  The outside of the Rijksmuseum is very large and impressive.  

(There is also a picture of the front of the Rijksmuseum in my second post in this blog)  The building had a very unique and cool looking exterior and interior.  The museum included a large number of paintings by Dutch artists and also included some old guns and expensive plates made of silver and gold.  This museum also included a couple rooms dedicated entirely to Rembrandt, the main attraction in the Rijksmuseum.  The painting “Night Watch” is also located there.  Since cameras are not allowed in the museum, a picture of "The Night Watch" can be found here: http://thefastertimes.com/overlookedhistory/files/2009/09/rembrandt_night_watch.jpg

It is a very famous painting and the only painting I recognized in the whole museum.  I am not very much into art or paintings but that painting was very impressive because of the large size and detail that went into the painting.  Overall the museum was enjoyable and I would suggest everyone to visit.  What confused me about the museum was how small it actually was.  Just by looking at the outside of the building one would think that the museum was also huge but was actually only two floors with 14 rooms total.  But it turns out that most of the Rijksmuseum was being remodeled or under reconstruction unfortunately.

Its Greek to me

February 12- Today I cooked spaghetti for dinner and as I was cleaning my dishes a girl who lives on my floor walked in and we started talking. The girl’s name was Deni (pronounced like Deny) and she invited me to drink coffee with her and a friend who was coming over.  His name was Greg and they are both Greek.  I talked to Deni and Greg for about an hour and a half just going back and forth asking questions about ourselves and our home countries.  It was very interesting to learn more about Greek culture, as I didn’t know a whole lot to begin with.  That was also the first time I have ever drank coffee but I did not tell Deni or Greg that.  The coffee tasted really good actually.  Deni let me try some Greek casserole with noodles in it.  It sounds a little strange but it was actually quite delicious.  She also gave me a Greek sweet which was a fourth of an orange with really sugary syrup on top.  I thought it was a strange sweet because we also ate the orange peels but because it was an orange and had a ton of sugar, it tasted very good.  Deni and Greg told me that the Greek people like to eat a lot and like to eat food with a lot of sugar which probably explains all the sugar on the oranges.  I had an awesome time talking and meeting these Greek people.  I also learned that Germans do not like Greeks for some reason and was also told that the only good movies in the world are American made!  I also met another Greek girl who lives on my floor whose name is Angela.  Everyone was very nice.  Greg was really funny too.  It was a great experience.  That is one of the reasons why I came to Amsterdam, to meet new international people which was really cool.

International Sem Pond Jump

February 11- Today I biked to Amsterdamse Bos, a park near where I live, with Dan, Ian, Andrew, Canada, Tyler, and Jacob.  We biked there in order to participate in the “Sem Pond Jump” which is an annual tradition every February at Calvin.  Since we didn’t have a frozen pond to jump in, we found the next best thing, an unfrozen pond!  Don’t get me wrong, the water was still really cold, just not as cold.  But we all recited the Sem Pond dedication and proceeded to jump in.  

(There is also a video of us jumping in on my facebook page.)  The water first seemed really cold but once we got out and dried off it was not that cold, but we still had to bike 15 minutes back to home.  

The experience made me feel like I was partly back at home as all the Calvin students back at home were jumping in the Seminary Pond the same day.

Differing Areas in the Netherlands

February 5- Today I decided to go for a bike ride with a couple other guys.  We biked through Amsterdam to central station and then took a ferry over to Noord-Holland.  The ferry was free and we could also take our bikes with us.  

The picture above is looking at the buildings in Amsterdam.  Once leaving Amsterdam, the scenery changed drastically.  There were no buildings around but only small towns.  There was a lot of green and open areas to bike and walk around.  It is amazing how different the rural areas look from the urban cities such as Amsterdam.  

This picture is of open pasture land in Noord- Holland which is quite different from an urban setting.  There is a line where the buildings stop and fields start.  The Netherlands is basically split into large areas of farmland and pastures or large cities.  There is very little mixture of both.  We followed a path along a canal for a while and decided to turn back in order to find some cheap food.  We found a small Turkish restaurant and most of the guys ate a Turkish pizza.  The bike ride was about 3.5 hours and went about 15-20 miles.

The Historic Museum

February 4- Today I went to the Historic Museum of Amsterdam.  

First of all, the museum was set up in a confusing way so I started at the top floor, which was the most recent history and worked backwards in time as I headed downstairs.  The first exhibit I saw dealt with the legalization of drugs which was really interesting to read about.  Next was a small exhibit about World War II.  That exhibit was very small, especially compared to the exhibit about some famous Dutch soccer player.  To be honest, I would rather learn more about WWII but I do live in Europe now and it seems their whole lives revolve around soccer, or futbol.  The historic museum also had some information about the architecture of Amsterdam.  The architecture in Amsterdam is really cool looking because it is so much different from what I am used to.  

Plus the architecture varies greatly from one building to another all over Amsterdam.  The houses and building are all compressed together and have no yards as you can tell from the picture above.  Also the museum had some paintings and some information of previous queens of the Netherlands.  To me the more recent history was what really interested me and the oldest history was really difficult to get interested in.  The museum wasn’t the best but it did have its interesting and cool parts.  It did have a good representation of the historical changes that Amsterdam underwent in the past couple of centuries.  It also showed a lot of the cultural changes as more and more immigrants arrived in Amsterdam.

International Dinner

February 2- Today we finally got bikes and biked to the street market called Albert Cuyp.  Later there was an International Dinner with pancakes.  The international dinner was made up of a group of only international students and offered a chance for us to meet new people from all over the world.  I met Sheena from the Philippines, Lee from South Africa, Francis from Ghana, Christine from Czech Republic, and Deson from Portugal.  It was really fun to talk to them and learn a little bit more about their culture and about their home countries.  We discussed various things about our home countries and I learned a lot more about the countries they are from.  This was the first real interaction with people from a different country and I really enjoyed talking to them.  Oh and the pancakes were delicious!  I had a pancake with apples on them and Matt Wever had a pancake with bacon on it.  Those pancakes were very thin and are a Dutch specialty.  That night was a very good way to experience the culture from a lot of various places around the world.

Exploring

January 29- Today was the second day of being in Amsterdam.  So of course we wanted to do some exploring.  Uko and Jane Zylstra helped us get our bearings around Amsterdam a little bit and also the public transit system.  We took the tram to the Concertebouwe stop and walked around for a little bit.  The Concertebouwe, or concert hall was a very impressive looking building, with a cool looking exterior.  The Van Gogh museum is also located right at that stop.  Also in the distance the Rijksmuseum was clearly visible.

That building was huge and looked like a palace, but it wasn’t.  We then went to the Albert Cuyp Street Market.  The street market had a lot of open aired fruit and vegetables stands, cheese stands, and also clothing stands.  

It also had a lot of other random shops.  The prices are generally cheap, especially the fruit. The entire market stretched for a couple of blocks and took a long time to walk through the whole market.  Later we explored downtown Amsterdam more.  We continued to take the tram further into the city.  We really had no plan on where we were going, we just wanted to walk around and see new sights.  Earlier we received our Museumkaarts which allows us to get into various museums and other major sights around the city and country for free.  These cards work wonders and are awesome!  Because we all had these cards, we decided to visit the Royal Palace. The palace looked very lame from the outside because it was under construction and had massive tarps and scaffolding on the building.  The inside of the palace was quite impressive but also became tiring after a while because every room started to look the same.  

Every room had a massive chandelier with gold everywhere and paintings on the wall.  The center of the palace has a statue of Atlas on the wall and a huge map of the world on the floor.  Unfortunately carpet was covering the map.  The palace is located in Dam Square, which is basically the center of Amsterdam.  There were a lot of street performers dressed up in various costumes.  

There was a gorilla costume right outside the palace.   From there we explored some of the side streets and saw familiar restaurants such as McDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  

As we continued, the temperature kept decreasing until we could no longer stand the cold.  At that moment a church was located right behind where we were standing.  So we decided to go in just to warm up.  Turns out a service was also about to start and we decided to stay.  The church was a Catholic church called St. Nicholas Church and the service was in English.  The service was very difficult to follow and the songs were very slow as every song was sung by a very beautiful sounding choir.  The service was very interesting and I am glad we decided to stay.  Plus now I can say I attended a Catholic service.  Later we decided we needed to eat something.  We stopped and got off the tram at a stop called Leidseplein.  

We ate at an Irish pub called “Hole in the Wall.”  I ordered a burger and that burger was one of the best tasting burgers I have ever had in my life.  After we were finished, we were expecting the waiter to come and give us our checks, but he never did.  Apparently Dutch culture is when people go out to restaurants, the main point is to talk to other people and not only to eat food.  Americans are more used to going out to restaurants to eat and then leave once their food is finished.  So the waiters put no pressure on anyone to leave once everyone’s food is gone.  We then asked for our checks.  Another small problem that we encountered was the tip.  No one knew what to do for a tip so we ended up asking some guy who appeared to be on a date.  Oops but we needed to know.  He said that tips were included in the price of the food but we should also leave a small coin on the table also.  So we all left 50 cents on the table and we were on our way.