Week 47: Short Vacation to the Netherlands

A few months ago, we had marked some time off on our calendar to attend the wedding of one of Jason's cousins. Unfortunately, due to our realization that we would spend almost as much time travelling as we would on the ground, we decided that it wouldn't make sense to take the trip. We were left with time off on our calendar. After investigating some last-minute package tours and other options that required ass-early flights, we found a lovely little B&B in the Netherlands (link in Dutch), where we could spend time relaxing and riding our bikes.

The livingroom in our B&B apartment

The drive was about 5 hours from our place to Waspe, where the B&B is located. The area was very nice and surrounded by farms and parkland. (Mom--you would love it! There were horses everywhere. We saw at least two people driving as well.) On our drive in, we followed a canal for much of the way. We had arranged ahead of time to have our hostess prepare dinner for us, which was fantastic and much easier than trying to find a place to eat after our long drive.

We spent our first day out on our bikes. The weather was really nice--sunny, but still a little cool. As you may know, the Dutch are crazy for biking and as we were sitting in our room in the morning, we saw students headed to school and a string of adults headed to work all on bicycles. And the only time the Dutch are seen wearing helmets while biking is if they are on the crazy road bikes with the skinny tires that require you to wear spandex and clippy shoes.

From our B&B, we headed out into the nearby Drents-Friese Wold (a wooded parkland--north of Waspe, if you follow the link to the map above) and rode our bikes to the town of Appelscha, where we had lunch. Jason had the opportunity to experience Dutch noontime cuisine (I've had it a number of times at the companies I've visited in the Netherlands), which consists either of fried croquettes of some type or hot open face sandwiches with cheese and fried eggs. He had the first. I had the latter. His impression: "So good." And once again, we were struck by the fact that really, here in Northern Europe they don't eat that much better than we do--they just seem to spend much more time moving around--or something--to stay generally not-obese.

One interesting thing we noticed as we were riding around is than an inordinate number of roads in this area of the Netherlands were brick. It wasn't like you normally see in Europe, where the roads in the center of town or where people walk were paved with brick. These were all the secondary roads, both in town and outside of it. And in almost all cases that we ran into, even in the more remote farming areas, they were in very good repair.

A sample of the brick roads

After a great day our on our bikes, we found a BBQ joint that was a short drive away. It had all the trappings of your standard BBQ joint in the US, as you can see from the photo below--hats, wagon wheels, barrels, etc. The waiters even had holsters with toy guns in them. I hadn't eaten ribs in ages, so I ordered those and Jason ordered a steak. The ribs were a mistake--they were very odd tasting. It took me a while, but I finally realized what the flavor was--Chinese spareribs. Like you get at that crappy Chinese place that you go to only because it is close, not because it is good. Jason, though, enjoyed his steak, and frankly, the atmosphere in the place was quite amusing, almost making up for the abominable ribs.

Howdy, partner! 

For our second full day, we  drove up to Groningen (pronounced "Hrone-ing-gen"), which is the nearest city to where we were staying. We had lunch in the city, which, like much of the rest of the Netherlands, was full of canals and wandered through the town a bit. Our main destination in Groningen, though was a climbing gym located on the edge of the city. The most notable feature of this gym is shown in the picture below: the highest dedicated climbing structure in the world. It could only be used if you were lead climbing (something Jason and I are currently not qualified to do), but was still quite impressive to see.

For scale, Jason is with the car on the right-hand side of the photo

For our last full day, we went out for another bike ride, this time to the town of Dwingeloo and the Dwingelerweld park land. The best thing about biking in the Netherlands is that there are no hills. None. Maybe an occasional bump for a bridge or a local depression, but no steep valleys or tall hills to be seen.

Lunch in Dwingeloo--Go Sox!

In riding through the parkland near Dwingeloo, we found the radio telescope in the below picture. This is my second time having my photo taken with a radio telescope. The first time was about 15 years ago at Nerd Camp, where my future college roommate took a picture of me in front of a much larger radio telescope located in West Virginia. I suppose I now need to make my way to the largest radio telescope in the world, located in Puerto Rico.

Me and a radio telescope!

Our vacation ended with a 5 hour drive home. All too short, as vacations inevitably are, but a very enjoyable time while it lasted.

Another Catch Up Post

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and didn't end up trampled under crowds on Black Friday. Jason and I were back in the States for the week of Thanksgiving. We had a great time visiting friends and family and especially enjoyed climbing at Rock Spot with Jason's siblings. One of the big events for this trip back was Jason's 15th high school reunion. The best part of that evening was the bar we went to after the reunion, where a friend's sandwich was taken by a drunk girl when he left it for a moment to go to the rest room. Her response, with a mouth full of sandwich, was: Yeah? So what? 

Jason headed back to Germany on Sunday evening, and I headed out to Concord, Mass to spend the week in the office and in the wonderful Best Western (Plus!) at Historic Concord. One of my colleagues says it smells like dirty socks. I think the smell has improved slightly with the addition of the "Plus" to the name over the last year. (One thing to note: if you are booked in a Best Western in Europe, do not despair! They are really classy joints here--the largest and nicest hotel room I have stayed in outside of Las Vegas was a Best Western in the Netherlands.)

My company has been growing recently, so there were a number of new faces in the office, including a new boss for me, who started that Monday. If nothing, I have good timing. There was also a cube realignment, which, for a space management system that is supposed to be flexible and easy to change, took a surprisingly long time to complete. I, luckily, was able to find my favorite chair and a desk to sit at, so I was content for the week.

The base from the bike trail

I returned to Germany that Friday, ready to face a busy week and jet-lag. Jason was kind enough to help keep me awake the Saturday I returned, mostly by watching TV shows with me. He was off, though, for the week Sunday, on a cultural education trip to Hamburg. I, in an effort to get my clock back to normally, went out for a  mountain bike ride in the cold and wet woods. I miraculously avoided the rain drops, and had a really nice view of the base under the cloudy sky, but was *covered* in mud on returning to the apartment, as the pictures below can testify.

Covered in mud

There is a pair of shoes under there...somewhere

While Jason was up in Hamburg, learning the details of the current German and European cultural landscape, I had a work trip that involved three cars, two trains and two planes. I supposed it really involved four planes, but 2 of them, headed to Hannover, were cancelled due to snow in Munich, and the fourth was found mostly by accident when asking in jest how to get to my next destination by the next morning. It turned out that the place I was headed, this small city two hours outside of Hannover, has an airport and the plane was leaving that evening, though delayed. Proof that it is always worth asking and that every cloud has a silver, though often slightly tarnished, lining.

Week 6: Out Climbing

Jason and I signed up a couple weeks ago with the outdoor recreation department on base for a rock climbing trip. As many of you know, we've been climbing indoors regularly over the last year or so, but this was our first trip climbing outside. Our leader, Matt, is an American, but has been living in Germany for many years. He has also been climbing for many years and so knew of a good spot (cliff? hill?) to take us for our outing. Most of the folks in the group had not climbed before, so the place that Matt took us was at more of a beginner level, named Hochstein, about 2 hours south of us and very close to the French boarder. 

Me, with very sore arms

Since Jason and I more-or-less knew what we were doing (mostly in reference to belaying), we were set up on the harder of the two climbs, with one of us belaying and the other climbing. Jason went up first, making it look easy, while I was belaying him with a Munter Hitch (also a first). The Munter Hitch is good to know in case your ATC is eaten by rabid dogs--or just falls out of your bag--so you can still climb as long as you have a locking 'beener.

Jason mastering the wall

When my turn came, it was painfully obvious that I hadn't been climbing in almost two months. I got up maybe 10 feet, when my forearms decided to cramp up. Damn. I came down, stretched a bit, then tried again, managing to get up to maybe 20 or so feet. We each tried the easier climb a bit later--the pictures are of each of us from that climb. Jason, again, made it look easy. I, on the other hand, had completely tired myself out fighting with the other climb and couldn't get past the first section. Ah, well. If we ever go back, I'll get it then.

We were climbing on sandstone cliffs. It made for some interesting features and a lot of dust. There were lots of little stones sticking out of the wall that you could use as footholds, similar to the foot chips in the climbing gym. In other ways, though, it was very different from gym climbing. The biggest was that there wasn't a marked path up the rock to follow. I found climbing very difficult because of this--you need to look at the climb very differently. It is no longer a matter of how do I get to that very specific next hold, but where on this entire wall do I go. Granted, there are specific paths up the rock that considered a certain rating, so there is some general idea of where you should go, but the options outside are much greater than in the gym. Overall, though, we had a really great time and will do it again next time it comes around as an outdoor recreation trip. At some point it would also be great to get some rope so we can set up our own top roping for a day out--and further down the road get lead certified, that will be a ways off though. (We also learned about a good indoor gym about an hour away--we'll have to get over there soon.)

We also went out for a bike ride, finding some great mountain bike trails near us. They are close enough to us to get out during the week, which should be a lot of fun during these long summer days. That reminds me--lunar eclipse this evening!