Cambridge & London, UK

August 13-19, 2008

My first trip to the UK was to visit Joel and Jill in Cambridge. Cambridge is a quaint little town full of winding roads and beautiful old buildings & colleges. We really enjoyed walking around the campuses and seeing all of the buildings. I felt like I was in the middle of a Harry Potter story (well, I did find platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station in London!).

We went "punting," which is when you get in a little boat in the river and the punter has a long stick pole which they use to push and steer the boat. Joel and Chad took turns punting while Jill and I "helped" with the tiny oars. It was nice, relaxing, and a great way to see some of the back lawn areas of the colleges. Beautiful! Later on we went to a nice park near town, Chad and Joel bought an American football to toss around. They were like two boys with a new toy. ;)

Chad and I took the train into London a couple times to romp around the city, since it's only about an hour and a half away. It was my first time there, Chad's second. He loved London the first time he visited, so I enjoyed having him show me around (as I am usually the leader/organizer when we visit a new city). We saw Big Ben and Parliament, London Tower and Tower Bridge, & Buckingham Palace. The parks and gardens were all very well maintained. We also found a great market in Covent Gardens. They had unique art and jewelry vendors, and we even found a booth in the market that sold oysters and champagne! Mmmmm!

One day, Joel and Jill joined us in London, and we all met up with my friend Dennis, an old FedEx'er from Pittsburgh. We went to see Avenue Q, Chad's favorite play, basically an R-rated puppet show. Haha. It was hilarious. We walked around SoHo, and found a fabulous Indian restaurant for dinner. The food was delicious. It was a fun night, and nice to meet up with an old friend from home. We can't wait to come back to London, and hopefully Cambridge again!

-S

Pics from Cambridge & London:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanickmoses/sets/72157606893197821/

Bombs over Rotterdam

There are interesting reminders every now and then about the history of our fair city. Some are subtle, and some, not so much... like the bomb sirens that just went off all over the city. Huh? You heard me right, folks. It starts with just one soft siren in the distance, and grows increasingly intense and loud as others join in across the city. Don't worry, the War on Terror has not extended into The Netherlands, yet. Some group of cloggies somewhere decided that it was important to keep the old bomb warnings in tact, and in order to do so it requires that they test the system every month or so. It was a bit strange, and eerie, but at least "this is only a test."

On the more subtle side of the reminders of the past are the quaint, more typically Dutch, towns that line the city center of Rotterdam. Chad and I took a nice bike ride after work today to nearby Delfshaven. It's a small town consisting of only two to three old streets that are split by canals and topped off with a windmill at end of the inlet. The wall-to-wall buildings are marked with old metal signs swinging from hangers over the doors naming the tavern, taylor, or art gallary inside. It's a stark contrast to the modern, industrial city that can literally be seen over the tops of these old buildings. These modern city buildings owe their existence to the bombings in the 40's that leveled the city center, sparing only a few bordering villages to preserve the legacy of the area. This statue on the right represents Rotterdam after the WWII bombings leveled the entire city center. It's called "The City Without a Heart." While change can sometimes bring progress, as it has to the industry in Rotterdam, it's nice to have areas like Delfshaven that preserve a piece of the past.

-S

Gotta Talk that Dutch

People from home often ask: "How is the language barrier". The stock answer about Holland is: "You will rarely ever NEED to speak Dutch, and most everyone speaks English well". This is true.. but there are subtleties to living around the language that are starting to wear on me. For instance, it is impossible to be polite when asking for something; asking "when you get a chance, could you bring the bill" will be met with a blank look until you say: "I would like to pay, please". More importantly, when you hear people around you talking and they end up laughing, you get that sense that you aren't 'in' on the joke (somewhat of a High School feeling).

They laugh alot, so this has me thinking that I need to put the time and effort into learning some Dutch.

-Chad






For your viewing enjoyment, I threw in this picture of people repelling off of the Euromast.

Another visitor; McCormick

Our next visitor, ironically, was Feet's old partner in crime, McCormick. Jarod happened to be in Bruges, Belgium, for a conference. So afterwards he hopped on a train up to see us. He was here over the 4th of July weekend. It was nice to be with another fellow countryman on the 4th. ;)

We celebrated in style, by going to the beach at the Hague and sitting outside in a café on the beach, lounging and drinking and eating all afternoon. Jarod decided that he wanted to move to the Hague, so he could live this lifestyle all the time (in the short summer months of course). We also stumbled upon a wonderful tapas restaurant in the city for dinner that night. Once again, it was really nice to have a friend visit to share our new home with.

-S

Pics from Jarod's visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanickmoses/sets/72157606627461793/

Cyber Frustrations

One of the most frustrating parts of settling in here in Holland was trying to establish an internet connection. It seems like it should be straight forward. You go to the store, and leave with an internet subscription and modem. Not so.

Of course we wanted to get the cheapest option possible that would handle our needs, so we shopped around a bit. There are a few discount internet providers available, and the adds sounds great, so we first looked there. However, they do not provide the high speeds that we needed, especially to use Slingbox or Skype.

 

Then we looked for a higher speed providers, which took us to UPC or KPN. After taking a trip to each store downtown, we were told that setup took 4 weeks. FOUR WEEKS! That is such an incredibly long time, considering it should only involve them “flipping a switch,” so to speak. Could they not just hand us the modem in the store? I guess our expectations were too high. We were desparate for another option, so we kept looking.

We found that Orange also offered high speeds, but at a cheaper price. So we went to ask them, and they also told us it would take “4-6” weeks, but they expected it would be less than four (which was no consolation to us). After much deliberation, and still in disbelief of the long wait time, we decided to go to the Orange store and buy their setup. They put our information into the computer and “set us up.” We were now to wait a few weeks and then we would receive a modem.

Two weeks later, we received a letter, but not the one we were hoping for. The letter stated that they could not provide internet to our apartment, because we were within a certain postal code in the city limits, and they had already used the allotted number of lines that KPN (the phone company) provides to them. What!? Plus, why did it take them two weeks to come back to us with this information? Couldn't they look this up and tell us in the store? It is too complicated to get into the full explanation of this setup in here, so I’ll leave it at that. But long story short, we couldn’t use them.

I'm fairly certain that the internet setup in Rotterdam looked something like this:

So, we were back to where we started. Basically, our only option then was to go to UPC. It was much more expensive, but we bit the bullet and went ahead. We set up the account, and set in for the long wait. After a few weeks, we had heard nothing, so we went to check up. At this point, they told us they couldn’t create a new account for us because there was already an active account for our 'building.' Our building is split into three apartments, but they only had it as one address in their system. This didn't help us because the setup was not in our apartment.

Well, I didn't do a very good job of keeping this long story short, but in conclusion, we were able to go into the store with our upstairs neighbor, and purchase the expensive plan (saying we lived 'together'). Then we waited our allotted weeks, and presto... the magic world of the internet was at our fingertips (so long as the service didn't go out, as it often did)!

- C

Our first visitor; Feet!

Our first visitor came only a month after we moved into our new apartment. Feet (Forest), was on his way back home after living in the Middle East for a year, where he worked on establishing and improving a paramedic program.


Feet was very excited about the “cool” summer climates in Holland, after spending so much time in the hot dessert. He was also excited to eat pork again. We showed him around Rotterdam as best we could, with having only limited knowledge of the city ourselves. It was fun to explore the city with a friend from home.

Pics from Feet's visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanickmoses/sets/72157606890741178/

Our First Anniversary; Paris, France

June 6-11, 2008

What can I say about Paris? People have written books trying to capture the character and atmosphere of the city. So I will not attempt to do so in a couple paragraphs, but I will recap what we did. It really is a charming city, a photographers' paradise, and such a romantic place to celebrate our first anniversary. We couldn't believe it had been a whole year, because all of the fun we had at the wedding was still so fresh in our memories. Who knew then that within the next year we would be packing up and moving to Europe, and we'd end up spending our anniversary in Paris.

Despite popular belief, most people in France are incredibly friendly if you give at least a bit of effort to speak French, and don't act like an obnoxious tourist. First of all, thanks to my 5 years of traveling with FedEx and staying in Hilton chain hotels, I had saved up enough points to book the Hilton Arc de Triomphe for 5 nights! Score! We probably could have never afforded to stay in this hotel otherwise. It was only two (long) blocks from the Arc, and they even put little chocolates on your pillow. Yet another thing that made our experience there so cool.

For 5 days we just wondered around the city from one amazing site to the next. We strolled down the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre. The size of the Arc is very impressive, especially when you are standing directly under it. It is also neat to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance peaking up over the buildings. Outside the Louvre, there are beautifully landscaped gardens full of Romanesque statues and large water fountains. We found a café and had some wine while we soaked up all of the beautiful things around us. Formerly the residence of royalty, the building of the Louvre is itself a piece of art. It is enormous, encompassing an entire block. Inside the painted ceilings and marble doorways and floors are really something to see. You could easily spend several days in this museum and not see everything, but we were able to see the main things that we wanted to see. Our favorite part by far is the statue gallery in the left wing, which is a huge open area with dozens of large marble and bronze statues.

Some of the best parts of Paris, though, are not the landmarks or tourist spots. One afternoon we bought a bottle of wine and sat in the lounge chairs in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a large garden in the city, talking for hours. It was nice because there were not many people there, so it was quiet and private. Another day we got lost in The Third, and ended up finding a really neat part of town. We stumbled upon a quaint little street with shops and cafes where we stopped to have a glass of white wine to cool off. And, when we walked around the corner, bam, there was Notre Dame! That is the neat thing about this city, you never know what you will encounter around the next corner.

Notre Dame is a beautiful cathedral, inside and out. It still has a medieval feeling to it. We bit the bullet and waited in line to go up in the bell towers. It was well worth the wait, because it provides a beautiful view of the city, including the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. It is also just interesting to see the inside of the towers with their tiny worn down spiral staircases, and gargoyles everywhere. I can't help but think about the Hunchback of Notre Dame when I'm up there. Haha.

The Eiffel Tower is obviously at the top of most peoples' list of things to see in Paris. It is just one more thing that made us say "wow." It is nice to see in the daylight, but you absolutely must visit it at night, too, as it has a completely different atmosphere. The parks and gardens surrounding the tour and nice to lay around in and drink some wine. Then about every half hour they have a light show where the whole tour sparkles. Talk about romantic…Our first anniversary was definitely memorable, and I'm sure we will be just as happy on our 50th. I would highly recommend adding Paris to your must-visit-list. You won't be disappointed.

-S

Pics from our first anniversary in Paris:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanickmoses/sets/72157605664028995/