Ray's visit

By the time Raymond came out to visit, we had discovered a few more cool places to go in Rotterdam than we had known about when Feet and Jarod were here. Raymond was going to Italy to work on the startup for a new Shell plant, so he flew in to see us for a couple days before heading down there. We spent the days strolling around Rotteram, Delft, & Amsterdam, getting a personal tour of the Pelgrim brewery in Delfshaven, and biking around the city & Kralingen lake.

Of course, Ray is an amazing photographer. One of the benefits of having a friend like this is that he took some great shots while he was here, such as this one that he snapped of Chad and I in Amsterdam.


-S

PS: for more pics from Ray's trip, check out the Flickr folder:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanickmoses/sets/72157610554568283/

Ahh... weekends in Europe

Thought I would take a minute to describe what a weekend might be like when you live in Europe (that is when you are not traveling to another country or city). To start things off, on Friday evening my department at Maersk had a "team building event." Normally in the States, this can be a bland and possibly "safe" but slightly boring event, but in Europe, it is quite the opposite. We started by going to a go-cart race track in Rotterdam. It was an indoor track that spanned 3 floors. The cars went quite fast, and it actually hurt when you hit a wall, or cut a corner too short, or if another car hit you. I found, just 12 hrs later, that I am covered in deep blue and purple bruises all over my body. But, I'm considering them battle scars, and I had good lap times, so it's all worth it. ;)

After the go-carts, the entire department (and their sig. others) went to "Steen's" house for dinner. Steen is our supervisor, from Denmark, who is normally a very mild mannered, soft spoken guy. But, get a couple beers in him (the Danish LOVE to drink), and he is absolutely hilarious, and an entertaining guy to talk to about any subject. Also, keep in mind that our group is extremely diverse, and we have people from not only Holland, but Poland, Denmark, Germany, Georgia (the country, not the state, of course), China, India, Finland, Canada, and of course us from the US. Everyone has such a different perspective, and different opinions of other countries, so it makes for some really funny & interesting conversations. So, while we weren't sure what to expect, we had a great time that evening.

Contrary to what I thought before, Europeans do have a very strong opinion about "other" countries. They have the same stereotypes of countries here as we in America may have of people from certain states in the US. It's funny to listen to them go on about this type of thing, though, because I guess I naively thought that they would be very "diplomatic" or understanding of other people or cultures. But, the truth is that people are the same no matter where you go. They are critical of people and places that are different than where they come from and what they are used to, and they want to let you know that they feel that their traditions are really the best, or make the most sense.

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Relaxing on the terrace at the Witte Aap

But... I digress with all of this international dialog. Back to our great weekend. Today, we slept in (yes!), woke up and cooked ourselves an "American" breakfast of French Toast, with a European flare (Nutella and banana's for toppings... Yum!). A little while later we went to the gym, for a quick workout, since we are now trying to burn enough calories to compensate for our intake of calories in the form of Belgium beer and chocolate. After a couple more hours of relaxing, we decide to bike over to Delfshaven to enjoy the beautiful sunny day while it lasted. It's the quaint little historic area beside Rotterdam that I've described before, complete with canals and a wind mil. We went to our favorite Rotterdam Brewery (yes, that's right, a Rotterdam micro brew), Pelgrim, and sat outside at a table on the sidewalk and drank some coffee and beer, read our books, and soaked up the sun. This may be some of the last sunny days we have before our rainy fall/winter kicks in, so we are trying to savor it as much as possible.

There are so many things that are easy to take for granted here in Europe. Such as being able to ride your bike to so many interesting places, and being able to sit outside at a cafe or restaurant. We try to remember to appreciate these things, but it so easily becomes part of your everyday routine. This is nice for us, as it is a pleasant way of life, but it also makes us wonder... what will we do when we move back to the States?

-S

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