26 May 2009

Arnhem Openair museum

Openluchtmuseum

We went to Arnhem to the Openair museum. It's a bit of a strange place. Part amusement park, part educational center, part eponymous old-stuff holding depot. It was a lot of fun and I would recommend it.  

My friend Dom is staying with us a bit and went with us.  One of the highlights was a display where we built a Dutch fronteirsman hut.





















We also saw an old butter factory powered by a gigantic steam engine.













Word of the day


stoomtrein Steam train.

Teylers Museum

We went to the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. It's one of the oldest public museums in the world, the only older being the Louvre. The Teylers folk point out that that the Louvre may have opened a year earlier, but it wasn't excactly by choice.

Teylers is somewhat eclectic, but the main theme is 18th and 19th century science.  This was a very exciting time in human history as we finally began to believe that the universe was comprehensible and that it may operate according to sets of internally consistent rules and that these rules might be ferreted out by means of the scientific method.  Galileo and Newton of course set the stage for this revolution with the examples of celestial and classical mechanics, and the early advances in optics nearly a century earlier.  In the 19th century the unification of the laws of optics with the laws electricity and magnetism gave impetus to the idea of a grand unified theory of everything.  


Sundry Scientific stuff













Uranium glass candlestick holder












Telescopes and microscopes












A spectrometer










A table of states of polarization of light











A generator/condenser for generating huge static-electric discharge











One of the main halls










Part of the large fossil collection













Word of the day

natuurkunde physics. Natuurkunde heette natural philosophy in engels in de 19e eeuw.

24 May 2009

Belgium

Summer camp for the whole family

While my mom was here, we went to a so-called Centerpark in Peer Belgium.  That park is called Erperheide.  The idea is like summer camp for kids, but the whole family goes.  We went for a four-day weekend and had a great time.  

There were lots of outside activities including petting zoo, playgrounds, a giant swing, trails to hike or bike, and general running around.










There were inside activities including giant Lego projects, ball pits,  jump houses, etc.  The best indoor activity was the waterpark.  Unfortunately I did not get any pics, but you can see it of the website.  It was absolute heaven for the boys.










We stayed in a little cabin.  It had three bedrooms, each just large enough to hold the beds, and a nice livingroom with a fireplace that Ethan was very excited about.










One can rent paddleboats, bikes, tennis rackets, or go minigolfing.  











Most importantly, one should relax.












Word of the day 

ontspannen to relax.  Wij gingen naar Erperheide om te ontspannen.


15 May 2009

Birthdays

The boys each had birthdays in April. We had nine of Ethan's friends from school and the neighborhood over for a party. We celebrated Leif's birthday in Belgium (more on that later).









































So the Boys are now 2 and 6.  Crazy.  Ethan seems a lot older than when we arrived.  


Word of the day:

verjaardag birthday.  Fijn verjaardag.

14 May 2009

Barneveld and Amsterdam

Barneveld

I grew up in New York in a little village called Barneveld.  My mom came to visit for a couple of weeks during the second half of April.   We rented a car to drive to Belgium (upcoming post) and thought we might swing through Barneveld, NL (Gelderland) while we had a car.   

The Netherlands has a Bible belt just like the US.  It is scaled down to Dutch proportions and runs in  30 km wide strip from the south west to the central northest of the country.  Barneveld is perhaps a buckle.  It was interesting.  The place is apparently famous for a breed of chicken developed there.  It looks quite big by comparison to my hometown, but is generally viewed as provincial and a bit backward by the west-coast Dutch.  I thought it was quaint.

There are lots of old churches.












There's a very nice museum that has quite a lot of good stuff in the archeological history of the area.  










The Rijksmuseum boiled down

On another day, Mom and Ethan and I went up to the Rijks in Amsterdam.  It's currently under renovation and is a small fraction of it's normal size.  This is actually good as one can still spend a whole day there, but they've boiled it down to the best of the collection.  

Ethan had a great time there and on the Museumplein what he climbed on the IAmsterdam sign in front of the Rijks. 













Word of the day  

woord van de dag word of the day.  Woord van de dag is de woord van de dag, of mischien fier. 

Self-fulfilling profecy

I predicted back in December that I would probably wander off sometime in April and forget how to edit this blog.  I wasn't actively trying to keep with the prediction, but I do apparently know myself fairly well. 

I really just have been busy.  I'm going to try to catch up in a series of posts rather than one go.  The good news is that I've been fairly productive and we've been having a lot of fun.


I like trains

Back on 11 April I took Ethan and one of his friends back to the train museum in Utrecht again.  Good times. 











Hanging around the neighborhood

They put up scaffolding on the front of our building sometime in January and finally took it down at the end of April.  I don't think they actually did anything with it.  It did serve as a jungle gym for the neighborhood kids.  

There seems to be a big Dutch industry in putting up and taking down scaffolding for doing really small jobs for which you might expect a ladder to suffice.  There also seems to be a tradition of attacking a job with great enthusiasm but then forgetting to actually finnish it for months.  











Getting through life on his looks

Leif finally got a haircut.  He's awfully cute.























Word of the day

zorg care or worrIk zorg voor jou en jij zorgt ook voor mij.

04 April 2009

Prague

Hazard duty

Our good friends Taco and Anja  watched our kids for us last weekend while we went to Prague.













The little one, Leif, now walks around the house asking for "Taco, Taco, Taco."  Tonight, when Taco and Anja came over for dinner, it was clear as Ethan served up juice in wine glasses for Anja and himself, that perhaps there might be room in his Oedipal little heart for another woman. 

There are not many people with whom we would leave our children.   Though at the right time at the end of a day particularly well-filled with whining and broken stuff and sand and dirt and snot and poop and crying and demands and cajoling and deviousness-beyond-their-years, we might consider leaving them with passing strangers on the street, there are really only a handful of friends we would really trust for a weekend.  

Prague 

Prague is a very fine city.  

We took public transport from the airport to out hotel .  It took about 50 minutes and was quite easy with a single change from bus to tube.  It cost about $2.50 pp.  

We stayed in the Marriott Prague.  It is listed as a five-star place.  I would say in reality it is three and a half.  That is, it's perfectly nice Marriott, it was well worth what we paid for it, but it was not super-luxe.  It was a Marriott.  

It is located near the town gate and is an easy walk from the Old Square. 










The Old Town Square is home to a celestial clock that is very pretty and interesting.













The square is very lively at all hours.











There was half-marathon being run the day we were there.  Here is a picture of the last finisher running along the Vltava River.  








This is a view from one of the towers of the Charles Bridge. 









and here is the bridge itself.  It's currently under repair.














There is an old Jewish quarter that has become largely a museum.










This is a night view of the statue of Wenceslas, the founder of the Czech republic. It sits in front of the National Museum.  










My old PhD advisor, Emil Wolf, was originally from Prague.  He fled as a teenager when the Germans invaded.  He became friends with another Czech refugee in England, Vlada.  He and Vlada were separated after the War.  Vlada returned to Prague and Emil eventually came to the US.  They managed to stay in touch through the Iron Curtain and eventually reunited after sixty years.  The agreed to meet in '91 "beneath the horse," that is, beneath the statue of Wenceslas.  

We had the great privilege of meeting Vlada on our trip:










He showed us around Prague by foot and by tram.  












We had lunch at Parnas on the Vltava.  The traditional duck was amazing.










Vlada was in the British RAF for a while.  In this photo he is wearing an RAF tie and pins.  During the war roughly 2500 Czechs served in the RAF and 2000 survived the War.  Vlada says that today there are 28.  There are only a few left in Prague; they meet on the first Wednesday of every month.

After the War, Vlada worked as an engineer in Prague.  After the Soviets invaded in '68 communication with the outside became heavily censored.  He was finally able to send letters to Emil while he was on a business trip in India.  

Lastly,  I liked this mural.  It is perhaps a little pessimistic.  I'd like to take it as a warning.  











Word of the day:  vakantie. vacation. Wij waren op vakantie




01 April 2009

Punching above their weight

I just listened to an interview with Secretary Clinton.  She stated rather nicely something that I have wanted to write about for a while.  

One of the most impressive things about the Netherlands is how small it is. That is, it has an impact on world politics on par with any European country, indeed even significant against giants like China and India.  Yet it has a population of 16 million people, 1/80 the size of China. It is home to the World Court. 

It is where they will hopefully someday try John Yoo, George the idiot king, Darth Cheney and the rest of the torturers and war criminals from the previous administration.  Well, ok, that's not going to happen, but given the depth of their crimes, it should.  

Anyway, this tiny country leads the way on issues of human rights, justice, personal liberty, and they feel deeply the noblese oblige of wealthy nations.  They sometimes get it wrong, but they keep evolving, learning, growing, leading.  They rank sixth in the world in providing developmental foreign aid.  How do they do this?  They don't exactly work themselves to death like the Japanese or Americans.  They maintain a robust military, but it still only represents 1.5% of the GDP compared to over 4% in the US.  I think the Dutch prominence in the world demonstrates the power of ideas. Just imagine what we are capable of in the US when we again couple great ideas to our tremendous power. 
 
Well, my opinion of Secretary Clinton has gone up a lot since her rather badly run presidential campaign.  This is due in no small part to smart statements like, "The Netherlands is a small country... [ the Dutch] really punch above their weight.''


22 March 2009

Catching up

Spring cleaning at the fietsenstalling

They cleaned out the bike garage at Leiden Central Station two weeks ago.  The result was open walkways and a few free spaces at the racks.   It was like a little piece of serenity.  Like the five minutes after we've cleaned the house and before the boys are turned loose.  









By today the crosswalk was full again and the aisles were starting to get a bit cluttered  There is more than one bike per person in the NL.  They are not all well-loved.

Ah well. 





The Americans are coming, the Americans are coming

Our friends Peggy and Brad and their little girl, Maggy Lou came to visit two weeks ago and stayed for a week.  











They arrived at Schipol Airport (Schipol Luchthaven).  We took the train to Leiden Lammenschans where I then took their bags in the Bakfiets and we walked five minutes to our house.  Easy.  No cars.  

The impact of easy, low-stress, public transport and safe and easy biking  on quality of life is really very significant.  

Caged children
 
One day we all went to Amsterdam.  Brad and I took the kids to TunFun while Deborah and Peggy went to the Van Gogh museum where they currently have a special exhibit called the color of the night.  The center piece is Starry Night.

TunFun is basically a hamster house for kids built in an abandoned subway tunnel.










They had stuff for Leif and Maggy Lou.










Cage match.










Ethan has a way with the ladies.











Scheveningen

The next day we went to Delft and then Deborah and I took the kids to Scheveningen, 
the beach near the Hague.  Brad and Peggy tour the Hague for a bit.

Scheveningen is really great.  They build little beach bars with wood decking and tenting.  You can sit and let the kids play ing the sand while some nice person brings you beer by the fire.  We'll be spending more time there. 










At Scheveningen there is a nice aquarium called Sea Life.










































Leif at the beach.



Back to the NEMO

The next day Deborah and Peggy kept the little ones (Leif and Maggy Lou) and Brad and Ethan and I went to Amsterdam.  We hit the NEMO and then went to the van Gogh Museum ourselves.  I got some better pictures at the NEMO this time.

There is a good exhibit on body image.  It includes a mirror that warps ones width.  The participant is meant to push a button when the mirror is flat, representing one's true size.   A voice then announces, "You are thinner than you think," or, "You are fatter than you think,." 



Body image 








I got a nice shot of the IR imaging exhibit which sits in front of the sex exhibit.











This is one of those bits that definitely would not fly in the US.  Then again, an Indian friend of mine here says that in India they would just burn it down, so maybe the US isn't the most repressed place on earth.











And, finally, my favorite:

French kissing display at the NEMO.











Word of the day:

slaperig: sleepy.   's Morgen, ik slaperig was omdat de weekend een uur minderer had.