Wat ongelooflijk mooi weer!

The title of this post means "What incredibly wonderful weather!"  It probably deserves an extra couple of exclamation marks, just because it is sooooooo wonderful. !!!!!!

This is what Google says my weather is right now and what the forecast is for the weekend.  I have been here for two months (exactly, tomorrow) and I have never seen three little sunshines in a row before.  And, since I am from Minnesota and in the Netherlands, I check it every day.  Usually multiple times per day.  Sometimes we wouldn't actually get rain, and sometimes it would be sunny in between rain storms, and there have been a few days where there was some truly lovely weather but I just have to say that this is superbly wonderful.  And, since I base my view of perfect weather on a very few perfect summer days in Minnesota and consider anything above 75 or so to be unpleasantly warm, you should know just how amazing this weather forecast is, that I am this excited.

Look at all those little, unobstructed sunshines!!!!

This is what Yahoo has for my weather forecast (please note that it is not that cold, it is just in Celsius).  They spoiled the picture with an entirely unnecessary partially cloudy moon, so that is why they get second billing here.  Right now I can literally not see one, single, solitary, tiny, white cloud out of my window.  It is just blue, blue sky as far as the eye can see.

I guess I don't mind partially cloud night times if I can have all of those glorious little sunshines during the day!!!!

So, I am now leaving and going to find something to sit on (it will be hard--all of Rotterdam is taking up just about every bench and stoop that I saw on my walk home from school) and just try to soak up some vitamin D while the getting is good.

Het Laatste Dutch Cafe (The Final Dutch Cafe) and Dutch Cuisine

This Tuesday night was the final Dutch cafe.  A couple of other students from my class came as well, to say good-by to our teacher whom everyone liked a lot.  There was also one of the ladies who is in charge of the Language Training Center.   She said that although the LTC won't be doing the Dutch Cafe anymore (at least for students) there is some talk of the Erasmus Student Network taking over and starting up a Dutch Cafe instead.  Since ESN is the author of such events as "Cafe BED" (which runs from 10pm-4am every Tuesday, offers 1 euro drinks--the cheapest booze in the Netherlands, as far as I have heard--plus the occasional free shot, featured the delightful ad campaign "Will you go to BED with me?", and which is known for having inebriated students littering the floor in piles of vomit) I am guessing that the new Dutch Cafe might have a little different flavor from the old one.  But I guess we will just have to see.  Maybe I will have to see if I can weasel my way into the faculty and staff Dutch Cafe.

I asked about "Haave" (which was I word I couldn't translate from one of the windows of the Pilgremvaderskerk).  They said that they weren't familiar with that word.  However, there is a word "have" which means "creatures", as in all kinds of animals/living things.  So it could possibly be translated as "Salvation for His creatures comes only from God in Zion" or something similar, which would fit with the creation of the Dutch State/reliance on God's providence/etc. in a Matthew 10:29 type way ("Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.")

Also, the cafe was nice enough to bring us authentic Dutch hors d'oeuvres/snacks, on the house, since we had been showing up every week.  Everyone thought that was pretty nice, although since that was the last night, now it will look like we just grabbed the free food and ran.  There were three kinds of snacks, all deep-fried, so you have to know they started out right.  There were chicken nuggets that were just like McDonald's chicken nuggets (people seem to really like McDonald's around here).  There were also small fried meatballs that tasted kind of like a slightly spicy curried chicken, but I don't know what the actual name of them is.  The other thing was Bitterballen.  I do not know what the name exactly means but it is kind of like a thick, white, sausage gravy, deep fried in a crumb coating.  This makes it a little difficult to eat neatly.  It also means that there is a MASSIVE quality difference if you get one when it is fresh and hot or if you get it when it is cooler and has started nastily congealing.  However, Bitterballen (they are sometimes called croquettes) are ubiquitous.  You can get larger versions of them in hamburger or brat shapes and then you eat them in a bun.  They are pretty tasty but I don't think I could eat a whole sandwich made out of them.  I saw some one eating one of the sandwiches and the inside gooey stuff was oozing everywhere and was not a very pretty picture.

Kinderdijk Molens

A little while ago I posted about the University sponsored trip on the Pancake Boat to Kinderdijk.  Well, after a longish lull, this is the Kinderdijk section of that trip.  Kinderdijk is an area where there are still loads of windmills.  People still live inside them and they still sometimes use them to help regulate the water levels.

The name apparently comes from a story about how, after a big storm or after some flooding, or something like that, some folks came along and saw a cat sitting in a cradle that had wedged up on the dike.  Assuming that they would find something sad, they went and got the cradle and found a live little baby inside and figured that the cat had kept the cradle from capsizing and had kept the baby safe (although I am going to go out on a limb here  and say that that was from purely self-interest and not out of humanitarian motivations).

There was a storm coming in while we were there (fortunately, it didn't hit until about three seconds before I got to the metro station, so the whole trip was super windy, with really interesting clouds coming in, but still quite dry).

This was the first place that I actually saw any wooden shoes.   This is apparently a highly tourist-oriented area.

These are the large screws that regulate the water levels in the polder.  It is mostly run by electricity nowadays.

















I do not know why there is a little cut-out goat on top of this hay bale, but I thought it was pretty cute.

Do you notice the Holstein cow grazing in the field by the canal below?

We were supposed to get to go into one of the windmills to look around and see what it was like inside but the mill-owner wasn't there, so we just went wandering around, looking at the mills and checking out the canals.

While we were out walking around, I talked to a couple of girls who are on an exchange program from a university in Austria.  One was Austrian and the other was from Munich.  They were a lot of fun to talk to and both seemed very German.  Somehow, and I am sure that it will thrill some of you to hear this, we got onto the subject of German beverages.

I mentioned "Rrrradler."
The girl from Munich said "What?"
I said "Rrrrrrrrrradler!"
The girl from Munich looked very uncertain.
The girl from Austria said "She's saying "Rraddddlllerr.  I know, because I knew another American who said it that exact same way."
"Oh," said the girl from Munich, "yeah, rraddddlllerr."

I did, specifically, ask how "Radler" ought to be pronounced and what I was doing wrong.  They both said that it wasn't, in fact, an issue of how the "r" is rolled.  Rather, it is a question of how the "d" and the "l" get rolled together.  SO, even if I still can't order a Radler by myself, and even if other people can, it still isn't an issue of how well one rolls one's "r"s.

We had a fun time, though, talking about the superiority of German food over Dutch food and, especially, the terrible, relative, horribleness of Dutch bread and "bratwursts".