Boat Trip

The Dutch summer returned strong this week, with highs in the 80's yesterday (Friday) and today, and the high forecast to be above 90 tomorrow. While I was reading articles about cross-cultural variability in the recognition of facial expression of emotion in my desk, with the sun and warmth mocking me from outside my window, my coworker and friend Jelte asked me if I wanted to join him and some friends on a boat at 3:00pm. I accepted before the invitation was complete.

Our boat trip was just like this. Minus Horatio Sanz.

Actually, it was more like this.

I'd been remiss in waiting 15 months to take my first boat trip in Amsterdam. Boating is a real Dutch experience, with people flocking to the water whenever the temperature and clouds allow. Jelte's friend owns the boat, and Jelte sometimes borrows it for fun, or uses it to give paid tours of the city. Yesterday's plan was for Jelte, Niels (another coworker), Jelte's friend Gwen, and two friends of hers (who ended up being Philip and Olympe) to take the boat south through Amsterdam to the Nieuwe Meer, a lake on the border of Amsterdam and Amstelveen.

Being at water level gave a different perspective on apartments, on people lounging on terraces enjoying the sun, and on the other boats passing through canals and rivers. The houseboats were a highlight; they become larger (often two stories) as you get further away from the center of town.

One of many larger boats on the river. Jelte was good enough to steer us out of the way to avoid a collision, but boats like this still stirred up enough water to rough up the ride

A tram depot in the Western part of Amsterdam

This one has a slide into the water. Which might be for fun. Or to punish children.

The waterfowl were also a highlight. Gaggles of geese basked in the sun on rocky or grassy shores. The black water birds with red eyes built nests out of garbage and swarmed our boat looking for scraps of food. Ducks followed them closely. Swans rested serenely in the water during the day, but ghosted along at night, going faster than our boat.

We had to wait at a lock, which is a contained area between two bodies of water with different water levels. In the lock, the water level rises or falls to match that of the next area. Boats line up in the lock, waiting for the next time that it engages and allows passage into our out of the city. After we passed through, the waters of the canals opened up as we approached our destination. We simply went adrift for a while, letting the water carry us where it would, only using the motor to dodge buoys and the coast.

Waiting in the lock

Entering the lake

Jelte returning to the boat after temporarily abandoning ship

After time in the lake, we returned to the city, passed through the canals in the center as night approached, then went into the deeper and more open waters of the IJ after the sun set. And, around 11:00pm, the day's boat trip ended, with two more hot and sunny days awaiting Amsterdam.

A canal concert on the Prinsengracht

A water level angle at the Westerkerk

Beer Lessons

When I arrived in Amsterdam last summer, I decided that I'm not nearly enough of a snob and/or dork, and that I should remedy this shortcoming by cataloging every craft beer I bought at the fancy beer store I shop at. And, to take it up a notch to full dorkhood, I intended to photograph every beer and every bottle.

Well, either the desire for dorkdome waned, or other activities put me over the vaguely defined dork threshold, because I have done neither. No catalog, and no pictures. Just vague memories that I like De Molen, La Chouffe, and Mikkeller.

After my bootcamp class this evening, I opened the refrigerator and checked to see which beer I'd chilled after buying a few randoms at the Beerkonig (Beer King - local store for beer snobs). I was excited to see that the bottle was not only an opportunity for a new beer experience - it was also a vocabulary lesson!

Hop met de gijt. My meager Dutch pronunciation repeats the name in my head a few times. "Hope met duh gchait" (the "gch" an attempt at approximating the Dutch throat clearing sound that is "g"). So, a new word. Gijt is goat. Good. Animal names are fun and easy to remember.

But no - when I double check on google translate to make sure that gijt isn't faun, or lamb, or sheep, or some other nonsense, I find no translation for "gijt." The word does not exist in Dutch. The brewer has apparently put jibber jabber on the bottle. Likely without any intention to confuse Americans who has some aspiration to learn the names of farm animals. But, still. Not a nice trick.

After pouring (into my glass with a goat on it!) and enjoying the beer (not the best IPA; a little bitter, without much aroma or sweetness, and a little flat) with pizza, I let my sleuthing skills loose google translate. Which is to say, I took the obvious, minimal step that should have followed my discovery that gijt is not a word. I translated "goat" into Dutch, and I found that the word is "geit." Which sounds almost exactly like "gijt." But it's not gijt.

So, I'm apparently still missing the humor behind the spelling. But I think that I can now say - if not spell - goat in Dutch.

All in a dork day's work.

Zandvoort

Amsterdam experienced its one week of summer of the year recently, with virtually cloudless skies and zero rain from Sunday to Friday, and high temperatures in the upper 70's and lower 80's. I'd initially planned on seeing The Dark Knight Rises on that Tuesday evening, but a friend suggested that we go to Zandvoort, a beach town that is a short train ride from Amsterdam instead.

I'd heard that the Dutch beaches are notoriously packed whenever the temperatures get into the 70's and the clouds disappear, and I was expecting to be shoulder-to-shoulder with sweaty sunbathers, like some outdoor Bikram yoga class. It may have been this way during the day, but at 6:00pm the beach was pretty sparsely populated. Which was pretty surprising given how comfortable the air and sand felt, and how beautiful the scenery was.

Some people wore normal clothes; others wore swim wear; others went topless (both men and women). Sea birds stalked people's food and fought each other when scraps were abandoned. There were frisbees, glasses of wine and bottles of beer, couples snuggling in the sand and parents walking their children up and down the wet sands, and people photographing the North Sea. 

The last of the beach goers gathered at the coast around 10:00pm to watch the sun sink below the watery horizon.

This is the same area where these pictures were taken last September: http://abqtoadam.blogspot.nl/2011/09/dutch-dunes.html

Things look quite a bit different when the rains retreat and the temperatures rise.

Delft

As I may have noted on here before, there are many placed in the Netherlands that I have not seen. I've barely ventured outside of the Randstad, and I haven't made it to Rotterdam of Den Haag within the Randstad. Matt and Denise's visit provided an opportunity for me to make the time and effort to see somewhere new, since they wanted to take a few trips outside of Amsterdam during their visit. After weighing our options - some Northern towns that had open air museums describing traditional Dutch life, Rotterdam, Den Haag - we decided on Delft, which has been described to me as one of the most beautiful cities in the Netherlands.

Delft did not disappoint. It had one of the most beautiful city squares I've seen in Europe (and, well, the world), with a giant church and belfry situated opposite each other and cheese shops, cafes, and pottery vendors forming the other sides. The "New Church" (which is over 500 years old) included lots of information about the history of Delft, Holland, and the Netherlands, with special attention paid to William of Orange, who is entombed within the church along with other members of the royal family, the most recent being Queen Juliana in 2004. The history of William is fascinating - he was a wealthy nobleman who united the provinces that now form the Netherlands into a revolt against the Spanish, which led to the Eighty Years War between the Netherlands and Spain in the 16th Century. The war was related to conflicts between Spanish Catholicism and Dutch Protestantism, though I'm sure there were economic factors that were heavily involved. William was assassinated when he was 40. The Dutch apparently were (and still are) quite fond of William, and the murderer's fate was described in detail within the church (and reasonably replicated on Wikipedia):

He was tortured before his trial on 13 July, where he was sentenced to be brutally – even by the standards of that time – killed. The magistrates decreed that the right hand of Gérard should be burned off with a red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and that, finally, his head should be cut off. 

Ground view of the square

Immediately below city hall

Looking up at the belfry of the New Church

Statue of William of Orange

Town hall from the base of the New Church

From the belfry

Ikea adding a little flavor to the skyline

The square from 400 feet

View of the Old Church from the top of the New Church