The land of windmills and tulips!

The happy Scholtens Family. Marijn, Janna, Robbert, and Henk.
If you think you see a bike, you see ten. the bike parking garage is on the right. Sorry for the blurry picture, but it is forever imprinted on my mind.
Hard to see, but the letters spell out I AMsterdam (I am amsterdam)
Across the street is part of our group.
Me and a canal. you can see that it is impossible not to have a bike in almost any picture.

Days 71-74 – November 7th -10th – Friday thru Monday
Here is the long awaited entry on my trip to the land of windmills and tulips. That is, of course, Holland. I headed off Friday afternoon after getting a nice rest the night before and had no transportation problems. After arriving at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, I took the train to the central station and then went outside to try and meet up with my friend Ian. Immediately upon leaving the station, I noticed the bikes. In fact, there was a bicycle parking garage three stories high right in front of me. I imagine there were easily 10,000 bikes just in there. Not exaggerating at all. Once I tried to could how many bike I saw in one minute. Just one. I lost count at around 200. I found Ian after a little bit of wandering around and we ate with the friends he was traveling with and also my friend Mike Cass, who has made a little trip to Europe for a few weeks, at a Chinese restaurant. After this, we went to a coffee shop and had a “coofie draankin,” as it is said in Dutch, and waited for our tour guide. She's not really a guide, but she is a student at OSU who is studying in Amsterdam. She asked us what we wanted to do, but we really just wanted to wander around, so she led the way. We walked along a canal for a while and up through the middle of the city, even catching a glimpse or two of the red light district. It is quite a fantastic city and like no other place I've been in my life. The mix of languages is even more so than in Barcelona. I counted at least height before I stopped counting. It seemed like each group of people we passed spoke a different language. After a long day of traveling and knowing that we had a big day ahead, we went to bed pretty early, but awoke early as well. The next day, Saturday, we checked out of the not-so-nice hotel and wandered around and got lunch before more exploration by foot. We eventually got to the Van Gogh Museum, which was our final destination. It was a nice museum with a pretty large collection of Van Gogh as well as many contemporary works and inspirational pieces. I enjoyed the time there, but I must admit that Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dalí are leaps and bounds beyond Van Gogh. Many of his paintings seem like he didn't spend very much time on them, with thick, sloppy brush strokes and uninspired content. I've never been one for still lifes. I am sure there are much better Dutch painters. We left the museum and went to get lunch. After that, we stopped at another coffee shop before the group headed out to catch their trains. I did as well. From Amsterdam to Gröningen is about two and a quarter hours in train. I slept most of the way. There, at the train station, was Henk to pick me up. Though we haven't seen each other outside of pictures for fifteen years, and I'm sure I've changed a bit more than he has, we found each other quickly on the platform. Even in Gröningen, there is a bike parking garage of over four thousand bikes. On the ride home, our conversation was bilingual. As many Europeans are, Henk is at least trilingual. I'm not sure how many languages he speaks, but we used both that I knew. Upon arrival to their nice little typical Dutch house, I again met Janna, who was elated to see me and the two boys, whom I have seen grow up through pictures. Marijn is now fourteen and Robbert is twelve. They both speak English quite well, though Marijn is a bit more shy and prefers to game on the computer. Robbert was very friendly and wanted to talk. He has only just started taking English in school this year, but he has learned quite a bit just from watching television. He is a big fan of National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. I sat and talked and had a cup of coffee for a while before my yawns made it was obvious that I needed to go to bed. Robbert has been kind enough to lend me his bed for the night and, complete with American flag comforter and pillowcase, it was quite comfortable. I was woken up in the morning by Henk who came in and set a radio on the table, playing the BBC news. Today we are taking a walking tour of the city of Gröningen. It is a nice little town of about 150,000, more when school is in session as there are a high number of students. We went to lunch at a restaurant near the town square. Apparently, it is the largest bar in Europe. At first, I was skeptical. After all, there are a lot of bars in Europe and many of them are big. But as the tour continued, I realized just how many rooms there were. Probably fifteen different bar services and then a room or two to go with each. I'd like to see that place on a Saturday night. On our city walk, we hit all the big landmarks, including the Martini tower, which is the sign on Gröningen. We stopped at another popular café for a coffee and then finished up our self-guided tour. It was a very quite town, partly because it was Sunday, but also, we went to a few secluded parks that are surrounded by little houses. They were very nice and I would like very much to live in one, though they certainly are small. Henk tells me that there are places just like them in Amsterdam. In a city so large and full of life, a place so quite and peaceful is at a premium. We went to dinner at the pancake house, which is a very Dutch tradition. It was a good meal, but we ate at only about 6:00. After being accustomed to eating three and a half hours later, it was just too early for me and I couldn't finish mine. Upon returning home, I played a few games with Robbert and Janna before Robbert was forced into bed. Then I stayed up talking with the parents. We talked of everything basically. Politics, royal families (which they follow as religiously as many people in the states follow celebrities), the Euro vs. the dollar, Obama, socialism, bicycles, friends, and so on and so forth. I suppose I yawned enough times to be sent to bed, but really I had been yawning all day and wasn't particularly tired, but I was going to wake up early in the morning to go to Robbert's English class and be grilled by eleven- and twelve-year-olds. I woke up without the help of the BBC today and took a shower and had breakfast. Then, Janna and I rode bikes (yes! I was very excited to ride a bike in the Netherlands!) over to Henk's office. His building is very interesting and impressive. It is supposed to be a wholly organic building in design. Not in the way of materials, but in shape. There are mostly straight lines, which my knowledge of Gaudí tells me is not organic, but there are no right angles. You will have to see pictures, as I took a few, but it was a very impressive building. The stairs spiral upwards and the walls change color as you get higher and higher, making a rainbow. Henk works on the fourteenth floor, but we first went to the sixteenth to get a good view of the city. I'm pretty sure we were in the tallest building. Let me tell you, there is not a single hill in Holland. Not one. After yet another cup of coffee (I drank more coffee there than I have in my whole life, but it was very delicious), Henk rode with me over to Marijn and Robbert's school. It turned out that there were four Americans in the building today, which was quite unusual. The other three were all from the southern states but now living in Sweden. One man was there with his wife, whom was expecting their tenth child. All of their children were homeschooled. Poor kids, poor mom! They're reason for homeschooling was that the Christian schools in Sweden didn't always have a large number of Christian students nor Christian teachers. I mean, to each their own, but from what I've seen of homeschooled kids in the states, sure, they're just as smart, usually even a little more advanced in some areas, but they are often years behind socially. I imagine this is multiplied living in a foreign country. I doubt they kids are learning Swedish very well, if at all. However, the man was very adamant about how his wife, and moms in general were the best teachers for their kids. All ten of them. After this class, I went over to another class, but only for a little while as I had to catch a train to Amsterdam before my flight. Janna and I rode bikes back to the house, which was only about five minutes away, and had a little lunch before she drove me down to the station. She walked me to the correct train and waved as it pulled away. She had given me a day pass train ticket, which I no longer needed once I reached my destination, so I gave it to a grateful girl standing by the ticket machine. I then sat around for a couple hours waiting for the plane, then sat in the plane for a while, then sat on the bus to get home, and finally made it. I really like traveling, but it is a little time consuming. Especially when you're utilizing multiple forms of transport. This weekend, I used a bus, airplane, tram, metro, train, bike, car, and of course my feet. I got home and told my señores all about it and gave my señora some tulip bulbs which Janna had given me. The Scholtens were a fantastic host this weekend and I would really like to go back. I think I may see them next year, though, as they are trying to plan a trip to the states. Robbert is exceptionally excited about this. I think no one in the family would have any problems communicating.