Walking in the Rain

We started out today by going to the train station to purchase our tickets for Munich and Padua. Internet ticket purchasing was not working well. Our walking trip back from the station took us through Chinatown.
We walked through part of the red light district next. Few of the girls were up. Their curtains were closed. Later when we walked through the district there were more girls up. They were dressed rather scantily and you could see the furnishings of their cribs--a chair, a bed and a basin for washing up water. You can tell the windows by the red lights. I read that a company has bought some windows and business space in the district. They plan to have live lingerie models and then sell lingerie in the store.
We finally found the Old Church. Originally built in 1300, it used to be called St. Nicholas. It was pretty well gutted in 1566 when the Protestants stormed in and broke and tore up most of the Catholic decor. They broke statues and windows and tore up anything they considered a graven image. They sort of did a Taliban on the place. As you can see it is pretty bare. The Protestants fully took over the property in 1578. At that time they changed the name to Old Church. They took the organ out, but then put it back when they discovered the congregation could not sing on key without accompaniment. The inscription here in Dutch reads "The false practices introduced into God's church were undone here in 1578."Some of the old wood carvings "misericords" were left intact in the original choir stalls. These were mostly meant to illustrate proverbs for an illiterate congregation. This one illustrates "money doesn't fall out of my ass".Some of the window fragments were saved and put back in where ever they might fit-- in the 1970's.
I found poor old St. Nicholas in a side room. Maybe he was a more modern statue that might have been out for the holidays.
After lunch we went to Rembrandt's House. Nice place. He overextended himself and did not manage to pay off the mortgage. The contents of the house were well described for the bankruptcy, so the house was able to be restored and refurnished as a museum. Here William is carefully studying all the items Rembrandt kept in his artifact collection. These were items used for paintings.
The paintings and etchings displayed in the house were great------especially the etchings. We were able to watch a demonstration of the techniques of etching and printing a from a copper plate.

Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh

Today was a long day of museums. We first did the Rijksmuseum. See this panorama celebrating the time when the Dutch were a world power.
With the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC) they dominated the world and the high seas in the 17th century.

Most of the museum celebrates that time period with Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer.

Lunch at the Cafe Cobra then on to the Van Gogh museum. There were enough paintings by his contemporaries such as Monet to fit his paintings into the Impressionistic period.

A peasant hut.
Still life with carafe and lemons.


The Van Gogh Museum was also having a special exhibit of Barcelona in 1900 that included art, architecture, interior design, jewelry, etc.
An early self portrait of Picasso:

Plants and Resistance

Wm and I spent today at the botanical gardens and the resistance museum.
At the botanical gardens we tested our skills in identifying plants.

The three climate greenhouse was impressive and had a sign saying that the museum cat was not allowed in.

In the butterfly hothouse.

I was hoping a butterfly would land on me.

We ate in the botanical gardens café and had Brand beer brewed here since 1340.

William read everything in the Resistance Museum.

It certainly made you think. Would you have registered? Would you have signed loyalty oaths? Would you have hidden a Jewish family? Would you have resisted? Eighty six percent of students resisted, but less than 20% of the general populace resisted. The people went along with the German Occupation when it did not hurt and did not realize the evil until near the end when the Germans turned from soft repression to harsh and violent repression.

Slow Road to Historical Amsterdam

We spent today in the Historical Museum of Amsterdam. We wended our usual slow way through, taking about 5 hours.
This bicycle was found in a canal during some dredging. It had been there awhile as it had mussels growing on it. Up until modern times the canals had often been used for refuse dumping and the city did not begin work on a sewer system until 1907---PU. William studies hard. Perhaps he is intrigued about the 1578 "redecorating" the Protestants did to the Catholic churches in converting them to Protestant churches. Perhaps he is reading about the role of the Dutch West India Company in the African slave trade.
William captured me playing Happy Birthday on these church bells.
1944 was the winter of starvation in Amsterdam. Peter's family had found a goat head. They washed it well and cooked it for hours over their Primus stove. Every bit of flesh was eaten off of the bones. Peter saved the bones and glued them back together. It is said that those people who would have been having their growth spurt this winter are noticeably shorter than others. People also took half-starved cats home and then ate them. When this was made illegal, people shot crows. I am sure the fat pigeons were long gone.

All Around Amsterdam

Yesterday we went to the Hermitage (an extension of the St Petersburg museum) to see a collection of Art Nouveau pieces from the Tzars.
Dance of the scarves

Winter panel from the four seasons tapestries.

We also spent quite a bit of time in the Jewish Museum nearby.

The houses on the canals are built on pilings sunk into the mud. The dark house in the middle of this picture with the red shutter on the top floor looked to be listing. Today we were at the Anne Frank House and a wonderful exhibit at the Nieuwe Kerk called the hidden Afghanistan.
In the first century the northern part of Afghanistan was a major crossroads for nomads from China and Mongolia and Greeks. The art was an amalgam of East and West.
What was recovered from archaeological sites prior to the Soviet invasion has been preserved and is fantastic. This collection came first to France in 12/06 and is now in the Netherlands. One impressive find was a burial mound of a man with a horse sacrificed next to him surrounded by 5 women aged 20-30. All were buried dressed in all their gold. The gold jewelry was amazing. Such things as gold and turquoise hearts set in gold. Hearts? I never thought of heart shapes being 2,000 years old. One of the women had had a golden bangle crown and another had golden sandals. I think in the tradition of India they died with their spouse.

Amsterdam Walkabout

We have been enjoying the browsing and shopping on Albertcuypstraat just outside our door at the NickyBee Studio Apartments in Amsterdam. This market is a combo of Flea Market/Farmer's Market/Strip Mall that runs for 3 full city blocks and a side street. It is supposed to be for pedestrians only, but some bikers do not walk their bikes. When walking down next to the closest canal, we spotted the Holland Casino Amsterdam with a canal tour boat passing in front.We passed on the opportunity to order a pickled herring sandwich complete with raw onion. I am told it is an acquired taste. But I am brave and may try it yet. We had after all just eaten lunch. This is right in front of the Agora Hotel where the boys stayed on their trip to Amsterdam. They passed on pickled herring also.
At the flower market they sell more than just tulip and amaryllis starters.
Only in Amsterdam would you see a sex shop next to a McDonalds.
Rembrandt was paid to do the painting Nightwatch of a Rifle company in ~1640. The statue of Rembrandt is in the background and in the foreground is a copy of the figures in the painting in bronze by two Russian sculptures.

Hi, Water from Fernley, Nevada

As many of you know we have a nephew who lives in Fernley. We got this e-mail from him today that was very informative about the recent flood event there.

Hello Everyone

Thanks for checking in. Caley and I are just fine, our neighborhood was OK, and most of the damage was at least a mile away. After waking to the sound of rescue helicopters, we called friends and watched the news to find out who was affected. Some of our friends were in the path of the water, and were evacuated around 5:30am. They had maybe six inches of water in the garage, but none in the house -- still very messy.

I did go into the flood zone with my Jeep to try and help. On the way, I helped unload sandbags, bivouacked houses, and ferried some people in and out of some of the least accessible areas. On one trip into the high water, I found a sheriff's Chevy truck swamped out and abandoned.....there were areas I could see where the water was up to the top of backyard fences (yikes!), but I know how deep I can safely traverse in my Jeep and didn't even try to reach the worst places. There were a couple of streets where rescuers were working in canoes and small motorboats.

Of course, the broken irrigation canal levee was the real cause of the flood (which at this time is being reported as having been undermined by gopher diggings), but the problem was compounded by unusually heavy rainfall in the preceding 24 hrs -- at least 1.5 inches during that period, which is about 25 percent of our annual average. The sandy soil in our region, which drains poorly at best, was absolutely saturated; when the water from the canal broke free and crossed some farm fields into residential areas, neither the soil nor the storm drain system were able to accommodate the additional influx. What could have been street flooding ended up as waist deep water in many homes.

Our community really came together to provide assistance, with people who were not immediately affected turning out by the hundreds to fill sandbags, to donate time, clothes and blankets at the high school (shelter), and people with capable vehicles working the flood zones to shuttle residents, belongings and sandbags. There were even a few people from a neighboring town who towed in tractors to help with cleanup.

We all know how the news media loves a good disaster, and from what I saw on CNN on Saturday morning it looked like we had Hurricane Katrina in the desert, but I think generally things were overstated. Most of those affected are now cleaning up and petitioning FEMA for assistance.

Safe on high ground,

Brian & Caley

We are all glad that they are fine.

Joshua the Train Prophet

Joshua the Train Prophet helped me get my bags on the train. He was a nice looking older gentleman--a former Marine who served in Korea. We had spoken to him on the platform and found out that he was originally from LA but had spent the last 40 years running a photo postcard business in Europe. So he sat near us and told us stories of his life. For four years 20 years ago he was involved with a Swedish girl who was the reincarnation of a twin daughter of Titus of Rome whom he had been in love with as a Roman soldier. He subsequently met the reincarnation of her twin sister. God sends messages to him. He is now a religious Jew who believes fervently in the end times. He believes that he is the person who is to erect the Torah in stone after the next world war which will start in Iran. He left Wm with a prophecy that when the earthquake destroys the Dome of the Rock there will be a message in this event for Wm.

Almost Gone from Brugge

Nostalgia Reigns with this entry. Bill and I are doing our last loads of wash at the Wassalon. See him through the window.Across Ezelstraat is the Kwik-e-Nightshop, where Apu welcomes you for your after hours purchases.
Next to the Wassalon is the Pancake house featuring 60 different varieties of sweet or savory pancakes (crepes). A great place to dine while the clothes are washing.

Drive to Knokke

Yesterday we drove into The Netherlands and then back toward the North Sea at Knokke.
Knokke is a summer resort town and as the weather was very cold (wavering from -1 to +1C) with a cold wind, there were not many tourists out ambling along the ample seaside walk. We found a parking place and walked along the sea until we were quite frozen. We stopped for lunch at the Cafe Leffe. This cafe is part of a chain. There is one around the corner in 'T Zant square. Bill of course had a Leffe (beer). I had a warm wine and we both had the dagshotel (lunch special)-a nice sausage-like meatloaf with sauce and rough mashed potatoes with leeks and kale--very tasty. The cafe was on the edge of a square that had 2 unusual sculptures of noses. Children were racing rented motorized and pedal-power small vehicles around in the square while their parents sipped beer or wine in the surrounding cafes.
While we were in the cafe we noticed that it had started to spit snow. So here is a picture of me freezing with a skiff of snow sticking to the tiles at the edge of the North Sea.
Jon and Cyndi said it also snowed a bit here in Brugge. Not enough to really call it a snowfall. So Brugge continues its record of 3 years without a substantial snowfall.
The Boulder Baker's are off to Dover to check out a bit of the UK for a few days.
We will be skipping out of Brugge earlier than originally planned as we are leaving Monday the 7th for Amsterdam. We will stay in The Netherlands for 10 days and then head toward Italy, winding up in the hotel we had booked near Venice for after Brugge.

Flanders Fields Driving Tour

A Belgian cemetery --the crosses on the Belgian Flag were apparently added later. My take is this was part of the Belgian Nationalist/Catholic movement. Some of the stones did not have the cross. This one without the cross was an unknown soldier.A British cemetery with 12,000 known and unknown bodies and a wall with names of 35,000 missing.
This was a huge crater from the blowing up of a munitions dump. Now called the Pond of Peace.
The soldiers were buried where they fell so small cemeteries are next to farms and fields.
There is still unexploded ordinance in the fields and occasional bodies are found in fields even from 90 years ago. Is that a corn stalk or a femur?

Instant Bread Mix

Leah and I used instant bread mix to make pizza dough for our own pizza. Chorizo sausage, homemade pizza sauce and mushrooms for William. I made faux ranch dressing for Leah and we had some leftover sauce for dipping also. Then I used the rest of the mix to make cinnamon rolls--we have already hit on them--very good--the rule is to leave some for breakfast. We are getting very good at making what we want from what there is.

Events of Yesterday

Bill and I took Leah out yesterday to the Chocolate Museum. And then to Moscow on Ice--ballet, magic, clowns and acrobatics on an ice rink. Today Jon and Cyndi are off to Amsterdam for the new year celebration. Pic of chocolate making demo at the museum. Pic of ballet on ice number at Moscow on Ice in the big Concert Hall on the edge of T' Zant square just around the corner.

Guido Gezelle etc.

Outdoor sculpture exhibit at the Guido Gezelle Museum--a famous poet who was born and died in Brugge--did not notice anything in print in English. Still an interesting small museum.
The guy with the coat over his head is trying to light a lighter. He was also barefoot and his golden shoes were on another pedestal.
I did not know that windmills could be rotated to catch the wind.

This device shows up in some paintings with people inside to turn it. Human hamster wheel.
It had something to do with the movement of boats or the movement of water in the canals.The academic Brugge Bear at the corner of Academiestraat.
The procession of the Eastern Star is a small parade through Brugge that raises money for charity. Note the wise man in black face.

Gruthouse Museum

In the Gruthouse Museum we saw a bust of Charles the 5th that was said to include all of his specific Hapsburg features, narrow face, long jaw and under bite. William was always told by his mom that they were descended from the Hapsburgs. I think there is a definite resemblance between Charles the 5th and Jon.
Now if Jon had a Prince Valiant haircut and a flat hat---- Except Jon is definitely cuter.