Kaas broodje translates to “little cheese sandwich”, but this is deceiving.  A kaas broodje is actually a cheese filled pastry you can get at most snack shops/Hema/Leiden Central station cafes and boy, it is amazing.  Its rectangular, and always served warm (don’t ever eat one cold, they are kind of gross) and pretty much the perfect combination of warm salty cheese filling and buttery, flaky pastry layers.  Seriously?  They are amazing.  And I am totally addicted.

Chris and I were thrilled when some close pals of ours from North Carolina, Ryan and Rosanne, moved to Geneva Switzerland.  These are people we really like, from our town,  now living on our side of the ocean!  Yay!  We decided to give them a month or so to settle in before descending on them this past weekend.  We had a wonderful visit.

We arrived Friday night and went to their wonderful apartment and stayed up really late gossiping and sharing ex pat stories (expats LOVE to talk about visas).   The apartment is super huge: 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms!  And the view: it is spectacular.  The next morning we saw (from the 2 balconies) the lake, the city and the Alps.

Saturday we started out with a nice walk down by the lake.  Geneva is really pretty, nestled in the mountains with the lovely clear lake in front of it. The buildings look french in style and there is a nice park and walk along the water. The Jet d’ Eau was not running, perhaps due to the relatively cold temperatures, but it was nice nonetheless.  After our stroll we made our way via tram down to the city’s old town area, which is so nice: cobblestone streets and stone stairwells.  We bought some chocolates and postcards and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.  In Geneva they speak a number of languages but primarily french.  I only heard one person at a shop speak English to us, so I was grateful to have Rosanne and Ryan who are pretty good at French to be our translators.

An aside for any bird people: as soon as we walked out of the house I heard a “ki-ki-ki” and looked up to see a Peregrine Falcon being hassled by two crows!  The birds at the lake were quite nice too:  common mergansers,  yellow wagtail, and Red-crested pochard.

Around 5 we made our way to a brewery and sampled the local beer, served in a 5 liter tower.  Don’t worry, there were 5 of us to drink it! We were joined by Rosanne’s cousin Jennifer who was visiting from South Carolina.  The beer was great, and we ate it with the local swiss style pizza which I cannot remember the name of but was also quite nice.

Later that night we went out for dinner to a restaurant that specialized in fondue and raclette.   Fondue most folks are familiar with.  The one we got had mushrooms in it and was excellent.  I was really curious to try raclette: it is a specific kind of cow’s milk cheese that is cooked on a griddle and served to you in a big, melted, gooey puddle that you then smear on potatoes, bread, and cured meat.  We had a lovely cheese overload dinner, followed by a birthday surprise for me:  molten chocolate cake served with a sparkler and a song (and disco music, but maybe that is the French version of Happy Birthday)!  It was a lovely evening, and we would have stayed up later if not for our leaden bellies!

We woke up on Sunday to an amazingly clear, sunny day, so we scratched our plan to go to the natural history museum in favor of a drive to the mountains.  I am so glad we went!  We drove up and up to the top of a local peak (height was 1114 meters) and hiked around on a bald there.  There were folks paragliding, which I’d never seen, and we got amazing views of Mont Blanc, Geneva and the lake.  It was a great afternoon.  By the time we got back to Geneva it was nearly time for our flight.

The flight is a quick 1 hour 20 minutes, so I hope to go back again!  Geneva is a really pretty city and I look forward to more exploring.  Maybe next time we will make it to the Natural History Museum!

ANYWAY……

The bird collection at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences is a regionally focused collection with a smattering of international birds.  One of these birds, the Hoopoe caught my attention the moment that I saw the study skin 14 years ago.  Prior to that, I did not know they existed.  I was smitten…and what is not to like about this amazing bird?  D curved bill, long crest sometimes up and sometimes endearingly flattened against the bird’s head, orangey plumage with bold black and white, it is  a real stunner.  Over the years I used that Hoopoe specimen in many many collection tours, as it never fails to impress those unfamiliar with it. (oh, hey, what do you know, I wrote a post about it over here!)

Well,  time passes by and we move to the Netherlands, where, guess what, the Hoopoe occurs (and the Dutch name for this bird is as sweet as its appearance: Hop)! Well…..used to occur, as it turns out. Sometimes occurs, rarely, during migration.  So, I haven’t seen it here yet. In fact, I am not sure any have been seen in this country since I moved here.  No matter, because anyway, this spring, I went to Poland.  They occur, for sure, in Poland.  I go out with my bird guide from Krakow and tell him I want to see a Hoopoe.  No luck, says he, they don’t occur in that part of Poland except for rarely.  Ok, fine.  I see all kinds of other neat birds there, so that was cool.  Plus I am not worried because we have a safari planned to Hoopoe territory in September: Tanzania.

I am sure to get a Hoopoe in Africa.  They are everywhere, right? I am assured by folks who have been to Tanzania, and my bird guide.  Yes, you will see Hoopoe, in fact they are common.  I told our safari guide, an excellent birder himself, that I’d like to see a Hoopoe.  I am sure you have guessed that we NEVER found one.  I looked, and looked, and looked and no Hoopoe.  I mean, I still saw majorly awesome birds of every color shape and size, so the trip was still excellent! However,  I think it is now safe to say, the Hoopoe has become my new nemesis.  I wonder where I will next not get to see it…..  :)

Do you see me now?  No?  Hahahah!

A few weeks ago we had a party to celebrate our one year “Amsterdamiversary” and it was really a good time.  It made me really appreciate how lucky we have been.  Primarily, we have met so many amazing people here!  We were fortunate to have some pals from the states here (Laura, Marco and Grayson) who helped us land smoothly.  Since then we have met all sorts of great people, from all over the world.  I suspect Amsterdam is a magnet for really nice people!  Also, all the dutch folks that we have met, so helpful in explaining the Netherlands, the birds, the environment, its been wonderful.

I have been extremely lucky with my job:  arrived here and started volunteering at ZMA which quickly turned into a job packing the collection, which then became a job at NCB unpacking the collection.  It has all come together so smoothly its really been quite amazing!  It’s actually been a great career “next step” from my time at NCSM, working in a larger collection and a larger staff has been quite a learning experience.  I am enjoying myself a lot, and it helps that I have some really fun colleagues.

A year ago I did not know what stampot was.  Or Queen’s Day, or St Maartens, or Zwarte Pete.  I didn’t know how to say “May I please have a cheese sandwich?”  or  ”Get out of the bike lane, you dumb tourist!” in Dutch.  (Actually, I still don’t know how to say that, I just ding my bell).  I didn’t know what  a Green Woodpecker looked like, or a Bluethroat.  I had no idea what Texel was, or Ijmuiden.  I can also say, with confidence, that I had never had as many house guests, total, in my life, as I had in 2011.  Its been really really fun to host everyone and show them this beautiful country.

In general, I think that Americans don’t really think about the Netherlands: to me before we moved,  it was a small country to be confused with Belgium.  But now that I live here I see how truly special it is. Not just Amsterdam, which is such a beautiful city, but out in the small towns.  The forested area around Arnhem, the amazing beaches that stretch on a on.  The history, the museums, we are so lucky to live in such an amazing country!

There are certainly things I really miss, people especially.  Especially when I think about my family and my girlfriends, my heart just aches.  When we moved last year, I cried so hard on the plane from Raleigh that the stewardess got up during takeoff to bring me a box of tissues.  Also, life in the US is really easy and familiar, which I miss sometimes.  When we were in Raleigh in May, Chris and I went to our favorite coffee shop.  Right as I opened the door, I looked at Chris and said “I don’t have to order in Dutch!” and felt a weight just roll off my shoulders.   And don’t even get me started on dealing with intricacies of the IND here, or the many rude things people have said to me in reference to my dutch or lack thereof. Finally, life in a city is so much different from in NC: there are people everywhere, all the time. You are truly never alone.

The ups and downs, the good and the bad, has all made for a truly amazing experience.  Thanks everyone who has been part of this journey with us.  And for those of you who have not visited yet, we have an inflatable mattress with your name on it!

In February our good pal Melanie came to visit.  Melanie is a plant guru: she has a PhD in plants, works in plants, and loves to geek out about plants the way I love to geek out about birds.   When she came here, we went together to the Flower Market and spent hours checking out bulbs, discussing plants, and having fun.  We noticed one of the vendors had a special on orchids.  I told Melanie that Chris loves orchids, I fear orchids and she bought us two. They were so inexpensive, she said, that this way if they died I should not feel bad.  We immediately dubbed them the “Proletariat Orchids”  (due to their cheap nature) and brought them home.

I put one orchid, the pink one, in the bathroom (according to another pal, Paul, orchids love the humidity of bathrooms) and the other one, the white one, in the dining room.  Time passed.  Pinky produced bloom after bloom after bloom.  We have now had them since February and pinky still is covered with blooms.  It is a total overachiever.

White stayed completely the same, and then lost its two white blooms after about a month.  I know orchids go through a dormant period, so I moved white to the bathroom, hoping the humidity might work better for it than the drafty dining room.  I am happy to report that a few weeks ago, we noticed that white had a new stem!  And now, a new leaf!  It’s quite exciting.  No blooms yet but maybe soon.

I do worry a bit as the bathroom can get cold in the winter, plus I tend to forget about both plants and all of a sudden panic and water them, but they really have brought us 6+ months of joy.  Melanie, thanks for helping me get over my fear of orchids.  Maybe I will even buy more.

Stone Town, or Zanzibar Town,  is the main city on the island, and it is a UNESCO world heritage site.  I can easily admit I have never been anywhere like it.  It is crazy, fun, vibrant, and beautiful!  All the architecture is middle eastern influenced: white buildings with courtyards in the middle and rooftop terraces to catch the ocean breeze.  All the doors are thick wood and frequently decorated with bronze studs. The streets are a maze, and extremely narrow (too small for cars).  At first we were intimidated and thought we would never find our hotel after leaving it to explore, but a quick walk led us to realize that the town is really very small!   So if you just keep walking eventually you will find your home turf.

The first day we just wandered about and ended up on the beach.  We had a beer at a cafe and watched men loading and unloading a large cargo ship, which had pulled up directly on the sand. This was quite a show, as we watched people carrying refrigerators (one fridge per man) and all manner of other things, including pushing cars through the sand and up on the boat’s ramp.  It was fascinating!  We continued wandering and eventually found a cafe that served us a great dinner, despite a power outage (there were outages every day we were on Zanzibar, but everyone seems to have a generator).

On Friday we had booked an all day snorkeling trip through a local company, Eco and Culture Tours, and it was great fun. Ourselves and some nice folks from NYC got on a wooden boat from the south of town and went out to Niamembe Island, which is uninhabited and features a wonderful sandbar.  The shells we found were amazing!  Also, there was a wonderful flock of terns at the end of the island as well, so I got some new birds there.  I didn’t take any home but did get some photos. We snorkeled in the morning while the cook worked on our lunch (grilled fish, octopus, and a potato curry) and then swam from the sandbar in the afternoon.  The snorkeling was amazing, lots of anemones, pretty reef fish (including a very cute and territorial clown fish) as well as a large sea slug: imagine a giant pink caterpillar.  That is what it looked like.  Despite the 70 spf we got sunburned!

That night we finally caught up with our pal Greg (Kate was in the states due to family issues which was a bummer for us as she is super cool!) but it was wonderful to see Greg.  He has spent a bunch of time in Zanzibar, and we ate at a great cafe that night that he recommended.  Also, Greg and Kate had suggested we stay with them at their favorite hotel, The Coffee House Hotel,  and it was super nice.  It has 8 unique rooms, featuring lovely fresco-ed floors, and a hand carved wooden bedpost.  The hotel had 5 stories and a great rooftop terrace where they served breakfast and had an “honor bar” for later in the day, and we watched the sunset nightly.  The coffee is locally grown and those barristas are real pros! My morning cappuccino was always delicious.

Saturday Greg guided us through the city. We visited the Darajani Market and wandered around the city, stopping to try different rooftop or oceanfront cafes for a tea or beer.  I did some shopping but not too much as the guys were waiting!  At night we ate at Monsoon Restaurant, which features traditional sit on the floor middle eastern dining and live Taarab music. Taarab music is a fusion of African, Indian and Arabic music and is unique to Zanzibar.  It was wonderful to listen too! Dinner was good too.  Afterwards we sat  on our rooftop deck and tried the local booze, Konyagi.  It is a  white liquor, like gin, and is sold in plastic baggies.

Sunday after a farewell breakfast at the hotel with Greg,  we did a half day snorkeling trip to a sandbank off of Stone Town.  It was probably some of the best snorkeling I have ever done in my life.  The water was very shallow and clear, and the colors were just amazing.  More lovely fish, a big eel, and pretty corals in about every color of the rainbow.  Lunch was again wonderful: fresh grilled fish served with chapatis.

I am happy to report that our flight back on Sunday night was not a problem at all.  We were quite nervous after all of our trouble flying down, but it went fine.  The only bad part was that I got a sunburn on the back of my legs snorkeling, so it was not the most comfortable flight ever.  Live and learn!

See the photos over here!

Day 1

Actually, I am not going to go into detail about the first 24 hours of our trip because it was an absolute airport nightmare.  Pretty much everything that can go wrong on a plane (besides crashing) did go wrong.  We finally made it to Arusha Tanzania, the starting point for our safari, 6 hours later than intended.  But we made it, were greeted by Hosea, our awesome Matembezi guide, who dropped us off at the luxurious Karama Lodge for dinner and some sleep.  The resort  was really neat:  a fancy dining hall, and rustic but luxurious lodges for the guests. Best of all a group of bushbabies made a twilight appearance in the trees outside our balcony.

Day 2

The next morning Hosea picked us up and off we went in the land rover to Tarangire National Park.  Now, it was the end of the dry season so everything was truly parched and dusty! On the road there we passed folks herding cattle through endless scrub lands with no green at all and I could not help but wonder what the herds were eating!  The red dust was everywhere, too.  It was so different from the super green Netherlands, but magnificent to see these extensive landscapes without trees.  We got to the park, and Hosea took care of our entrance fee and gave our land rover a sunroof while we wandered around the entrance.  I was enthralled by the bird bath right there, filled with all kinds of birds including Red-billed Queleas, Cordon Bleus (not just a chicken dish but a tiny blue finch) and fire finches.  Chris and I walked over to the far end of the visitor’s area and gazed out with our binoculars, and Chris said “there is a deer over there!”  The deer turned out to be impala, and shortly after that we spotted dwarf mongoose that had taken over a termite mound, and a ringed mongoose wandering across the scrub land.  By the time we got back to Hosea, we were grinning like idiots and had about 40 questions (namely, to identify everything we just saw).  We climbed into the car and headed into the park!

The way these game drives work, is that you stand in the land rover as you drive along, under the shade of a canvas cover, and just gaze at everything!  The guide stops the truck when he sees something cool, or anytime you ask him too (like me,  who had to look at every bird, of course [though after the 20th Lilac breasted Roller I was able to drive by without stopping]).   The trucks are quite impressive: extra tires, shocks, all kinds of things you would need if you break down.  Inside it has comfy seats, big windows, a cooler of drinks and lots of cookies.  The guide, who has to go to college to do this, knows everything!  From how to drive on crazy roads to everything wildlife and bird.

Now, with Tarangire, Chris and I had been totally excited by a story our pal Stephanie had told us: “When I went to Tarangire, we got 50 feet inside the gate and lions killed a zebra!”  The park did not disappoint.  We saw so much!  Elephants,dik dik, zebra, wildebeast…it was just amazing.  We did watch lions hunt zebra, and though they were unsuccessful, it was awesome to see the big cats run.  We saw a Hammerkop that was following and intensely watching an enormous Nile Monitor Lizard as it dug in the banks of the Tarangire river.  We watched a Giraffe run, and they have such long legs it looked like the run was in slow motion.  I know everyone reading this blog has seen these animals in the zoo but there is something so different, so special, about seeing them in their habitat.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at a high ridge overlooking the river, which is where everyone has lunch (at all these parks you have to stay in the vehicle or risk possibly unpleasant encounters with wild animals).  There was a lion kill nearby, and some white backed vultures hanging around (those things are HUGE).  Also, Superb Starlings and a Vervet Monkey wanted to share our lunch (strictly forbidden, but somehow these guys had developed bad habits).   In the afternoon our adventures included spotting Waterbuck, painted snipe, and a troop of Olive Baboons.

That night we stayed at the lovely Tarangire River Camp.  This was our favorite spot we stayed while on safari, and both of us agreed we could have spent every night here.  The lodge and its 20 elevated luxury tents (with water, soft beds, and electricity) were located on a ridge overlooking the Tarangire River.  The main building consisted of three interconnected giant round buildings (two with thatched roofs): one filled with comfy couches and the other the dining room, where the food was first rate.  The third building had no roof and had a large fire pit in the middle, where we enjoyed a beer before dinner.  Back in our room, there was a whistle at the head of the bed could be used to summon the Masai warrior guards in case of emergency in the middle of the night, and these same guards would guide you to your tent after dark.  The manager has been quick to point out “an emergency is not “there is an elephant next to my tent”.  Funny!

Day 3

I woke up a little early and birded around the camp before breakfast.  I saw Spectacled Mousebirds (little did I know they would be the first of many), lots of yellow collared lovebirds,  and a grey-headed kingfisher. What a good way to start the day!

Back into Tarangire Park, this time all the way to the far south border where there is a big wet marsh (even in the dry season) which was full of elephants (for Chris) and all kinds of crazy bird species for me.  African open-billed heron, sacred ibis, a few different varieties of spurwings, African Spoonbills, it was so cool!  Hosea spotted a tree with two pythons in it, as well.  We spent most of the day in this marshy area.  Chris got some great photos of this elephant just going to town scratching itself on a big tree.  We did happen to get a good look at a nocturnal cat species, too, the Common Genet, hiding deep in the bushes.

Tonight we stayed at a different swanky lodge, this one with a pool.  We took our tired, dusty selves down for a swim and who was hanging out at the pool?  Two super cute African Pied Wagtails.  Chris was hoping for a hot lady in a bikini (I don’t wear a bikini).

It is probably worth mentioning that the sun rose and set at about 6am and pm, and Chris and I went to bed early and got up early every day.  I think it may have been the lack of sleep from our first 24 hours of chaos?  Not sure.  But we slept a lot!

Day 4

Today’s early morning birding at the lodge revealed a Purple Grenadier!  Both male and female birds were hanging out on the grass in front of our bungalow.

After breakfast with Hosea, we headed out to Ngorogoro Crater.   This is the world-famous 5 mile diameter crater (created by a prehistoric volcano eruption) and home to some extremely rare Black Rhinos.  It is an awe-inspiring place, it makes you feel so small!  You drive up through the jungly, cloudy crater rim, and then down the steep slope down into the hot, tree less crater.  At first it appears to be dry empty grasslands, but then animals start to appear.  We saw: cheetahs, jackals, hyenas, more zebras than we could count, the two gazelles found here, and lots of lions.  We were gazing at a Kori Bustard when we spotted a male lion walking toward the road where two other safari vehicles were parked, so we drove up.  The male lion (who was apparently an old one, he was really mangy looking) walked right between these two vehicles and peed on one of them!!  We did get to see Rhinos, too, which not everyone gets to see.  They tend to stay against the crater walls, or go up the crater walls for weeks on end.  What a cool animal!

We saw hippos in the lake and some of the wet areas here, and boy are they big.  We finally understood why old Bugs Bunny cartoons had him running over stepping-stones in a stream and then realizing they were actually hippos; we  saw hippos half submerged that we were convinced were rocks.

The birding in the crater was pretty amazing too: Flamingos, Secretary Birds, ostrich,  Crowned Crane, lots of grassland songbirds such as Rosy-breasted Longclaw and Red-capped Pipit, and raptors!  Black Kites at the Ngorogoro picnic spot try to eat your lunch, so you have to sit inside the truck to eat.

Day 5

Gibbs Farm is an eco farm and super swanky lodge where we had a bird walk.  It was great to see some forest birds!  I think I got 3 different sunbirds and a few flycatchers, among others.  The farm is a hub of sustainable ecotourism and is surrounded by coffee farms (not totally shade, maybe half shade, but it is organic, and hand roasted).  It was a really lovely spot, and I wish that we had either had time to do a whole day walk up into Ngorogoro (where I could see some turacos!) or had enough of a budget to stay there, it looked super nice!  Anyway, we had a great walk and our guide, Vincent, was an outstanding birder!

Then Hosea took us back to Arusha, where our safari ended….we hopped on a plane and went to Zanzibar!!!  I will post on that soon…..

Photos of our adventures, and its a LOT of photos, over here

Reptile List

• Agame Lizard
• Nile Monitor Lizard
• African Python

Mammal List

• Bushbaby (Senegal Galago)
• Savanna Baboon, olive race
• Vervet Monkey
• Plains Zebra
• Black Rhino
• Common Hippo
• Common Warthog
• Giraffe
• African Buffalo
• Waterbuck
• Common Reedbuck
• Coke’s Hartbeest
• Blue Wildebeest
• Impala
• Grant’s Gazelle
• Thompson’s Gazelle
• Steenbok
• Kirk’s Dik-dik
• Savanna Elephant
• Side-striped Jackal
• Common Genet
• Banded Mongoose
• Dwarf Mongoose
• Spotted Hyaena
• Cheetah
• Lion
• Tree Hyrax
• Indo-pacific humpback dolphin (well, this was off of Zanzibar)

I really, really want to learn to speak and understand Dutch, and I do feel like I have come pretty far since this time last year (when I understood/spoke none at all).  But as my pal Sue said, when learning a language  you can only see how far you have to go, not how far you have come. This is very true.

Prior to the move kept telling me before we moved how difficult it is to learn, and though I would nod, I would think, “Really? How hard can it be?”  The answer is, pretty hard! Though truthfully it is a combination of factors (and please note, this is specific to me! There are plenty of folks out there who pick it up quickly).  Dutch does have a very different structure than English, plus lots of sounds, like the g, and the ij, that are quite odd sounding to an English speaker.  Mostly, it is difficult because as an adult who works and has a 1 1/2 hour commute every day, attending class at night and doing lots of homework is tough. Classes are 10 weeks long and I find I get burned out at about 7 weeks.  I try to practice, but get so frustrated at my lack of vocabulary that I give up.  I actually don’t get embarrassed by my terrible pronunciation, I have had EVERYONE correct me and I welcome that, even from the girl working behind the counter at Hema.   I know, I just need to stick with it.  And I know it will come!

Truthfully part of it is just laziness.  Everyone in Amsterdam speaks English, and as soon as waiters, etc, hear my dutch they speak to me in English and I welcome that.  It takes me so long to put together a sentence in Dutch that I just finish it in English (one of my coworkers told me “Lets make a deal, if you start a sentence in Dutch, you have to finish it in Dutch!”). Also, it kind of is terrible when you ask the question and your pronunciation is so horrible that the Dutch person just stares at you blankly.  Really, though, there is NOTHING worse than asking a question in Dutch and then not understanding the answer. Which is why I am too scared to make appointments on the phone in Dutch yet, I just feel so intimidated!

But, I don’t want to be the ugly American who speaks no Dutch. As any of you reading this blog know, I looooooove to talk. I live here, which is a privilege, and it would be rude not to learn it.  Plus, there is my job.  I have the most awesome coworkers!  It is so hard not to be able to join in with my colleague’s  casual conversations at lunch or coffee, and that is really what motivated me to take the intense Dutch class in which I am currently enrolled (the course has been not so great, but that could be a whole different blog posting).  My coworkers are so sweet and speak to me in English, but I kind of hate that they have to do that.  I try to follow along conversations, and am happy to report I can usually understand what the conversation is about, but if I space out for one second I totally lose it.  Plus, my boss laid down the law and told me she wanted to hear me speaking more Dutch. And there is some guy at work whose name I don’t even know who always bullies me a bit about my reliance on English.  Which, frankly, is a little rude. I wonder if he does it to all the English speakers?

So I have plenty of reasons to stay motivated, sometimes it is just really hard.

So, first of all, the biggest news is my new job. I spent the fall and spring working at the Zoological Museum Amsterdam, packing up their collection of 65,000 bird specimens in order to be moved to and merged in with the collection at Naturalis Museum. Happily for me, when my contract ended at ZMA, Naturalis hired me to unpack everything I had packed up. This collection move is a really big deal, and there is a LOT of work to do (for those of you reading who had to listen to me complain about the NCSM bird collection move a few years ago this has been a lot different, and a lot easier in many ways). With any luck I will be gainfully employed at Naturalis for a while. The first week I was quite nervous and it was a little, um, awkward, what with walking into a low hanging beam with my face on the first day and splitting my pants on the 5th day. However, now that I have recovered from that I am having a really great experience. It’s amazing to work in such a large collection, I feel like I see new species every day, and my coworkers are a really great, fun bunch. Best of all they are super patient with my pathetic dutch language skills! The commute is a bit of a hike, 45 minutes door to door via bike and tram but I use that time to read Jip and Janneke, a famous dutch children’s book.

So, yeah, dutch.  Its hard at work to understand folks when they chit chat in dutch (usually I get the subject but not the specifics, though frequently I just space out if I lose the conversation thread) and also I feel a bit lost in the daily routine. So I am taking an intensive 8 week dutch class which meets twice a week and then on another night I meet a bunch of English speakers to practice.  I know, I am around dutch folks all day, but its easier with folks at my own level, they tend to speak slower.

My other summer focus is hot yoga, which I started in the spring and though I have taken a few breaks from I completely into. It kicks my butt every time, but that is a good thing!  I think it is really making me more flexible and I have lost a bunch of weight too, though from yoga or biking every day for my commute I do not know.

We have done some cool things lately: we went for a boat ride with our pals from Lisse to Leiden a few weeks ago on a sunny Friday night, and that was just lovely and fun.  So nice to see the country from a perspective besides the train!  We visited a really cool brewery in Haarlem called the Jopen Brewery.  Not only is it in an old church, and possibly the chic-est brewery I have ever been too, but they have some IPA type ales that are really good.  This last Friday we ate at a new (to us) restaurant, Rosa en Rita.  This fun place is located in the former canteen of a dutch shipbuilding company and they specialize in pizza and steak.  It was tasty and different from many of the small Amsterdam cafes.  Oh and the name comes from 2 tanker ships built here in the 1930s.  So cool!

Everyone in both mine and Chris’ office is taking long holidays right now.  We don’t have a holiday planned until our safari in September, but have been talking about taking a weekend trip someplace.  Maybe to the beach, or possibly to southern Germany.   Amsterdam itself is teeming with tourists, so we really try to stay out of the downtown areas if possible.

Fun things upcoming for us: a big beer festival in Haarlem in a few weeks, plus we have tickets to see Polvo and David Sedaris (not together, though that would be epic) and I have tentative plans to go dancing this Saturday with some of my girlfriends.  Anyway, I hope all is well with you, whether you are baking in the sun or laying on a beach somewhere!

Friday afternoon I took a guided tour of the city by bike.  Chris and I did this in Paris and London a few years ago and we love seeing the city this way. First of all, Krakow is beautiful.  It has the largest market square in Europe which features the cloth hall  market in the middle and is surrounded by buildings restored to look new and beautiful though they are 500-600 years old.  There are some amazing churches both on the market and around the city, and the enormous Wawel Castle Complex overlooking the Vistula River.

The bike tour was interesting, as Poland has a long and eventful history.  We visited the central market, the Jewish quarter (where the Jews lived prior to WWII)  the Jewish ghetto (where they were forced to live during Nazi occupation) along with Oskar Schindler’s factory (now a museum of Jewish experiences during WWII) an amazing baroque church whose name I have forgotten, and finally,a limestone quarry that was the closest labor camp to Krakow during the war as well as where Schindler’s List was filmed.  On a side note, biking in Krakow is not for the faint of heart!  The bike lanes are a suggestion, and there was lots of jumping curbs, swerving around people and off-road riding.  I thought it was fun!

I should probably mention at this point that Chris was not with me, and a nice couple from Germany who were also on the bike tour invited me to have dinner with them (I had a day before Lynn would arrive).  We had a really good time!  We ate perogies, and little did I know that this would be the first of many, many meals featuring these amazing potato filled  (or sauerkraut, or meat, or fruit) dumplings!  After we went to a tiny bar called Katedra which specialized in some amazing Polish microbrews.  It was a really fun evening.

Saturday I rented a bike and pedaled along the Vistula River to a park where I did some birdwatching and enjoyed the lovely views.  Upon returning to the old town I toured the amazing St. Mary’s Church (where there was a wedding in progress, despite the tons of tourists).   It’s a lovely church and to me the most notable thing to me were all the colors inside!  It was just amazing; blues, reds and gold.  So pretty.  After this leisurely day I finally caught up with Lynn and her group with Ecoquest Tours in time for another amazing dinner followed by house-made horseradish spiked vodka.  Yum!

Our gang toured Wawel Castle, an enormous complex of buildings complete with another lovely church, nice views over the city, and dragon bones affixed outside of the building (relics of the dragon that used to live under the hill, killed by King Krak: it kept eating maidens, how annoying).  I think my favorite part of the castle and furnishings were the amazing tapestries: they were so large and skillfully done that I could identify all the birds in them!  The human figures frequently looked like they could walk off the fabric as well.

After lunch at the cafe (yep, perogies) we had some time to shop downtown before visiting the Wieleczka Salt Mines, which fall firmly into the category of “touristy because they are super awesome!”  These mines have been working since the middle ages, and the underground complex includes mines, chapels, and many sculptures.  The only way to see them is with a guide, and it was nice because when we were there it was the end of the day so the mines were really quiet and it felt like we were the only ones there.  Despite lots of jokes about it, I never did try to lick the walls.  I’m sure they were…salty.

Monday I went birdwatching with a guide I had hired. We went up to the Spytkowice Fish Ponds, which is used for carp farming, and originally created in the middle ages.  We had a great morning, and the life birds for me included: Whiskered Tern, Common Rosefinch, Great Reed Warbler, Penduline Tit (and nest!), Night-heron, Yellow-legged Gull, Red-backed Shrike, and a few others I cannot remember offhand.  It was a lovely sunny day and nice to see what it is like outside the city.

One of the bonuses of visiting Poland is that it is very, very cheap.  I think the exchange rate is currently 1 euro to 4 zloty.  I had such a great weekend and look forward to going back.  Perhaps I will even take Chris next time!