Belgian Waffles.....Belgian Waffles.....

Sunday morning we packed up the car (Wim's car) and piled in for a road trip to Antwerp. Wim had to meet someone in Belgium so we got a free ride straight from his house in Germany to our hotel's front steps (Hotel Leopold). Great service!

My motivation for wanting to come to Antwerp was that I visited once in 1996 for work - my first full week of work for Wetzel Associates, a now defunct Museum, Aquarium, and Zoo design firm. I was the assistant to the head of the company. Wetzel Assoc. had designed some of the signage for the Antwerp Zoo and the goal was to convince some folks to build an aquarium on some now defunct docks in the north of Antwerp. I loved the city, but did not have much time to explore since I was working much of the time. I remembered a wonderful old town full of cool shops where I bought a watch and a black briefcase, seeing a store with hundreds of different types of beer glasses, each Belgian beer getting its own special glass, and the diamond district with many Jews, something I was interested in, but didn't get much time to explore on my work trip.

Henry's motivation for coming to Belgium: waffles.

After we checked in, we went in search of a specific waffle house that was suggested by the woman who worked at the front desk. She said we'd see street stands, but that Antwerpians (is that what they're called?) love this place the best and it was famous for its waffles. We trudged out in the misty rain, hungry and a bit weary from travel. (Why is sitting in a car for two hours tiring? A mystery I've never understood - you'd think sitting for that long would be restful if you're not the one driving.) As it was Sunday, most everything was closed, but we did stumble upon a farmers' market. I was thrilled, of course, because aren't pictures of bunches of flowers and herbs obligatory in a traveler's log?

 

 

The boys, however, were grumpy and not so interested - they wanted waffles. I took the photos anyway before going on to find the waffle place. What was its name? We couldn't quite remember.

We followed the map towards the X that the desk-woman (concierge? reception worker?) had marked on our map. It took us past Rubens Haus, the house where artist Peter Paul Rubens lived and worked. We did not venture in, however, as waffles were the first order. At the end of the plaza where Rubens Haus stands is a waffle stand. I forced the boys past it, venturing forward on our quest for the X in the map with the famous waffles. We walked past a myriad of clothing stores whose vivid displays of bright clothing were sharp contrasts to the dreary grey day. We got to the place with the X on the map and, well, nothing resembling a waffle was anywhere nearby. Henry began sniffing his way through the streets, determined he could smell his way to the waffles. No success. We'd catch a scent, then it would be replaced by the cold, wet smell of cobblestones and metal grates.

Defeated, we trudged back towards Rubens Haus and bought the waffles from the street vendor who was quite cheerful and lifted the spirits of the overly hungry and tired boys. And, despite the warning that the street waffles were not as good as the ones we couldn't find, at this point the warm, chewy waffles with crystalized sugar on the outside were the best!

Warmed by waffles and knowing that there were only a couple hours left in the day, I dragged the boys into Rubens Haus to see the architecture, including a gorgeous bed that I remembered from my previous trip. It was only about five feet long as people slept more upright, their backs supported by a mountain of pillows which was thought to be a healthier position. On this I agree - anyone who's had a horrible cold knows that lying flat makes it impossible to breathe, but sitting upright makes it possible to get some sleep. Anyway, the boys were reluctant, but in fact seemed to really enjoy the museum. I read the interpretive signs to them and we learned about how Rubens style changed when he went to Italy to study the works of the mater Italian artists. We looked at the splendid furnishings he had, talked about how the house copied the Italian style of having a large patio in the center with the house surrounding it, and we looked at the paintings. There were many artists represented, including Frans Snyder who painted many animal scenes with vivid realism, including game brought back from the hunt and of roosters fighting. Of course I wanted to show the boys the paintings of the naked women to show them the meaning of the description, rubenesque since it's an apt description of me. Surprisingly, there are not many of this type in the museum. Nonetheless they now know that curvy and rounded woman used to the be IN thing. If only I was alive in the 1600s. Anyway, the thing that fascinated us most was the paintings that showed objects that were silver and gold, but there was no silver or gold paint. I showed the boys that if they looked up close they would see that the metallic appearance was just a trick of shadows and light with the use of white, yellow, brown, and black. Here's an example of Rubens' work that shows off the metallics without using metallics (click here).

Following the cultural experience of Rubens, we went to the Diamond Museum (normally two museums back to back would be a no-no since burn-out is easy, but it was Sunday and the museums would all be closed on Monday so it was a now or never decision). The Diamond Museum was okay. We saw the carbon structure of diamonds and some fake crowns and a few small gems. Nothing worth writing home about so that's all I'll write.

The next day we went wandering again, and this time were successful in finding the waffle spot, Desire de Lille. We had to eat some healthy food before the waffle, but then the boys finally got the promised waffle, with ice cream and whipped cream and chocolate. I had one bite - not nearly as good as the one on the cart on the street. Arg. But they were happy.

 

 

With waffles warming us up, we wandered the streets of Antwerp. I wanted to see the historic buildings and sites. The boys wanted to play soccer. We compromised and the boys played soccer in historic sites. They also lit more candles in churches, sampled Belgian chocolates, and discovered the traditional gum drop of Belgium. A good day all in all.

 

For more photos please visit the album for Antwerp. View Album 

Cologne with Old Friends, Chocolate, and Crazy Football Fans

We spent Saturday morning at the Chocolate Museum (seeing, sampling...) with James' former nanny, Marina. Then we went to the Cologne Cathedral (largest facade for a church in the world and HUGE). After that we strolled through the CROWDED shopping district which, I'm told, is wall to wall at Christmas and you can only walk at a shuffled pace. Yipes. I thought this was crowded. I wish we'd had more time since there were dyed-hair-pierced kids with skateboards, leather, and bright leggings, street musicians, random ponies, and more. Unfortunately we had to go quickly, but did, of course, have time to stop for a sausage (being a vegetarian in Germany is trying, to say the least).

The highlight of the day - even more than a museum about chocolate - was the football (soccer) match between Koln and Bayer. 46,000 plus fans all screaming, chanting, and lighting the stadium on fire. Don't believe me - see the photos. Real flames. Real smoke. And I thought firing off blanks from the 4 muskets at the Revolution Games in Boston was exciting. Hah. This was AMAZING! Photos below and eventually videos since although the photos are pretty cool, you can't see all the fans hopping up and down in union or waving their scarves in the stills.

Some of the photos are here:

View Album

More to come if the internet picks up speed.

Dusseldorf

We eventually got out of the beautiful house in the woods to go to see Dusseldorf. It was a misty / rainy day which made all of the incredible colors of the shops pop out even more! There was of course more graffiti and, even better, more boobs to, as the boys put it, "scar them for life." See photos and read captions here:  View Album

A House in the Woods

Wednesday afternoon we left the Utrecht church flat to drive in Betsy, Lynda's little Jetta, to Germany. She and her boyfriend, Wim, live in a small village outside of Dusseldorf. It is such a small village that there is no store, but there is one about five minutes away called Real. Real is kind of like a mini-target with a large grocery store attached. The German store is about what I expected - LOTS of processed meats. Sausages of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Also sliced lunch meats galore - bologna type round meats of different sizes and shapes. Finding tofu, however, took half an hour. There were gluten free breads, though, which was nice.

More soon...

Amsterdam, Anne Frank, and Peanut Butter Meat Logs

Day Two - We were heading to Amsterdam. Eventually. Jet lag kept us sleeping until 10:30 or so, and thus our early morning train to Amsterdam from Utrecht became a noon train. Because it was lunchtime, we stopped in the station before boarding the train to get a quick snack out of the great metal walls of food. Yes, the train station is full of these silver-frames outlining delicious fried treats. Vegetable samosas, bits of fried chicken, and the boys' favorite: Kroquette. Kroquette are Dutch meat balls, although the amount of meat in them is debatable. They are made by making a thick roux of butter, broth, and bits of meat, forming them into the shape of a log about the size of a Baby Ruth bar, and then rolling it in breadcrumbs and deep frying it. The result is crunchy on the outside, with a creamy savory filling oozing out of the inside. Kind of like the savory version of a chocolate truffle. To make it even more decadent, they also come in sate flavor, which means it's deep-fried-peanut-butter-meat sticks. Oh my.


                        


But our purpose of going to Amsterdam was not just eating from the train station's walls. We had spoken to Bori the day before about her experience in World War II and I thought it was time the boys see the Anne Frank House. Henry knows his Grandpa Bob had been in the war, but he never really understood what the war was about. When was it, where was it, etc. Having the chance to talk to Bori and hear her family's story was an excellent precursor to the visit to Amsterdam. We got to Anne's house and found a long and daunting-looking line, but in fact it was only about twenty minutes before we found ourselves inside.

I had been twenty or so years ago, and remembered being surprised by the house since I had spent most of my time in the less savory neighborhoods of Amsterdam before finding this residential, canal-lined one. The Anne Frank House at the time was the only non-residential house on the street and it looked just like that - just one more row house lining the waterway. This time, the museum stood out more - not just because of the long line, but because the museum has expanded out of necessity due to the huge number of visitors who make the pilgrimage to see the Annex each year. I was worried that it would be too crowded, which it was, full of people from all over speaking a number of different languages. Yet the crowds were not bothersome. Instead, I found it heartening that learning about this sad history has become important to people world-wide.

The boys did a little pre-entry activity, making notes about the neighborhood, noticing the leaning buildings, construction crews everywhere, and the cobblestone streets. Once inside, they had to answer my pre-written questions in their journals - when did the family move to the Netherlands, how many people were in the family, who else hid, and what happened to them. The boys were dutiful students, listening intently to the variety of videos describing the jam and spice business Otto Frank had set up, listening to the voices of some of the people who had helped hid the Franks, including Miep Gies, and looking at photos of the family and the Annex where they hid. Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the eight Jews who hid upstairs in the jam factory, asked that the space be left as empty as it was when the Nazis removed all of their furnishings. There is a model of what the space looked like in the building, but the top two floors of the factory, The Annex, are bare except for the magazine photos that Anne used to decorate her walls for the two years she hid. In terms of storytelling, the museum is sparse, using Anne's own words from her diary to tell bits and pieces of the story, and then using photos of the camps to show where the eight people in hiding were sent once they were discovered.

The boys were moved by the whole thing, but particularly by the fact that Anne died in a camp only two weeks before the camp was liberated. Two weeks. It really hit home that there were people who did not survive. They had many questions about why the Germans wanted to attack other countries, about why Hitler picked on people, particularly the Jews (something that hits home to Henry since his grandfather was a Jewish doctor living in Germany until 1934). We talked about the first World War, the Treaty of Versailles, and how poverty and hunger cause people to make decisions that they would perhaps not make otherwise. They have also learned to look at maps and realize that it is not advantageous to be in the middle of two countries who are not your allies (don't be the meat in a war sandwich - the bread is much more strategic - thanks, Steve Cohen for the lesson!)


The end of the exhibit had a wonderful interactive movie that showed different scenarios about tolerance and the law. There were short films about different people in different countries. One was about a man who wanted to wear a turban and be in the US army which was not allowed, but because he had valuable language skills, he was given an exception and allowed to wear a turban. The people in the room were allowed to vote about whether others should others allowed to have the right to freedom of expression of their religion as well or should exceptions be made only for those who have sought-after military or intelligence skills? Another problem posed was in France, where the police targeted a West African frequented night club to find people who were supposedly conducting illegal fraud activities on the internet (you know, the Nigerian banker email stories).  Only the black-skinned people were taken in for questioning, and although none were arrested for the fraud that the police were looking to arrest people for, many were deported for being undocumented. Did the people in the room think that the police should have the right to profile certain groups of people? The answers from everyone in the room were shown on the screen as a percentage, and then the percentage of everyone who took the test since the exhibit began was shown. All of the stories were quite thought-provoking and really made people wonder about issues of tolerance in today's world, bringing the lesson of the Franks up to date. Well done.

Following this, we strolled the streets including looking at the flower market (mostly bulbs this time of year), looked in tourist shops, and Henry bought a new rip-stick with light-up wheels (although why he needs this in the land of cobblestones is still a mystery to me).

For someone like me who likes taking photos of bikes, graffiti, signs, funny store fronts, and generally odd things, this Amsterdam was a joy. Traveling with me and not wanting to stop every 10 feet to wait for me to take said photos, perhaps not such a joy, but we all seemed happy by the day's end. We journeyed back to Utrecht to another meal of fried foods (deep-fried peanut butter logs and fries with curry dipping sauce) eaten at Lynda's apartment. Thank goodness for Bori's neighborliness and addition of a green salad.

Tomorrow we are off to Germany to see Wim, Lynda's boyfriend and a friend of mine from my days in Zanzibar 20+ years ago. This will be my first trip to Germany other than for a layover at the Frankfurt Airport so I'm quite excited!

More Amsterdam photos available here: View Album

Day One: Utrecht

We intended to go to Amsterdam for our first day, but jet lag has something else in mind. By the time we woke up, had breakfast, and got organized, we realized the day was almost over. Rather than more traveling, we decided to stick around Utrecht and have an easy day.

Our first stop was at the neighbor, Bori's, house. Bori is in her seventies and grew up in the Netherlands. One of the reasons Lynda wanted us to meet her (besides that she's wonderful) is that Bori's father was Jewish and escaped the Nazis by hiding on a farm in a pigsty. Bori was six when her father had to go into hiding, but her mother told her that her father had died. Her parents couldn't risk letting their children know that he was in hiding because they were so young they might go to school or around town and tell others that Father was hiding. When the German soldiers came marching into town, Bori stood at the window and stuck her tongue out at them as they marched passed until her mother saw what she was doing and demanded that she stop. They could not risk drawing attention to themselves since their father, although not present, was Jewish. She learned to behave herself around soldiers. At the war's end, Bori was nine years old and one day a man showed up at the door. She knew it looked like her father and she had photos of him in the house, but he was dead, so it couldn't be him. But it was.

Bori re-enacting sticking her tongue out at the Nazis.

Bori's apartment, like Lynda and Wim's, is in an old church. Bori bought her place as the conversion from church to flat was happening so she was able to ask them to leave the original painting on some of the arches - beautiful!

After our visit to Bori's we wandered the streets admiring shops, looking at bookstores who all had the Wimpy Kid books in the windows entitled Loser in Dutch. We came across the Occupy Utrecht camp, saw a church tower and a church that used to be connected except the middle of the church blew down in a storm so now a large plaza separates the two. And, being the Netherlands, we saw things in windows that the boys claimed, "have scarred us for life," such as breast-shaped slippers and items referring to love. Photos available on Facebook and soon somewhere else, if I ever get organized to upload them somewhere else. 

Boston - Iceland - Utrecht

We left on Saturday night to fly via Iceland to Amsterdam to see my friend, Lynda, who was meeting us at the airport to take us to Utrecht, The Netherlands. The boys managed to sleep for one and a half hours on the first flight and none on the second flight. We landed at 11:00 on Sunday morning and by noon were with my friend Lynda on the train to Utrecht, a city outside of Amsterdam. She and her long-time boyfriend, Wim, have an apartment there since he's Dutch, but he lives in Germany since that's where he works.

The apartment is in a building that used to be a church. Its two bedrooms and large living/dining room has the original church arches. I went immediately to sleep, while the boys who didn't seem to need sleep played in the apartment on their new iPods and waited for me to get up so they could go exploring.

We left the apartment in the afternoon to go past the statue of St. Martin who permanently rides his horse who is trodding on a serpent in the apartment / church entranceway. Any clue who St. Martin is? I assume he conquered a giant snake somewhere.


                                            





We wandered the cobblestone sidewalks, went shopping for important necessities such as two-toned Nutella and stropewaffels and dined on a supper of patate (Dutch fries) with curry and peanut dipping sauce. It was all the boys could do to stay awake until 8:30 and then the collapsed until 10:00 the next morning.

The trip itself is still a whirl. Hard to think straight when I'm still trying to process a week in Cuba and being gone mid-school-year is odd. In school I showed the kids a movie based on a Kurt Vonnegut story, Harrison Bergeron. In the movie, everyone is forced to wear handicaps to prevent anyone from having unfair advantages. At one point in the movie a dancer is dancing with weights tied to his body, and unexpectedly the weights fall off. He is startled at first, and then his dancing becomes natural and the expression on his face is one of sudden joy and freedom. Leaving life in mid-stream to come to Europe suddenly feels like this weightlessness, only that I do miss the weights as well, considering I love both my husband and the job I left behind. I guess the analogy that I'm trying to make is that taking a journey like this does feel liberating and exciting. I can't wait to visit places I've been long ago, see old friends, and most importantly, show Henry and James new things.