My dear Batavus, how I miss you…

OK, so you know how I love the European design aesthetic and I’m especially enamored with the love of cycling and cycle accessories. I’ve been trying to find a bicycle in the States that somehow comes close to my beloved Batavus Personal bike that I used while in Holland. It’s a true Dutch work bike, and is the most comfortable bike I’ve ever ridden by a huge margin. Plus, with a couple of accessories it can easily become our family station wagon. The cheapest price I’ve found for my Batavus is around $1100, not including a few hundred for delivery, so that’s out. Way out. So I am looking for the full upright seating style of the Batavus, along with the easy step-through, and a heavy duty frame that can hold my favorite passenger and our groceries. In the meantime, I’ve been looking around for something similar and although there are now lots of choices for beach cruise bikes in the US, they are really not the same as Dutch bikes so I’m a bit stymied. My maximum budget – maximum!! – is $500, including accessories, so I’m really looking for something of quality in the $300 range.  So far I like a few of the Trek Cruiser models (click here if you’re curious) or this Raleigh or maybe I can find a used one from the bike shop. But I am definitely not compromising on the accessories. Check it out:

Hoofd?

Last week we biked over to the adorable neighboring town of Veere to try to get a table at De Peperboom, the restaurant that our exchangers had recommended. It was full, and we weren’t really dressed for a more upscale place anyway, so we settled on one of the more touristy places in the central square that we’d been to before. We’d found out from the waiter the last time that Veere is a popular tourist destination for wealthy Americans on the smaller yachts – he said yachts, not me – as well as for day trippers from the Benelux region. There were a shitload of Americans walking around last time we were there, I’m not kidding, so we wanted to keep a lower profile and try to blend in. Until we saw the menu, that is. I hadn’t seen the dinner menu last time, and was vaguely horrified to scan down to the center of the page to see this: Hoofd. Oh, hell no. What are the animals with hooves, anyway? Do sheep have hooves? What about cows, and yes, definitely horses have hooves. Wait a minute, aren’t they called cloven?  I am already mostly vegetarian, never eating beef and occasionally some chicken or pork, so I was really not ready to be ordering from this section. Not possible. I settled on a warm goat cheese salad from the top of the page, and didn’t mention Hoofd to anyone. Can you imagine how relieved I was when I got home and looked up the word in the dictionary? It means mains, principals – you know, like Entrées. It was just the list of the main dishes, nothing to do with hooves or even animals. Go ahead, laugh at me…it is pretty funny.

Limb training?

Many of the houses here have a funky landscaping feature that I’ve never seen before. People are making huge trellises in front of their houses by training the limbs of a certain kind of tree to grow straight across at a 90° angle from the trunk. They start out with anywhere from 3 to 8 trees, trellis trees I call them now, and plant them about about 4 feet apart. These trees stand at least as tall as the roof line, but without any branches. Then they use wire to make an actual trellis to serve as a guide for the branches when they begin to grow. The branches grow across from one trunk to another, and the final result is a sort of crosshatch pattern to decorate the front of your house. Do you get it yet? Look, let me show you.  Here is what you start out with – click the pictures to enlarge them so you can really see what’s going on:

 

See how the branches have just begun to extend across to the next trunks? They are still quite thin and without much growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The branches are thicker and have begun to bloom on this house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a more mature look – and this one even wraps around the house on the left. How cute!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think this is such a different and interesting way to landscape, but I’m not sure that it always works. I love the house in the 3rd picture above, but I’m not so sure about the others. What do you think?

3 more days…

I just got a lovely note from our exchangers in the Netherlands. They are gracious enough to start our exchange a few days earlier that previously agreed upon so that we can go straight to their place after leaving our house in Norway. They sent us information about their home and after reading the specifics we are even more excited to get there and to see what it’s like in Gapinge. The cool part is that they are going to be blogging about their trip and will share their stories and photos with us – our Norwegian exchangers sent a few pictures but not many, and we’re curious! Anyway, we’re eager to learn what there is in Holland besides tulips and windmills. Stay tuned!

image: emmerspaperarts.com

Tiptoe through the window...

Next month my mother is coming to visit us in Holland, and she had asked me to take her to Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands to see the flowers. I am not really a garden person, nor a flower person, and especially not a drive-90-minutes-to-wander-around-for-two-hours-admiring-flowers person. I would much rather do somehing useful, like laundry or shave my legs. However, when I saw these arial pictures of the tulip farms in Holland, I completely changed my mind. How fantastic is this???

images: London Daily Mail

What's a dale and where can I find one?

I hate to say it, but the bike riding here is kicking my ass. There really aren't any flat stretches, so it's more of a squiggly line of torture through the burbs of Ålesund. Remember the sledding hill leading down into our cul-de-sac? Well that's nothing compared to the rest of the hills that are around the house, making biking pretty unpleasant about 50% of the time. No wonder the locals are in great shape; a quick trip of only a few miles is a full cardio workout. I'm looking forward to moving into flatter terrain as the weather improves. We'll be in the Netherlands in less than 3 weeks, just in time for the first bloom of tulips, warm weather, and easier bike rides.

Coming up next...or, Don't worry when your friend sleeps with the guy you like.

The Gapinge house!

It seems sort of, well, rude to sit in this beautiful house and look out on the mountains while planning for the next segment of our home exchange.  In just 5 short weeks we'll be leaving Ålesund for Gapinge, Netherlands for a 4 week swap with a kind retired couple.  I was lucky to find these folks after our original exchangers from Northumberland, England cancelled on us over the holidays. Apparently this type of behavior is not common, but we'd had a few false starts already and the idea of being homeless for 5 weeks between two home exchanges did not make me feel too festive.  I was really pissed at these people, especially because we had met them in person and thought we'd built a great rapport with them over dinner. We'd even bought a GPS system for our car because the husband was worried about driving in the US and we wanted to make it as easy as possible.  Whatever. I channeled my frustration into a wide search for a suitable exchange and was quite happy to find these Dutch exchangers who were looking for a trip to Florida. It works out much better than an exchange in England, where we weren't too excited to go in the first place because we already speak English (well, most of us). I knew it was meant to be when I realize that Gapinge is only a few kilometers outside of Middelburg, Netherlands where I'd spent a few days back in college.  Sure, it was about a man, but we were already on a trip to Europe and he was a handsome young professor. Don't judge. So I guess the moral of the story is that while my friend got the professor (and made sure I knew it), and although I had to wait 20 years for karmic balance, I was ultimately rewarded with a home exchange that came to my rescue. Karma is real!