Hunting Me a Windmill

One of the coolest thing about my new country are windmills.  There are hundreds of windmills that dot the landscape of the Netherlands, many of them historically preserved.  So Bram and I recently went on a "windmill hunt" to find one of these windmills.  We headed north along the bike paths, following one of the main roads diagonally away from the city.

This involved biking through the Dutch countryside.  This taught me several things:
1. the Netherlands is very flat
2. therefore the Netherlands is very windy
3. therefore my bike goes very slowly.
Q.E.D.

I also learned that the Netherlands is filled with cows and sheep.  

And the Netherlands is filled with water!  Growing up in the desert, the amount of canals here will never cease to amaze me.

We biked through the countryside, looking for our windmill.  It was beautiful to see the open spaces and rural farmland.  All I can say is - very different from Paris.

 

We biked farther and farther, and biking into the wind, I was afraid we would never find our windmill.  But finally, there it was!

Surrounded by cows, it sure looked idyllic.

Chasing windmills is one of our new hobbies.  We are just like Don Quixote!  

And now for the point - what year was this windmill constructed in?  

The Great Bike Revolution

Question: How do you anger tons of people in the Netherlands at once?

Answer: Confiscate their bikes.

So, campus here is closed to cars, so the best way to get to work is to ride a bike.  (You can also walk, which takes a long time, or take the bus, and be crammed with about 500 undergraduates.)

Cramming on the bus

So biking by far wins out among my co-workers, and everyone else at the university.  The result is there are thousands (literally) of bikes that need to park somewhere.

The bike racks are always full, so most people just park their bike near the rack, lock it up, and go.  Until, that is, we got an email that bikes not in the racks were being confiscated by the university.

I ran outside to my newly purchased bike.  Was it safe?  I had only had it for 5 days, yet I couldn't imagine life without it, and I certain as heck did not want to wake up at 4:30 am (again) to buy another one.  My bike was not in a rack, but it was chained to a pole.  Was that ok?  Would some disgruntled university employee saw through my chain?  Would I find my bike being hauled away?  I ran outside.

I found several dozen of my coworkers either moving their bikes or drinking coffee, watching the campus authorities haul off bikes.  So once I made sure my bike was ok, I got my own coffee and looked down at the spectacle: bikes being confiscated, undergraduates arriving from all directions, running to get their bikes, some other undergraduates finding their bikes were already taken, some jumping on the trailer and grabbing their bike before it was hauled off to who-knows-where...

The next day I saw "police" asking people if they worked in my building before they parked their bikes there, but I saw many more students just not stopping their bikes to talk to the police and parking them in front of my building anyways.

(There really are a lot of bikes.  For a point - out of the 50 or so people I've met here, how many do not ride their bike to work?)

Academic Halls

The last stop on our UK trip brings us back to England, where we visit Oxford - home to academics and famous literature. 

The streets of Oxford.

In modern day England, there is not the same need for the iconic phone booths.  But, why get rid of them when they have a much higher calling?  

 

This one dispenses nonsense!

Some pretty amazing cake architecture.

Oxford is known for a few things.  One is its architecture.  The buildings are all so unique, so beautiful.  They range from the old, cozy type of architecture:

 

to the giant academic stone buildings, decorated with intricate patterns.

Along with the intricate architecture is some pretty awesome statues and decorations on the buildings themselves.

 

The Bridge of Sighs, one of the most famous landmarks in Oxford.

The massive door to one of the many academic schools.

This is the single largest room in a bookstore in all of the UK.  I am standing from the "photo point".

I went to a exhibit in a museum detailing the history of astronomy.  They had some pretty fascinating artifacts.

The oldest of a certain type of telescope in the world.  A point if you can name what kind of telescope this is.  (*Note: see revised game rules at the end of this post.)

Complex models of the celestial sphere.

The most famous book in astronomy: by Nicholas Copernicus, opened to the page where he puts the sun at the center of the solar system.

Another model of our solar system.

The Einstein blackboard.  This has been preserved from 1931 when Einstein gave a lecture at Oxford.  That is a major DNE!

A point if you can describe the equations on the blackboard and their importance to astronomy.  (*Note: see revised game rules at the end of this post.)

Of course, no college town is complete without bars, and no English college town is compete without pubs.  This sign gives directions to "An education in intoxication."

In Oxford, we stayed the night in jail.  Oh, don't worry, not that kind of jail.   We actually stayed in an old prison that has now been remodeled to a hotel.  The main hall of the hotel still retains its prison block feel.

Our cell... I mean room.

Our room was made of three cells.  Living in just one of these would have been tough - especially sharing it with two other men.

The outside of the prison.

I visited one of the colleges in Oxford - Christ Church.

 

The gardens.

Some of the amazing architecture of the college.

The ribbed ceilings of the hall.

Does this staircase look familiar?  In the Harry Potter movies, this is where Harry Potter and other new students are greeted by Professor McGonagall when they first arrive at Hogwarts.

The Great Hall of Christ Church was the model for the one built for the Harry Potter movies as well.  They had to model it, because in Harry Potter, the hall has four long tables, not three.  Could you imagine eating lunch here everyday?

The gong in the dining hall.

Lewis Carroll, the writer of Alice in Wonderland, studied here.  In the Great Hall, there is lots of evidence of his influence!

And of course, no Great Hall would be complete without Einstein.

And for a point, what literary character should this remind you of, and why?  (*Note: see revised game rules at the end of this post.)

In the chapel in Christ Church.

Walking through the wonderful green fields.

* Ok, and now for the rules for the revised game:
- There are three questions in this post.  The telescope question is worth 2 points, and the other questions are worth 1 point.
- Here's the catch.  You can only answer one of the questions.  Choose wisely.
- If your answer is wrong and I say so on the comments, you can answer the same question again, or choose a different question.
- Once you answer a question right, you cannot answer another one of the questions.  One right answer per person!