Dutch Summer

The summer is here!  Quick!  Go outside before the sun goes away again!

After being pent up inside all winter, suffering as the sun went down at 4:30PM (which was behind a layer of clouds anyways), people joyously celebrate when the days become longer and the sun stays out for longer than 20 seconds on any given day.

Because the summer lasts only about two weeks, it is not really ecomical to purchase lawn furniture.  But, it would be a tragedy not to enjoy the sun when it's here!  The solution: get your kitchen chairs or your sofa, and park it outside.  The rattier the sofa - the better.  There are also many people without a lawn or deck, who have discovered that parking your couch on the sidewalk is just as good.  

Don't forget the beer.

Also popular: hanging from windows to enjoy the outdoors.

 
The ultimate Dutch summer experience: two worn out sofa, parked on a floating dock next to your houseboat.

Battlefield: Sun

It seems all I do is complain.

All year long, I have been complaining on how cold, rainy, and windy the Netherlands has been.  Now it is none of these things.  It's hot.  The humid air hangs in a stagnant, unmoving mass above the city, with no hope for a refreshing rain shower.

And still, I complain.

Yeah, yeah.  I've lived in Texas.  I should be used to the heat, right?  Well, there is one important difference.  In Texas, you wake up in your nice air-conditioned house.  You walk into your garage, which is slightly warmer, get in your car, turn on the AC, drive to work, run into your building, where it is air-conditioned to a good 60* F cooler than the outside.  You feel pretty dumb bringing a sweater to work when it's 120* outside.  The hottest part of your day is when you come back to your car at the end of the day, which has been parked outside all day and is now hotter than super-critical plutonium.

But Dutch summer is something completely different.  Sure, it is not as hot, but there is NO RELIEF.  No air conditioned bedroom to sleep in.  No freezing office.  Not even a cool grocery store to walk around in for a break.  It's hot.  Everywhere.  

Figure 1: Idiotic window design

It turns out that my house has a pretty idiotic window design.  (Figure 1)  The only way to get fresh air into the house is to crack open the window, which opens about a fraction of a millimeter.  This pretty much eliminates any hope for a breeze (if there was a breeze in the first place).  And since I live on the top floor, that means all the hot air goes into my apartment and stays there.

Because of this, my apartment has pretty much been at 30* C (or 86* F) for a week.  It is hotter inside than outside, and at least outside, you can feel fresh air on your skin.

I have therefore waged battle on the sun.  The curtains are always closed, but this pretty much blocked what little air I could get from my window (open a fraction of a millimeter).  I tried putting a yoga mat up in the window to block the light but let in the air, but after a few days, the yoga mat melted.  So finally, I taped aluminium foil up in the window.  I ran out of tape, so I used whatever sticky things I had left.  I knew I was saving that gum for something!

Ahh!  Immediate relief!  I can feel the temperature drop already.  Take that sun!

Just remind me of this in two weeks when the rain comes back and I again go into sun withdrawal.

Of Reindeer and Rain

While in Helsinki, we took a small trip to the island fortress of Soumenlinna, an old military fortress.  To get there, we boarded a ferry and headed out through the archipelago off the coast of Finland.

The approaching ferry, with a host of seagulls hovering above it. 

Our own flock of seagulls hover above our ferry. 

Traveling through the archipelago, we see the thousands of islands that dot the sea.  Some are no larger than a rock, peaking up above the water, while others host a house or two.

I want my own island!

Soumenlinna has lot of little shops and cafes to stop at for a nice break. 

We stop at one of these cafes and try their creamy cheese and reindeer soup.  Reindeer is a popular thing to eat in Finland - not sure if it's because it is easy to get, or because tourists like to say "I ate reindeer". 

The church on the island has an interesting fence - chain supported by cannons on end.

We visit the ship-building yards, and I meet this creepy looking fellow.

Flowers on the island.

Including this thing.... now THAT'S a thistle.

Finally, we reach the remains of the fortress.  It was built in the 1800s when Sweden owned this part of Finland.  It's been a part of major wars since then, such as the Crimean War and the Russian Revolution. 

Of course, with all these rocks around, I couldn't keep him from climbing a few.

The beautiful rocky coast of the island.

And uh oh - what's that I see on the horizon?  Dark grey clouds approach.  This does not bode well for our outing.

Soon, it starts pouring.  Bram and I take shelter under a tree.  Nearby, a group of Finns hold out - a little rain won't spoil their picnic!

That's how we Finns do it.

As the rain intensifies, our tree is not offering enough protection, so we head to the nearby "indoor picnic area", presumably designed for exactly this purpose - since I'm guessing the weather is more often that not cold, rainy, snowy, or some combination of precipitation.  Inside, it feels a little bit like a refugee camp, with soaked people cramming in for a little place to sit for a while.

After a bit, the rain slows, and people slowly venture outside again.  Of course, all this rain makes pretty flowers and green hillsides possible. 

Back outside, we explore the coast of the island. 

Moments later, Bram falls in the Baltic Sea after trying to retrieve his sunglasses, which fell in.

Bunkers pop up, built into hills in the fortress.  From the back, you can't even tell they are there.  Now, in more peaceful times, they remind me more of Hobbit Holes.

Looking out over the tiny islands of the archipelago. 

Heading down to the sea.

The number of islands Suomenlinna is on is shrinking.  That's because the entire region is uplifting due to post-glacial rebound, causing more islands to surface, and islands already present to merge.

The King's Gate, on the far side of the fortress.

Weird mushrooms (?) growing up the tree.

Uh-oh.  More clouds gather, this time with thunder.  We carefully time our walking, so that we arrive at a cafe at the precise moment it starts raining.  This time, we spend the time when it's pouring rain enjoying a piece of cake and talking to a nice Canadian couple.

On the ferry back.  I claim false advertising - we saw more rain than sun! Well, it is Finland, after all.

Streets of Amsterdam

Continuing on my visit to Amsterdam, I was able to explore little known parts of the city.  The cold temperatures and snowfall made them pretty desolate.  It was still nice to walk through the cold snow-covered streets.

Someone went shutter-crazy when designing this building!

With the ground being so water-logged, a real problem in the Netherlands is sinking houses.  Here is proof of this - the house in the middle has sunk, unevenly, into the ground.  I wonder if the floors in the house are now sloped!

I tried playing marbles inside.  I failed.

The snow covered streets, of course, do not impede bike riding.

It did, however, freeze this couple solid as they shared a bottle of wine.

Here's a really weird shaped house.  I imagine fitting furniture in that corner would be tricky.

Some of the pretty buildings in Amsterdam.

Finally, an HDR of the canals as evening falls.

All About Frozen Canals

Part of winter in the Netherlands involves the canals freezing.  Many times, they freeze hard enough so that people can skate on top.  It's a great mode of travel if all the canals are frozen, since sometimes it seems they are more numerous than roads.  (Ok, not really, but close).  This year, the larger canals didn't all freeze, but many of the smaller canals did, along with the ponds.  As soon as the ice was thick enough, hundreds of Dutch people were found outside, skating on the ponds and canals.  Even the littlest of kids were out there, running around on the ice, pushing a wooden chair in front of them for balance.  

This winter, the southern part of the country has been colder and has had more snow.  On a short trip to  Amsterdam, I was able to see many of the frozen canals.

The locks in the canal are surrounded by a nice sheet of ice.  

The canals frozen and covered in snow.  All of the houseboats were frozen in place.

Some birds stand on the frozen canal.

Not all of the canal was frozen solid.  This part regularly had boats pass by, and they broke the ice up into little mini-icebergs.

Every winter, certain Dutch people get more and more excited the colder it gets.  Their hope is that it will get cold enough to hold the Elfstedentocht - a 200 km ice skating circuit that goes over several of the canals in the country.  Of course, you need a pretty cold winter to freeze 200 km of canals - but it has happened several times.   This year it wasn't nearly cold enough for this to happen. (I still thought it was plenty cold, thank you.)  Of course, spending anywhere from 6-13 hours skating on 200 km of canals is hard on the body, and people at the end of the race typically look like this.

This event was made into a competition in 1909, but people were skating far before this on the canals on a similar circuit   In what year, before 1909, was a poem written that mentioned skating on the canals of Friesland?