Waterfowl, public works, and wheels

At this point, any impressions I offer here are just the jumbled firings of very tired synapses. Read the following with this in mind.

At this moment we are in the village of Driebruggen (Three bridges) about 40 km south of Amsterdam. We are staying in a house with “la holandesa” from Siles, our friend S and her children. F&H were so excited to visit their friends from Siles one more time that they barely needed the engines on the plane in order to rise off the ground in Madrid. Their excitement alone could have powered our flight.

S tells us this is the groene hart (green heart) of the Netherlands, which is not hard to believe. Green grass stretches out in all directions from the village, interrupted only by canals and hedge rows. These fields contain a multitude of cows, responsible I assume for some of the great Dutch cheeses (gouda and edam), but even more birds. The place is covered up with waterfowl: ducks, geese, swans, herons, storks, and others that I don’t know the names of.

Of course, it is covered up with waterfowl because it is covered up with water, and because it is covered up with water, it is covered with public works. The amount of infrastructure here is incredible. In the Netherlands, not only do boats travel on canals, but cars also drive under them. I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with that. Everything is designed to keep the water and the earth in balance; so far, so good.

Another stereotype of the Netherlands is of hordes of happy, smiley people riding bikes, and that also is true. The bike culture here makes me incredibly jealous.  On the roads, bikes have primacy. There are special separate street signs just for the bikes giving distances and directions for them that are different from those for cars. I also appreciate that the great majority of bikes are very upright “granny bikes,” which are good for those with previous shoulder injuries like myself. And when children have learned to ride a bike, they get two bikes. They get a “play” bike for riding around the neighborhood and beating up, and they get a serious bike for riding longer distances between towns with the family. Wow, just wow.

So, of course, Chris and I rented bikes. F borrowed a “play” bike from one of S’s relatives, and we all (our family and S and her family) rode 10 km to the town of Gouda, of cheese fame. We did eat cheese there, but only what was on our pannekoeken (pancakes) — mmmm, savory pancakes with cheese and bacon. We also had poffertjes, tiny puffy pancakes with powdered sugar. There is a thick syrup for them too that tastes a bit like molasses, but that just seems like overkill.

The day before, S had given Chris and me a gift by watching the kids while we rode to the town of Oudewater, where we were weighed in the Heksenwaag (Witch’s Scales) to prove that we were in fact not witches or sorcerers. The children were disappointed to learn this given that we are on the final book in the Harry Potter series. In Oudewater, I also sampled a fantastic appleflap (apple turnover) which tempted me to title this post “An appleflap too far,” but I thought it might be even more arcane than the Shakespeare reference. Let me know.

Tired eyes and brain going to bed now.