Friesland! Home of the Happy Heidi

A few random things TJ and I have run into. We ordered milkshakes one day at a restaurant and they were warm, we weren’t expecting that! And cups are extremely small here. Chocolate milk is not refrigerated. Also, everybody has talked about how it is overwhelmingly and unusually hot for Europe, but we feel like it’s been great. It’s about 26 degrees Celsius during the afternoons, it cools off nicely at night. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, but we’ve thought it has been very pleasant. Also, their toilets do not flush…a pool of water constantly sits at the bottom, and pushes the old water out…well, most of the old water. There are no screens on the windows because of how few bugs there are. This has been noticed in England, Brussels, Amsterdam, and even the farm country of the Netherlands. Many TV shows are American, but with subtitles and when nobody is visibly talking and it cuts to a new scene, somebody in the native language speaks instead of in English. Heidi and I went to the store to make a meal for Ria, Heidi’s dad’s cousin, who has been taking care of us all week. When we went to the store to purchase the ingredients to make spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad, we found it to be quite difficult. It’s amazing how hard it is to find garlic when they spell it knoflook.

July 4, 2009
We had such a great time in Friesland. On Tuesday we went with Heidi’s dad’s cousin to Veen Park, a recreation of the Friesland area from about 100 years ago. They had old fashioned windmills, bakeries, butcher shops, homes, schools, and churches like they used to be. One of the main jobs all the way into the mid 60’s was harvesting peat. It was used for fuel for furnaces and trains. They would burn it instead of coal. We watched an old peat farmer explain difficulties of harvesting peat. They would make bricks of peat about 4 inches wide, a foot long, and about 4 inches deep. When they would harvest the 4 inches deep they would stomp it down to harder the bricks (using wooden shoes, aka klompen). They would then stack the bricks and dry them for 2 weeks before they could be used for fuel. This stopped when they hit natural gas and used natural gas for fuel instead. Peat wasn’t as efficient as natural gas, and since the Netherlands is pretty much at or below sea level, digging much more than a few feet would cause a danger of flooding in the future.
We also went to Westerborg (probably spelled it wrong). Camp Westerborg was a transportation camp for the Jews during the Holocaust. It was a centralized hub in Holland where the Jews would be transported before sending them to other camps like Aushwitz and Berkenaw. Anne Frank and her family were placed here for a few days until they were sent away.
Wednesday went with Hobbien (Heidi’s grandpa’s sister) and Ger on a boat tour of the canal’s, and a lake that was created by a flood in the land that the peat was harvested. The lake was 1 meter, just about 3 and half feet deep, all the way around, and it was huge. Young teens would jump out of their boats in the middle of the lake and swim beside it, only to easily jump back into their boat. We also ate some pretty amazing, freshly caught ocean fish.
Thursday we went to Gert and Shuart Bijma’s farm (Heidi’s grandpa’s cousin’s sons…whatever that makes them). They worked on the Byma (American name got switched to Byma instead of Bijma) farm when Heidi was 10, for about 3 months. They have a very large farm for the Netherlands. In the Netherlands it’s called a mega-farm when they milk over 250 cows. They milk 250. They are currently building a new rotating milking parlor that can milk 60 cows in 10 minutes at full speed. They were very kind, and it was exciting to see them doing well. We were also to meet both of their wives and Gert’s two children and Shuart’s 3 children.
Friday we took a trip to the sea, the north side of the Netherlands. We went with Gea (Heidi’s second cousin) and Halbe and their two children Yanika (and her boyfriend Peter) and Anette. They all spoke great English, and it was very relaxing to be able be given a tour by them. We went to an ice skating museum, where they had all the original ice skates. Needless to say, they were not very comfortable looking. When it is very cold for a long period of them, 15 days straight of 10 degrees or colder (around…my celcius converter might be a bit off), they have a 200 km race going through 11 cities by way of canal. They announce it 2 days in advance and stop school, business, and everything to have this race. The last one they had was in 1997 and they’ve only had 6 since 1943. You must register every year, regardless if they have the race or not. Each year it costs around $125…and people are on the waiting list. They only take 50,000 applicants, but when they say the race is on, they have two days to get from where they’re at to the start of the race in Leeuwarden. Some people get off of the plane, quickly drive to the start of the race, throw on their skates and start racing…if you ask me, it’s not worth it.
Every day we have had dinner (and usually lunch), transportation, and a place to lay our head at night. It has been great. We have truly been loved this week. We could not thank them enough, and they didn’t even expect the thank you.
Today we’re on our way to Berlin. We activated our Eurail train pass, so we can go anywhere in Europe…except hi-speed trains and night trains for free (except for the price of the pass we already paid). Night and hi-speed trains are a small fee. It is far cheaper for us to go Eurail though, and it’s incredibly easy to use (so far). We’ve been enjoying our train travel through Germany. Well, until next time.
This is Heidi. If you don’t go other places, you don’t often don’t realize the simple things you take for granted. Like ketchup on French fries. I thought that was a given. Here they have fry sauce which apparently tastes like a mayonnaise and mustard mixture. And you have to pay extra if you want ketchup instead. I didn’t try it (TJ did), I am more of a purist when it comes to French fries; ketchup or nothing. Also in the Netherlands, I would ask where the bathroom was and I would get a funny look. It is called the toilet, in houses there are normally 2 separate rooms; a bathroom with a shower/bath and a room with a toilet. I couldn’t remember that for the life of me. I keep on forgetting is that that they call diet coke “cola light”. Also this trip is the first time I have even paid to use the bathroom. You think if you pay for it that it would be clean and smell nice, unfortunately that is not always the case. So we are on the train to Berlin, Germany and we crossed the border between the Netherlands and Germany, and I am whoa disappointed that they didn’t stamp my passport. I could come home with only 1 stamp in it! Oh well, that is way better than have a problem with the passport or ticket 