He beats the nose of the leafblower on the ground, displaying his agitation and growing aggression against the pile of wet leaves that just won’t blow away.  

Some people just don’t know when to hang up the leafblower.  This attitude, on the whole, is why 70 percent of my life here in Sacramento is polluted by the rumbling noise of a leafblower.  

Just leave the leaves alone when they’re wet!  Or, if you just cannot handle that, then get a steel broom, because a leaf blower just isn’t going to cut it.

Plus, your leafblower isn’t going to last very long if you keep banging it on the ground like that.

There’s North Dakota…

I just watched a National Parks video and they said that there were still 80,000 buffalo roaming the U.S., most of them in T.R.’s National Park in the western half of North Dakota.

What!? 

But anyway, back to Aberdeen, South Dakota, the home of the annual Wizard of Oz festival.  I don’t want to divulge any real secrets, but I just- might- know a little girl who played Dorothy for the Aberdeen Wizard of Oz festival in the early nineties. 

So, my upcoming trip to Aberdeen.  Aberdeen is like the Job of U.S. cities, I swear it.  No offense, Little- but I see the news. 

Flooding in Aberdeen

Blizzard producing 37 inches of snow hits Aberdeen

15 days straight of rain in Aberdeen, it floods

Suffocating heat stifles Aberdeen citizens

Aberdeen area crops dying from the suffocating heat

Weather so hot trees are spontaneously bursting into flames… in Aberdeen

A downpour of rain saves Aberdeen’s crops, but unfortunately, causes more flooding, lots more

It goes on and on!  Is there a good season in Aberdeen?  Ah, but yes there is.  There might actually be two.  They’re tiny and probably off the radar for some, but I am on to them.  The first is the Wizard of Oz festival.  Who doesn’t love a good flying monkey?

The second is going to be Little’s wedding.  That’s right, I will go out on a brittle and ice covered limb and say that it’s going to be a beautiful February weekend in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  I think it’s going to warm.  The sun is going to be shining and the wind won’t be blowing and the temp will be…

40.

That’s right, 40 degrees, not just 32, not even 35, but a nice, balmy, winter 40.

Here’s hoping.

My classes thus far have been good, nothing too crazy, but I’ve still come home everyday exhausted and with no voice.  It takes a while to toughen up that “loud” voice. 

A late start is obviously good news for the kids, good news for me, and good news for all the things that I need to get done!  Phew, finally a nice little break.  Matt has gotten to watch movies all day long and gotten numerous prep periods – finally, my turn.  It was actually quite lucky that today I dropped off Matt rather than the other way around.  So, I took the Merc (that’s what the Brits call them- I just found out) and headed to a place that is everyone in Sac’s “third place,” the Donut Shop.  Delicious donuts and fresh coffee for only $2.  Lovely.  Plus, I got to spend my morning writing for NaNoWriMo (well, plus this, and reading my buku [Indonesian = book], plus people watching, man people can eat donuts around here!)

p.s.  I have also learned that there are no “long johns” here, these are called “bars.”  One maple bar and one chocolate bar please…

Whatever.  One creme-filled chocolate longjohn please!

p.s.s.  The donut shop also sold snow cones.  For some reason I found this highly amusing.

So many things have happened and such a turn of events that it is almost inconceivable.  (Ah, one of the things that happened was that I watched The Princess Bride - I recommend.).  So- inconceivable.  Matt and I are moving back to the Usa.  (You can pronounce it this way too, like a slavic woman’s first name, Usa.)    We have purchased our tickets, conveniently scheduling a stopover in Iceland for one day (!), we have decided upon a plan of attack for that thing that most people have… I think it’s called a job, and we have even narrowed it down to four cities where our next apartment will be located.  These are all cities where our next plans are most likely to successfully develop, which mainly means that they must be moderately sized, have schools (high schools, junior colleges, community colleges, and maybe even a state college) and for one reason or another they must seem fun.  Here goes:  Santa Rosa area, Chico, San Francisco or bay area, and Sacramento.  If you have any thoughts, be sure to let us know.  We are, of course, open to strong opinions.

But – overall, if you want to go somewhere for a reasonable price at basically any time of day, just be thankful you are in the Netherlands. 

If you are in the Randstad (~Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Dordrecht), you can basically go to the train station any time between 6:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. and get on a train in 10-15 minutes to your destination of choice.  Don’t even bother looking up the times.  If you are heading out the Randstad, then it could be every half hour, but it’s probably more frequent than that.  Note: if you are taking internation trains to Brussels, Paris, Dusseldorf, etc., make sure you check the time and what you need to do for a reservation.  The Thalys, especially, (the high speed train to Paris via Antwerp and Brussels), requires a reservation in the most annoying sense of the word.  Back to the Netherlands, the train system is smooth and basically effortless.  Get a discount card and you’re home free.  The discout card costs 50 euros (or used to) gives you 40% off all trains after 9:00 am and during holidays (which means weekends and almost the whole summer).  You can also pay an extra 15 euros and get NS Rail Plus which is an addition that
gives you 25% off all international rail tickets that either start or
end in the Netherlands.  You need a passport photo, which you can buy in the train station in one of those machines for 5 Euros.

Everyone who lives there buys this (unless their employer compensates them, which is also quite normal).  Their high speed rail site, which has more international journeys: http://www.nshispeed.nl/en can be used to search, although we have found that the German site tends to be better (www.bahn.de).  The French site isn’t bad either (www.tgv.fr).

If you are making some longer trips around Europe, I highly recommend checking out raileurope.com or eurail.com, and the possibility of a railpass.  They can be substantially cheaper.  If they try to make you make (and pay for) reservations for every trip, don’t do it!  You don’t have to and  you’ll just end up missing one and have to pay for it again.  Find out which ones you have  to make reservations for (night trains, Thalys, some high speed German trains, the Eurostar under the English Channel to Britain, etc.) and make reservations for those beforehand, when  you buy your railpass, as they are cheaper then and you don’t have to stand in line.

Regarding other rail systems, I personally have a quite livid anger towards the Belgian rail system.  It is based upon 5-10 trips to Brussels, Brugge, Ghent, Antwerpen, that were more or less the worst experiences of rail travel that I’ve experienced in my life.

And I’m from the U.S.

And I travelled in Romania.

We actually had one particular instance when we were attempting to get from Durbuy, a tiny town in the Wallonian part of Belgium, back to Leiden.  I admit, we did make the mistake of stopping in Brussels for beer and chocolate, but still, is there any reason we should have ended up stuck on the Netherlands/Belgium border? 

The train stopped, ended and didn’t cross the border.  After a 80 Euro taxi ride to Breda, life resumed- as did the train system, and we could get a train back to the Randstad. 

Okay, so it was slightly more complicated than that, but the main point is that you Can and Will get stuck on some train in Belgium that’s hot, stuffy, crowded, delayed, ending at an inopportune time, or some other BS that will probably make you loathe the Belgian train system as much as I do.

*On a kinder note, my friend Martha thinks that the Belgian rail system rocks.  She has some bizarre form of luck that I simply do not have.

Great!  I thought.  I could use a nice movie to fall asleep, and sleep is always welcome at the end of a 20 hour bus ride south from the Netherlands.   There were a few students who were yelling requests or had brought movies along (The Notebook! I heard yelled from the back).  They quickly chose the worst possible movie to watch on a winding path up the mountains in the middle of the night, obviously wanting every student on the bus to become properly carsick by the time we reached the ski resort in Risoul.   “A Perfect Storm” appeared on the screen, and the nightmare began…

Has anyone actually seen this movie?  It’s horrible.  Plus, at the end, everyone dies!  Quite tragic really, but when I have to put in headphones and put a shirt over my head so I can escape the raging seas of an ocean  storm- while on a bus winding up a mountain path… I don’t really care whether George Clooney wants to prove himself or not.  I think he should have just kept his boat in the harbor and found a new career.

If you are ever in charge of movies on a bus, next time, please consider the route the bus will be taking and keep in mind that the whole point of movie is to distract the passengers, not to blast their senses with noise, chaos, and movement- followed by tragic death.

Maybe The Notebook would have been better after all.

Yesterday, I headed to the market with the idea that it would be a nice quick trip, stopping at the grocery store on the way home.   Fortunately, the sun, the people, and the cruising boats took me captive and I instead chose to wander among the crowds for an hour, eating a Super Stroop (the big stroopwafels you can get fresh at the market for one Euro) and bought flowers and fresh bread and asparagus (it’s the season) and rhubarb and strawberries… Enough wonderful things that soon my bags were too full and I would definitely have to stop home before going to the supermarket.

The crowds of people at the market were amazing, not the usual rush to be the first in the cheese line, but a wandering and almost sedated form of happiness that can only be induced by wandering with a melting ice cream cone or sitting on the canal drinking wine or cappuccino and watching the dozens of boats drift by.  Some boats were tied up to the edge of the canal next to the cafe, an old man still there, shirt off and working on the start of what- by the end of the summer- will be a large, dark brown belly.  There were wine glasses next to him, half full of a nice summer Riesling from a few hundred kilometers away across the German border and his wife was missing, probably picking up broodjes (sandwiches) or haring or some old Gouda. 

As I walked down the stretch past the fish men, regretting my decision to buy a bouquet of roses first thing (they were so nice!  20 for only 3.50!), I passed a cellist and an acoustic guitarist, and later, a violin-playing puppet.  On market days like this, it’s all so much like a dream, living here in lovely Leiden.  I wonder, if I leave, if I will remember that I actually did it, or if I will forget that this is how life can be.

This morning, I am just sitting outside my house in a brightly striped green and blue sundress, drinking green tea (which I didn’t think I liked until just now) and hearing the church bells ring in the distance.  My street is completely peaceful, even the cats are having a lie-in (that’s how the British say sleeping in, did you know that!?  Love it.) 

Best of all… in two hours I am picking up my friend Melissa from the airport.

(!!!)

Strolling in Rhythm & Verse
by Patricia Willers

While most cities are constantly bustling with people and activity, the city of Leiden seems to preserve a special peacefulness that allows its citizens: families, students, and businessmen alike, to slow down and stroll through the city streets. Although this may irritate some when they are searching for an open grocery store to buy their Sunday evening dinner, in the end, the point is to understand and embrace it. The next time you need a way to slow down and see the world that is quickly passing you by, take a walk through Leiden using the dozens of poems, verses, and sonnets painted on the walls of the houses of Leiden.

To tour the whole Leiden area, follow the poems for the full route, which will take between two and three hours. The café, De Stadhouder, located at Nieuwe Rijn 13, serves as an excellent starting place. Inside, you will find a list of the poems as well as a map of the locations of the poems.

If you are only looking to do a bit of exploring, visit just a few poems and spend some extra time considering the row houses, canals, and unique architecture, and what it may have been like in earlier years. The poems are sometimes chosen by the homeowners and community surrounding them, so at times, they really seem to give you a glimpse of Dutch life. With some in particular, such as that on the Villa Cecelia, it is easy to imagine a few possibilities.

The many poems of Leiden were painted on the walls through a project called “Poems and Walls,” which started in 1992 and was completed in 2005. The program was started by an initiative of the private foundation, ‘Tegen-Beeld,’ started by Ben Walenkamp and Jan-Willem Bruins. The idea behind the poems was to unite language and images. The verses are written in a variety of languages, although many times with Dutch and English translations.

Leiden is the perfect setting for this unique form of art because of the town’s rich history of authors, artists, and both Dutch and international scholars. The “Poems and Walls” program maintains a website which can be found at www.muurgedichten.nl/wallpoems.html. Through this website, it is possible to find a map of the poetry walk, a virtual tour of the numerous wall paintings, and a more detailed description of the “Poems and Walls” project. It is also noted on the website that a follow-up to the initial project may take place in 2010. A book, entitled “Dicht op de muur,” by Marleen van der Weij, is also available. Both the book and a majority of the website are written in Dutch, but the map and general description are more than enough to lead you on an excellent poetry walk. If you are interested in a guided tour, the Leiden VVV can sometimes help to arrange tours.

 As the city blooms into spring and you hurry on with your lives, make a little time for a poetry walk in Leiden, whether you read all 101 poems or only make it to the first café, it may remind you that you are living someplace new, and to make time to stop, look around, and enjoy it.

As we sit in our cozy reservering verplicht seats (reservation required), I can look diagonally across and down the aisle of the train and watch the most extraordinary woman.  This woman is obviously Dutch, and definitely knows how to travel by train.  As soon as the train pulled away from Rotterdam Centraal, she filled up a little (typical Dutch) cafe glass with white wine and set out a beer for her husband.  Next came the plate, yellow and plastic, and then a large packet of crackers, a few for her, a few for her husband, and a few for the person across the aisle that she just handed a small plastic cup of juice to.  After the crackers came a nice silver knife and next, well, my mouth starts watering just thinking about what comes next.  Cheese, delicious Dutch cheese.  Old Amsterdammer, to be exact, I can tell by the waxy black rind.  She starts to make blokjes, nice large blokjes, like they give you in a Dutch cafe when you order a plate of cheese as an appetizer or snack.  After the Oud Amsterdammer, a salty, flavourful, native Dutch cheese, she pulls out a soft and stinky round of French cheese and begins to spread it on crackers. 

Maybe she wanted variety in her cheeses, maybe she figured she was on her way to France so she ought to pay a small tribute, either way, I glance down sadly at my peanut butter and jelly.  While it seemed like a good idea at the time, now it just seems like quite a pitiful excuse for a train picnic.

The cafe is small and has a sort of wooden windowed patio that extends onto the pedestrian street.  As I first slid the door open, the smell of lilacs surrounded me.  A pot sat on each table, and out of each, three or four lilacs grew.  I’m not sure how lilacs normally grow, but these seemed to be growing from bulbs.  The Dutch could always do amazing things with flowers…

As we sat around the high wooden table, we looked around the cafe and observed our surroundings for the first time.  The cafe has been around since 1890, and the menu is put together like a photo album made from one of those free plastic albums you used to get when you had pictures developed.  There is a section telling all about the first owner with photographs of Leiden students from generations past. 

Behind the counter, there is a giant cow painted onto ceramic tiles.  They serve more than a few beers, wines, and warm coffee drinks, most of them a bit more obscure or unique than in other cafes.  The type of cafe that Matt and I like to visit is the kind that has a bit more originality and individuality.  Nowadays, this can come in one of two forms, either the cafe is breaking out of the U.S. chain-cafe style and uses only organic or local products and serves fair trade coffee, or they really are an original cafe, and either never wanted to conform to the new chain-cafe style, or never got around to it.  It seems like the Bonte Koe is more in the second category.  They make their own bitterballen, a nice potato-puree-based fried Dutch treat, they serve ringed sausages from a local slagerij (butcher), and they have an unknown beer on tap that costs just 1.60.

These original cafes are quite hard to find, but when you find them, it is always a treat.  Matt’s uncle, a resident of Vienna, always explained the city’s planning in a similar way.  While many other European cities were getting rid of their trams and building highways across the city, the city officials of Vienna were thinking…  Thinking about whether they were ready to get rid of their simple loops of plain red and white trams that circled the numbered districts.  Later, when the cities, newly criss-crossed with highway and interstate systems, were trying to figure out how to restore their once peaceful centers, Vienna continued on, the same tram circling the first district and the offshoots connecting the center with the rest of the city.

I suppose the moral of all this is to be patient.  Good things come and go, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly.  While you might miss out if you don’t hurry up and jump on the bandwagon, good things come to those who wait as well.  

Now, off to the Bonte Koe.