Thursday, November 18, 2010

And then the Villagers Stormed the Castle

View of Vianden castle from the hostel
Cold, wet, and (in Jeff's case) sick, we headed out of Luxembourg City Saturday night for the little town of Vianden along the German border - home of Luxembourg's only current nomination for the World Heritage list (perhaps you can sense a theme). This involved a train and then a country bus, and then a trudge up a steep hill under the shadow of Vianden's medieval castle.

I asked the nice lady at the hostel to recommend a place for dinner, and she mentioned that the town was having a little parade that night, followed by food stands in the school yard. A little odd to have a parade at 8 on a cold and rainy November evening, I thought, but hey - we're game for anything.

As we trudged back down the hill in the rain at 7:58, there was a seismic boom, followed by another - it was less friendly-crackle-of-firecrackers and more heavy-artillery-bombarding-the-town. I think we heard the crackling of the fires before we actually saw them: two giant bonfires on opposite hilltops that looked like they were raging out of control (Jeff voiced concern for our belongings back at the hostel).

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

UNESCO World Heritage, check

I have (another) somewhat arbitrary life goal of visiting all 900+ sites on UNESCO's World Heritage list. Luxembourg has a grand total of one.

Last Saturday may have been cold, it may have been rainy, the wind may have been so strong that no umbrella could stay right side out for long, but we were not deterred: we walked every cobblestone street and every stony rampart of "The City of Luxembourg: its old quarters and fortifications".

This was no easy task: Luxembourg City was what it was (the "Gibraltar of the North") because it sits on top of a rocky promontory, surrounded on three sides by a deep river valley (we're talking a straight drop). Up, down, up, down - this is not a walking tour for the faint of heart.

Looking for a short cut.


Jeff dwarfed by one of many old gates.
But I love scrambling over rocky ruins, especially those of fortresses that are labyrinthine and terraced. We climbed up watch towers, snaked across old sentry walks, took pictures from every redoubt (don't worry, I'll spare you).

If you ever find yourself in Luxembourg, most hotels and tourist places will have brochures for two self-guided walks: The City Promenade (for the city center) and the Wenzel Walk (for the ruins of the fortress). I would more strongly recommend the latter, though the former is a nice addition (and would be even more lovely on a non-tempestuous day).


UNESCO World Heritage cite, check. Next up: watching the villagers storm the castle...

Why Luxembourg

I have a somewhat arbitrary life goal to visit two new countries every year. Granted, this goal is only three years old, but I figure that's all the more reason not to give up on it yet.

I might have moved to a new country this year - a major life goal in itself - but as we entered November of the year 2010, I had yet to visit any new countries. With time rapidly running out and without much vacation time to spare, I found my solution: Luxembourg.

Luxembourg is a five or six hour train ride from the Hague, is stereotypically European (think church bells ringing through town squares and ruins of ancient castles on the hillsides), and is ripe with amusing factoids.

Luxembourg, like Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino, is inherently amusing just for being a historical anomaly that American school children have often never heard of. Luxembourg's mystique is further increased (for me) by the fact that it's actually not all that small - by which I mean, it has a full train system, and the length of the country would take more than an hour to traverse. There are plenty of rural towns in Luxembourg that are entirely distinct from Luxembourg City.

Other interesting/amusing factoids we learned during our 36 hours in Luxembourg:

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

10 things I like about Rotterdam

Rotterdam gets a bad rap in the travel guides for being modern and cold and lacking in the quaint charms of canal towns like Delft and Leiden. But there are only so many canals one can tolerate in any given year.

Rotterdam is definitely a "real" city, full of grime and big buildings, but it is designed on a human scale and doesn't take itself too seriously. I like that. In fact, there's a lot I like about Rotterdam. From our first visit to the city last Saturday, here are just 10 of the things I liked about Rotterdam (in rough order of appearance):

1. Cool architecture

A selection of new, multipurpose buildings down by the docks.
You cannot talk about Rotterdam without talking about cutting-edge modern architecture. (Indeed, Gridskipper just published a nice new map of Rotterdam's most striking buildings.) But cutting-edge modern architecture requires constant construction - of which we saw plenty around town. I could live without the mess, but I love the final results.

2. Graffiti art

Rotterdam is a city of modern whimsy, and even its graffiti is bright and playful.



Pirate cats for Katie. Yaar.

3. Mussels in the Market

I regret now not ordering my own heap of steaming mussels from this mussels stand in Rotterdam's bustling market (Jeff was worried about having fish-hands for the rest of the day). They were cooking the mussels en masse, and people stood shoulder-to-shoulder eating piles of them with their fingers. We also appreciated that a vlaamses frites stand set up shop right next door.




4. Kubiswoningen

It turns out these tilted houses set up on giant concrete pylons are not all that practical to live in, but there's something about their color and shape and misplaced sense of urban utopia that feels sweetly optimistic.

(Designed by Piet Blom and built in the early 1980s, the entire complex is referred to as a "forest," with the cubes as the tree houses.)
With Het Potlood ("The Pencil")
5. Zakinde's Monument to a Devastated City

Why, you might ask, is Rotterdam full of tilted cube houses and modern skyscrappers? Why no traditional Dutch aesthetic like you might find in Amsterdam or the Hague? Because Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe (we're talking huge), was bombed to oblivion during WWII by first the Germans and then the Allies (with the Germans sabotaging what was left on their way out of town). The people of Rotterdam might have rebuilt, but they have not forgotten.


On our walk last Saturday, we counted at least four monuments commemorating the war. The most famous, and the most moving, is Zakinde's Monument to a Devastated City: a statute of a man reeling back in anguish, a gaping hole where his heart used to be.


Rotterdam's history makes me appreciate its modern sensibilities all the more: I like that the people of Rotterdam after the war chose to look forward and build a new city with new ideas, to experiment with open spaces and public art, to make the proverbial lemonade when life gave them rubble.

From another war memorial.
6. The coat check at the art museum

While we were standing in line at the art museum to flex a little museumkaart muscle, I was fascinated by the automated coat check: you turn a key on a chord, and a string with a hanger on the end of it drops down from the sky. You hang up your coat, turn the key back, and the hanger flies up into the sea of coats over your head, safe from prying hands. Fun!



More generally, I liked how such details in Rotterdam's museums were thoughtfully (or at least playfully) designed, like this hidden door to the woman's bathroom at a museum cafe.

Waiting for the loo in the cafe of the Kunsthal.
7. The Sonneveld House

We didn't actually end up going in to the art museum with the cool coat check because the museumkaart did not get us in for free (it's a matter of principle). But then we found out that the Sonneveld House, associated with the Netherlands Architecture Institute, was free even without the museumkaart. I knew then that I would like this place.

The house was built in the 1930s for a local self-made businessman and his family and (I am told) exemplifies the "nieuwe bouwen" style of architecture.

Cutting-edge architecture from the 1930s.
The house is a living museum, decorated as it was when it was built, with the expectation that visitors (who must wear burlap sacks over their shoes) will sit on the couches, poke into cupboards, and touch all the fabrics. There's something lovely about the kinetic experience of actually being *in* a historic home, instead of just an observer of it.

Cooling my heels in the Sonnevelds' living room.
Plus it came with an awesome (and free) audio guide. Highly recommended for the curious and the incurably snoopy.

Getting my learn on with the free audioguide.
8. Field of Bunnies


Not all of Rotterdam's many public art installations relate to the war and its aftermath. My personal favorite is this field of pleasantly bulbous bunny rabbits.


In particular I liked the one facing west, waiting expectantly for the sunset.

(You can see the Euromast in this picture. They call that "foreshadowing".)
9. The Euromast at Sunset

Perhaps because the country is so flat, perhaps because it rains so much, whatever it is, the light and sky and clouds in the Netherlands are ethereal. This means the "golden hour" here is often magical.



Jeff basking in the Golden Hour.
We had a perfect golden hour during our walk from the bunnies (#8) to Delfshaven (#10), along the Maas, past the Olmstead-esque park that houses the Euromast.

Sunsets in Holland can make even industrial-looking hospitals seem beautiful.
The Euromast is like the Space Needle and is of the same era. It has the futuristic optimism of the 1960s, but is also a bit quirky in its rounded asymmetry.


We saved going *up* the Euromast, however, for a later trip. We are now accepting dibs from future guests.

10. Delftshaven

Delftshaven is not my favorite part of Rotterdam, but it was a soothing contrast at the end of the day: A historic port that was swallowed up by Rotterdam many years ago, Delftshaven consists primarily of one cute canal, which is anchored by the requisite windmill and is full of little cafes and shops. At dusk, it was quite pretty.

Note the windmill.
Of historical interest, the pilgrims (of Plymouth Rock fame) prayed at a church here before setting sail across the ocean.
The pilgrims' church, and a traditional Dutch drawbridge.
Perhaps the best part of Delftshaven? That at the end of the canal, you are immediately back into the rush of the real city, with broad avenues and bright lights and crowded side walks. That's the side of Rotterdam I like best.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Umbrella fail

It was a dark and stormy night last Friday. When we arrived in Rotterdam Saturday morning, we counted six broken umbrellas discarded on one block alone.




Monday, November 1, 2010

A-ha!

Shopping in grocery stores in foreign countries is a mini-anthropological experience. In the Netherlands, the ubiquitous grocery store chain is Albert Heijn, or AH -- which, in Dutch, is pronounced "a-ha." Here is what A-ha! has taught me about being Dutch -- and being American:

1. Pea soup: The Dutch evidently love their "erwtensoep," which Wikipedia tells me is also called "snert." (Appetizing.) There is a whole set of shelves in our local A-ha! just for the snert, including on the bottom shelf industrial-sized cans of generic pea soup, suggesting snert-eating marathons in Dutch households.

2. "Exotic" vegetables: I can tell we are living on a different continent and in a different clime based on what is cheap in the produce section. I never really thought about it, but Belgian endives and Brussel sprouts are indigenous to someplace, and obviously that someplace is here. Same also with leeks and cauliflower. We are finding ways to work leeks into just about every meal.

3. Kaas: the Dutch really only eat Dutch cheese - and I can't say I blame them. Our useful word of the week: "belegen," meaning "matured," or cheese that is beyond "jonge" but cannot yet be classified as "oude." We love our belegen kaas.

4. "American" cusine: Catering to the large expat community here in the Hague, our local A-ha! has a long aisle of "international" cuisines, including significant selections of Asian, Latin and Indonesian ingredients. At the very end of the aisle are just a couple shelves which are apparently intended to represent American cuisine. And what, you might ask, do the Dutch associate with "American" cuisine? Evidently corn on the cob is such an anomaly in Europe that you have to buy it canned. There is also a company whose primary purpose seems to be to knock off American brands, such as Kraft mac & cheese, French's yellow mustard, and Cheetoh cheese puffs. However, the Hellman's "real" mayonnaise is real, but I am amused by the solitary American brand when there is an entire section of the store dedicated to actual "real" mayonnaise. Also represented in the American section: BBQ sauce, beef jerky, Skippy peanut butter, caramel corn, and jet-puffed marshmallows (the kind they wouldn't sell at Whole Foods).

When I head to Boston at the end of November, I will be taking an empty suitcase with me so I can stock up on my own favorite "American" items -- none of which are evidently American enough for A-ha! to stock in their American section. High on my list are Quaker rolled oats, rooster sauce, and Old Bay seasoning (for Jeff). Any other suggestions?