Directions

I still don't have very good bearings over here.  Whenever we drive through and out of town, I recognize everything, but I generally can't tell you which direction is N, and I don't know which way we should leave town when heading towards ____.  I often know "the fastest route from point a to point b" in town, but outside of the comfort zone of Barneveld, I'm useless.

I study my map (thank you google maps), but I still get confused.

There's a big difference in how the towns and cities are built here compared to North America.  In NA, most cities are designed like a grid.  Streets run East-West or N-S.  Of course there are some exceptions (like Hamilton Rd. in London, ON).  In Canada there are also a lot more areas of town.  While there may be a center, there are certainly other subdivisions that each have their own "center" as well.

Here, the cities are built around the center.  I think it's often a church that's at the center.  Most of the main streets in town start at the center, and head out.  Then, there is a "ring" around that-- a main street, that circles the center of the town.  Hardly any of the intersections here are 90 degree angles.  If you look at a map, it looks like a round (slightly deformed) pizza with a major road on the outskirts of town.  Take a look at Paris (France), Brussels (Belgium) or Amsterdam (The Netherlands) on googlemaps.  In Canada, we would say "head West on Commissioner's Rd., then go North on Wonderland Rd....".  Here, if you head North on one street, it's likely that you'll be heading East within a couple minutes, and you'll probably end up heading South shortly after that, mind you, I probably wouldn't notice, since I can't figure out the directions.

The same thing is true of a lot of highways.  In Ontario, we know that the 401 runs E-W (mostly), 400 runs N-S... etc.  But here, it doesn't work that way.  You either follow the signs towards the town of your destination, you know which highways to take, or you use a TomTom.  I think TomTom (or a GPS) is one of man's best friends over here... at least that's true of me!

Here's Barneveld on googlemaps, with the red arrow very close to the church that's in the center of town.  You can see the "pizza" much better with larger cities, though.

Cheaper buy the dozen?

I remember Tim Horton's advertising their snack wrappers as "$1.99 or two for $3.98!"  Wait a second... what kind of a deal is that?

In the NL, there seems to be no such thing as a deal for purchasing a larger quantity.

You want 1kg of flour?  $0.30    You would like 10 kg?  Buy 10 bags of 1kg = $3.00

If your one-way ticket costs $2.40, then your return ticket will cost $4.80.  Easy math.

If you eat at a restaurant, you pay for the food that you order (kids don't ever eat free.)

Sure,  there are sales at the supermarket for meat that's nearing the expiration date, or large bins of inventory that wasn't as popular as expected.  But that's to be expected.

I've actually been caught in this a couple times-- I bought a return train ticket, because I knew I needed to go both ways.  But it turned out that I got a ride the second way, AND I could have just as easily, bought one ticket just before each trip.  Ah, I think I've learned my lesson.

Despite the lack of "deals" here, I think most food is actually cheaper than in Canada.  At least a lot of fresh produce is!  I can get a little package (about 500g I think) of pre-washed and chopped veggies for 1 Euro.  Yes, that's about $1.30 CDN, but it's a  1/2 KG of washed and chopped leeks, mushrooms, red onion and red peppers.  Perfect to add to pasta sauce!  I get 1 kg of cheese for $4-$5 (Euros, of course, but I still haven't figured out how to make the Euro sign on this computer.)  I just found cream cheese for $0.60 for 200g!

I do miss the thrill that comes with getting a really good deal on cheese (when 500g costs less than $4... or even $5), or other foods.  But I do really like the fact that we don't keep months worth of food in the house, and we eat a lot of fresh produce.

The only downside, is that there are some products (mostly frozen products) that I can't find.  Their replacements are canned... like mixed veggies.  Peas or green beans just don't look as nice when they come out of a can.  They're also MUCH more expensive (and dare I say less nutritional... there must be some salt or preservatives in that can).  So, now my job is to figure out fresh substitutes for what I would normally use frozen.  I think I will always miss my frozen mixed veggies, though.

Fun in the snow!

(Beware, this is a long post with lots of pictures.)

It snowed.  Yaaaay!  It looks beautiful here!  This also means that Martin has no work- which is a nice treat for me :)  We went on a very last-minute ski-trip to Germany for two days of skiing.  

I learned that the Germans, Dutch and British have particular ways of serving their beer- specifically the foam.  The German way allows for this:

And of course, we had some schnitzel. 

We went to Winterberg, which is not in the alps, and it's not especially high, but it was skiing.  We had talked a lot about skiing since we met, but this was our first chance to ski together.  It was lovely!

And a little taste of the chalet- notice the German pub song.

It's beautiful here!

Then, a few days later, the snow followed us back to Barneveld.  But, even with this much snow, nothing stops people from riding their bikes...

Gas prices?

Everything about this picture is normal-- except for the snow. (That's 5 bikes together.)

The snow just adds to the beauty-- typical view in Barneveld: train car and bikes. 

THEN to top off fun in the snow, we went out to Martin's Oma and Opa's, and showed up JUST in time to be invited to join a sleigh ride!

And finally, I had to include some pictures of canal-skating!  And yes, I did join in on "Elfstedentoch fever", and I was disappointed to hear the ijsmaster announce that he had "geen goed niews".

In the park that's near our house.

The park

Beautiful in the summer and winter!

As we were driving along the highway in the Western part of the NL.  This was a beautiful, big canal, and I missed the best photo-op, but you can see some skaters if you look closely.

These "canals" are more like big ditches-- everywhere in town!  They're beautiful to walk around in the summer, and perfect for skating in the winter.  I think everyone in town could walk to a skate-able canal within 10 minutes... probably even 5.

I'm not sure if you can see in these pictures, but the most popular household skates here seem to be speed-skates, but I've also seen home hockey-style skates and figure-skating skates.  You know you live in a skating country, when they have a special word for "walking on skates off the ice" (klunen.)

I LOVE winter, and the beauty and peace that seems to accompany it, but can I say that I'm enjoying the lack of snow-shovelling, and minimal car-windshield-scraping, and I'm looking forward to spring!  (We saw some narcissus about 3 weeks ago... and the birds are chirping.)