V is for...

Viking Ship

When you are in Norway, you can't really not see anything to do with Vikings. After all, it's the basis for a lot of things in Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia). So, I made my way to the Viking Ship museum when I was in Oslo to see what it was all about.

Well, an unassuming building housed three ships varying in size and beauty and a large collection of 'treasures' recovered from one of the ships. It wasn't a large museum and it didn't really go into the whole Viking thing, but it did show and tell about the three ships that were there.

The one in the photo was the biggest of the three and the most complete, although I can't remember whether that was because of restoration or because they had found it that way. As you can see it is on the flat side with a lot of holes in the side. Those holes were for the rowing oars. When I look at that ship and then imagine it could have gone all the way to Northern America, I wonder how they did it in the first place. It must have been quite a hard journey to undertake, but they not only did it once, they did it several times!

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U is for...

part of my stuff prior to leaving

Upheaval

Well, since I couldn't think of anything else for the letter U, I thought Upheaval was a pretty good one. Especially since I went through quite a bit of upheaval during the last few weeks. Not only did I pack up a lot of stuff, I also gave a lot away and all that was left was thrown away. 

I had colleagues, friends and family come over and help, I did a lot myself and in the end a lorry came to pick everything up that I wanted to take. And if you don't know what I am talking about: I was taking it all to Norway. Yes, you read it right: I moved from the Netherlands to Norway. Actually by the time you're reading this, I have moved into a new (smaller) home and have been at work for 2 days!

I have been through a small bureaucratic mill, I have had to speak Norwegian all the time (I made it a point to start out in Norwegian, it's the best way for me to get to grips with the language, even if they all do speak fantastic English here) and I am still figuring out what to do about the furniture that couldn't come with me to my new place. 

There is still a lot of upheaval in my head as well. It still hasn't quietened down, even though I am now sleeping better than I did the first few days. What with the language, all the new people, the new surroundings and everything else, I guess that will probably linger a bit longer. But I have some great help in the area and people so far have been very nice and kind to me! 

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T is for...

Tornado

When I went to Canada in October of 2011, I had to change planes in Chicago. I had to wait a long time. A very long time! And when I have to wait, I get bored and start looking around me. And this is what I found: the sign for 'severe weather' and the little picture of a tornado.

I have seen some bad weather in my time: a green and yellow sky heralding a massive thunderstorm, snow storms, rain and wind storms, but fortunately I have never seen or been in a tornado! Now, the most famous person ever caught up in a tornado was of course Miss Galen (Dorothy to her friends) and her little dog Toto, as told by Frank L Baum.

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S is for...

Stortinget

When I was in Oslo in April of this year, I visited the 'Storting' or the Parliament. A lovely building smack bang in the center of Oslo. And because it was Saturday they had some guided tours going. It didn't cost anything, but there were only three of them that day. I managed to get on the second tour.

The first thing we had to do was go through security, leave bags and coats (but not cameras fortunately) and wait for the guide. She was a lovely young woman who spoke perfect English and since most people on the tour, including the Norwegians themselves, spoke good English, the tour was done in English and Norwegian was only used for one family with some young teens.

The former Upper House, no longer in use as such

We got to see the original constitution (yellowish photo), the Lower House (compare to House of Commons), the former Upper House (compare to House of Lords) and got explanations about kings, politics and the building itself.

It was a very interesting tour that gave a little insight into Norwegian politics. So, if you are ever in the area: try and take a tour (Saturdays only).

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R is for...

Le Relais de la Fôret, Normandie, France (March)

Room

Bickley Manor, London, England

When I first started this job as an international busdriver, a friend of mine told me it was 'nice to stay in a hotel'. 

Ferry Newcastle-IJmuiden (Amsterdam)

Well, okay, if it's not usual, I guess it probably is. 

Best Western Bondeheimen, Oslo, Norway

But for me, it's pretty usual and in the end all the rooms start to look alike. 

Lifjell hytte, Lifjell, Norway

And in order to show you how alike, I have taken photos of every single hotel room I stayed in this year! 

Van der Valk, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Most specifically of the beds. 

Der Wilder Mann, Aschaffenburg, Germany

So you can see how not special it is to stay in yet another hotel!

PC Goussainville, near Paris, France

The rooms start to merge into one.

Étap Chevilly Larue, Paris, France

Bedcovering for one (Norway, Germany) or two (France, UK)

Hotel Seeblick, Klietz, Germany

Out in the country or in the middle of the city.

Quellenhof, Bad Helmstedt, Germany

Cheap or expensive.

Best Western Hordaheimen, Bergen, Norway

Small rooms or big rooms.

Gersfelder Hof, Gersfeld, Germany

This is the letter R for ABC Wednesday. 

Hotel Kaiser, Hammelburg, Germany

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Q is for...

Qiuz

Whenever I stayed in London with 'my' school, we stayed in a hotel that was not far from this pub. And this pub hosted a Quiz-night every Sunday. We actually were there one year when they had the quiz and we were (the six of us together) able to answer quite a few questions that night. We hadn't joined though, so we couldn't win anything.

There was a time in the past though, where I did join in. I was actually part of a pubquiz team. And we were the proud bearers of the wooden spoon. In other words: we were always dead last! But then again, someone has to be! We got questions like: what is the fruit of the rose called, what did Danish Ole Kirk Christiansen invent and who was emperor of India in 1890? I knew the first answer, but only in Dutch, which didn't help. I knew the second answer, but my team mates went with a different answer. I knew the third answer and we got that one right (they listened to me). So, without googling, would you know the answers?

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P is for...

Plane

When I was 16 I flew for the very first time. Only for about 20 minutes and I remember my Dad nearly having a fit when I got home and told him (not helped by the fact that my Mum knew sort of...). It wasn't a regular plane though: it was a glider. I can't remember much of that flight, although I do recall thinking it fantastic to see things from above. 

When I was 19 I came back from Pula (current day Croatia) to Amsterdam by plane. A year later Brussels-London, London-Catania (Sicily), Catania-Rome and Rome-Paris. Since then I have flown to Malta, Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Norway and Canada. 

The thing I like most about the whole flying thing is the speed while still on the runway. You might call me a speed-junkie, but driving along a motorway with that kind of speed, would be a severe thrill... And once you get into the air and are able to see the earth from above: magical. It all looks so tiny. In some cases it looks quite rough and tough, in other cases it looks really regimented. The Netherlands look regimented. All the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. No blade of grass out of place. At least, that's the way it looks from up above!

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Top photo taken in October 2011 from the plane (Houston-Amsterdam) over the Netherlands
Bottom photo taken in October 2011 of the plane I was due to take from Amsterdam to Chicago

O is for...

O2 arena

Now, if you watched any of the Olympics, there is quite a chance that you saw this arena come by at some point. It was used for the gymnastics and the final of the basketball games. However, you may not have heard this name then, since due to advertising regulations it was known during the Olympics and Paralympics as the North Greenwich Arena. 

The arena was built later than the dome which meant that any work that needed to be done to the place, needed to be done inside, since no cranes could be used. So, the roof was built and then lifted into place! 

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Photo taken in April 2011, from the River Thames

N is for...

Nagele

Nagele is one of the ten 'green' villages surrounding the town where I live (Emmeloord). It isn't big, but it has one feature not found anywhere else in the Netherlands: all the buildings have flat roofs!

After the North East Polder was formed in 1942 by closing the last of the dykes, people started to dig ditches (by hand) to get rid of the remaining water in the polder. They planted crops that would help with the drainage as well and after a few years some small settlements started: Emmeloord, Marknesse and Ens, the latter two also being two of the ten villages, albeit the two largest. Here there were baracks to house the men who worked the land and the infrastructure. 

After the war, work started in earnest, the first houses went up in those three settlements and the first farms were built, attracting farmers from all over the country. The village of Nagele and the other villages started their life then as well. Since all the villages in the area were going to be completely new, it was of course a great place for architects and even though Nagele today is different from the original plans, there are still quite a few things that are the same, amongst which of course the flat roofs. Another original plan was the large common with three schools (Protestant, Catholic and Public) and churches. Even though the common and its buildings still exist, due to the smallness of the village, one of the churches is now a museum and the schools have joined up as well. 

And if you want to know what the other 'green villages' are called, here they are: Ens, Marknesse, Kraggenburg, Luttelgeest, Bant, Rutten, Espel, Creil, Tollebeek and Nagele. None of the villages are any more than 20 km removed from Emmeloord. All of the villages are named after former areas or villages on or in long forgotten places. 

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M is for...

Mermaid

The mermaid in Copenhagen harbour to be exact! When I was in Denmark in July of 2011, the statue of the mermaid was really the only thing I wanted to see. Everything else would be good, but the mermaid was top of the list. Despite the heavy rain of that day, me and two colleagues made our way towards the harbour, by bus and on foot. By the time we arrived at the harbour, the rain had almost let up and when I got my first glance of the mermaid it was dry. The sun even came out for a minute!

I had been told in advance that the mermaid wasn't very big and I must admit, I expected something the size of 'Manneken Pis' in Brussels, but I was happily surprised when it was a good deal bigger than that. The mermaid is sculpted by Edvard Eriksen and his wife Eline was the model. And before you ask: yes, the statue is based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen!

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L is for...

Lindy at Lake Louise

A blog is a great medium, because it was through my blog that I got to know Kay who lives in Canada. And when I went to Canada on holiday, she invited me to stay in a hotel with her and Lindy, her dog, and see some sights. I took her up on that offer and our first tour was of the Rocky Mountains. We walked around a bit in Banff and then we made our way to Lake Louise, a beautiful turquoise lake at the foot of a glacier.

Kay told me that when she first saw the glacier years earlier, it had been much larger. However, it was still very cold with the wind coming over the glacier and the lake and my coat didn't really warm me up enough. Fortunately Lindy didn't suffer from that at all, she had a very nice coat on: her own fur!

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K is for...

Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad is a town in Russia, but situated in a part of Russia between Lithuania and Poland. It used to be part of Prussia and was called Königsbergen until 1946. It lies on the Baltic Sea. But not only is it a town, it is also a naval vessel. And a fairly big one at that!

The name in Cyrillic writing

As I was at the Navy Days in the Netherlands this year, we saw this ship arriving and being moored. It's always amazing how they do that: the steering is somewhere at the back, which goes against all I believe in. Then again, they might be lousy at parallel parking a coach!

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J is for...

John Steele

John Steele was an American paratrooper who fought in Europe during the second world war. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division and was dropped from a plane on D-Day over the small French village of Ste-Mère-Église in Normandy. As bad luck would have it, that evening a fire had broken out in one of the bigger houses in the center and the Germans and the French were busy putting out that fire. So, when all of a sudden a lot of men come falling from the sky, the were quickly noticed and the firing started.

Some of the men landed in the countryside, others in the village, some were shot and some survived. John Steele? He got caught on the church steeple smack bang in the middle of the village. He got shot in the foot and decided his best chance of survival was playing dead and he hung on the steeple until the Germans got him down. Upon realising he was still alive, he became a prisoner of war and was locked up. However, he managed to escape and rejoin his division.

John Steele survived the war and passed away in 1969 of throat cancer, just a few weeks short of the 25th anniversary of D-Day.

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Photo taken in March 2012 in Ste-Mère-Église, France

I is for...

Ice Skating

It's been a few years since I last bound under the skates (this is a literal translation of the Dutch expression, before any of you start in on me about my bad grammar), but in the winter of 2012 I got the chance to take some photos of other people skating.

In early February it was cold, very cold. About minus twenty cold! Windscreen frozen on the inside and all that. But during the day the sun came out and it was quite pleasant to take a walk in the snow. Until we got to the lake. We had two options: return the way we came or go the long way round. I came up with option number three: go across the lake, it was frozen over!

As soon as we hit the lake, we realised we weren't the first ones: we could see tracks made by other people. And then we saw those other people, on skates, making skating tracks right next to their own footsteps. Since we knew the area they had walked on was safe, we followed their tracks and made it safely across the lake. Only slipping a few times...

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H is for...

Hansa

The Hansa is an old organisation which allowed trading between towns in different countries. You can compare it a little with the current EU, which basically allows the same nowadays. Originally it was a purely German thing: only German towns and cities were dealing with each other. After a while Dutch and Belgian towns were to join, as well as towns in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland and the Baltic states and at its high point there were Hanseatic offices as far away as Novgorod (Russia), Bergen (Norway), Bruges and later Antwerp (Belgium) and London (England). The only one remaining today is the one in Bergen.  

The main commodity dealt with in Bergen was fish from the North of the country (Lofoten) in exchange for grain. The reason why Bergen was chosen instead of a place further north had several reasons: the weather probably being part of it, but mainly it was that the Norwegians didn't want those Germans any further up than they needed to be.

The office in Bergen was manned by Germans and Germans only. One after the other the houses of the Bryggen quarter were bought and in the end, the whole area was German. On top of that: no women were allowed. The so-called 'women's jobs' were done by apprentices, some as young as 13 who came from good middle class families back in Germany. Men were not allowed to be married either. You worked for the Hansa and after several years you went back to Germany, with money obviously, found a wife and started a family.

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G is for...

Gobble gobble

I know, I am cheating a little, but I couldn't find another (recent) G I was happy with, so turkey it is! Turkeys originally hail from the Americas (North and Central) and are related to the chicken. They are now almost synonymous with Christmas as most of the English speaking nations of the world will eat turkey for their Christmas dinner.

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F is for...

Fun Fair

So, when is the last time you went to the fun fair? And did you go on any of the rides? Get jostled on the bumper cars, get sick on the fast things, get scared in the haunted house? The last time I went was in May 2012 and I went with my friend and her two children. We went on a fast ride that went backwards and forwards, we went on the bumper cars, we had cotton candy and french fries, the children fished for duckies and they loved the caroussel.

The only thing missing was the haunted house!

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E is for...

Eiffel Tower

This iron tower was erected as a the entrance arch to the 1889 World Fair held in Paris. The original design came from Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, both senior engineers for Gustave Eiffel's company. At first Eiffel himself didn't really like the proposed tower, but in the end he was won over. After proposing the idea to the people behind the World Fair and winning over all the other entries, the tower was built. 

The tower was only supposed to be there for a limited amount of time: the duration of the World Fair plus some twenty years after. It was always the idea that it would be torn down again. However, by the time it was due to be torn down again, it was already quite famous and the radio had made a big entrance. The tower could now serve a dual purpose: be a tourist attraction and a huge radio antenna.

It is now (not counting the antennae on top) the second highest man-made structure in France, after the Millau viaduct and measures 320 meters (an awful lot of feet). I have never climbed it yet, but one day...

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D is for...

Dinosaur

My friend Kay had invited me to show me around Alberta when I was in Canada in October 2011 and on our second outing she took me to see the Badlands, which are in the East of the province. Since we had her dog Lindy along as well, we couldn't go to the museum in Drumheller, but two days later I went back to the Badlands and I visited the museum.

Find the dinosaur!

I have never been a dino afficionado, but that museum was something different. It was fantastic. All the dinosaurs had been found in the province and there were so many different ones, it was mind-boggling. They had even opened up a wall so people could see right into the preservation area. One of the researchers was there trying to clean up some unsuspecting fossil and he got asked a lot of questions as well.

If you are ever in the area, go and see this beautiful museum, it is fantastic!

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C is for...

Cemetery and Cross

During my trip to Normandy in March this year, we visited several cemeteries. The trip had been organised after the (mainly) boys and young men had asked why they were part of the honour's guards on May 4th, which is Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. They certainly found out why: beaches, tanks, planes, guns and many many crosses, all dating from WWII.

The first photo shows the American Cemetery near Omaha Beach. Row upon row of white crosses and an occasional Star of David. Underneath every cross lies one young man who died in pursuit of freedom for everybody, be they 'different' or 'normal'. The second photo shows the German Cemetery near La Cambe. Row upon row of small greyish flat stones. Underneath every stone lie two to three young men who died in pursuit of one big Germany and only one type of 'normal'.

In contrast to the American crosses, the German stones bear both name and age of the people underneath and what was the most shocking was the ages of the soldiers: about the same age as the young men and women on my coach. It certainly hit home for them.

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