Vic, Spain on a Market Saturday, and home on Sunday

I was in Vic, Spain, from the 29th of October through November 1. These pictures were taken of a main shopping area in Vic, not far from my hotel. I enjoyed the castle-like top to this building.


The buildings in the downtown area were connected to each other, although each building's architecture might be different. I particularly enjoyed the color and the windows.

Similar to what I first learned in Vienna, the windows on each floor have different surroundings. In Vienna, we called the area above a window its "eyebrows".

Angels had offered to do something with me on Saturday, but I was happy to visit the local outdoor Saturday market. This was a HUGE open square within a ring of buildings, and all kinds of things were for sale.

This woman was very outgoing and talkative, and we got along nicely with my high school Spanish and her Catalan. I bought scarves like she is wearing---basically a long piece of knit material with jewelry in the middle. I think I will try to make more when I get home!

This woman was more quiet but very sweet. She and her husband ran this booth, and I bought several pieces of jewelry from her. One piece that I just love is a little donkey pin. The previous week, my German friend Helen had told me that the German name for a mnemonic device is a "donkey's bridge." In memory of that phrase and because he is just cute and appears to be smiling, I bought the donkey, which is a piece she made herself.

These little people, most about 6" high, were in a store window. They were absolutely darling. However, not only was I nervous about the thought of getting them home to the US, I was flying Ryan Air and Jet Blue, both of which had severe luggage restrictions. That thought helped me avoid buying any of these!

A woman watering her flowers on her balcony, above a stall in the market

Part of the crowd at the market. The market is held every Saturday, year round.

A church on the main street of town

Most of the "side" streets were basically pedestrian malls, with no vehicle traffic

Notice that this sign is in Catalan, not Spanish, though you can certainly understand it. The store, like many, was closed for 3 hours from 1:30 to 4:30. The Spanish eat lunch about 2, and relax....Supper is at 9 at the EARLIEST.

It appeared to us that Ryan Air did not fly out of Girona on Sundays, so we set up my trip to go from Vic to Barcelona. I did that leg by train, helped by some directions for faculty at the university. I took a train to a particular stop, then got on a bus to go to the airport. The bus ride was about half an hour, I believe. This picture is the only one I took in Barcelona!

I flew from Barcelona to Dortmund, getting a bus for a short ride from the airport to this train station. This is the smallest train station I've ever encountered, and it is in Helwicki, Germany. There was literally no attendant, no rest room, no vending machine....nothing!! From here I then took trains the rest of the way home.

Geld (Money) Ist Super!!

I know that in the United States, we have tried to have a dollar coin, the Susan B. Anthony. It didn't work well for reasons of cash drawers, people hoarding them, and so forth. I don't think I have seen a 50 cent piece for years, either.
The countries in the European Union have a standardized money system. When you realize that many of their countries are the size of our states, and think about changing your money if you drove from Michigan to Wisconsin, and then again if you drove on to Minnesota, it makes a lot of sense to have a multi-country system for money.
In this picture I have a 2 euro piece, a 1 euro piece, a 50 euro cent piece, a 20 euro cent piece, a 5 euro cent piece, a 2 euro cent piece, and a 1 euro cent piece.
As we have in the United States, the edges of the coins are made differently, I assume to help the sight-impaired to distinguish one coin from another. For example, the 20 cent coin and the 5 cent coin are very similar in size, but the edges are different, and the color and metal content are also different.
The drawback to all of this, as far as I am concerned, is the weight that you can end up carrying around due to the weight of these coins, especially the 1 and 2 euro coins. If all the dollar bills you normally carry were heavy coins, money literally becomes a more weighty matter!! To have both a 2 cent and a 1 cent coin, when both are basically worthless, also seems strange. Early on, I began putting 1 and 2 cent pieces aside in a little container. Routinely, I would put perhaps 50 cents worth of 5 cent pieces in one pocket so that I could quickly count out that much change for a purchase and get rid of as many coins as possible. Before I leave, I will take my container of 1 and 2 cent pieces to the bank and turn in those coins.

The front sides of all coins are the same for that euro value, regardless of where it was minted. However, the backs are different based on which country it represents. I don't know the symbols for each country's coins, but you can see that there is some variety here among the coins that I happened to gather together to make this picture.

Euro bills are also very different than our bill system. Not only is each bill a different color, it is a different size. As the value of the bill goes up, the size increases. The feel of these bills is more like paper and less like linen that American bills. Each bill also has a reflective stripe along the right side, with the exception of the 50 which has more of a reflective seal near the right bottom corner.

Backs of various euro bill denominations. The map of the countries involved is the same, but the
bridges pictured are different.
Personally, I have never had a bill larger than a 50 euro bill. I'm sure they do, however, exist!

1) German Keyboard, and 2) Blogging Bottleneck

Earlier tonight, I finally posted a blog about the tour Sandi and I had taken through the Anne Frank house while we were in Amsterdam. We were not allowed to take pictures, so I used photos of the pictures in the book I bought in a small attempt to share this experience with you via the blog. The whole experience was very sobering for me. To be in the actual spaces where 8 people lived for so long with no sunlight, no way to see much outside, no way to move freely, and no fresh air, was powerful. To realize that in so many ways the effort was futile because 7 of the 8 people were killed, seems overwhelming. I simply cannot imagine being Otto Frank, with his entire family gone, searching for months for his daughters, and then having the question of how to deal with Anne's diary. Her words are powerful, and her age and appearance are so sweet that the comparison between her innocence and the brutality of the context is really jarring.

So, it took me awhile to come to grips with how I wanted to document my experience.

Another delay has been caused by the fact that I have for some weeks now been using a German laptop provided to me by the school because we had to send my laptop off to repair. It should have been back by now, and finding out what is going on may be problematic because I understand the paperwork is handled in one German city while the laptop was shipped to another. I had hoped to have had my own computer returned to me over a week ago. Using this one for my blog causes two problems. The more minor problem is that the software for dealing with downloading pictures is different and I cannot easily see the exact picture I want to upload into a blog. Rather than seeing a thumbnail of the picture itself, I have little standard icons for each picture and have to know the number for the picture I want.

The more major problem, however, is the keyboard on this computer. I have adjusted to the fact that the letters z and y are in reversed positions on this keyboard compared to their positions on an American keyboard. When I am typing a lot, I also adjust to the fact that the @ sign has to be done by using the "alt gr" key to the right of the space bar, in conjunction with the letter q key. On our keyboards, if I remember correctly (!), this sign is on the number 2 and is done with the shift key and letter 2. The German keyboard also has extra letters, all grouped on the right, because German has more letters, basically. Several vowels, namely a, o, and u sometimes appear with 2 dots, called umlauts, above them, causing a slight difference in the pronunciation of the word. Thus, this keyboard has keys for ä, ö, and ü. This throws the "enter" key farther to the right, which I don't always quite reach, resulting in getting a # key by mistake. There are other differences such as a set of keys above the function keys, labelled in German, and punctuation marks in different places, but you get the idea.

Left side of the keyboard. Note the location of y and z, the @ symbol under the q, and different labelling on the lower keys---
Fn, Strg, Alt. The shift lock key is the arrow key on the left with the wider base, left of the A.

This is among the worst pictures I've taken but you get the idea. Think about going from L, for example, to the enter key.

And last and definitely not least of my problems with blogging is that I recognize that my time here is drawing to a close. Three weeks from today, I get on a plane to return to the US. Although I realize that I need to return to my job, my children, my friends, my house, the 2 chis left behind-----this experience has been powerful beyond words. Several things coalesced to make it an incredible, wonderful, exhilarating, overwhelming experience from which I have learned immensely and which has changed how I look at things, some of what I believe, and a lot of what I believe about international education. I did not really understand the scope of it until Christine asked me while visiting here last week "What have you learned?" Literally, I was speechless. It is going to take a while to come to grips with what I have learned in my head, my heart, and my gut, and get to words, as my friend Jill says. So, in some ways, the things that are most important to me are things that either cannot be blogged, or I cannot yet write about, if that makes sense.

Some things, however, I know at the core of my being. One that I know is that I am different and always will be as a result of this experience. Another that I know is that I have a new direction and new energy to devote toward things that I now believe are very important and are things about which I believe we at NMU can improve. The definition of learning that I give students in my organizational behavior classes is that learning is a change in behavior as a result of experience. I came, I saw, I experienced, I did, I learned, and I am different and changed as a result. Simply having time to think on a sabbatical, and having the opportunity to be confronted by differences and by the people, beliefs, and attitudes that I have lived with here----all of this has been a challenging luxury which I have enjoyed immensely. I do not want to give it up, but hopefully I will find a way to return to the US and not have to "give up" everything about this environment and this situation.

Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

This is the book that I bought in the Anne Frank house shop. the book was published in 2004 and the website for the house is http://www.annefrank.nl/.


The family went into hiding on July 5, 1942, the day after Anne's older sister Margot received a notice to report for work in Germany. Otto Frank worked for a company that made products for making jams and jellies. He and his wife had prepared a secret hiding place in the back of the building and on the upper levels of the building where his company was housed. They also planned to hide Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter. This family was also Jewish, and Hermann was also a director in the company. Miep Gies, who worked in the company, her husband Jan, and Johannes Kleiman, who also worked for the company, were in on the plan for the family to hide.
In the picture, you can tell that there are numbers on the 4 windows of one building. This is the rear of the company building. The window on the lower left was originally the room for Anne and Margot, but later housed Anne and Fritz Pfeffer with Margot moving into her parents' room. The window on the lower right was in Otto and Edith Frank's bedroom. The windows on the top floor were the van Pelses' bedroom windows. All the windows were covered constantly so that no light seeped out and no one could see movement inside.
The warehouse was on the ground floor with the kitchen belonging to the business on the left and Otto Frank's private office on the right. The people in hiding only went there once all the workers had gone home.



The Secret Annexe was completely refurnished for a film a few years ago, and these photos were of the rooms as set for that occasion. When Sandi and I saw them, they were empty except for photos, video clips, and so forth. I had not remembered from reading the diary years ago that there were several rooms involved, and that this entire level of rooms had been hidden behind a big bookcase.
This room was Otto and Edith Frank's room. Once Fritz Pfeffer (a family friend) moved in in November, Margo also slept here.

Anne's room, first shared with Margot and later with Fritz. She decorated with cutouts of movie stars from magazines.

The washroom. The people in hiding talked in whispers, tried not to use the toilet or run water when there were workers in the company below, and basically were "like mice".

The communal living and dining room

Peter's room---the only person with a room of his own. I don't quite understand why Peter and Fritz didn't share a room rather than having Anne share with Fritz....

The attic, mainly used for storing food such as beans and potatos

Otto Frank showing the Auschwitz tattoo on his arm

Otto Frank with the helpers in one of the offices right after the war. Left to right: Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Otto Frank, Victor Kugler and Bep Voskuijl

The hiding group was safe until August 4, 1944, when police raided based on a phone call to the German police that there were Jews hiding in the building. Whoever betrayed the group was never found out. On August 8, these 8 Jews were taken to Westerbork, a transit camp for Jews. On September 2, 1944, the 8 were in a group of 1,000 people who left by train, very overcrowded, to Auschwitz. Hermann van Pels bruised his thumb one day, couldn't work, and was killed in a gas chamber as a result. Fritz Pfeffer died in December in another camp. Anne and Margot were taken to Bergen-Belsen because they were deemed as fit enough to work. Edith Frank died of exhaustion in Auschwitz in January, 1945. Peter died in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in May of 1945. Margot and Anne both got typhus, spread by lice. They were lying right next to the door with an icy wind blowing over them They both died in March of 1945, with Anne dying 1 day after Margot. Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15, 1945.

Otto Frank, the only one of the 8 to survive, spent 4 months traveling from Auschwitz to Amsterdam because he had to detour around fighting. On June 3, 1945, he finally arrived in Amsterdam, hoping and expecting to find his daughters there. He found out from 2 sisters who knew the Frank sisters and who had been in Bergen-Belsen with them, that both Frank girls had died. It took him 3 days to gather the strength to tell the rest of his family. Miep Gies had found and kept Anne's diary and gave it to him. His friends convinced him that he should publish Anne's diary, partially because she had written "You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer....In any case, after the war, I'd like to publish a book called The Secret Annexe." Initially he could not find a publisher. However, Jan Romein, a well-known historian, read the diary and wrote an article about it in a Dutch Newspaper. Several publishers then approached Otto Frank and the book was published two years later.

Otto Frank in the attic of Anne Frank House, a few hours before it was officially opened in 1960.

Actually going through these rooms was very sobering. To think of 8 people living inside, unable to breathe fresh air or to see outside, being as quiet as possible during the long days, makes me wonder how they kept their sanity. After all of this, to end up being betrayed and all but one losing their lives entirely, is so sad. I admire their ingenuity, the loyalty of the company people who helped them with food and clothing, and their perseverance. I particularly cannot imagine being Otto Frank, knowing he was the only one to survive, dealing with such horrible personal loss, and then trying to determine what to do with his daughter's words left behind.

Not to detract from the story, but the odd twist to this whole tour was that Brandi visited the house inside her travel kennel, never said a word, and is probably the only dog to have ever toured the Secret Annexe. I truly believe that no one knew she was in the bag I was carrying.

Getting to Vic, Spain---What An Adventure!!

RyanAir sign and measurement device (there was a scale early in the process) saying if it fits, take it onboard. If it doesn't. pay the bag fee, or the bag doesn't go.


Everyone lined up in the appropriate line, sectioned off like theaters do before shows.

I had planned for some time to go to Vic, Spain, where we have an exchange campus, during the last weekend of October. I planned to leave Thursday morning, taking a train to Breman where I would take a RyanAir plane to Girona. From Girona, I would take a bus to Vic, and Angels, the business international coordinator, would pick me up at the bus station in central Vic. I had been communicating with Angels via e-mail and had her cellphone number.

The train part was no problem. I expected problems with RyanAir. This is an extreme discount airline, and people seem to either love it because everything goes right, or something goes wrong and it is a nightmare. I only have a couple of pictures of the RyanAir experience, so I will put them at the top of this posting. I had checked in online, which they recommend, I had my passport ready, and I made sure that my backpack was not overweight nor too big. RyanAir is really rigid about this; I saw some people unpacking suitcases and handing items to friends and relatives because their bags were too heavy or too big. After standing in line and feeling like a cow in the herd being moved around, the flight to Girona was fine. There are no boarding passes, and it is basically first come first served. I had gotten really close to the front of the line, so I was in good shape. The colors of this airline, orange and blue, are awful, but oh, well!! The flight was fine.

Angels had said to cross the street out the front door of the airport, and that the bus to Vic would be right there. No, it wasn't; there was a huge parking lot being dug and built right out front. I asked and someone directed me to the right of the building to several busses. No, this is wrong also; all of those busses are going to Barcelona. That person told me to go to the hotel and pointed to a nearby building. That was wrong too, so I went back to the airport and started all over, this time asking at the information counter. That young woman told me I had to go around the construction, which was at least 3 blocks long, to the other side, to a bus stop near the front door of the hotel. She actually drew me a map and helped me see how to get out the front door and arond the construction. So, off I went, thankful that I had allowed about an hour between the flight and the bus. I found the hotel and inquired about where the bus stop was. This was simply that I was to stand by a pole with a red sign on top of it, right on the side of the street.

So, there I stand, and here comes a somewhat-red-haired and red-bearded man, probably about 30 or so. I ask where he's from, and we have a nice though limited English conversation. He is from Italy and is going on the bus to the end of the line, 3 1/2 hours, to visit his girlfriend. He is a web journalist. He has a light green and pink backpack and what appears to be a big camera case.

Then. here comes a younger and bigger man who manages to tell us that he is from Poland, works in Madrid, is going to Vic or the other side of it (I don't remember) but that he has just been told by 2 teenagers down the street that the bus is on strike!! GREAT!! I think. Thank heavens I have Angel's phone number but it appears to be an hour trip between Girona and Vic.

I try to call Angels but it appears my phone has no service there. The three of us stand there, the appointed time of 2:45 comes and goes. I tell the Italian, who has much better English, that I will go to the hotel to see what they know about the strike, and not to let the bus go without me if it comes. This takes a couple of versions of English sentences for him to understand what is going on. I go to the hotel where the woman tells me the bus was there in the morning, she has heard nothing of a strike, and all of a sudden, she sees the bus coming. Out I run. The Polish guy is now in the bus, asking the bus driver all kinds of questions about the other side of Vic or something, and traffic is piling up behind the bus, at least 10 cars. A black man comes down the aisle of the bus, tells the Polish guy in English to ask all his questions later, get on, we are making a traffic problem. So, onto the bus go the Polish guy, the Italian guy, and me.

The Italian sits down next to the Nigerian, and I sit across the aisle from the Italian. I ask him if I can use his phone since mine evidently has no service. We try to call Angels but discover we're doing something wrong about the country code. The Nigerian guy gets into action (he is living with a relative in Girona and going to Vic; I thought he was a student at Vic), and gets the phone dialed properly. I tell Angels I am on the bus and should be there shortly about 3:30.

All is well for about 10 minutes. I am sitting there strongly regretting that I am not on my Harley---the road is windy, hilly, 2 lanes each way, beautiful country. The Italian guy's phone rings, he answers, and hands it to me---Angels is calling. She tells me that she has just been told there is a bus strike, and I tell her I heard the same thing but I am on a bus. She asks me where I am. I have no clue because there are no towns or anything, but I had just seen a sign that said Vic Central, a certain number of kilometers. OK, she will wait for me.

Again, all seemed to be going well. It wasn't, and it didn't. After another half hour or so, the bus pulls off the road into a parking lot, up on a hill, in the middle of nowhere other than the presence of a gas station with an attached restaurant. The bus driver announces "Vic" and the Nigerian, the Polish guy, about a dozen other people, and I get off. People get their suitcases out from underneath the bus. I just have my backpack so I walk toward the gas station wondering how on earth this is the main bus station.

The Nigerian guy tumbled to what was going on before I did. This was not Vic; something about the bus strike prevented our bus from actually going into town. I call Angels, and since I thought the Nigerian dude knew where Vic was, I have him talk to her. It turns out at that point that he had never been to Vic, and he was talking to fast in British English that Angels was getting nothing. Furthermore, we couldn't really tell her where we were other than the name of the gas station. Finally, we ask 2 young Spanish girls if they can tell Angels in Spanish where we are. Fast conversation, the young woman hangs up, and tells us that her boyfriend is coming to pick up the 2 young women, and the Nigerian guy and I are welcome to go into town with them. She has told Angels this, and Angels agreed. The Nigerian guy and I start talking, and he clearly states how important he thinks "knowing the language" is. It turns out that he is an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, and there is something about he will have to live with his cousin for 3 years before he can get citizenship of any type. Oh, brother. He can't get work for all sorts of reasons. I wonder why he left Nigeria illegally but figure I had better not ask.

The boyfriend shows up in a very small work truck. The back hatch won't open. One Spanish girl climbs in the back seat, with the other then sitting on her lap. The Nigerian climbs in, and their luggage takes up the rest of the back seat. The Polish guy has disappeared. I get in the front passenger seat. We take off and I discover that this young man should be driving in the Grand Prix or something. We were going way too fast, driving way too close to the cars in front of us, and I have my feet about going through the floor of the truck. We pass the Polish guy who is walking to town (we saw a sign that said it was 2 kilometers) but we have no space for him. He has a camera out and seems to be taking pictures during the hike.

We finally pull up to the bus station, after fast trips around at least 2 roundabouts in town. The Nigerian dude tells me to call my friend. I think maybe this is some kind of thing he and Angels had said and I don't know about, so I call her. She tells me she is at the bus station but does not see me. While talking, we each walk out to the edge of the sidewalk and see each other on opposite ends of the bus station. To say I was glad to see her is one of the understatements of my life!! I didn't realize it until later, but when she heard there was a bus strike and she knew I was on a bus, she worried that I was on another bus that would have come by the bus stop at about the same time, but would have taken me to a faraway cit in the wrong direction!! So, she was relieved that she didn't have to drive a long distance to retrieve me from the whole wrong place!

Now, I ask you----how many times in my life could I possibly end up needing the help of an Italian, a Polish man, a Nigerian, 2 Spanish girls of about high school age, and the boyfriend of one of them, to make it into town?? Angels was surprised and relieved I was laughing instead of being angry. At that point, the whole thing just seemed like some kind of situation comedy, the Lucille Ball Show, or something!! And I don't have a single picture of any of this!!

Trains

The European rail system is fantastic, in my opinion. You can go anywhere in relative comfort and if you buy your ticket ahead of time especially, the prices are very reasonable. Since I will be here 4 months, I bought a DeutschBahn railroad card for 25 euros, and it gives me a discount. This train is actually the one I took in France. It has 2 stories, as you can see from the steps at the top of the picture. The seats are comfortable, and I've noticed that blue seems to be the universal color for some reason. Clean, comfortable, efficient, and nice.

This is one of the newer German trains I have been on. This one was one I took coming back from Amsterdam. I always travel in second class coaches, which is certainly fine. Almost every train car has seats going in both directions---about half the car faces one way, and half the other. The seats with tables are scattered so that there are usually 4 (2 on each side of the aisle) spaced out through one car. There are usually plugins near the tables and people often work on their computers. There is good light, generally, and this one has more overhead storage than some do. Some trains have small rooms, generally seating 6, that you can enter and shut the door. This is really good for families and small groups.

I'm at the point where I'd rather go by train than fly. I can get up and move around, there is more space, and I am not sitting and wasting time waiting in an airport for hours and hours.

I hadn't found this type of board in the Bielefeld station but now know where it is. You look for the time of your train, the number, and then you can see how many cars are second class, where they are on the train, and which direction the train will be going. That lets you board an appropriate car. It is also possible, for 4 euros per ticket, to reserve seats. I did that when Heidi and Pete were coming so that we could sit together, and so that we could have window seats where possible. If you also get seats around one of the tables, you can tak with each other, though someone is going backwards. I do not do well going backwards and have learned to check the board to see which way the train will be going. I guess my mental map isn't good enough to automatically know which direction I should face so that I will be going forward!

There are at least 3 ways to buy tickets, with varying costs according to the method. Lots of people buy tickets from the machines. For example, your plane comes in from whereever, and you go to the machine, put in the city to which you want to go, the hour of the day you are traveling, and it tells you a price. Put in your credit card, get your ticket, and go. Tickets can also be purchased online with a credit card, you can print off the receipt on your computer printer, and hand that with your credit card (for identity proof) to the conductor. The most expensive way, though I've used this occasionally for complicated trips, is to go to the main train station and ask for help. I've gotten the same woman both times I have done this, and she has been really helpful and pleasant. Dogs can travel for free on trains, so Brandi has accompanied me on train trips a couple of times.

One thing about train travel is that you have to be paying attention. Frequently, changing trains is involved and you need to watch the time and listen and look for the right station. I do think if you fell asleep, for example, you could end up in the wrong place and the wrong country!! Once you know how to read the schedule, you can easily spot how much time you have between trains, which platform you'll come in on and which you need to get to to leave on the next train, etc. Most trains only stop for a very few minutes, and you had better be ready to get on or get off. Most trains I've been on have done fairly well for schedules, though the one from Dortmund last weekend was 17 minutes late.

There is a wide variety of train stations and services offered, ranging from really large stations offering a variety of stores and fresh flowers, to a few that are simply stations almost in the middle of nowhere with no services whatsoever. Many trains have separate areas in certain cars where people can put their bicycles. This works really great for people who want to go out into the country to ride. Every train I have been on has had the "WC" or water closet, with a varying degree of clean air. Many trains have dining cars. The ICE trains (Inter-City Express) trains travel the same tracks as the regional trains. They are newer (more streamlined and bullet-shaped) and are faster because they don't stop at all the places the regional trains stop. They also, however, cost more. The time for a regional train to get here from Dusseldorf (the airport I flew into from the USA) was close to 2 hours, and the time for the ICE train was closer to 1 1-2 hours. Several of the German here got a chuckle from my language. I called that train an ice train, as in ice cubes. Given the German pronunciation of the alphabet, they call it the EEE SAY AAA train!

Misc. Amsterdam and Rotterdam pictures

I put up 2 of the same pictures in a previous blog, accidentally. Here is a picture of the other side of the bedroom of our Rotterdam room.

The following are some of my favorite pictures that for whatever reason, I hadn't put up before!

I just loved this little Dutch shoe boat!

The guide on our canal tour boat said this is one of the most-photographed points in Amsterdam. Supposedly, if you are angled just right, you can see 7 bridges.

Our tour boat, with the bike parking lot across the water. You can see 3 levels of parking, and there was another at the water level. Unbelievable....

Aren't the window hangings beautiful?

This tree was along a canal in Rotterdam. I like its low branches and spreading structure.

This building was one of several along a street in Rotterdam. They had obviously been redone, and they looked wonderful. Notice how large the fake front is at the top. We noticed that many of these houses had a hook near the very top, probably to serve as a base for a pulley to pull furniture up. Think about those steps in Amsterdam---there would be no way to get furniture up those. So, through the window.....

Another sprawling tree

Sandi and I found this guy along a street in Rotterdam during one of our walks. There was no sign so we didn't quite know who he was or what he was doing....

An obviously small truck, perhaps for cooking?? one wheel in front.

We found these 3 bunnies during the same walk. We were not near a school that we knew of, so I assume they were simply decorating the little green space. Aren't they just cute?

This was the weirdest thing. This was along a canal in Rotterdam, I believe. A tree trunk and its roots had been cut, and the root structure, 4 pieces, had been mounted into pipes. It made for weird modern art, I suppose!

Amsterdam was built with concentric circles of canals. Rotterdam, while having a lot of water and canals, is arranged differently. This map was on a large board near a park, and it maps out bicycle routes, with distances.

Brandi in her travel crate, ready for another adventure!