a netherlands teaser

This was always going to be ambitious. One weekend, three cities. Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and a visit to Kinderdijk thrown in for good measure. It was good, tiring, and fun. And in the end it was easy to conclude: you've got to spend more than just a weekend in the Netherlands!

I arrived late in the evening on Friday, and met up with Carmen, Cynthia, and Roland. We had our own personal tour guide as Roland is from Rotterdam, but now lives in London. They'd been touring around before I got there, and so they met me for drinks in Den Haag after I arrived. Since the weather was good there were plenty of locals out drinking too. Den Haag has some old squares where you can buy drinks in the bars, and then take them out into the square which has tables and chairs set up. It's all very cool.

Saturday was reserved for Amsterdam. We took a canal tour that let us travel around the city at our own pace. We hopped off at the Rijksmuseum, home of many Rembrandt paintings. In addition to its' most famous images, the museum also documents a lot of the Netherlands "golden age": when trade, rather than a monarch or a religion, ruled the land; when the Dutch East and West India companies were trading and bringing back treasures from around the globe - either that or stealing them from the Portuguese!

The detail in the paintings surprised me. Some of the paintings depicted scenes with shiny metal objects, and the painter went to the effort of painting the reflection of other objects in the painting on the shiny surfaces. It made me laugh as I thought this must have been the equivalent of 18th-century gamers: always aiming to get more and more rendered realism, more pixels, more detail.

What better than to follow up a museum visit on a nice day, than with a walk in a park. With spring well and truly established, Amsterdam locals were out in force. It was so nice to see people cycling, lounging around, drinking, and generally not being in any kind of a hurry. Not hurrying also applied to the waitresses at lunch... slowest service... ever... Did we mind though? Nah, it was nice sitting in the sun.

It would have been nice to do what these locals were doing. Having wine and cheese in their very own canal boat.

The conundrum of the how long to spend at lunch - and when to get back on the tour boat to see more of the city - pushed us to keep moving on in the end. We sailed up to Anne Frank's house. This was a far more sombre affair contrasted with the Rijksmuseum. The later celebrated the Netherlands golden age, where as the former commemorated some of the Netherlands darkest years. The house tells the story of Anne and her close friends and relatives. It also explains the story of all the Dutch Jews. Of around 100,000 Jewish residents in the Netherlands, a puny 5,000 survived world war II. The quote from a holocaust survivor in the guide book accurately sums this up for me:

One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.

First impression of the house is that it is bigger than you imagine it would have been. Then it dawns: this was Anne and her seven relatives and friends home/prison for two years straight. The windows were blacked out, so there was no sunshine. And when it all came down to it, after two years in the dark, they were betrayed and sent to concentration camps. So it goes.

By the time we concluded our lap of Amsterdam by boat the sun was starting to dip in the sky.

At night the landscape changes... to a wonderful shade of dodgy red. You may have heard of the Amsterdam red-light district. Well, it's not so much a district, more like... most of the alleys and lane ways in the centre of town. Fun. Strange. Dodgy. Tourist attraction. Drug dealers. Drunks. Tits.

We didn't stay too late in Amsterdam because we wanted to avoid having to catch the night train back to Den Haag (which stops all stations).

The next day took us to Rotterdam. The most modern of the three cities, mainly because the Germans destroyed most of it in 1940 when they invaded. This has liberated Rotterdam from heritage that might have stopped them building interesting looking things like these apartments:

Bizarre aren't they? I'd love to return and see more of Rotterdam's modern architecture. Time constraints meant we had to move on, catch a boat, and see the most quintessential of all Dutch symbols.

That's right, no whirlwind trip to the Netherlands would be complete without a trip to see some windmills. We visited Kinderdijk, a world heritage listed collection of 16 windmills including one we could go inside and check out 17th century engineering.

Ingenious design really: the wind turns the wheel, which turns a drive shaft through the middle of the building. This turns either a worm drive type arrangement, or a water wheel, to move water from lower ground to higher ground. This allowed the Dutch to move flood-water out of the fields into the canals and rivers quicker that it would naturally drain. Fields were back in production quicker after heavy rain. If only Australia had this problem! You can solve flooding with 17th century techniques, but there is no solution to drought.

All too soon it was time to head back to the airport, with a vow to return.

exploring göteborg

Over the last two weekends I've had some time to explore Göteborg. The weather has been warming up... and it was even sunny last weekend!

The town is putting on its summer face. Restaurants are adding outdoor dining tables, people are picnicking by the canals, and the tourist boat tours are starting up.

Slottsskogen (translation: Castle Forest) is a large park and recreation area in Göteborg. It was developed as a English garden, but these days there are soccer pitches, a "zoo" with Swedish animals, and areas for frisbee golf. I haven't played frisbee golf yet, but it looks hilarious; rest assured there'll be a blog post on that when I do end up playing it.

Two weekends ago on a slightly cold overcast Saturday, a colleague of mine, Deepika, and myself went exploring around Slottsskogen. It's quite nice. We found an aviary in the middle of the park. It had all sorts of birds including rainbow Rainbow Lorikeets from Australia! But that wasn't the most interesting thing about this aviary. This aviary included aquatic bird life: penguins! Didn't expect that.

The next weekend was wandering weather. I like to wander aimless in a new city if I have the time. It's a great way to understand the dynamic of the city. What are the flashy expensive suburbs? Where are the grimy blue collar towns? Where is the university? There's sure to be some student pubs around the university - always good to find that :-)

I decided to follow one of the canals through town, and see where it lead me.

It lead past the construction site of a new football stadium. Past their main football stadium. Past a highway leading to Oslo, or Stockholm, or Copenhagen. And then I decided to follow a road up a hill instead of the canal, loosely heading towards a fortress in the distance. On my way up the hill there was a church with a statue of Mermen (that's right: men, not maids) out the front, throwing rocks at each other. The juxtaposition of Greek mythology and Christian architecture was quite bizarre.

April is when the tourist boats start doing tours of Göteborg's canals and harbour. This really illustrates how the historic 17th century centre of the city fits in with the industrial ship-building harbour. These days the ship-building is gone, but repairs are still done here.

Sunday was equally as sunny, and so Deepika and I headed to one of the islands in the mouth of Göta Älv, Göteborg's river. There's heaps of islands in the mouth of the river, and most of them have names ending in "ö". We caught the ferry to Brännö. This car-free island is home to around 800 people. Instead of cars they have funny looking three-wheeled motorcycles. The architecture is very Swedish, and some of the houses were very old and small.

We decided to hike out to the edge of Brännö where it is connected to another island, Galterö, by a small sand bank. Galterö seemed to be uninhabited except for the odd hiker, or family on an outing.

I'll be very happy if the weather stays this good! This weekend I'm off to Amsterdam / Den Haag / Rotterdam, and it's supposed to be warm and sunny. Make sure you visit my photo album, as there's heaps more photos there!

stockholm in a weekend

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, I went and visited Stockholm; Sweden's largest city and capital. From my Australian perspective it's funny that the largest city is the capital - seems like it's getting everything its own way. Makes you realise Canberra is an anomaly, but we already knew that right? :-) Anyway, the Swede's are quite generous when it comes to "the youth". In Sweden you are a youth until you are 25, which means that I get discounted public transport tickets - and even better: discounted airfares with some of the Swedish airlines. Invited to a party in Stockholm, I checked the airfare, and it's less than $200.00 Australian. Going to Stockholm for the weekend was a no brainer.

Another thing an Melbourne native should get used to overseas is most big cities have a rail-link from the airport to the centre of town (Melbourne doesn't!). It shouldn't be a cause for excitement, but hell, I was anyway: the Arlanda Express took 20 minutes to hit Stockholm Central (40km away), and most of the way it was travelling at around 185km/h. (Possibly the fastest I've been on land?..)

The party was fun. Met a bunch of people from work and elsewhere - both Australian and Swedish. And also an Aussie couple that had become Swedes! There was plenty of discussion, nachos, music and red wine. The low down is that you need to visit the Vasa and Gamla Stan when in Stockholm.

The weather gods have been favouring me so far. Awesome snow on arrival, and now only a couple of weeks later Stockholm produced a sunny Saturday for all to enjoy.

First stop when exploring Stockholm is the tourist bureau. Purchasing the Stockholm card seems to be the sensible thing to do for a weekend - it allows unlimited use of the public transport system and entry to all the museums and other attractions. It's a short walk from there to Gamla Stan - otherwise known as "Old Town". Gamla Stan exists completely on the island of Stadsholmen (literally: City Island), and until the 19th century the Stockholm was contained on the island. Given medieval towns were prone to burning down, Gamla Stan contains architecture from the 17th century onwards. This includes the Swedish royal palace which burnt down in 1697 and had to be rebuilt. The palace is still in use today as the official residence of the head of state, and it's open to visitors. It wasn't that interesting however. I should have visited the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) instead, but I didn't know I was looking at it, even when I took a photo of it! Ooops, haha.

Stockholm city hall is an impressive brick building on the corner of one of the islands. Unfortunately the hall was closed for a function on the weekend I visited.


Wandering back out onto the streets, I almost missed the Nobel Prize museum. Don't miss it though - it is really interesting! Over head is a rail which constantly rotates profiles of each of the winners, down the middle you can read about the things that have been "prize worthy" through-out the years and the social and political context these have fitted into. To one side there is a theatrette showing 3 minute interviews with the prize winners - explaining their inventions, discoveries, or contributions in their own words.

At the back there is a space for temporary exhibitions. Currently the museum is hosting "Design4Science", an exhibition dedicated to the sculptures, illustrations, sketches and models that have helped advance molecular biology. For example the structure of haemoglobin was not known until Max Perutz built a model of it from x-ray images he'd taken. Some of the most complex ideas can be simplified by models, such as Ahmed Zewail's 1999 prize winning invention, a method to photograph chemical reactions. The video below demonstrates the concept: a laser is broken by a spinning disc with slots in it, this is aimed at a fast moving 'thing' (i.e. a chemical reaction).

Not content with finishing a day of tourism just yet, I headed to the Armémuseum. Yup, that's a funky Swedish spelling of Army. The museum documents military history in general as well as specific Swedish history. Unfortunately all the information is in Swedish! I got by, but I'm sure it's a lot more interesting if you know the language ;-)

A quintessential Swedish military innovation is moving their bicycle infantry around not by marching, and not even by the soldiers peddling their bikes, but instead the bicycles were towed by a tractor!

That's enough science, culture, and history to work up an apetite! So that night I met up with Shona, a friend from university and work, and one of her colleagues for dinner. We had Indian, and after joking with the waiter that Swede's can't eat hot food, they served up the hottest vindaloo you've ever had! We barely got through it alive. It had to be washed down with beer - of course! After a false start in a crappy bar (though it was cheap), we then hit the suggestively named Berns Salonger. Berns' is quite fancy, and with fancy came the famous Swedish alcohol prices (i.e. expensive!), but it was fun.

Sunday brought an overcast day, but that didn't matter too much, I headed indoors to check out the massive Vasa. The Vasa is a 17th century warship that the Swede's built, and then it promptly sank on its maiden voyage. In fact it didn't even get out of Stockholm! Why? This is a classic study into not being able to say "No" to a demanding customer. The King demanded a massive ship: it was to carry 64 guns, all to be heavy artillery, and 300 soldiers. Ship design in those days usually had one gun-deck, but to accommodate 64 guns the Vasa had two. Putting heavy artillery on the upper deck made the ship unstable and top heavy. The ship was to be manoeuvrable, and so it was built too narrow to support its weight. A stability test (30 men running from side to side) showed that it was unstable, but the Admiral ignored the results because the King was fighting a war in Poland and needed it immediately.

Can anyone see the parallels in software engineering here? Customer demands every feature, plus a few more; testing shows its got bugs but the customer needs the software today; deliver the software and then watch it crash!

Given that it sank, you'd expect this all to be history, but the Baltic Sea isn't as salty as other seas. The ship was well preserved in these waters, and in the 1960's it was found, lifted, sealed with plastic, and then put in a museum. It's all quite impressive and well worth a visit. It's so big that I couldn't get far enough away from it to get a good overall photo of it.

Just down the road from the Vasa is Skansen - a Swedish version of Soveriegn Hill. I was mainly attracted by the promise of seeing some bears. The promise was fulfilled: they had recently woken up from hibernation and were roaming around their enclosure, and even play fighting a bit.

There were an array of other Swedish animals from wild wolves, wolverines, elk, otters and seals, to domesticated horses, ponies, sheep and goats. The main purpose to Skansen is to preserve what life was like in Sweden before and during the early parts of the industrial age. Not that thrilling really.

After Skansen it was time to get back on the Arlanda express, head to the airport, and get whisked back to Göteborg and work for another week.

sport in göteborg

Back in Melbourne I don't shy away from playing a bit of sport. Usually tennis, more recently basketball, and when convenient (and not wet!) I'll ride to work.

Before I left for Sweden I was already thinking about Sweden's tennis heritage: Edberg and Björkman are the ones that come to mind. But there have been more recent Swedish players: Johansson won the Aussie in 2002, and Enqvist lost it in 1999. Most famously Björn Borg only played one Aus. Open because he's soft. Anyway... You'd thinking this great tennis playing nation might have a fair bit of tennis at the amateur (or more accurately: hack) level. Nup, it snows here so they play indoors - limiting the number of courts available.

This doesn't matter though as my work mates have taught me another game. Again, it's been influenced by the snow. It's called Innebandy (or Floorball in English), and it's basically indoor hockey, but also influenced by ice hockey too (you can go behind the goals for instance).

We play three on three, and with no goalie either. It's quick and scores come often.

The other sport I've taken up while I'm here is a bit more ridiculous... I've travelled 15,000kms to join a footy club! Mind you, they've got a cool name: The Göteborg Berserkers! Would you want to play a sword wielding Viking berserker? I haven't played footy in a good 8 years, and it's fair to say I haven't got any better since high school. Luckily, they don't seem to be much better ;-)

Funny thing is footy here is played properly: in the mud! No drought to worry about here, there's plenty of soft turf to land in. Mind you I was doing that on my own accord as I don't have studded boots. Volley's don't have much grip in the mud... actually they have none. Might be time for a trip to the shops.