Tulips!

I’ve been asked where all the tulips are. Tulips are mostly grown in Northern Holland, so Maastricht doesn’t have huge fields of tulip bulbs. I did manage to take a couple of pictures of tulips decorating the roundabout just up the street from our flat.

A better place to get tulips this time of year is the Bloemenmarkt in Amsterdam. Dan & I stumbled upon it last Saturday morning while looking for the American Book Club store. The length of an entire block is taken up with stalls selling flowers, bulbs, and seeds.

There were even a couple of booths dedicated to selling cacti (and big ones).

We didn’t pick up any bulbs this time because we would have had to carry them all over the city with us, but the variety and prices looked great. I will be going back some time to pick some up.

See more images from the Market here.

Home is where the wifi is…

The internet is up. The movers dropped off our bed, computer and mattress. Even though we are still waiting for flooring in the loft, the flat is starting to feel like home. Its amazing how having an internet connection really makes a difference.

Tomorrow the TV comes and we’ll get to hook the XBox & Wii up.

Episode 3 of Maastricht Minutiae

This weekend we talk about our sudden overnight trip to Amsterdam for a one day conference Dan had to attend. I used the opportunity to go see a museum on my own and then on Saturday we checked out more sights and sounds.

Click Here to get the podcast!

Some of the things we mention on the podcast are:
- Van Gogh Museum: An excellent museum that really leads you though the life of Van Gogh and some related work from his contemporaries. The “And the Colors of the Night” special exhibit is going on until DATE. Link
- The American Book Club bookstore: An independent, English language bookstore with a huge collection of nearly everything you could want. Link
- Canal Tour: Cheap and not really worth the 8 Euros per person.
- Artis Zoo: A quality, in-city zoo with a large bird population. Link
- Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum): A small museum about the ways the Dutch people resisted the Nazis during World War II. Link
- Rijkmuseum: A huge art museum that we haven’t visited yet. Link

Photos from our trip to Amsterdam can be seen by Clicking Here.

We were experimenting with recording on this podcast and unfortunately, the sound quality isn’t very good. We’ll try not to do it again.

Episode 2 of Maastricht Minutiae

Episode 2 of Maastricht Minutiae is now available for download at TalkShoe. In this episode we talk about where Maastricht is located geographically, renting in Maastricht, and our opinions of our new apartment. I also give a horribly mangled rendition of this Pierre Kemp poem as translated by Google Translate. Free free to drop us comments or questions here and we’ll try to address them on future podcasts.

Click Here for Maastricht Minutiae!

Update: Please listen to Episode 2b for a quick geography correction from Dan.

Sundays are enforced lazy

I’m not sure what the Dutch do with their Sundays, but it definitely isn’t shopping for cookie sheets or buying groceries. They probably don’t even wake up early; something I’ve done nearly every day since arriving in Maastricht. Of course, this morning I had the extra help of Einstein jumping down from the windowsill and onto my stomach. I really wasn’t feeling like going back to bed after that. Why risk another pounce from a 14 pound cat?

So once we got our day going, we went out for a bike ride around the outskirts of the city. It was mostly residential, so I only took a couple pictures (which I forgot to upload). We actually live very close by an old earthen-work. I believe we’re outside the town walls proper at our apartment, so we’d be at the mercy of invading enemies if we lived when those walls were still in use. We biked a short distance along the river Maas as well, which afforded a peek into the back gardens of some rather well-to-do residents. The return trip was uphill. Not steep, but long. My bike handed it fairly well.

Back at home I really wanted to bake something, but my new microwave/oven didn’t come with cookie sheets. Instead, we decided to attempt a treat from my youth. Fry Dough. I won’t go so far to say it was the Navajo style bread my mother made for us when I was a kid (I had no baking powder or yeast). It turned out warm and fresh and greasy, but kind of dense. We ate it all with butter and maple syrup (it was a small batch). Hopefully I can get my mother’s actual recipe and make it better next time.

It occurred to me while frying the dough that we are not using corn-based vegetable oil. Sunflower oil seems to be the common option.

Of course no day would be complete without hunting up internet access so I can bring you a small taste of our exploits.

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