Batavia Werf

Last Saturday we went to a place called Batavia werf, where there was a reconstruction of a old ship from the seventeenth century.  We got to explore the entire ship, which at some places was five stories high (even though the ceiling of the fourth level was so low that you almost had to crawl).  On the inside, the ship seemed very large, though it didn't look that big from the outside.  Also, they are working on building a different ship, we saw what they had already built.          Ethan                

the lowest level of the ship

London - Debbie's thoughts

 We went to an Evensong service at Westminster Abbey - awesome!  The Evensong service is a contemplative service, so there is no sermon and no mass; just prayers, an Old and New Testament reading, and a choir singing (sometimes with organ accompaniment, sometimes without).  The music was beautiful (in Latin and English) and the building incredible, but it made me think of man's sinful nature and how easy it is to turn from the truth and stop following after God.  For this amazing structure, built to show the glory of God and inspire men to worship Him, was filled with large statues of Prime Ministers, church leaders, and other important men, with plaques on the walls honoring this group or that group, and elaborate burial markers of those deemed important enough to be buried here.  Though the burial markers may have been intended to remind one of the brevity of life, it all seemed to glorify man and his accomplishments rather than the Creator and Redeemer.

             We went to the Tower of London which is so much more than just the white tower.  It's a whole castle - very large, very medieval looking  and very cool.  We walked on some of the walls from tower to tower (there are more than a dozen towers and each has a name) and got to go inside several of them. (What a great place this would be to play hide and seek or capture the flag!)  Some were used as residences, royal and otherwise, some for prisoners, one is a chapel, etc.  The crown jewels are in the old guards' barracks building and included a video of the Queen's coronation. (Man, she's been Queen for a long time, since 1953!)  Most of the crowns and scepters are so heavy it's no wonder they're only used for special ceremonies.  Some of the crowns were only worn once!

Tower Bridge

  When we went to the British Museum we didn't have time to see everything but we got to see most of it.  I liked the statues, gates, and reliefs from ancient Assyria the best.  The Assyrian lions/griffins were awesome. They even had reliefs from a palace in Nineveh - they made me think about Job and wonder if these were from the palace of the king who repented in response to Job's unwilling message of deliverance.

 The 3 stooges?  Maybe not, but still. . . something here reminds me of them.

The Churchill War Rooms and Museum below one of the treasury buildings - very interesting. The rooms were pretty much abandoned right after the war and left locked up as they were until someone decided to turn them into a museum.

Of course, no visit to London would be complete without seeing Buckingham Palace.

    - They only allow tours for 2 months in the summer and we were not invited to tea, so we have no pictures of the inside or of the Queen - sorry.

Going to England.

On Sunday we drove to the coast of France and took a ferry to England.  Then we drove to London and to our hotel which was kind of strange since they drive on the left side of the road in England.    We got through London by using the underground and overground metros.  This is a picture of the white cliffs of dover, which was taken from the ferry.    

One of the places we visited is the royal observatory, which is where time is measured from.  They had lots of telescopes and machines for telling time.  The observatory was on a hill, so we had a very good view of London.               -Ethan    

In England

 Buckingham Palace was pretty big and the Queen was living there for the time. The gate around the palace was decorated and there was a big fountain in the front.

We went and saw Big Ben, which is located right  next to the Parliament house.




                  







                                                                                    
                                                    We saw the Eye from across the river it went really slow and rather boring.                                                                                                                  
                                                                                    


  -Anna











                                         

The British Museum and Westminster Abbey

At the British Museum, there was an exhibit on Zimbabwean money.  There was a Zimbabwean trillion dollar bill!  It is amazing to realize that all the money in this picture isn't worth enough to buy a large sheet of paper! 

This is a picture of the East entrance of Westminster Abbey. 

 We got to go and listen to the Evensong service,  which was really neat. 

Here is a picture of Dad holding a broad sword.  

We got to see lots of arms and armor at the British Museum and the Tower of London.  I saw two swords that were as tall as Dad!

Here is a picture of the Rosetta Stone, which is at the British Museum.  The British museum was one of my favorite things that we saw while in London.  -Leah

Biking around

On Wednesday we rented bikes and rode around for the afternoon.  We thought about buying some used bikes, but we would only be here for two more months, so we didn't.  The bikes were very nice, and we rode for about three or more hours.  We were pretty tired after riding that much, so we just relaxed the rest of the evening and Thursday.      -Ethan        

                                           Here is the model of a rail gun.

On Sunday we went to museum called Liberty Park, it has the most military vehicles in Europe and below is one of the bullets at the museum which was fired by a Rail gun. (Above ) the gun was so big it took two railroad tracks to hold it.

World War II cemetery

                                                                                            
                                  
        We went two a World War II cemetery last week.  I don't know how many were buried there, but there were a bunch of soldiers that were unknown, and almost all of of them were younger than thirty.
      

While we were there were a lot of butterflies and I got a lot of pictures of them.  Anna

Here are some mushroom pictures that I took while we were hiking.  Because it is so moist here, there are lots more mushrooms here than at home.  We have seen a lot of large colorful mushrooms, and I think they're really cool.  -Leah

We went to Brussels Belgium on Saturday to try to do some scuba diving, see the Waterloo Battlefield, and last of all check out the Atomium.

Our first plan did not go so well; my co worker Steve Oplatek and I were looking forward to scuba diving in the indoor dive pool known as Nemo 33 (http://www.nemo33.com/) but we both forgot our Padi cards and could not get in to dive.  Oh well that is the way it goes, we came here to work not dive, so its no surprise we forgot the cards.  The good news is we now know where the place is and what to bring and not bring the next time we're out here.

After accepting defeat at Nemo 33 we went to the Waterloo Battlefield where Napoleon was defeated for the last time against the allied army.  It was this battle that marked a turning point in the history of Europe and a new era of peace for Europe.  Below is a picture of the five of us before we hiked up the Lion Mound which was a monument built in memory of the soldiers who lost their lives in the battle.

Here is the view from the top with Debbie climbing the stairs.

Here is Ethan on top of the Lion Mound.

Here is Leah on top of the Lion Mound.

We also found this really cool map of the battlefield on top of the mound.  You could get a very good perspective of the battlefield from up on top of the mound.  Overall this was a very cool place to visit; I am glad I didn't have to live during this period of history.

Someone from work recommended that I visit a place called the Atomium.  Which is a very unusual building that was built in Brussels for the 1958 World Fair.  We got to go inside and all the way up to the top of the building.  Even better I got a nice souvenir shirt!

Sorry no pictures today, the function that is supposed to allow us to add pictures hasn't been working for the  past few days.  Yesterday we went to a WWII cemetery and most of the soldiers were pretty young like 18 through 30.
-Anna

The Living History Festival

On Sunday, we went to the Living History Festival.  They had reenactments of different types of battles, from different times in history.  These are a few of the swords that were displayed at the Living History Festival.

 There were many different groups of soldiers at the festival.  There were Roman gladiators, a Scottish warrior band, Napoleonic soldiers, Medieval soldiers, 16th century pirates, Viking warriors, and WWII soldiers.  This picture is of the re-enactment of a 15th century battle.  In this battle, they had cannons and archers.

This was the re-enactment of a WWII battle.  This re-enactment was my favorite.  We were standing so close to the soldiers that we kept getting hit by bullet shells!  -Leah

The archaeological park in Xanten

On Saturday, we went to an archaeological park in Xanten, Germany.  The park is built where there used to be a Roman town.  This is a picture of the ruins of a roman temple.  Also in the archaeological park , they had a museum(which had lots of roman artifacts), some rebuilt roman buildings, and other things.                                                                        

This is a picture of a reconstructed amphitheater at the archaeological park.  It was very big.

Ethan

This is a church we saw in Cuijk, a town close to where we are staying.  We also went inside the church,it was very large and had lots of paintings on the walls.

This is a wall mural of Saint George and the Dragon that we saw inside the church at Cuijk.  Almost all of the walls in the church were covered in murals like this one, depicting different scenes from the Bible.  I thought they were really neat.

I took this picture while we were at the grocery store.  We were in the meat section, when I saw this.  It was so funny, that I had to take a picture of it!  It seems that they have happy salami here in Holland!

This tower is part of a church in the town of Mill.  The church was really large, and it had a really cool clock on the tower.  

A day of exploring

We did some exploring today in Holland.  This morning we took a walk near where we live in the villiage of Plasmolen.  Below is a picture of Leah and I walking in the  Saint Jansberg forest.

Everyone had a good time walking and getting some fresh air.  Below is a picture of a water mill that we saw on our hike.

Is this some kind of crazy Dutch tradition?

No it's just the crazy American kids!

After our hike we went into the big city of Nijmegen to do some exploring.  One of the interesting things in Nijmegen was there were very few shops open because it was Sunday.  Seems like a very good tradition to me.  I did see a Belgian Chocolate shop there but they were closed; I'll have to stop by while I am here and get my Dad some chocolates.

We also saw some old ruins from the Valkhof castle in Nijmegen's city center.  Below is a picture of ruins of the chapel of that castle.  Unfortunately there was not much left of the castle we'll have to find a more intact castle in the future.

Flying and jet lag

We flew out to Holland on 9/11.  While sitting at the Milwaukee airport they announced a moment of silence to remember and reflect on the events of that day.  We flew from Milwaukee to Newark, NJ; which was Leah, Ethan, and Anna's first flight ever..  None of them turned green or worse but Anna's ears were bothering her.  Here is a picture of the kids on the plane.

I didn't get a picture of myself because I was holding the camera and besides it's just me.  I didn't get a picture of Debbie because she was sitting in the row in front of me and I didn't think you would want to see the back of her head.  Our flight to Newark went very well but we had a very long layover in Newark which we spent eating at Chiles and just looking around.  In the terminal we saw another reminder of 9/11 and that was the New York skyline.

We left our house Saturday morning before 6:00 in the morning (Wisconsin time) to catch our flight in Milwaukee.  We arrived in Düsseldorf, Germany at 6:00 in the morning (German time).  It wasn't 24 hours of travel time but with the time change in all it seem weird.  We got to our hotel for the first night but our room was not ready; so we went for a long drive through some of the surrounding areas.  I saw some windmills but did not get any picture of them because I was driving and everyone else was asleep or wishing they were asleep.  We're now in our bungalow; below is a picture of the front.  Maybe later I'll take some picture of the inside.  It's very similar to a cabin you'd rent up North.

Jet lag has affected myself and Anna the most; we both keep waking up around 4:00 in the morning and can't go back to sleep.  So we've been just hanging out around the table drinking coffee and talking.  They drink a lot of strong coffee here which is something I could get use to.