Steak on a Stone

We're back in Amsterdam after our stressful week of birth control babysitting. Mom, Dad, new baby and, yes, the still-living, still-breathing, and even-once-bathed two year old are all home together. You can check on their progress at the Duffy's link on the right. It was great to be able to help out and, even with the stress, we had a lot of fun. It's always great to be back in Germany and we were able to close out our trip with a visit to Rob's favorite restaurant, Gasthof (or Guesthouse) Schüttersmühle, or, as is more commonly known, Steak on a Stone.

Gasthof Schüttersmühle is on the eastern edge of an area of Germany known as the Fränkische Schweiz, or Franconian Switzerland. The Fränkische Schweiz is an area within Bavaria that is a huge tourist destination for Germans. The geography is similar to that of Switzerland (hence the name), and includes towering cliffs, hundreds of caves, a river for kayaking and rafting, several castles, and boasts the highest density of breweries in the world.

When you enter the guesthouse, you are greeted by its owner, Herr Heinz Zitzmann, who is a giant, bear of a man with huge paws, er, hands and a bushy white mustache. He's also about the friendliest German ever and when he remembers you will greet you with an enthusiastic, 'ah, the best American.' Rob hadn't been there for over two years, but Herr Zitzmann definitely recognized him and shamed him for not coming around anymore. We told him we now live in the Netherlands and when he brought out our dinners, he presented Erika's to 'the best lady from Holland.'

As far as dinner goes, in addition to a full menu of delicious German food, including an amazing Trout Cream Soup, the restaurant offers several cuts of meat served raw on hot stones that are heated in the oven. You then prepare the meat to your liking, and can also dip it in or grill it with one of 4 sauces on the side:


Washed down with a half-liter of Hefeweizen and this meal can't be beat. It was the perfect ending to our week. Just look at this happy guy:

Renting Skis, a Car, and a Two-Year-Old

This has been quite a week: We went skiing in Garmisch, Germany, Erika celebrated her (redacted)th Birthday, and our friends, the Duffys, celebrated the arrival of a new little girl. Garmisch was pretty good for spring skiing, the valley was green, but the mountains were white:


We got quite a few runs in and then took Erika out to celebrate her big day, where she got to make her own birthday drink:


The next day we headed back up and during one of the trips up the gondola, we got the call about the new baby. So, we packed up the car and drove into Germany to help out (and hold the baby):


Mom and Baby are sequestered in the hospital (they're both fine, just getting some rest), and Dad is making his way back from a, um, business trip, so we've volunteered to watch the new big sis, Denali. We've always had a great time hanging out with Denali, but we really jumped in with both feet this time. This little kid is running us ragged! We've never been so tired. And there are two of us. We have no idea how Vicki does this on her own.

We hope to get some pics up, but right now, we've got our hands full with this monkey:

Happy St. Paddy's Day

Two One-Horse Towns Minus the Horses

There isn't much to say about Rob and Brian's trip to Alkmaar and Edam. Both towns are famous for their cheese markets and little else. So, it was a little disappointing to get up and catch the train to Alkmaar only to find that the famous cheese markets don't start until April. Rob is too nice to point out whether or not Brian's guide book explicitly stated that the cheese market doesn't open until April, right Brian?


Still, the boys made the most of it. If Haarlem is a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Amsterdam, then Alkmaar might be a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Haarlem. The boys also tried to see the obligatory Giant European Church in Alkmaar, but it, too, was closed for renovations. At least the cafés were open. Oh, and Brian got to see his first windmill:


Alkmaar also has a strong sense of community and a real dedication to green living. The light posts are manually operated and the city runs shifts each night to power the lights:

Okay, maybe that's just some sort of art piece, but never underestimate the Dutch...

If Alkmaar is a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Haarlem, then Edam might be a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Alkmaar. Do you see a pattern here? Somewhere in Holland there is a little village that fits in the palm of your hand and radiates Old Europe charm. Edam isn't quite that small, but it's close. And, while the cheese market was closed, the boys did buy some local cheeses from a local grower and we will definitely be headed back for more. For some reason, Rob only took one picture in Edam, and though it's been posted before, here it is again: Baby Angel Death Monkey!

God Loves Brian

This is an absolutely true story.

After Brian and Rob saw the auction house, they caught a bus to Haarlem. Like most Dutch towns, Haarlem is very charming, even more laid-back than Amsterdam and there are a few cool things to do there, like seeing the Frans Hals Museum and the beautiful city square (-it's also a great town for shopping, so we try to take all the girls there when they visit).

Trying to get out of the cold, they went into the Grote of St. Bavokerk, the 14th century, obligatory, giant European church in Haarlem. St. Bavokerk is interesting for two reasons: it has a beautiful lantern tower:

and it has one of the finest church organs in the world:

That thing is 98 feet tall and has over 5000 pipes. Both Handel and a young Mozart came to Haarlem to play it.

The boys wandered around the church for about 15 minutes. It wasn't any warmer inside, but they were happy to be out of the wind. The interior of the church is, um, pretty much the same as every other Giant European Church, though the ceiling is cool, as it's made out of wood, and there is a 15th century wooden bench where bread was distributed to the poor. Here's a shot of the ceiling:


Anyway, as they were standing under the giant organ deciding where to go next, Brian sneezed. And, before Rob could say 'Bless you' or 'Gesundheit' or 'Gross,' the organ sounded off with a thunderous 5 notes and then went silent. It was awesome. It had been silent for the entire time they had been in there and it remained silent for the next 5 minutes as they made their way out, but for that one split second after Brian sneezed, God blessed him.

The Flower Market

When Brian arrived, he said he wanted to see this "flower market in Aalsmeer" he'd read about in his book. Amsterdam has a handful of flower markets, including the famous 'floating' market, but the market in Aalsmeer is less tents and shopkeepers and more of a market in the stock market sense.


The Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer is the giant auction house where over 6000 growers sell their flowers and plants to over 1000 buyers and exporters. The building itself is one of the largest in the world, with over 10 million square feet of space and its own rail line. Inside there are 4 large auction rooms where buyers use a high-to-low bidding method (more on that in a sec) to buy the flowers.


The flowers are stacked on carts and run through the room as two auctioneers talk about each flower, answer questions, and occasionally pull them out to demonstrate quality. In a typical day, the auction house sells over 20 million flowers and plants.


The bidding is controlled through computers and runs off this clock system, where the numbers are the price and it runs from high to low. This means the buyers try to wait for the price to drop, but the first bid sets the price. If you click on the picture below, you'll see a red dot at the 40 mark (around 5 o'clock on the clock face). The red dot travels from the 1 position (12 o'clock) counter-clockwise very, very quickly. This plant has just been purchased for 40 cents per plant. All the other numbers on the clock face list the quantity of plants and other information.


It is an incredibly fast system. There are over 60,000 sales a day and something like 300 transactions a minute (there are 4 auction rooms, each with two clocks). The flowers seldom stop moving through the room and the clock jumps directly to the next sale. It's a pretty calm system, though we did watch one guy maniacally jam his laptop as he tried to place a bid. He didn't get it.

There's not much to the tour. Mostly you walk along a catwalk above the floor and watch flower carts move here and there with occasional automated stations that explain the action. But the sheer volume of flowers makes it worth the trip. The market basically sets the prices for much of the European flower market and is a huge influence on the worldwide price of roses, as nearly 2 billion roses a year flow through Aalsmeer. Not a bad way to spend half a morning, if you don't mind getting up early to catch the bus. We'll get some more pictures on our Flickr page soon.

A Very Memorable Weekend

This weekend we hosted Erika's cousin, Elizabeth, and her boyfriend, Peter. Elizabeth and Peter are both studying at Cambridge, so they are ridiculously smart and we tried to communicate with them through a series of grunting and pointing, and they helped by drawing pictures for us when we got too confused and trying to limit their vocabulary to 1- and 2-syllable words for us. Plus, Peter's actually British, so everything he says sounds intelligent anyway.

Anyway, we spent Saturday on Rob's patented Amsterdam Walking Tour and then they spent Sunday seeing the various museums in town. It was a great weekend, but not without a little excitement. Needing a break from the mindless walking and turning around (all part of Rob's patented tour), we decided to enjoy a nice canal cruise. The weather was nice enough and the views from the canals are quite lovely. We should have suspected something was amiss, when we first laid eyes on our Captain, The Ancient Mariner. He was a nice guy, but was somewhere between 90 and 150 years old. The way these tours work is that a tape plays in 4-6 languages pointing out various buildings and other attractions and The Captain waves his hand in the general direction of whatever the tape references. Everything was fine until one of the passengers decided to partake in one of Amsterdam's main attractions (not the one in the Red Light District. The other one.) We're not really sure what happened next, but suddenly, as we were making a 90 degree right turn into a narrow old lock, The Captain and The Stoner got into some sort of fracas at the front of the boat and one of them- we think The Stoner- triggered the fire extinguisher. Now, here is what these boats look like:

(Note, this is a pic of a different company's boat, not the boat we were on.)

So you see that the boat is encased in glass. When the fire extinguisher went off, it went off until it was empty, completely filling our boat with white smoke. There are tiny windows that slide open on every other seat and (the smart) people stuck their heads out to get some fresh air. Everybody else got up and ran to the front of the boat. In the meantime, The Captain had opened the door to let the smoke out, at which point The Stoner jumped through the door and onto the lock and walked off into the city like nothing happened. Oh, and the boat bumped into the lock pretty good, too. Luckily, all the crazy people now crowding The Captain at the front of the boat didn't seem to rock the boat or try to escape. A few minutes later the smoke dissipated and we were on our way. Everyone was laughing and standing and knocking the chemical powder out of their hair and clothing, but here was the most amazing part: The Captain continued to give the tour. The tape never stopped and as soon as he could steer again, he was right back with the pointing, like nothing ever happened! Or like it happened all the time... We were a little too concerned during the event to pull out the camera, but here's a pic of the residue:


Finally, the tour ended, everyone filed out (no tips for our man this time) and did a thorough pat down on the docks. The tourists that were waiting for the next boat suddenly weren't too sure they wanted to go and The Captain's coworkers all huddled around, trying to figure out what happened. We don't speak much Dutch, but it was pretty clear that even The Captain wasn't really sure. Some of the customers seemed to want some kind of explanation or recompensation, but we figured that was enough excitement for one day. Well, most of us did. We didn't get 50 yards away when Erika found herself on the receiving end of a pigeon's, um, delivery. Yeah. Poor Erika, covered in chemical powder, which we could kind of taste a little, and then besmirched by a flying rat.

But wait, it gets worse. These things always come in threes, and later that night as we ran to catch a tram, Erika tripped and dove, Superman-style, along the pavement. She's okay (though we did miss that tram). You know you've had a rough weekend when spending 3 hours on Sunday doing your taxes is the least stressful event. Still, despite all the bad luck, we had a great time showing Liz and Peter around and look forward to seeing them in England sometime. Though, maybe without the fire and the pigeon droppings, if that's not too much to ask.

Hungry?

We'd like to introduce a new feature to our page: the Food we're eating list on the right (under the book list). We've gotten so many compliments on Erika's work in the kitchen, we wanted a way to be able to share more than just pictures. So, if you're so inclined, you can click on the listed meal and it will take you to a post with a recipe and maybe a picture or two of our attempt at it.