The Fifth of Six

When we first arrived in the Nerherlands 5 weeks ago, everyone kept apologizing for the terrible weather - "It feels like November..." they would say in perfect English, after telling me they spoke English "a little bit." And indeed it was unusually cold and wet. So it's only fitting that by the end of our stay, the weather should be unusually hot and dry. But for the most part, the Dutch don't seem awfully surprised, since there's no serious debate here about the changeable climate. I've heard repeatedly, for example, that appreciable amounts of snow are basically accepted as a thing of the past. 

So to tackle the heat wave yesterday, we headed for a lake near Leer, Germany with Katja and her family. It's only about 30 minutes by car from here in Bad Nieuweschans, and they are staying there for several days holiday with Katja's friend Andrea. 

We packed a picnic lunch for the beach, and the boys and I contributed the exotic American specialty dish, PB&J sandwiches... Our Dutch friends were incredulous and to be fair, these WERE made with lemon curd. But really, the big deal was the very idea of putting PB with jelly, of any kind. Here PB is pretty exclusively paired with hagelslag. But everybody tried it - and this outrageous combo was deemed "interesting" and "an acquired taste."

After our exotic meal, we pretty much camped out in the water, and Katja was the lucky one to be "treated" to a mud bath by her kids. 

For clean up we headed over to Andrea's house near Leer and the boys had a chance to check out Andrea's Dutch army truck that's been converted into an RV.

This vehicle has the noteworthy accomplishment of having made 2, trans-African tours!

The day wrapped up back in Bad Nieuweschans where we hosted everyone for dinner. This would never have worked in our teeny cottage of course, but luckily we're still caretaking for the main house and could spread everyone out at the big garden table.

Thunder and lightning ended the evening and broke the heat at least until the early morning. But by 11:00, it was the kind of hot when breathing makes you sweat. So a walk in the bos (forest) seemed like it might be a heat-minimizing alternative. But finding a forest is not as easy in NL as it is in Maine. Because land here is basically for human habitation or for farming, if you want land for anything else, you have to preserve it as such. So I looked on the map for an area marked "bos." I found it in the closet city, interestingly- Sterrebos. We jumped the train to Winschoten and ate our fabulous PB&Js in the shade of the bos. 

In addition to being home to an urban forest, Winschoten also boats 3 urban windmills. We discovered the first in what I have to call a Dutch strip mall and the second in the shadow of a used car dealership and gas station. 

City Hall is a spectacular monument though. Our neighbor here in the village works in this building, along with the city's Burgermeister (meaning mayor - but we need the 2 dots over the U).

I had to ask our neighbor about the onion dome atop the tower, since it conjures up St Petersburg, Russia maybe, but not at all Holland. Eef, our neighbor, had no explanation except that the architect was popular during the Victorian era when the hall was constructed... Who can argue with that?

And I will close out with a sabbatical research update. My 16th interview had to be rescheduled as a video call in early August when I'm back in the states. In the meantime, the daily work of coding about 22 hours of interviews continues - but does not make for very colorful photos...