On a different note, Delft is an amazing city. This is a perfect home base, a city not too big where I'm overwhelmed but also not too small. When I got back one night from one of our trips, my thought was "I'm back home now." It just dawned on me this week how much I'm going to miss Delft and how lucky I'm here long enough to get to really know the city more than a normal tourist would. The bartender at our favorite bar knows who we are when we walked in. Her name is Gabby. I don't even know any of the bartenders in Boston! Enough on that though.
Last Thursday (7/30/15) we spent most of the day working on projects again with a short lecture on bus rapid transit in the afternoon. I got to sleep in a little bit later than normal, which was nice. I took a long lunch and walked around the market in the Old City of Delft. I got some delicious bread and some fried mussels from two different stands. Only 3 euro for a plate of fried mussels! I'm never going to want to pay full price for things once I'm back in the US.
I spy the market!
So much bread!
And fried fish!
And Cheese!
Also had some time to take an artsy photo in front of the antique shop.
Who wouldn't want to live here?
In the evening we were off on another outing with the program. This time we were headed to the nearby Town of Wateringen. Tonight was the night of Wateringen's annual summer festival. The festival is based around a bike race where member of the Dutch team for the Tour de France come and compete. Apparently the Tour de France competitors get a lot of money from touring around after the big race competing in local races like this. It was actually pretty cool to see all of the racers go by over and over again. The course was a roughly 1.5 km circuit and the racers all went around about 100 times or so. Those racers can really cruise!
Our location to watch the race was the front yard of one of our professor's friends; Peter Van Rijn. Peter was kind enough to open his home to all of us and feed us soup and Chinese food. It was good having a headquarters where we could station ourselves for the evening. After the race we all went inside and our Professor Furth led us in a group sing along. He played the piano and we sat around the room and sang different songs. I found it a little odd and felt a little bit like I was 5 years old or something. Group sing alongs always seem a little too forced in my opinion.
We also walked around to see more of the race and the festival. It still amazes me the lack of open container laws here in the Netherlands. There were stands everywhere selling beer and wine, and people are able to walk around where ever they want with their drinks. People don't have to stay in one little roped off area.
Another fun fact of the evening is that it was one of the coldest nights I've experienced so far. I had on jeans and a sweatshirt and I was still a little chilly. It felt more like October than July! The next day a woman told me that it was one of the coldest nights ever in the month of July and in some towns the temperature got below 0 degrees Celsius! In July!
Waiting for the race to start
And here they go!
I didn't know bikes could go that fast! A few cars were following behind the cyclists and the cars had trouble going around the curves at such a high speed.
So many people are out to celebrate in Wateringen!
Finish Line!
Looks like the sun is starting to set.
A beautiful bike ride back in the dark to Delft.
On Friday (7/31/15) we were off on another day trip with the program! Today our destination was the City of Haarlem in the North Holland province. Haarlem is a really pretty city. It is slightly larger than Delft, and the two seemed to have a lot of similarities. The borough in New York City was actually named after this city here in the Netherlands.
Our first destination was the Corrie Ten Boom House. Corrie Ten Boom led the resistance movement for the Haarlem area during WWII. On the museum we toured her house, and saw where she hid Jewish people and other resistance workers during the war from the Nazis. We learned about how one day the gestapo came and arrested her family and went through the entire house. However, they did not find the six people hiding in a false wall who were able to successfully escape. Corrie Ten Boom's story is the inspiration for the book and the movie "The Hiding Place". I had never heard this story before, but I thought the museum was excellent and was really touching. I'm glad they added this museum visit into the schedule.
The location in the house for the hiding place. Hiders needed to enter through the bottom shelf of the closet. Luckily it was a good enough hiding place that the Nazis never found them!
The outside of the Corrie Ten Boom House.
After the museum we had another presentation at the city hall. We learned about Haarlem's transportation plan and the new Bus Rapid Transit Route that was built to connect Haarlem to Schiphol Airport. We ended up riding the bus later in the day when we were leaving the city and catching the train back to Delft from Schiphol.
After lunch we took a short walking tour with the city officials. We then wandered around on our own after the tour ended so we could see more of the city. It's a really charming little city!
Main Square in Haarlem
The roof of a cool looking building
The main cathedral in the square. The little stand in the front sells really good mini pancakes with powdered sugar.
More of Haarlem's main square.
Look at that brick pattern!
More cool rooftops.
Every good Dutch city needs at least one canal.
Classic Haarlem
People eating and people-watching back on the main square.
A nice green alley way of a street.
One of the shopping streets in Haarlem.
In the evening we took the train back to Den Haag. We got a quick dinner at the train station and then we were off to the evening's activities: a soccer match! Kyle suggested that we go see a soccer match while in Europe, and a group of us agreed. It turned out tonight the local team in Den Haag (ADO Den Haag) was having an exposition game against Real Mallorca (from Spain). It was only an exposition game, but it was fun. Soccer is actually more interesting to watch than I give it credit for, And the home team won!
At Kyocera Stadium in Den Haag.
Proof that we were actually there.
More proof!
Go Team!
I ended up buying a scarf! My favorite team in the Dutch Soccer league is most definitely ADO Den Haag. Their mascot is a stork!
In the evening it was back to Delft. We grabbed a couple drinks and then I went home relatively early to prepare for our trip the next day to Brussels!!
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