Day 34 – July 10, 2011 – Sunny Summer Sundays…

Best...Windmill... Ever!

Number of days in Amsterdam – 34

Number of days without a bike theft – 30

Days left until the close of the Kickstarter Project – 7

Days since it last rained – 0 1

Yesterday was a good run for Kickstarter, pushing us into the sixtieth percentile, but as anyone who took part in the American educational system could tell you, that’s not a passing grade. So I need to continue the persistent requests for you to all get on board and become a part of the group that’s getting behind the Amsterdam Expat Project! Just seven days remain in our push to get funded, and this is serious crunch time. How serious is this crunch time?

It’s Tim’s Crunchy serious.

Yes Tim, it IS crunchy...

I don’t know who you are, Tim, but I gotta hand it to you – you make a damn fine granola.

Available now at your local Dirk van den Broek.

And back to our fund drive…

Things are getting to that rallying point, where we need everyone to dig in and kick in to the Kickstarter drive. And for those of you who have donated, once again I offer up tons of thanks, and ask you to help spread the word, so we can make that last surge that gets this project to its fully-funded destination. It’s all or nothing, so we get the funding… or we get nothing.

Now, on with the Amsterdam Expat Adventure Hour!

As the story goes, prior to our staring over as expats, we had never set foot in Amsterdam. We’d never seen the city, we rented this flat sight unseen. That’s not to say we’d never set foot on Dutch soil, though.

People ask us if we’d been to Amsterdam before, and we have to reply, “Just the airport,” because we have flown through the Netherlands a few times. Schiphol Airport is a hub connecting Detroit with much of Europe, and US travelers on their way to European destinations often fly through. (European travelers also often go through Detroit on their way to the US, which prompts a similar response from some Europeans who’ve been to the States. “Ever been to Detroit?” “Just the airport.”)

Once, due to a delayed flight and a missed connection, we spent several hours in Schiphol Airport, waiting to return home. We whiled away the time in the Heineken beer garden, briefly entertaining the idea of making a run into the city, but afraind of getting tied up in security and missing yet another connection.

If Schiphol Airport’s latest attraction had been there at the time, though, we could have at least caught a glimpse of the city we’re now calling home.

Amsterdam has unveiled the Floating Dutchman. It’s a bus tour of the city, that leaves and returns to the airport.

But the bus drives in water.

As in, you get on a bus at the airport, and it drives you around in the water!

Seriously, it’s like Greyhound Bus sponsored the latest James Bond movie, and in a desperate grab for product placement decided to put Bond in a bus – that drives on the water!

It leaves from and goes back to the airport, without stopping or without letting anyone on or off (I wonder if they tried it once, and realized you can’t open a bus door underwater, and so changed the business plan?), so it’s ideal for folks who have a layover at the airport (the trip calls for a minimum of four hours layover to finish its trip of 2 hours and 45 minutes), and want to add one more bit of sightseeing to their adventure, rather than simply sucking down a few Heinekens.

Take a look:

I have to wonder how many failed attempts they had at starting this up, and how many buses are sitting at the bottom of the canals.

Today was a gorgeous sunny day, and we wasted a good portion of the day in the way Sundays are intended – we lounged around the flat, ate a big breakfast, and did a little shopping.

Then it was time to drink some beer look at a windmill.

Amsterdam actually has eight windmills within its borders. One (the Sloten Windmill) is still in use and can be toured to learn its workings. That sounds important, and perfectly fun and educational. This is not the most important windmill in Amsterdam, though, so it was not the windmill that prioritized for our first.

We went to the De Gooyer Windmill.

This windmill is actually the most important of all the remaining windmills in the city. It has achieved that status by using part of its structure to house the Brouwerij ‘t IJ, a microbrewery that makes really good beer.

It has a massive beergarden too, which makes it an ideal place to spend the latter part of a sunny Sunday. It’s a friendly place, where we ran into people we knew, and watched families hang out, while kids enjoyed the space as much as the grownups (making an ongoing mental notebook of family-friendly establishments that also serve beer, especially once Nicole is able to have some again). They serve up a great beer sampler (even though they weren’t labeled, they were all great, so no worries) and snacks.

This was one of the best lunches I’ve had since we arrived.

I see all the basic food groups represented here - Beer, cheese, salami...

After that, it was time to continue the lazy Sunday route, so the bikes carried us back to the neighborhood, stopping briefly at the store for some steaks, frites and fritessaus for a positively European dinner.

Fritessaus is like mayonnaise, if mayonnaise were taken into the locker room by the coach after a bad first half, sat down and told, “Look mayonnaise, I know you have it in you, but if you want to be winner, you have to get back out there and focus on being more awesome!”

That should be the ad slogan for fritessaus.

FRITESSAUS – It’s like mayonnaise decided to be more awesome.

I just trademarked that slogan. You can’t use it unless you pay me. I called it.

So, with a heavy head and a full tummy, a Sunday was enjoyed in the way intended. Nothing was accomplished, and the only things created were good memories. Oh, and frites with fritessaus.

If you go:

Two things – see the windmills, but if you only see one, make sure it’s a good one. The kind that serves beer.

Also, frites and fritessaus are a delicacy here, and not just in my flat. There are a ton of street vendors slinging these things, which makes it like the third best street food, after poffertjes and stroopwafel.

You’ll notice I don’t mention stroopwafel lately. That’s because I made a pledge to a donor to not eat any stroopwafel until the end of the Kickstarter pitch. This, along with my willingness to produce a video of me eating raw herring (which will be available ONLY to donors, and not to the general readership – so don’t miss that! Donate at least $1 and you’re on the list!) is a sign of my dedication to this project, and I hope you’ll all get involved.