Katwijk aan Zee

High 70s in the Netherlands! Time to check out the beach!
"Wow!" you say "In addition to its awesome canal network, prestigious university, and cool museums, Leiden is also coastal!" Well not quite. But the North Sea is within biking distance (if you adjust your idea of biking distance from an American point-of-view to a Dutch one). Beautiful and quaint Katwijk aan Zee is a mere 10 km 35-minute bike ride from the center of Leiden (unless you are hauling two toddlers in a bike trailer and you keep taking wrong turns- then it is about 45 minutes). And when I  say that you can bike there I don't mean that you just point yourself in Katwijks direction and then try to muddle though traffic via sidewalks, parking lots, and highways. There are actual bike lanes the entire way there. Bike lanes that parallel highways! It is an amazing system. The lanes, like the road, always continue. They do not just drop off like they do in the US (if they even exist at all).
  Anyway Katwijk is an adorable little coastal town that I imagine looks something like coastal towns in the U.S. in the 1950s. It is touristy but still low rise and quiet. We biked right up to the sand, took off our shoes, and ran into the water. And then we ran right back out. Did I mention that it is the North Sea?!?!? The same sea that touches Norway? Yeah it was cold. Leif and I eventually warmed up to it but poor Klaus was not a fan. None the less we spent a very pleasant morning on the beach.

  At around 12:30 we packed up our things. I knew the boys would never make it home for nap so I accepted that they would just take their naps in the trailer on the way home. What I didn't quite realize is that this would mean I would be biking in the noon-day sun. Most of the bike lanes were not shaded and by this time it was definitely in the low 80s. I gulped down a can of Fanta and a bottle of water before we left the beach to try to avoid impending dehydration. I made it to the out-skirts of Leiden alright but soon started to feel as if I was overheating. I've had heat stroke before and I remember the symptoms of it rather well. Have you ever been so hot that you felt your pulse in your head? If it was just me I would have continued on (hence why I have experienced heat stoke before) but I had a responsibility to the two sleeping little guys in the bike trailer not to faint in the middle of the road. So I pulled off the bike lane onto a shady patch of sidewalk near the bio science park. It was a really quiet part of the route and I didn't figure I would be in anyone's way as there was no one around. No sooner had I extracted the water thermos from the saddlebag than some pedestrian starts chastising me in Dutch for being on the sidewalk. I didn't really answer him figuring that he would notice my obviously red face (also I was having trouble forming words in English much less Dutch) and just let it go. But he kept talking while I chugged some water. Finally he said "no drinking here" in English. I looked at him and, with an American brashness that I don't often use, I poured myself some more water and drank it. He kept walking.
   We made it home soundly and sandy. I immediately tossed the boys in the bathtub, took a cold shower, and then vacuumed up all the sand. All in all a pleasant little trip.

Slapen

  Another week has flown by and we are still in pretty good shape. Kurt put in a full work week and seems to be getting along with his colleagues rather well. The boys and I haven't had too much success making friends yet but we will work on that. We go on some sort of outting every morning. Mostly it has been to the grocery. Since we have no car and a very small kitchen and refrigerator frequent small trips to the market will probably be the norm.
  On Monday we were obliged to participate in some more government bureaucracy. This time we had to register at the Leiden Town Hall. The 'Stadhuis' as it is called has a fabulous 16th century exterior that lets you easily pretend you have traveled back in time (not so great for stroller access though). The interior was gutted by fire in 1929 but that has conveniently allowed the government to make it into a more useful modern space complete with a glass-ceilinged courtyard. While we were not thrilled to fill out another bit of paperwork at least we got to do it in a pleasant setting.
  Afterwards the boys and I checked out the library. It has a wonderful kids corner with lots of toys and games for the kids to use. Leif is already a bit bored with the small amount of toys and books that we were able to bring so this will be a great place for us to go play. Our landlord generously left us her library card so I picked up some kids books in English and Dutch. (I used the self-check out. Not quite sure if i did it right but no alarms went off when we left so hopefully 'alles is goed')  So far Leif does not care for the Dutch books but Klaus likes them and it is helping me with my language skills a little. 
   For father's day we went to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center. It is a great science museum within biking distance from our house. We bought a one-year museum pass there which is good for pretty much any museum in the Netherlands. There is so much for the kids to do there that I imagine, armed with our museum pass, we will go most every week.
   In other news: we have settled our sleep arrangement issues but we have broken our cardinal rule of parenting to do so: Leif is sharing a room with us. As you may recall from my last post this apartment is perfect except for the fact that it only has 2 bedrooms. The hope was that Leif and Klaus could share a room and that we would have the other one. Last week we tried several combinations at making that work. On Monday we put Klaus to bed at 7 and then tried to sneak Leif in at 8. When I opened the door Klaus immediately woke up and we spent the next hour trying to soothe both boys to bed. We tried this again on Tuesday hoping that it was just the jet-lag that made it so difficult the night before. This time we spent about an hour and a half soothing them to sleep. On Wednesday we tried putting them both to bed at the same time. Neither had gotten a good nap that day so they both fell asleep in about 40 minutes. We tried this again on Thursday and Friday with less success. As soon as one would quiet down the other would make some noise and wake the first one. I think they both made it to sleep at about 10:30. On Saturday we decided to let Leif fall asleep in our bed. At home in Gettysburg he enjoyed playing quietly in bed before falling asleep. I think he was a little resentful that we were not letting him do it anymore as it was keeping Klaus up. With him in our room he could play and make a little noise like he was used to at home. It worked like a charm. Leif drove his motorcycles around our big bed for about 30 minutes in bed and then fell asleep. When it was time for use to go to bed I just moved Leif to his bed in the other room. Everyone slept soundly until 6 am. Hooray! Problem solved!...until Sunday night... we tried this technique again and it failed in just about every way. As I tried to move Leif to his bed Klaus woke up and started crying. This woke Leif up and he started crying. At the same time the neighbor next door decided to blast some god-awful music (imagine a Yanni/Jimmy Buffet hybrid). Kurt shuffled Leif back into our room and tried to get him to calm down and I nursed Klaus back to sleep. At that point I made the executive decision not to try to get Leif back into the room with Klaus but just to let him sleep in our bed. Kurt opted for the couch and everyone tried to get back to sleep despite the music next door. After about 20 minutes Leif decided that he would rather get up and play. When I told him to go back to sleep he began to scream which of course woke Klaus back up. Kurt bolted upstairs to quiet Leif while I tried to quiet Klaus. I can't remember the specifics after that but I think we all got to sleep at around 2. Anywho as a result Klaus now has his own room and Leif sleeps on a mattress on the floor in our room. C'est la vie. We will just have to try to break him of the habit when we get home.

Kurt beginning work on his DNA pulling experiments

       

De eerste week

 It is Monday which means we have survived our first week in the Netherlands. If we had not it would have been a pretty clear endorsement of natural selection for it is really easy for an American to settle into Dutch society. It is a super cooshie landing. The Dutch are very friendly and accommodating and absolutely everyone speaks English (which has not encouraged me to test all the dutch I have leaned. More about that later.)
 Because we took a night flight we switched over to the time zone easily. We are still encountering a bit of sleep trouble due to the two bed room situation but I will tackle that in a later post. For now everyone is getting some sleep but probably not as much as we need. The 15 hours of daylight is not helping. We have darkened the boys' room with curtains but we keep forgetting to go to bed at the right time because it always seems too early. Hopefully we will get used to it soon.
  Anyway our first week was all about settling in. We reached the apartment at about 2 on Monday. Jasper, the landlord's brother showed us around and gave us the keys. He had left us some beautiful flowers and some stroopwafels as a welcome gift (made me feel bad for not doing anything of the sort for our renters. Oh well.).
   The apartment is wonderful. It has high ceilings, enormous windows, and an elegant wooden spiral staircase. The kitchen is a galley but the one side has a picture window which looks out onto the yard, making it feel larger than it is. There is one bathroom on the ground floor with a warm bath and luke-warm shower (I've only been taking baths). There is a shed in the yard that contains two bicycles and a washer dryer set. Up stairs are two size-able bedrooms. One overlooks the garden and the other has a great view of the canal across the street. We have really lucked out on the location of this place. Besides the canal, we are close to several parks, the downtown historic district, the shopping district, the train station, and the visitors center. Kurt's workplace is about a 10 minute bike ride but there are bike lanes the whole way. Actually there are bike lanes just about everywhere. It is awesome.

   Our first outing was to the nearby grocery store. We had a great time trying to decode the ingredients of various products with our limited Dutch. It was pretty exciting to see all the new and different foods and really to have no idea what to expect. It felt very adventurous. Leif and Klaus were a bit less impressed. We ended up with some toddler puffs that were covered in paprika.
   On Tuesday we toured Kurt's new lab/office and did some more paperwork at the HR office. As we finished up the HR employee informed us that she had made an appointment for us at the immigration office in Den Hage on Wednesday at 1:30. I wanted to say "1:30?!?!? Are you nuts? That is nap time." but what I said was "Dankuwel." So Wednesday we took our first European train ride with the boys. As expected they both loved it. All the trains going to Den Hage were easily accessible for a stroller.  The trains on the way home were not leading to some precarious double stroller high jinks. Everyone is ok but it made me wonder about disability accessibility laws in Europe.
   Kurt started work on Thursday and so the boys and I spent the morning scoping out various parks and playgrounds. There are a few good ones very close by. Now we just need some friends to share them with.
  On Thursday night we took a walk after dinner to the old city citadel. It has a great 360 degree view of the city and it is a pretty easy climb. While we were at the top we were pulled aside by a docent and camera man with the other tourists that were there at that time of the evening. The docent explained that they are putting together a grant proposal to get a giant map of the city installed in the citadel. They wanted a few pictures to put in the proposal. So Klaus and I will be featured listening to the docent with Kurt and Leif in the background looking out at the city. I'm not sure if the photo will be published anywhere else but I will let you know if we find a copy.
  So I must confess I have been too cowardly to use much Dutch this week. I really need to work on my vocab. I was able to respond when a woman on the train asked in dutch how old Klaus was. But that has been the extent of my success. I'm giving myself a pass until I get a few good nights of sleep.

We zijn hier!

   Above is a picture of the courtesy bags that I made for our flight to the Netherlands. As it turns out I should not have bothered; Both Leif and Klaus were excellent little flyers.  I was worried at first. Both of them were super energetic at the airport- running/crawling all over the place. I was afraid that they would be too excited to sleep and would get all strung out. As we sat down in our seats, Klaus was doing flip flops in my arms to try to wiggle out of my grasp and onto the floor. I could feel the dread in the passengers around me.  But not to worry- we settled Leif in with a few Bob the Builder and Dora the Explorer videos and Klaus fell asleep with a bottle of milk. Success! 

    Now for take off. We taxi to the runway. Leif is giggling with excitement, his nose glued to the window. Klaus is snuggled in my arms and softly snoring. 

  And then an announcement comes on. 

  It was given first in Icelandic (we were flying on IcelandAir). I don't know any Icelandic aside from takk (thanks to Sigur Ros) but I caught what sounded like the words "forty minutes". Then the announcement was given in English. Sure enough it was "forty minutes" - a forty minute delay in the take off time because of a storm in New York. Argh! Panic panic panic! Our connection time in Iceland was only an hour. What are we going to do with two already wigged-out kids if we miss our flight? Also we have a taxi reservation. Plus the landlord's brother is waiting for us at the apartment with keys and we have no way to contact him except to email his sister who is in Africa and hope that she can relay the message. Plus even if we somehow make the next flight there is no way that our luggage will make it. No no no! This delay cannot happen. I am about ready to pinch Klaus hoping that his screams will spurr the captain to take off or throw us off the plane and let me go home to my beautiful house and forget about this whole silly adventure.

 Then a miracle of aviation happens! The plane actually takes off in forty minutes as promised.  To ease the fears of anyone with a connecting flight, the captain announces that we will make it to Iceland before any departures are even scheduled to leave. 

    The rest of the flight was great. Klaus slept the whole time. Leif was easily convinced after several videos to lay down and go to sleep. I didn't sleep at all thanks to an ill-conceived dinner at Chipotle but I did enjoy snuggling with Klaus for 6+ hours. 

    The landing in Iceland was a bit bumpy but that made Leif love it all the more. He asked to go on another plane and we happily said yes. The plane let out on the tarmac (Classy, IcelandAir. Real classy) and we quickly shuffled inside to escape the wind and rain. We checked the boarding pass and followed the signs to our gate. When we reached the escalator there was a line. We waited our turn only to realize that the line wasn't actually moving. There was a gate across the escalator entrance. Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation but I couldn't seem to process the situation. "Why would someone put a gate there? And why are we all obeying it?" I started looking around for alternative roots. Kurt kept me in line and eventually some airline official removed the gate. We all proceeded upstairs and found out that the reason we were waiting was because the customs office had just opened. Oh no I forgot to factor in customs! We are going to miss our flight! Isn't there a special  line for people who need to run to their next flight?!?!? With true Icelandic brevity the line moved along and we made it to our flight. 

   Again Klaus slept and Leif watched videos and napped. I didn't even bother handing out the courtesy bags I had made. These kids were not going to be a problem.      

   We landed at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport with no problem and proceeded to the baggage claim area where we picked up most of the baggage on the flight as it was all ours. We loaded up two carts and put the kids in the stroller and then struggled across the airport to the taxi service, patting ourselves on the back all the while for giving up our silly plan to take the train to Leiden. 

  After a quick drive we arrived at Maresingel  57 and were greeted by our landlord's brother. He helped us get all our luggage in and showed us around. The place is absolutely wonderful. I will write more about it later. 

For now- we zijn hier!

Wat te brengen

  We are about two weeks out now from our departure date. We have visas, plane tickets, and renters for our house. Kurt is taking the cat up to Canada this weekend to the open arms of Nick Strazzabosco and Abby Scholer (thanks, guys!). The fish are scheduled to live with my in-laws(thanks, guys!). The plants are going to Luke and Pieta (thanks, guys!). The kids next door are going to mow the lawn (thanks, guys!). So aside from some serious household cleaning and organizing, we just have to pack.
  Makkelijk, eh? Easy, right? Well maybe but it is going to take some time.

Things to keep in mind:
   -We will be there for both warm and cold weather
   -The boys will inevitably grow
   -Clothing in Europe is expensive
   -Our income will still be in U.S. dollars

  IcelandAir allows each ticketed passenger two 50 lbs checked-bags and one 22 lbs carry-on. Infants can have one 50 lb bag and a car seat or stroller. Pretty generous I think. In my estimation this is what we need for each person: a weeks worth of warm-weather clothes, a weeks worth of cold weather clothes, 2 pairs of pajamas, 2 sweaters or sweatshirts, a swim suit, a raincoat, and 2 pairs of shoes. For the boys only: a winter coat (Kurt and I will just layer) and 3 days worth of diapers. We will reserve one suitcase for toys and any other non-clothing items that we are bringing but that don't need to be in the carry-on.

Other things to keep in mind:
  - We are going to take the train from the airport to Leiden
  - We can walk from the train station to our Leiden apartment
  - Leif and Klaus cannot carry their own bags and, in fact, are more like baggage themselves

You might say "Why not take a cab or rent a car to mitigate these factors? " Perhaps we will but it doesn't seem in the European spirit. Public transport is so good there that we want to show our support from the outset. (Also it makes this post more interesting if there are more complicating factors plaguing our packing efforts.) The short of it is everything that we pack we need to be able to transport ourselves.

  Ok so we are up to seven checked bags, 3 carry-ons, and a stroller. Add to that one pack n play, one two-seater bicycle trailer (packed in a box with a handle), and a small cooler filled with Kurt's medicine.

 Here is our plan: Kurt and I still have backpacks from our previous European adventure. We have one large suitcase and we plan to buy 4 more. Kurt and I will each wear a backpack and a carry-on, and pull two suitcases piggy-backed one on top of the other. We have a double stroller- Klaus will ride in the front with the cooler on his little lap. Leif will give up his seat to the pack n play and a suitcase. In turn, Leif will pull a wheeled carry-on in his typical meandering way. I will push the stroller with my free hand and Kurt will struggle along with the boxed bicycle trailer. Perfect!

This is not going to work. Screw it. Let's rent a car.

Glimlachen is verboden

  I meant this to be a weekly blog but, as any of you with young children know, I am worthless by the time I get the kids to sleep. I can't do much of anything but sink into the futon and watch the latest BBC mystery series that I've found on Netflix. With tea and biscuits of course.
  Anywho I would like to tell you about the long, frustrating, fascinating visa process. This bit of bureaucracy is like none I have ever encountered before. And I am sure I do not even know the whole process as Kurt and the Universiteit Leiden took care of a great deal of it. Since we are going to be staying for more that 90 days we can't just go on a passport visa; we need one that is more long term and thus the process is a bit longer.
  Back in September when we figured out that we would be undertaking this adventure I ordered several books off Amazon about emigrating to the Netherlands (I am always trying to hide my ignorance with information- it works sometimes). "Living and Working in Holland, Belgium, & Luxembourg: A survival Handbook" by Beverly Laflamme turned out to be a handy resource. It let us in on a little quirky requirement for getting a Visa to the Netherlands- the apostille. An apostille is supposed to be a certificate that certifies important documents like birth certificates and marriage licences. In reality it seemed to me to be little more than a regular piece of copy paper with a sticker on it. And the speed with which the documents were returned to me with the apostille made me skeptical that any real research was done to certify my documents. I suppose I should be grateful that the process was so easy and quick. All I had to do was send the documents to the right state office with a SASE and a check. But I guess I just wanted more ceremony for my $10 per document (did I mention I am cheap?).
  I mentioned earlier that we can not use just our passports to stay in the Netherlands for this length of time. But we still have to have passports. Kurt and I already had ours and they will not expire until long after we are home so we were set. Leif and Klaus however did not. We learned early on from friends (thanks Richard and Carrie!) that getting passport photos for infants can be a tricky business. At the time that I was endeavoring to get this all done, Klaus was only 4 months old and could barely hold his head up nevermind sitting. Since no external support can be visible in a passport photo (hand, pillow, vise, etc.) it is best to take an infant passport photo with the baby lying down and the camera positioned over them. There are not many places in Gettysburg to get passport photos. I only know of the post office and AAA. But neither of them will bother with infant photos. So we decided to take them ourselves. Leif was pretty easy. I am always coaching him to smile in pictures so I think he was relieved that I encouraged him to keep a neutral face for this one. For Klaus' photo I took him into the basement so that I could control the lighting a bit better. I laid him on a blanket under one of the can lights and unscrewed all the other lights so that they would not cast shadows on his face. I then had to hover over him to get a straight on shot being careful not to catch my own shadow in the picture. After about 20 photos (yay digital cameras!) I got one that would work. Fearing that I would not be able to get the biometrics just right I sent the digital files away to paspic.com. They made sure everything met the U.S. passport photo requirements and sent me a print out of 3 photos for each boy for $5/each. Not a bad deal (did I mention I am cheap?)
  Meanwhile Kurt was busy trading emails about visas with Yvonne Kerkhof, the extremely polite and helpful secretary of the biophysics department in Leiden. To our surprise (and seemingly to hers) it was going to cost around $3000 for visas for our family of four. While this was not prohibitively expensive it is an expense that we did not know about and it gave us a little pause. Since I am currently home with the kids, we are operating on a single income with a little sprinkling of money from my art. In short- three grand is a lot of money for us right now. Kurt relayed as much to Yvonne and she passed it on to Professor Van Noort. He and Kurt planned to meet in February at the annual Biophysical Society Conference and he suggested that they could discuss it then. So we waited in limbo until February rolled around. At the conference, Professor Van Noort graciously offered to pay some of the visa fees for us out of his own budget. I was not there but I can just imagine Kurt's grovelling and copious 'thank yous'. With this generous offer our plans were back on track! (On a sidenote- As we gathered all the documentation that we needed the Netherlands just happened to cut the cost of a visa by about two thirds. Thus Kurt's funds from Gettysburg College now cover all of our visa costs and Professor Van Noort is released from his offer.)
  From there the Universiteit Leiden initiated the visa process. Neither Kurt nor I really know what this all entailed but we dutifully scanned and sent all the documents that they requested. Luckily I had already acquired the apostilles so we were able to get everything to them almost as soon as they asked for it.
  About a month later they asked which Dutch Embassy we wanted to pick up the visas from. Since Gettysburg is only 1.5 hours from D.C. we, of course, requested that convenient option. But we couldn't just pick up the visas- we had to make an appointment during the embassy's office hours M-F 9:30-12:30 to get them. Actually since there are four of us we had to make two appointments. We were able to schedule the appointments online without much difficulty (apparently people are not clamoring to get to the Netherlands at this time of year).
  No indication was given to us about what happens at this appointment but we were told to bring all our documentation plus a passport like photo to meets these qualifications: Photograph Guidelines. Feeling confident after my success with Leif and Klaus' passport photos I was ready to take on this challenge. But after reading several more websites about how particularly difficult these pictures are to get right, Kurt and I were feeling less confident ( I was particularly afraid of the rule that there can be no flash reflections on the face- my skin can often blind the unsuspecting onlooker if they pass at the wrong angle between me and the sun.). The consulate recommended a place in D.C. called Embassy Camera that is adept at their specific requirements. So we debated- should we take our own and hope that they will work and that we will only have to make one trip to D.C. or should we take two trips to D.C. and feel confident when we go to our visa appointments? We decided on the later even though the photos cost $20 each (did I mention that we are cheap?) Our neutral expression photos turned out great as you can see posted above. Cute, right? And it was pretty fun to take two trips to D.C. in one week. Although the traffic is abysmal at any time on Connecticut ave.
  April 25th (the day of our appointments) arrived. We woke up early, dressed in our best embassy visiting clothes, snapped the kids into their car seats and took off. The Dutch Embassy is actually located in a quiet neighborhood off Connecticut ave. It is a modest structure with a pleasant tulip-filled courtyard. Still not knowing what to expect, we were buzzed in and proceeded to the consular desk. For the next 40 minutes the boys and I played on the floor while Kurt passed documents back and forth with the woman behind the desk. Then she asked when we wanted to pick them up. As same day service is not available, Kurt agreed to pick them up on the upcoming Tuesday. "Ok" she said, "Goodbye." And that was it. No interview. No meeting with officials. We stood there wondering what we had made an appointment for. Yay bureaucracy! Again, "Why are you complaining?" you might ask. I dunno. Just expectations I guess.

Kurt and the boys in the Dutch embassy's courtyard tulip chairs

Waarom?

We are going to the Netherlands! We are going to the Netherlands??!

You might be wondering why we are going to the Netherlands. Well here is some insight into the posh world of a college professor: Before tenure, professors get a one semester paid sabbatical to do research or what have you. After tenure you receive this same sabbatical every 7 years or so. You can use it pretty much any way you want but it is a good idea to actually do research.

 Anywho this 6 months will be Kurt's pre-tenure sabbatical. He studies DNA folding and the physics of how it packs into our cells (apparently this is very important). When we started talking about this upcoming sabbatical, Kurt explained to me that he wanted to use it to expand his research methods and pool of collaborators. He asked me if it would be ok if he looked for collaborators in a different country seeing as the logistics might be a bit tricky with two young children and all. I, of course, said 'yes!'- I have always wanted to live abroad but, as you may remember from my first post, I am really a coward when it comes to interacting with the wider world. Neither Kurt nor I studied abroad in college. How could we pass up this opportunity to be glamorous expats? We couldn't and thus Kurt's search began.

 I was hoping he would find someone to work with in the UK. I am a huge Anglophile (plus I would not have to learn a different language and thus avoid confronting my monolingual state). Alas there was really no one he was interested in working with. He found groups in the Netherlands and Singapore that worked in his particular field. The coward in me sputtered "Netherlands, Netherlands!" when he reported back. Singapore seemed too foreign a prospect for this interested but reluctant world traveler. I figure that we should start with a western country to warm my skills at living abroad before we jump into a place where I could really get in trouble for my ignorance.

  Kurt cold-emailed Professor Jon Van Noort at Leiden University in Leiden, Netherlands.  He had been to Leiden in 2005 for a conference and got to see some of the university. To our delight Professor Van Noort responded with enthusiasm and agreed to let Kurt work in his lab and study his technique. He even suggested that we stay 6 months rather than just a semester to give time for Kurt to get some real work done. Kurt and Professor Van Noort met up at the last Biophysical Society meeting in February to work out the particulars. Kurt is going to help him with some ion pulling experiments (for more information on this- talk to Kurt. My grasp of physics is pretty limp). Anywho I am sure it will be very exciting for him.

  So that is why we are going to the Netherlands (!)