Say It With Flowers




Tulips at The Keukenhof near Lisse, Holland



As Mother's Day approaches it seems appropriate to talk about flowers in the Netherlands.  When you think of Holland you probably think of windmills, Hans Brinker and tulips.  Although not native to Holland, once the first tulips arrived here in the late 1500's their popularity soared.  In the early 1600's tulips became so expensive that a speculators' market developed.  Prices for tulips exceeded those for a small home; traders made enormous profits.  Tulipmania gripped Holland for two years.  Then, as always seems to happen with these markets, the winds changed -- quickly.  Everyone now had tulips so why pay a high price for something that even the commoners owned. The market crashed, lots of people lost money and everyone wondered how it all happened.   The only difference from today is that it didn't spawn a bunch of books and congressional investigations. 

As an aside, if you look up tulip in Wikipedia, one of the pictures is of the Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon.  Evidently the town has a Dutch heritage, which of course obligates it to have a tulip festival just like every other US town with a Dutch heritage.  In case you are wondering whether the author's ancestors were involved with the town's naming, that is not the case.  Years ago, in response to a letter from my older sister, the town fathers informed us that in the 1800's a fire got out of control and burned down a wooded lot.  Being very pragmatic (i.e. Dutch) people, they conjured up the name Woodburn for their new settlement.  This story is also told on Wikipedia so it must be true. 

Anyway, back to flowers.  Holland supplies 10 billion flower bulbs every year, 70% of the world's total.  If you want to see them at their best, visit the Keukenhof near Lisse.  This 70 acre park contains 6 to 7 million flower bulbs that are planted each fall and then removed in the summer by 60 full time gardeners.   The next year they do it all again with different bulbs and differnt garden designs.  It's kind of like a Farm Progress Show for tulips --the bulbs are all donated by over 90 different growers so that they can showcase their latest hybrids.



My brother, Tom, has a variety named after him.



The Keukenhof gets about 900,000 visitors every year, which doesn't seem like that many until you realize that it's only open in April & May.  There are only three 2 lane roads accessing the park so traffic is horrendous.  And it is tour bus mecca so once you get to the park you have to compete with roving packs of tour groups from around the world.  Luckily, the locals had advised us to go early.  So we rousted Don and Joan out of bed at 6:00 am, ate a quick breakfast and got to the front gate just before the opening at 8:00.  What a difference that made; there was no traffic and we had the park almost to ourselves for an hour. 





This is what the Keukenhof entrance looks like at 7:55 am.  It is much busier at 11:00 am. 




As expected, John Deere was the offical tractor of the Keukenhof






 



They look pretty happy for having gotten up at 5:30 am. 





The latest way to carry your dog in comfort.  We want one of these for Graber. 



Grant taking a break from flower watching to play on the zip line while eating a chocolate covered waffle.

As you might expect, the Keukenhof is right in the middle of prime tulip growing farms.  We drove around the area and saw field after field of tulips in bloom. 


This machine was planting some type of bulb.



One of the tulip fields near Lisse



More tulip fields. 



A hyacinth field near Wassenaar



Our second flower expedition was to the FloraHolland flower auction in Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam.  FloraHolland is a cooperative owned by over 6000 flower growers.  They have six auction houses that sell 48 million flowers and plants every day.  The Aalsmeer auction is their largest handling over 17 million flowers every day.  If you bought a day's worth of flowers at Aalsmeer, that would be enough to give your Mother almost 4000 dozen flowers every day for a year!  That would easily top Harry & David's Fruit of the Month Club.


Millionsof flowers on carts ready for auction




The Aalsmeer Auction is in a warehouse about the size of Rhode Island.  Visitors walk on catwalks above the floor where dozens of tractors pull thousands of carts loaded with millions of flowers.  The auction rooms hold several hundred buyers sitting in tiered rows with computer screens and headsets.  The flower carts come through on an automated rail system.  As the cart goes buy, a lady pulls out a sample to show the buyers (somewhat like Vanna White on the Price is Right). 



One of the five auction rooms at Aalsmeer.  Note the flowers coming through on the track.  It never stops moving.  The auction screen is at the front of the room. 




Meanwhile, the auction is happening on a huge computer screen at the front of the room.  The Dutch use a "clock" for an auction.  The price starts at around one Euro per stem.  Then the ball goes around the clock counting down the price until someone buys.  There is no bidding against one another; the first one to bid as the price falls gets it.  The longer you wait, the lower the price.  But someone could beat you to it.  And you don't have much time to think; it takes about three seconds for the clock to count down.  Once you are the successful buyer you can decide how many containers of that particular flower to take at that price.  Then it's on to the next lot.  It's not quite as exciting as watching the Stenzel Brothers but it's the only way they can auction that much inventory every day.


Flowers that have been sold.  They are lined up ready to be loaded on trucks for delivery. 




The logistics of this business are amazing.  The flowers are picked at the growers on the afternoon before, shipped that evening to the auction house.  They spend the night in refrigerated storage.  Inspection begins at 4:00 am, the auction begins at 6:00, all the flowers are sold by 9 or 10, then shipped out to arrive all across Europe by that afternoon.  Of course others are shipped by plane to arrive the next morning.  Amazing. 

One more thing.  Since the auction begins early and ends when they run out of flowers, the locals' advice was to go early.  So once again, Don and Joan were up at 5:30 to get to the visitors center by 7:00 am.   Who knew that visiting Holland would be so exhausting. 







These carts are on the automated track. 





Tulips and roses are the big volume flowers.  We also saw some African Violets.




Some flowers are moved in boxes.

 One of the advantages of living in the midst of all these flowers is that they are relatively inexpensive to buy.  There are two or three flower stands in Wassenaar.  I usually buy a nice arrangement for about 15 euro.  If I was clever enough to arrange my own I could get the cut flowers for half that price.  During tulip season the going price seems to be 50 cut tulips for 5 euro.  What a bargain. 



Many of the medians in Wassenaar are covered in Daffodils in the Spring. 




The sign says it all....in Dutch, of course.  They're even open on Sunday!




So many colors to chose from.



Some of the author's tulips in full bloom.  Those of you that watched World Cup Soccer last summer will know that Orange is the official color of The Netherlands



Happy Birthday Don!





Lori's parents, Don & Joan, are visiting this week.  Both of their families are originally from Holland so their first visit the the Fatherland has been special.  The visit has also been special because it was Don's 85th birthday.  Lori made a coconut meringue cake for the celebration.  This was the cake that she had hoped I would make for her birthday....but somehow I forgot.  I think she was over-estimating my cooking ability.  The cake was delicious.  I'd highly encourage others to come celebrate their birthdays with us, too. 

For you trivia buffs, Don and Queen Elizabeth were born on the same day.  We invited her to come have coconut cake, but I guess she was too busy getting ready for the big wedding. 

Happy Birthday Don!



Lori begins to put on the meringue.  It was made with 10 egg whites.  The recipe said that she might not need it all.  Small understatement. 


 

Even though Lori is an accomplished cook, a little supervision from her Father never hurts. 



The best way to get meringue peaks is to get messy



Torching the meringue





Don and Joan



Happy Birthday Kate!

Although she thought it would never get here, Kate finally celebrated her 21st birthday this week.  Since her parents have moved to another continent, we were unable to be with her and so she had to make due by celebrating with her roommates and friends.   I'm sure it was a real hardship.  



At the Great Wall in middle school

We attempted to be part of the party by ordering cupcakes for her birthday celebration.  Unfortunately, the bakery that we used did some remodeling the day before Kate's birthday.  And even more unfortunately the work took longer than expected, the bakery was closed an extra day and.....no cupcakes for Kate.  However, the story has a happy ending.  Kate's fantastic roommate, Rachel, called an audible and picked up some cupcakes from another bakery at the last minute.  Well done, Rachel!

I'm sure that Kate was also looking forward to being of age to legally have a drink.  Being of age is one thing; proving it is another.  You see, Kate lost her drivers license last month.  And as she is finding out, getting a replacement drivers license from the fine State of New Jersey when you aren't actually living in New Jersey is about as easy as passing a budget bill in Congress.  The process involves the folks at the DMV mailing her a form, which she returned with about a gazillion pieces of paper proving her identity, afterwhich the DMV promised to mail her a temporary license that she can trade in for a permanent one when she returns for their fine state.  The process is archaic primarily because very few people who live in New Jersey ever leave New Jersey for more than a week.  No temporary New Jersey license has arrived so Kate is probably one of the few people in Nashville using her passport to get into bars. 

Scuba Diving with an Octopus on her face

Kate and Grant when we lived in Beaumont

Happy Birthday Kate!

Sweden

Whoa! Sweden in early April?  You are probably wondering about our travel sanity.  Relax, there is a valid reason.  Grant's conference swim meet was held this past weekend just outside of Stockholm so I traveled there to watch him compete.   As you can imagine, the American School of the Hague's (ASH) conference is a bit bigger geographically than the Three Rivers Conference where Riverdale competed (although the drive to Amboy seemed pretty long).  There were schools from Amsterdam, Antwerp, Luxemborg, Norway, Germany, Denmark and of course, Sweden.  And the ages started in 4th grade and went all through high school....so there was a lot of swimming over two days. 

Grant had a busy meet, swimming a total of 7 races in the backstroke, breastroke and freestyle.  He made the finals in the 100 m backstroke, ultimately finishing fourth.  His 200 m medley relay team finished first so he got his turn on the top of the podium (they don't play the school song, though) and a medal to go with it.  There were a lot of happy parents there, partially due to ASH having a good meet, but mainly because this marked the end of 6:00 am practices. 



Ready for take-off in the backstroke



Championship Form



Grant was tied for the lead on the first leg of the relay.  The two boys in middle and back right did breaststroke & butterfly respectively and maintained a tie for the lead, then the tall boy in the back left blew away the other team for the gold. 





Resting after his leg.  The writing on his arm are the heats that he was sceduled to race.  The coaches had 63 swimmers to look after so they knew all the tricks.   





I had some extra time to walk around Upsalla, a town of 150,000 people and home to the oldest university in Scandanavia, founded in 1477.  Its famous citizens include film director Ingmar Bergman, scientist Anders Celsius (invented the Celsius temperature scale) and former UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold.  The town also seems to have attempted to corner the market on pea gravel.  It was everywhere...sidewalk, roads, piled beside the roads.  One of the Swedish parents on the team explained that it gets too cold for salt to effective to de-ice the roads and walkways (doesn't bode well for winter tourism from our family), so they spread gravel  to improve traction.  And they don't sweep it up until they are sure the last snow storms have passed -- which, based on my trip, is evidently some time after April 3.  As we discussed other impacts of the pleasant Swedish winters, he told us that it gets too cold to keep your beer outside in the winter (a favorite European method of dealing with small refrigerators).  The beer will freeze solid and the bottles will burst. 




Pea gravel on the sidewalk

 
A castle on a hill overlooking the town was the home of King Gustav Vasa.  In the 1500's Sweden switched from Catholicism to become a Protestant country and the King took over much of the Catholic Church's assets (which I would guess to be substantial).  To keep the bishops in line, one set of cannons were aimed at the cathedral to be "styrbiskop" or bishop's controllers. 




The cathedral viewed from the river



Architecture from the 1600's



In the 1700's this curfew bell would ring each night signalling the time when all villagers had to be in their home. 




The Styrbiskop



As I left the cannon area, this group was walking up the hill.  The two leaders are putting the blindfolded ones back in line after spinning each around mulitple times.  Then they began marching up to the cannons.  I guess initiation rites don't change much around the world. 



 

My town tour also included a walk to the Cathedral (I was safe; the cannons had been disabled) which stated that it was open until 6:00 pm.  However, there was a wedding in progress so we had to wait until that was over before we could go in.  It felt a little funny touring around the inside of the church while the bride and groom were finishing their pictures.  But I guess the locals are used to that type of religous environment because the Cathedral is also open for touring on Sundays.  As the Swedish parent explained, you can tour  inside the church as long as you don't disrupt the service!



My visit inside the cathedral was delayed.....for a wedding! 



I stayed in a historic hotel situated by the River Fyrus.  The practicality of the place would make the Dutch proud.  There was no dresser or closet in my room.  Just a table for my suitcase and four hooks with hangers on the wall.  I didn't have to worry if my clothes got wrinkled in the suitcase; there was an ironing board and iron built into the hallway to be shared by all the guests. But the room did have some decoration....there was a sketch of a Spanish Flameco dancer on the wall.  Go figure?  And in a final comment that is sure to make my Mother wonder if these are actually the words of her son, the pickles on the breakfast buffet were so delicious that I had seconds.



My room's wall hooks



Let's just say that I didn't have to ask anyone to stop ironing to take this picture. 




Great name for a travel company.  Free advertising everytime someone writes "Kilroy was Here".



Aqaba and the Red Sea

After 4 days of history and hiking we ended our trip with 3 days of relaxation at a resort on the Red Sea in Aqaba.  It was a great way to end the trip.  We did five scuba dives, two from the shore and three from a boat. We also rode four-wheelers in the desert.  And we managed to find time to play around in the nicely-heated pool.  We didn't have time to visit Wadi Rum, the desert area near Aqaba where T.E. Lawrence spent some of his time and where much of the movie Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. 



Our hotel viewed from the water



When I inquired with the bellman at our Petra hotel about securing a taxi to drive us to Aqaba, he told me that he had a "friend" with a taxi that would be glad to take us.  His friend turned out to be reliable, friendly and a decent driver.  A little air conditioning and better shock absorbers would have helped though. 
 

The desert between Petra and Aqaba



The road cutting through the desert.  Note the car and truck both going the same direction....this was not a four lane highway. 



Taking the sheep to market




More desert views



This was Grant's second time scuba diving and first time jumping in from the boat; he did great.  Among other things, we saw a sea turtle, lion fish, an octopus and lots of eels.  We also dove around a freighter that was intentionally scuttled to form a reef. 

 

The dive boat. 



 

Ready for his first boat dive.  You just walk off the end of the boat.



Grant and his dive instructor, Luis (from Argentinia)



The driver from the hotel to the four-wheeling site was courteous but didn't seem to speak much English.  On the way, the three of us started to discuss our dives that day.  Suddenly his English became very good.  He had a "friend" with a boat that could take us diving the next day.  Thank you very much, but we'll stick with the hotel dive shop. 

The four-wheeling in the desert was interesting.  We weren't exactly in the middle of nowhere.  In fact, we were surprised at how much trash was blowing around.  It was more like riding around a sandy industrial site.  The leader also liked to stop, drive one of us around on the back of his bike while the other two sat and did nothing.  We finally convinced him that we all wanted to ride at the same time, which for some reason seemed like quite a surprise to him.  



No we're not on the moon. 



Easy Rider.....and his parents



At the end we were riding in the dark.  A vehicle pulled off the highway and drove towards us; it turned out to be a Jordanian Army truck with a mounted machine gun in the bed.  Three soldiers got out, had a one-cigarette conversation with the leader, got back in the truck and left.  When we asked him about it afterward, he said the soldiers were his "friends".  I wasn't really scared, but I must admit that as we drove away I kept looking behind me to make sure they weren't setting up to have a little target practice.   

 

Passing the time before diving.





We felt like movie stars...when the boat left the harbor, these guys took lots of pictures.