Addendum: This isn't Dutch. It must've been at a stopover in Germany, but in my half-asleep state of the time I thought we were already in the Netherlands.
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On the way back to Amsterdam, we stopped in
the town of Utrecht. It is about an hour outside of Amsterdam, so it is
sort of a suburb of Amsterdam, but it is about 800 years old in its own
right and has a college in it to boot. Its atmosphere is most like a
college town, with gaming stores and pubs being fairly common. After an
overnight train ride where we didn't get much sleep, the Dutch elevators
seemed pretty amusing.
Addendum: This isn't Dutch. It must've been at a stopover in Germany, but in my half-asleep state of the time I thought we were already in the Netherlands. |
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The centerpiece of Utrecht is a monestary and
a clock tower. They used to be connected, but a hurricane nearly 1000
years ago took out the middle section. Now, the clock tower chimes a
musical tune every 15 minutes. I imagine that this gets really old
after a few days, but we were only there for a day so it remained
entertaining. We stayed at the hostel, and found it to be as good as
some of the hotels we'd stayed at.
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The darker areas of brick show where the
pillars inside the building used to stand. You can see in the
background where one of the archways was bricked up.
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The remaining part of the monestary is
impressive. It seems to depend heavily on flying butresses, which
probably didn't work so well in the hurricane, but look great today.
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Another view of the monestary.
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in the center of the monestary is a courtyard
garden. Shrubs and herbs grow in each of the areas, lined with
carefully maintained hedges.
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Gargoyles guard the garden. Each gargoyle is
different, many of them resembling animals. All of them have human
hands and feet.
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There are carvings above the doorways
depicting religious stories. Many of the stories are not in the bible,
and some of them seem downright odd.
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We stopped in Utrecht mainly to visit Daan,
who in this picture is talking to Eric about programming. Daan gave us
the grand tour of the place, including stopping by an 800 year old candy
shop. Unfortunately, they weren't open, so I wasn't able to ask them if
they had any 800 year old candy.
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Even the sleepy town of Utrecht had an opinion
on the war.
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