Student housing at the Universitiet Utrecht. To the left are massive buildings, to the right fantastic green space and further afield, farm land. Such an amazing setting!
I suppose I should have started with this image above - the quintecential windmill...taken from inside a tour bus...classic, eh? Thatched roof and really, truly working. The windmill system is pretty darn amazing - we learned all about the system and in true Cindy fashion, I'll be sure to bend all your ears about it upon return. :)
So this was trippy. We were in the national park, De Heg Veluwe (don't even attempt it, that words even trips up the Dutch) and you can pick up a bike upon entry (for FREE) and bike everywhere. La, la la, we're biking in the heatherland and happen upon a statue of some dude looking out over the heatherland. Laura Lyndgaard is standing to the left (note: scale). I think he was influential in the creation of the park but the writing was in, well, Dutch and hard to discern.
This is the Rietveld-Schroder house, world famous house that literally feels like you're in a Mondrian painting. I will, of course, bend your ear about this one too - the details inside are amazing - doors collapse, expand (as do windows)....it's surreal.
This is "social housing" - affordable housing in the Netherlands. This guy, a CEO of a company, wanted to create housing for his workers and said it had to be at the standard where he would live there too. Can you imagine? It is quite old (1895) and has since become senior housing but what an amazing thing to do. This house you can see would house four families (all separate but shared walls).
This, on the other hand, is student housing. University of Utrecht. I can't even describe the scale and how it felt to walk through it. You can see signs across the street, those are about 7-8 feet high, so the thing is enormous.
Near the student housing some green space....ahhhhh....and in the background, farmland.
This is a mix of social and market rate housing. In Almere a town built on a polder. A polder is land that's been drained of water for human use. Much of Holland is built on polders - land they call "reclaimed from the sea".
Julia to the left, smiling with the great scarf (she's the instructor), and Candace a student who BROUGHT her bike helmet to Europe. She was sick this day and was a total trooper.
So this is stormwater control, Holland-style. Bricks that are swooping around (the striking pattern) are actually set to be sort of like a swale, all the water runs from the street into this cool feature and then goes to the canal. I actually was praying for rain this day just to see it work.
This is Museum Centraal in Utrecht - one wing of it. Just a typical builidng in the area.
So I mentioned De Heg Veluwe, the national park - this is one place where you pick up a bike to tour the place!
This was my favorite house in Almere (where we biked around) - part of it is canilevered over the water. The green space, you can't really see it here, was a sort of round garden - I liked the juxtaposition of the modular, rectangular house and the rounded garden.
An actual floating house - on a canal in Almere.
This is the garbage-sucker. In Almere's city center the garbage put in the garbage cans are actually vacuumed up right away and are sent to this location. It is bizaare but garbage is such an issue here (in Utrecht), so this was sort of interesting.
So, graffiti is ubiquitous. But is COW graffiti? Seriously, how cool is that?
This was a cool little town on our polder tour - call De Bilk. Hey, look, a canal.
De Bilk again. A woman biking and I tried to capture a woman batting her linens out the window but she was too darn quick. You can see them in the building though.
The heatherland in, say it with me, De Heg Veluwe.
Some of the watch guards on the statue that is posted above - keeping gard over the park or looking for their lost sheep.
This one is of a hunting lodge in the national park. Can't really call it "Camp" can we Skellengers?
The one above is of me biking and taking a photo of a canal. Don't worry my love, I was very very careful with your camera!

Um...they like bikes here....take that back they LOVE bikes here!


Well hopefully this works! Just a little taste of what life is like while I'm here....hope you enjoyed it!

Love and miss you all.