Holland stuff

Hello!

As I said in my previous post I was in Holland. It was a great experience both personally and professionally. I reconnected with a few colleagues I had not seen in a long time, did (if I may say so myself) some of my best interpreting work in a long time and was treated to fabulous food and hospitality.

Some general notes. You know that myth about The Netherlands being full of people on bicycles? No myth, my friend; bikes are EVERYWHERE! Streets are designed with dedicated lanes and it really makes for a cool sight, many more people walking and biking in most areas than driving. (You can see a bunch of bikes in one of the pictures below...that is a small collection of bikes compared to some of the bike parking lots we saw!)

I landed on Wednesday afternoon in Amsterdam, went to the town of Den Bosch (home of the aforementioned yummy dessert!) by train and met with some people from the conference I would be working. We were treated to a fabulous meal by our host. The weather was perfect so we ate outside. The wonderful company and food and location made it a great first experience in The Netherlands. It was the time of year for fresh asparagus so I had an amazing piece of salmon with white asparagus in a dill sauce. Afterward we had our yummy dessert!

On Thursday we went (again by train) to Eindhoven where the conference took place. The conference was great, and the language issues fun to work out. I was interpreting ASL<->English. There were spoken Dutch<-> English interpreters as well as Dutch Sign Language Interpreters. Boy that was fun! :) After it was all over back on the train to Den Bosch where we ate at the fabulous Brasserie Méprise.

Friday, in the morning, walked around Den Bosch and then was treated to a whirlwind tour of a a few places including an assisted living facility/nursing home/elderly residence for Deaf people. A beautiful place designed with visual communication as the driving force behind the architecture. Also got to meet some very lovely elderly Deaf Dutch people (including our host's mother who is in her 90's and barely looks 70!). We then went to the Rotterdam Deaf club and afterward I caught the train back to the hotel airport and flew home on Saturday morning, tired but feeling really lucky about the life I have!

Here are a bunch of pictures (click for full size):

Here is the train station with the full name of the town (see why everyone calls it Den Bosch!?!)

Here is one of the smaller bike congregation areas:

A lot of the architecture (and design as well) juxtaposed the old and the new in interesting ways that I really liked.

I love the headless statue with headless mannequins (note the bicycle!)

Some canal pictures:






The Dutch are egalitarian when it comes to porn; no segregation here!

I love the name of this store:


Oh, look, it's a statue just stuck here in the middle of a back street!


Oh, it's a fountain, how cute!!!


Oh, look, um, oh my, what a big boy you are...