God Made The World

According to my good friend Bryan there is a popular saying here in the Netherlands that God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands, and today we went out with our host parents and explored just what they made. Our first stop was this wicked awesome little town called belt-schutsloot through which canals connected all the homes with fields of grain surrounding the neighborhood. The moss accenting these homes made it seem as if age had overtaken each house and they had almost become one with the nature around it. It was a truly beautiful sight, and apparently it is called little venice because of the massive amount of canals connecting the houses, some of which can only be reached by boat.

Our next stop placed us in schokland were apparently rocks from finland and such arrived via a glaciar during the last ice age. They claim to know this because of some scratches on the rocks or something. Needless to say I was not to impressed, in fact I just kept on thinking how awesome it would have been if before they found the rocks I had found them and just sat around putting scratches all over them because i was bored and then finding out later that they developed a whole freakin park around these rocks. Im not going to lie, to me a rock is a rock, some are bigger than others, and some hurt a heck more than others when they are thrown at ya. Still, at the head of the park resided a quaint building promising warmth from the chili wind so we entered only to find a kind older gentelman welcome us. He had sunken eyes and small glasses resting on the end of his nose, and before long he went into a deep explanation of the remarkable features of this park. As he spoke he got more and more excited, and in fact I too got excited merely because this swell old man was so dang thrilled to talk about rocks. I dont know, I left the museam very happy about rocks for some reason and from now on whenever i see a rock with a scratch on it I will proably think of this man who became like a child at christmas because he got to talk about rocks. Anyway, we didnt really go to this place to look at the rocks, that was just a side step to get warm, we actually came there to look at what used to be a harbor. When Freddy told me about this harbor I was like, ok i think i am missing something in the translation because we were in the middle of a forest, no lie. There were trees everywhere and it was deffinatly not the most optimal point to dock a massive ship. Yet, as soon as we stepped out of the forest in the distance we could see a small square building on a hill. We later found out that that building is one of the few remaining buildings left on what used to be an island with a large harbor, but now that the new dikes have been build the harbor has been dried up and fields are now farmed. It was truly amazing so I will just let you guys look at the pictures.

Oh yea, there was a pirate left who was pretty ticked that his dang harbor was gone.

I found this sign on the way back, maybe I am just imature but i found it rather funny.

Next we went to this small fishing town called Urk which used to also be an island before the dikes were built. The buildings were exceptionally old and beautiful and the lake which is seen from the dry land is amazingly beautiful. Another great thing about this town was the fish known as Kibbling. I had never had it before, but it was glorious, if you get a chance I highly recomend you try it.

Also, as you can see we made some more Gnome spottings, apparently our new friend Sprankten let them know we were ok so they are comming out to greet us more openly than remaining in hiding as before, it was truly a pleasant gathering of friends.

On our last stop of the day we finally found the pirates boat at Batavia, he sailed off into the mist, i sure hope that guy keeps in touch, after getting past his rough burly exterior he really opened up. The swell of emotions inside a pirate is similar to the most turbulent storm on the sea. I mean it is pretty difficult knowing that you must steal and plunder others in order to keep your title of a pirate, and we all know that being a pirate is a pretty wicked awesome job.