The Harley-Davidson company has an incredible history. It was started in Milwaukee by four men in a small shed and grew exponentially since then. It reminded me of how Apple started in a garage. William Harley and Arthur Davidson made just 1 motorcycle in 1903, then another one in 1904, then 5 the following year, then 8, 50, 150, 450, and by 1920 they were making 26,500 motorcycles and 13,000 sidecars. You know that you have a successful brand when people proudly wear your logo on t-shirts and patches. I can’t think of many other brands, like Harley-Davidson, that have a similar appeal to people so that they’ll want to collect pins and wear it on apparel (Disney and Hard Rock Cafe come to mind).

Here are some pictures from our visit:

The museum was opened in July 2008 and is located near downtown Milwaukee. It is housed in three buildings: the museum, the archives and the third building has a restaurant, shop and conference center. The entrance fee is quite steep at $16 per adult.

This vehicle is known as Serial Number One and is the oldest Harley-Davidson in the world, thought to be from around 1903. It’s origins are sort of a mystery. During the 1990s, restorers discovered a number “1″ stamped inside various components, inspiring the bike’s nickname.

Harley-Davidson made a lot of service motorcycles, for postmen, police officers and military personnel. This army one had holders for two rifles.

Dutch advertisement from 1928

Advertisements from throughout the years

Wall of different tanks

At the back of the museum you can take the elevator to the third floor and have a peek inside the archives building. This is where they keep a copy of every model brought out since 1915. Over 450 motorcycles are stored here and you can see the archives staff at work doing their restoration work.

The Design Lab explains what goes into designing new models. There were blue-prints, clay models and lots of other neat things to look at.

The Design Lab also had a welding robot that demonstrated its moves. It was very impressive the way the large machine moved around so swiftly.

At the end of the museum is a large hall with ten motorcycles set up for people to sit on

For more about the Indiana Jones exhibit we visited see my post Indiana Jones Exhibit at Harley-Davidson Museum.

We are not particularly interested in motorcycles, but we had a great time at the 130,000-square-foot museum, which opened in July 2008 and is located near downtown Milwaukee. For more about the museum see my other post about the Harley-Davidson museum.

We arrived at the museum at noon and stayed for about four hours. We picked Thursday for the Museum Gallery Talk about the Indy bikes, which was at 2pm. The talk was a bit simple, but still interesting. If you want to see the bikes and can’t make it to the talk then you should just go and don’t worry about missing the talk. The talk was only 10 minutes.

A member of the Archives staff explained about how the vehicles were prepared for the filming of the 2008 Indiana Jones movie. He tells about the five motorcycles that they gave to Paramount Pictures and how bike builder Justin Kell in California transformed the 2006 Softail Springer Classic models to look like motorcycles from the 1950s. While the frame, engine and transmission remained stock, Kell made many vintage-inspired alternations, including the handlebars, seat, bobbed fenders and ‘55-’56 logos applied to a Sportster tank. A fake kick-starter was even added as a finished look.

The studio gave two of the bikes back to Harley-Davidson and both of them are on display at the museum this month. The first Indiana Jones bike is located in the entrance hall. It is the ‘hero’ bike, which was the one used by Harrison and Shia in the shots where you can see there faces. The other bikes were mostly used by the stuntmen.

We weren’t allowed to touch this ‘hero’ bike. At the end of this month this one will go into the Archives, which is a separate large building attached to the museum where over 450 bikes are stored. Hardley-Davidson has kept one copy of every model since 1915. You can peek into the archives storage if you take the elevator to the third floor in the back of the museum:

The second Indiana Jones bike is located at the end of the museum tour, after the design lab. There’s a small corner with some fake “Property of US government” crates where the stunt bike is proudly displayed.

Guests are welcome to sit on this bike for a photo op. You can even dress up as Indy or Mutt with a hat, leather jacket and whip:

Hollywood magic has transformed this 2006 model into a 1950s motorcycle. It’s made to look all dirty and roughed up, but you can’t wipe off that dirt! It’s on there permanently so that all five bikes used for the film look exactly the same.

This second bike is owned by the marketing department of Harley-Davidson and will be used on roadshows after this month.

It was great to see the Indiana Jones bikes, but the museum itself was no less impressive. I’ll post some more pictures of the museum later on.

Me on Mutt’s bike

Trams run between the different areas as they are quite far apart. We took a tram from the entrance to the Norwegian area, which is located at the far end of the 600-acre park.

The first settlement we visited was the Kvaale Farm in the Norwegian area, which was from 1865. A woman inside was spinning wool and told us about the Kvaale family that moved from Norway to Wisconsin and lived in this house with their 11 children.

At Schulz Farm in the German settlement men were cutting wood. It was an impressive undertaking. Tree trunks were brought in by horses and men would roll them to the saw, which was connected with extremely long leather straps to an old steam engine.

Here are some more pictures from other areas of Old World Wisconsin:

ESTEC covers about 100 acres of land near Noordwijk, which is a small coastal town northwest of Leiden. ESTEC provides extensive testing facilities to verify the proper operation of spacecraft, such as the Large Space Simulator (LSS), acoustic and electromagnetic testing bays, multi-axis vibration tables and the ESA Propulsion Laboratory (EPL). Almost all equipment that ESA launches is tested in some degree at ESTEC prior to launching.

The first time we visited Space Expo was on 23 January 2005 and the museum was then slated for refurbishment. They have done a very nice job; the displays and interactive screens look great. There’s a lot of information about the work of ESA, the International Space Station and other space stuff, with replicas of space craft, instruments and lots of beautiful large photos.

I found this video about the exhibition:

The highlight of our visit was the Space Train, which costs €3 extra and brings you on a tour of ESTEC.

We had also done the tour on our first visit in 2005 and then saw the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle sitting on the largest of their vibration tables. We were lucky then because they don’t always have something to see. The ATV was launched on 9 March 2008.

Today we were lucky again as they were working on the Herschel Space Observatory! We had a great view of this big piece of equipment as men in white outfits were working on it in the testing bay, which is a hermetically sealed environment. Herschel is scheduled for launch later this year and will be the first space observatory to cover the full far infrared waveband. Its 11.5 foot telescope will incorporate the largest mirror ever deployed in space.

Here are some more photos of our visit. Unfortunately cameras weren’t allowed inside ESTEC, so no pictures of the cool testing bays and satellite.

Photo by Rob Van Hilten

We booked our tickets (€16.50 per person) on the the Corpus website for the 13:37 time slot. The museum is situated near the A44 highway and is rather difficult to reach. We arrived at the building at 13:15 and parked our car inside (€5 for first 4 hours parking).

We collected our tickets but quickly found out that they were running a bit late. Guests go through the ‘experience’ in groups of 10 or 15 people and our 13:37 time slot was delayed for about an hour. Apparently there had been some technical difficulties in the morning, so lots of people were hanging around in the reception area.

At 14:30 we could finally go in. We collected our audio guides and stepped onto the long escalator going into the body. The audio guides are fully automatic and are activated each time you enter a room (or rather ‘body cavity’). The 1-hour tour was very nicely done, with lights, large screens with CGI animation, 3D videos and realistic-looking ’sets’. Several times we had to sit down on a platform that moved up to the next floor level after the presentation was done. Some times we had to put on 3D glasses and other times the chairs moved and shook to add to what we were seeing. It was pretty cool.

The audio tour ended at the top (the brain) and this is where the interactive museum started. After handing in your headset you can walk around freely on the six floors of educational games to learn more about the human body. We spent about an hour in the museum.

We had a great visit. Especially the 1-hour audio guide was impressive. Children under eight are not admitted, so we expected parts to be graphic and ‘gross’, but it was all really nicely presented, from digestion to reproduction to sneezing. The entrance fee of €16.50 is kind of steep considering you only spend about 2 hours there, but considering all the audio and video effects this is actually quite understandable. It would be nice if they made parking free as the building is in the middle of nowhere with lots of vacant land around, so charging €5 on top of the €16.50 is kind of strange.

Unfortunately photography is not allowed inside, but you can find some pictures on Flickr and www.corpus-experience.nl.

Photo by Rob Van Hilten

The event was a huge success this year, with more visitors on Saturday than the entire weekend last year. Certain monuments could only be viewed or visited during a guided tour; the Latijnse School (the Latin School, where Rembrandt attended classes) was already fully booked for the weekend by Saturday afternoon. There were huge waits to visit the Gravensteen (old city jail) and Pieterskerk (St. Peter’s Church).

There was an incident at the Hooglandse Kerk in the morning on Saturday, when a woman who climbed up the church tower became unwell. Paramedics climbed up the tower to provide medical assistance. A fire truck ladder was raised up the tower to evacuate the woman from the tower.

We happened to be at the Hooglandse Kerk at the time, and I happened to have climbed up the tower just as the paramedics were attending to the sick woman. I had to climb down the tower using a second staircase, which was very poorly lit and nearly pitch black in some places. When I came outside the church a crowd of spectators had gathered to watch the fire truck’s ladder being used to bring the woman down. I hope she’s okay.

These are the monuments we visited on Saturday:

Zijlpoort
In the 17th century Leiden was enclosed by a city wall with eight gates. Today two of the gates still stand, including Zijlpoort, which was built in 1667. Today this gate serves as a restaurant which was opened in 1999. During restoration a portion of the city wall around the gate was rebuilt.

Zijlpoort

Museum Het Leids Wevershuis
Leiden is full of ‘wevershuisjes’, small houses like this one which were once home to cloth-makers (weavers). This house was built in the 1620’s and became Leiden’s newest museum when it opened to the public during Open Monument Weekend 2005. The interior of the house is very simple and stands as it did in the early 1900’s.

Het Leids Wevershuis

Hooglandse Kerk
Construction on this huge church began in the late 1300’s. Especially remarkable here is a giant clock mechanism which dates from 1607.

Hooglandse Kerk: gravestone from 1678; clock mechanism; chuch tower with fire truck ladder; view from the tower.

Stadhuis
The Leiden City Hall was built in the late 1500’s, shortly after the defeat of the Spanish (celebrated each year on 3 October). Meeting rooms and offices were open for public viewing. The most interesting things we saw here were the inlaid woodworks by M.C. Escher in a few rooms.

Leiden Stadhuis: Council Meeting Room

Waalse Kerk
After Leiden kicked out the Spanish in 1574, Protestants from Belgium and France flooded into the city, where they were welcome. So many Wallonians came into Leiden that they had their own French-speaking neighborhood. In 1818 they established this church.

Gemeenlandshuis van Rijnland
The Rijnland District Water Control Board (Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland) has owned this office building since 1578.

Gemeenlandshuis van Rijnland

SieboldHuis
This museum at Rapenburg 19 houses Japanese treasures from the personal collection of Philipp Franz Balthasar Von Siebold. The building dates from the early 1500’s. The museum opened its doors in 2000 and underwent extensive restoration work in 2005.

Hotel de Doelen
The buiding at Rapenburg 2 dates from 1668. The breakfast room and 18th century staircase were open for public viewing.

Rapenburg 29
This is a beautiful old canal house which was also open during Monumentenweekend last year, during renovations. The renovation is complete now and a family is living in this beautiful house. One remarkable detail is the mural on the dining room ceiling, which was rediscovered during restoration done in the 1950’s.

A Open Monumentendag flag in front of Rapenburg 29

Source: Enorme drukte op eerste monumentendag

Tropenmuseum

www.kit.nl – Linnaeusstraat 2, Amsterdam, ( +31 (0)20 5688215 – Open daily from 10am to 5pm (on 5, 24 and 31 December until 3 pm; and closed on 1 January, 29 April, 5 May and 25 December)

The Tropenmuseum is a very nice anthropological museum. Especially interesting for us, as we had just been to India, was the temporary exhibit Dealing with the Gods about rituals in Hindu religion, which runs till 10 September 2006 in the main hall. The exhibit shows how Hindus live with their gods, at important moments in life, like birth, marriage and death, but also in everyday life. We spent most of our visit looking at the great displays of this Indian exhibit, and then we had a quick look at the first floor, which holds many artifacts of Dutch colonial history.

Here is a picture of Amy just north of the Tropenmuseum, as we begin our walk past Artis, Amsterdam’s zoo, toward the Verzetsmuseum:

Verzetsmuseum

www.verzetsmuseum.org – Plantage Kerklaan 61, Amsterdam, ( +31 (0)20 6202535 – Open Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm, and Saturday to Monday and holidays from noon to 5pm (closed on 1 January, 30 april and 25 December)

The great Verzetsmuseum, Dutch Resistance Museum, follows the development of the Dutch Resistance movement from the German invasion in May 1940 to the liberation in May 1945. The exhibition shows how the Dutch people courageously faced the occupation, and it includes fascinating displays with private stories of individual heroism, and memorabilia, such as forged identity papers, old photographs, underground newspapers and weapons.

Here is a photo taken near Rembrandt Corner, a small cafe where we had a short break. It was freezing outside and we were in need of some hot chocolate.

Allard Pierson Museum

cf.uba.uva.nl/apm – Oude Turfmarkt 127, Amsterdam, ( +31 (0)20 5252556 – Open daily Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm; Saturday and Sunday from 1pm to 5pm; closed on Monday (also closed on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 30 April, Whit Sunday and Christmas Day)

This wonderful smallish museum was named after the University of Amsterdam’s first Professor of Classical Archeology, and contains its archeological collection, including Egyptian mummies, Coptic clothes, Cypriot jewellery, Greek pottery, Roman statuary, and more. We had a short visit here of about two hours, but managed to see most of the displays.

Here is a picture of a photo in the Egyptian section of the Allard Pierson Museum of a fallen statue of Ramses II near Memphis. We had seen this statue on our April 2003 visit of Egypt, but now there is a large building around the statue (see photo 5 in our photo album of that trip):

Van der Laan said that offering free entrance to museums will only have a positive effect when all museums in the country participate. Otherwise the museums that are forced to charge entrance fees will suffer from unfair competition.

This weekend is Museumweekend 2006 in the Netherlands, an annual festival where many museums across the country are either free or offer a discount. We plan to visit some nice museums this weekend and are already planning a route.

Related post: Museums in Leiden

Source: Geen nieuwe bezoekers musea door gratis toegang

Giant squids are rarely seen as they live at depts of 200 to 1,000m (650 to 3,300ft) and were once believed to be mythical creatures. They can grow to tremendous size of up to 10m (34ft) for males and 13m (44ft) for females.

Researchers of the museum have taken great care in preservering the giant creature, which is now on display in a 9m (30ft) long glass tank.

“Most giant squid tend to be washed up dead on beaches, or retrieved from the stomach of sperm whales, so they tend to be in quite poor condition,” said Jon Ablett, mollusc curator at the Natural History Museum.

“The first stage was to defrost it”, Abbet explained to BBC News. “That took about four days. The problem was the mantle – the body – is very thick and the tentacles very narrow, so we had to try to thaw the thick mantle without the tentacles rotting.

The scientists did this by bathing the mantle in water, whilst covering the tentacles in ice packs, after which they injected the squid with a formol-saline solution to prevent it from rotting.

Source: Giant squid grabs London audience