Wolfstad

Our Black Friday experience

Arthur — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:13:09 +0000

Today was Black Friday and many stores were open very early with special sales. Some even as early as 4 o’clock! When we got up at 5:00 we turned on the news and they were already showing helicopter views of huge lines of people in front of stores and malls. Roads around big malls like Woodfield and Gurnee Mills were already jammed. Some Best Buy’s in the Chicagoland area had people camping out in front of their doors from 3pm in the afternoon the day before! Big stores like Best Buy and Target often have so-called ‘doorbusters’, which are things like laptops and big TV’s that are very cheap but they only have a few in each store. So people want to be the first in and grab these things.

We decided to go to our nearest Kohl’s, which had already opened at 4:00 (!) but we arrived at around 6:30. The parking lot was almost full but there were still some places. When we entered the store there were two HUGE lines at the register that went around the entire perimeter of the store. People were dragging huge plastic bags full of stuff behind them as the lines crept forward. There were still a lot of really great sales available. Kohl’s had hundreds of products on the ‘early bird’ sale, which ran until noon. We picked out some things and got in the long line. It went pretty quickly and only took about 30 minutes until we reached the cashier. In front of us was a party of three women who had only one small bag between them when we got in line, but two of them kept running away to get more stuff and by the end they were dragging several huge bags full of stuff behind them.

When we left Kohl’s the parking lot was completely packed and we made someone very happy with our Kohl’s shopping bag and parking space. We got out at about 8:00 and then headed to Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills. It wasn’t so crowded there. We figured most people were still in the big box stores like Wal Mart, Target and Best Buy. Many of the stores in the mall didn’t even have a sale. Some did though. The Disney Store, for instance, had 20% off everything until 10:00.

After the mall our final stop was Target. It was around 10:30am at this time and it was still very crowded (they had opened at 6:00). A lot of the doorbuster display cases were empty. Especially the cheap DVD’s and Blu-Rays were wiped out.

This was my first Black Friday and it was a lot of fun to see all the frantic shoppers. We got some very good deals!

Perspective

admin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:57:37 +0000

Woo hoo!

Amy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:35:20 +0000

Old World Wisconsin

Arthur — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:58:21 +0000

Last Sunday we drove up to Eagle, southwest of Milwaukee, and visited Old World Wisconsin, an open air museum with more than 60 historic structures from the 1800s. The buildings range from ethnic farmsteads with furnished houses and rural outbuildings, to a crossroads village with its traditional small-town institutions.

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:

Horicon NWR

Arthur — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:34:29 +0000

Yesterday we drove up to Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. The weather was beautiful again. It’s around 77^oF / 25^oC these days. Horicon Marsh is the site of both a national and state wildlife refuge. The extinct glacial lake is the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the United States. The refuges are known for their many species of birds. Millions of waterfowl migrate through the marsh. Here are some photos of our visit.

Horicon National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center

This sign reading “Please Do Not Drive Over Snakes Basking On The Road” was posted at the beginning of the loop road in the North-West part of the refuge. We saw quite a few snakes laying on the road but OMG they were so tiny!! Amy got out the car one time to scoot one to the side and the small thing was jumping up and hissing at her.

There was a very nice floating boardwalk at the Egret Trail. We saw lots of muskrat houses (but no muskrats), some ducks and a few turtles.

Painted Turtles at Egret Walk Boardwalk

Alex 1994-2008

Arthur — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:00:02 +0000

This morning our beloved cat Alex died at the age of 14 from kidney failure. Here are some pictures of Alex from the last 8 years that she lived with us, in Rotterdam, Leiden and the last two weeks here in Deerfield. May she rest in peace.

Emptying our house

Arthur — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:29:54 +0000

Today we moved our couch, a cabinet, Amy’s bike and some other things to our family in Roosendaal. Our house is getting pretty empty now, and we just have some essential furniture left. We rented this small truck at Bo-rent to move the stuff:

I never drove a truck like this before, but it all went well. Actually it was quite fun to drive. Luckily there were hardly any cars parked in our one-way street this morning so we had no problem getting it to our house. It was a good car and the cheapest we could find. It says €70 per day, but with the insurance and extra kilometers we ended up paying about €130 for the day.

Photo tour of Leiden

Arthur — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:50:00 +0000

Next week we’ll be moving from Leiden in the Netherlands to the USA. We’ve lived here in Leiden for the last 6 years and really enjoyed this old charming town. Here are some of our pictures of Leiden.

This is Oude Vest looking at the harbour, about 5 minutes walking from our house. We pass this every time we walk to the center of town. There are a lot of canals like this in Leiden, lined with boats.

This is Haarlemmerstraat, the main shopping street of Leiden. All shops are open Monday to Saturday and Thursday evenings. Some of the big shops are also open on Sunday.

This is Rembrandt Brug, named after the famous painter that was born right around the corner of this bridge. 2006 was Rembrandt’s 400th anniversary and there were a lot of fun activities in town.

This nice little windmill is a replica of the one where Rembrandt’s dad used to work. It’s right next to the bridge from the last photo.

In the summer the cafes and restaurants expand their terraces onto flat barges in the water, which are great to have a drink or eat while watching the boats go by.

Here is another popular terrace in the water from a cafe called Annie’s Verjaardag (’Annie’s Birthday’), a nice place to have a drink or lunch. The photo is taken from the top of the V&D department store, which has a restaurant on top with an outside place to sit.

This picture is taken from the top of the old Meelfabriek (’Flour Factory’), which is abandoned and normally closed. We had a tour of the place on last year’s national Open Monument Day (8 September 2007). Our house is just to the right of that large church.

3 October is an annual holiday in the city of Leiden to commemorate the liberation of the city from the Spanish occupation in 1574. Every year there is a large funfair on this day with life music and traditional free herring and white bread for the citizens.

This is the front of Leiden’s main train station. We have a great train connection to the rest of Holland. It’s just 12 minutes to The Hague and 33 minutes to Amsterdam from here.

This is the back of the train station. This photo was just taken in April 2007 but today all this looks different as there is a huge construction pit where those cars are. They’re building a huge underground bike parking place, which is highly needed.

There are bikes ALL around the station in places where they are officially not allowed to be, but what else can people do if all places are full? Yesterday we looked around for 10 minutes to find a place and almost missed our train.

This is the current bike parking in front of the station. It opened in November 2002 with 2050 ‘legal’ spaces, and it’s been in constant overuse since then. Misparked bikes continue to clutter the place. This photo was taken on a Saturday, but on a weekday you can hardly walk through anymore from the bikes laying everywhere. Amy wrote about this a few years ago.

I’ll end with this funny sign in someone’s window that we saw last year. It translates as: “WARNING!! Loose-flying pigeons. When they come: lay flat on the ground and wait for help. If no help arrives: good luck”.

Scottish/Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park

Arthur — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:59:28 +0000

Four years ago today, on 11 September 2004, we were in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado, and saw the annual parade of the The Long Peak Scottish/Irish Highland Festival. We saw the parade of Clans & Tartans as well as the Grand March of the Dogs of the British Isles. Here are some photos of that day:

See here for more of our photos of the parade

Boxes shipped [2]

Arthur — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:09:47 +0000

After sending off our boxes yesterday we heard back from Worldwide Baggage Services today about the costs and schedule. The costs are pretty close to what we had already calculated on their website, which is great. This is the only company that we could find where you could just fill in details about your shipment and destination online and instantly get a quote. Good stuff. Our things will be transported on the ship on the photo below (this actual ship!). It will leave in about two weeks and then arrive in Chicago two weeks later:

Today we took a day off from packing and spent the day in Amsterdam! We visited the Rijksmuseum and saw Forbidden Kingdom (starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan) at the cinema.

Arthur getting train tickets in Leiden

10:30 train to Amsterdam

The Rijksmuseum, Holland’s National Art and History Museum, is housed in a very large building that is currently being renovated and work is expected to last until 2013! Until that time a small collection of masterpieces can be visited in the Philips Wing. It was a shockingly small exhibit but very much worth the visit.

Amy at the Rijksmuseum