Bath Houses in Amsterdam??

Yeah, there were!

The one in Javaplein, I first saw when I visited Kaustubh in his old house at Ceramplein. Noticing its tower and its extraordinary architecture, I thought it was an arab-style mosque, with that tower being its minaret.

The photo is from a blog by Kees; from his entry entitled "a € 29.95 brain"

Later, I noticed the label "Bad Huis" on it, which I knew to mean "bath house". More interesting was to realize that there were people inside having drinks etc. This made me think that I probably was wrong to translate "Bad Huis" since it does not make sense to name a restaurant as "Bath House".

Then, Maikel the saviour helped me :). I summarized him all this one day and asked him what "Bad Huis" meant. To my surprise that place was really an old public bath house of Amsterdam, which has later been converted to a restaurant. It was really weird to me. I thought there was no bath houses at all in europe; with it being a tradition in Turkey (hamams), or in other asian countries..

I have made a search on internet but I could not bump into any detailed information. I only learned that it was a municipal bath-house, where the poor would come for their weekly shower (look interesting!). This info made me think that it was really in old times (eg. a century ago). But somewhere else, it says that it has been built in 1942, which is notably recent to me.

I still wonder the reasoning behind to build such houses in the city. Was it like having water in their houses was a luxury for the poor at the time?

A Guide for Buying Eggs in Netherlands

I went to Maikel's place for dinner last evening. I first called him from the office, and he told me all the details on how to get to his place by bike so that I would not get lost on the way. Thanks a lot Google Maps! Amsterdam map was open in both of our browsers; and it was very convenient then to follow his directions on phone.

How to get there
I rode through Oosterstraat, going straight ahead; passed through Nobelweg till I hit Kruislaan. Then, I took a fietspad (cycle path) by keeping the highway always on my right. After a while, I saw Diemen Zuid station and passed under the rail tracks. I had already taken notes of all details; so It was not that difficult to get to Clara Zetkinstraat and finally to Kruitberg through Kraaiennestpad. Kraaiennest means crow nest by the way, and the metro station nearby is also called so.

Dinner
He is really a good cook! He cooked a very delicious vegetarian pizza,and a dessert whose recipe I will ask (mix of yoghurt, lime, milk ).

Chickens without beaks !!
He had a box of eggs on his kitchen bench. He gave me the details of the lables on the inner side of the box cover:


Here, there are a group of numbers on the eggs we buy. Each number starts with either of 0, 1, 2, 3. The first column of the explanations in the picture points to the meaning of these numbers; and this column is the most important part to pay attention when buying eggs.

Maikel said that he always buys the ones labeled with zero (organic/ biologisch) or 1 (chicken freely allowed to eat outside in grasses/ vrije uitleop). I asked if 3-kooi meant cow. "No" he said, "it is cage. The eggs labeled with 3 are from chicken always kept in cages."

"I never buy eggs with labels of 2 or 3 since the beaks of those chickens are cut off" he said. I was in a big surprise! "Since they are kept together, otherwise they make harms to each other with their beaks when they have fights" he explained.

How awful! Never heard this before. Now I regret that I did not pay attention to those labels before. My campaign is: never 2- or 3- labels to discourage harms to chicken beaks!

Omega in Oranjekerk

When was it? Hmmm. Yeah, the day Holland played with Russia.

It was saturday, and there was a nice (and free) classic music concert in Oranjekerk behind Sarphatipark. Merel (blackbird in Dutch) from third floor (mass spectrometry group) was also singing in the choire.

Oranjekerk is not a church anymore; it is used for different activities I guess.

However, after the concert, "It is probably still being used as church sometimes" said Maikel to me.

"How did you understand it?" I was curious and a bit amazed. He pointed to the speech desk: "there is an omega sign there." I did not get it, and asked why..

He told me that omega represents eternity or the afterlife since it is the last letter of the greek alphabet. That's why it is used as a symbol in church.

interesting...

I have just checked the wikipedia entry and found the following sentences:
In the New Testament book of Revelation, God is declared to be the "alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last".

"Notre Dame" or "Onze Lieve Vrouw"

I know the name "Notre Dame" since I heard about the book "the hunchback of notre dame" by Victor Hugo many times since childhood.

But I never knew that it was the name of a church.

Thanks to our visit to Paris with Maikel, I now know that it is the name of a very famous church in Paris, located on one of the small islands in river Seine. It has very nice and majestic look.
More surprising for me was to learn its meaning. Since the name was always associated with hunchback in my mind, I thought it was probably a person with a hunchback.

When we were inside the church, I saw the explanations in different languages; and my eye caught the word "onse lieve vrouw kerk" (our lovely lady church). I was surprised that they mentioned about a dutch church in the explanations. "Why" I asked Maikel. "What has this church to do with a dutch church"?

"It is this church" was Maikel's reply to my amazement. I did not get it. Then he told me that "Notre Dame" was the french word for "Onze Lieve Vrouw". How surprising!

And I realized that the novel by Victor Hugo was actually about the church. It was not a personal name...

My epiphany today: Cheesy vs. Çizi

Maikel was talking about something, and he used the word "cheesy".

And, I experienced a very sudden realization!

Çizi has always been my favourite biscuits. I liked its salty taste a lot. "Çiz" means "draw" in turkish, and I did not understand the reason behind the name of this biscuit.

At the moment Maikel used the word "cheesy", I was enlightened by the reason behind this naming :).

Çizi is the turkish spelling of Cheesy, and the biscuit had cheese flavour!

Maikel told me that the english word for such a sudden realisation was epiphany.

Jackdaw

Maikel told me that the crow-like birds with grayish head are not crows, but they are called jackdaw in english.

He said that jackdaws are the clever birds, not crows. And he added that jackdaws are actually smaller than crows. I put a crow picture below from wikipedia, to make the difference clearer.

And today, on our way back from R-Class meeting, Tjeerd told me that they are called 'Kauw' in dutch. I checked from wikipedia for the turkish name: it is not that creative: 'Kuchuk Karga', meaning 'Small Crow'.

OLVG: Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis

My huisarts (family doctor) is located in a hospital close to Oosterpark. The hospital is called OLVG, the abbreviation of 'Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis'. Namely, 'Our dear lady guesthouse'.

I had asked Maikel why this hospital was called so. He told me that 'Onze Lieve Vrouwe' refers to Prophet Jesus' mother, Mary. He added that this name suggests that the hospital was of catcholic origin. According to him, there are hospitals all over the country with the same naming.

Origin of many lakes in Holland

Maikel told me yesterday that many small lakes in the Netherlands were created because the stones and sands from ground were used for building purposes, and the resulting cavities were filled with water. He said that the lake close to his place (Gaasperplas) is one of such lakes.

PASEN & ASCENSION & PENTACOST

Today is the last of a series of holidays started with Easter (I guess).
First, we celebrated Easter (Pasen in Dutch, Paskalya in Turkish) for four days in March 21-24. It actually starts on thursday, but thursday is not official holiday. So:
White Thursday: the last supper of Prophet Jesus.
Good Friday: crucifixion of prophet Jesus
Silent Saturday: He lays on his tomb
Easter Sunday: This is the third day of crucifixion and he rises from dead.
Easter Monday: I do not know why is this celebrated/made holiday, and it looks that uncle Wiki also does not have any idea..

Then, the next day after Queen's Day, May 1, it was again holiday because of "Ascension day". First I thought that this was becasue of ascending to throne for the queen, but Maikel told me that it was the ascension of prophet Jesus to heaven 40 days after his resurrection..

And, this sonday and monday has been yet another holiday: Pentacost (Pinksteren in Dutch). Wikipedia says that this is the day when the holy spirit came back to his apostles and followers 10 days after his ascension.

my bike pump

I had bought a small, functional and easy-to-carry-around bike pump from one shop in Javastraat a couple of months ago - I guest just for 3 euros or so.. But I could never make it work..

One night my iranian neighbours told me that one of them had flat tire, and they wanted to borrow my bike for an hour. I offered them my pump in the hope that they could manage to make it work.. And no..

I tried it few more times, but no way.. Then today I decided to take it to office. 'Maybe Maikel would want to have it' I thought; 'otherwise it is not any use to me'.

Then, again he has taught me something :)
He just told me the trick, and a couple of minutes ago we tried it on Olja's bike. It worked perfect!. With just a couple of pumpings, the tires were full of air..

'Mas' in Christmas

Today, Maikel told me that Christmas actually means 'Christ's mass'; and 'mass' is the gathering in the church for celebrations, commemorations, funerals etc. where the priest gives a talk.