Of Mud and Men

So on this next little part of the update, we leave Germany and head into Holland. Over here, the program is leading us to a mud-walk (which is literally a walk through an immense amount of mud) and a seal rehabilitation center. After that, we headed to Amsterdam for one of our free weekends.

The first part of the trip in Holland was hilarious, awesome, and one of the most tiring activities ever. This was the mud-walk. Now a mud-walk doesn’t sound like it would be that difficult, except when it is consistently up to your ankles and sometimes up to your knees. This trip was out into the Wadden Sea, a tidal area of the Dutch coastline that has a huge shift between high and low water. This area is only accessible during the low water times, so trips are usually keep a good clip to make sure to travel a good distance. A lot of these exposed barriers are used by the seals during low water for shelter and with all the industrialization and human influence, this ecosystem is quickly changing, pushing the seals out. Right down the road from mud-walking is the seal rehab center, which takes in those seals that wash up on the beach in the need of help. They can be any age, and are take care of for three months and then released again back into the wild. It was a great insight into how the care of the marine mammals occurs, and how much resourcefulness actually has to go into their care.

Once we left Pieterburen, we trained over to Amsterdam for the free weekend. Even though we have only been here for a couple days, it feels like we have packed a ton of stuff in here. We started on Friday with the Anne Frank House, which is the actual house that the Frank family and others hid in. We also have visited the Van Gogh Museum and its exhibition, “Lights of the Night.” This exhibition highlights Van Gogh’s use of the stars in his paintings. Besides having many pieces of Van Gogh’s in the permanent collection, we were also able to see “The Starry Night,” one of his most famous works. The sheer amount of history that exists in all of the buildings and streets of these cities is just impressive. At every corner, there are buildings with stories, built compact and to what seems like a larger city design. Heck, even the gelato store has seen the rise and fall of empires. It's just awesome. Oh, and none of them have bathrooms for you to use. :)