Netherlands: Day 5 and 6 — Tiana Daniella

Jul 29

Jul 29 Netherlands: Day 5 and 6

Day 5

Today we went on a bit of a field trip with work. We took the train and a bus to the town of Gemert and from there went to see a "robot dairy farm". It was really interesting. All of the calves born on the farm are kept in the first of 3 barns. We went to that barn first and met one little cow that was only two days old. One of the other calves who was also very young, was still struggling to walk. He would try to stand up with his back legs first and then stumble over to the front of his enclosure to see us but he couldn't quite balance on his front legs and would flop down again.

Doodling and journaling on the train to Gemert

Most of the cows and calves would walk to the front of their pens and watch you when you walked by. A few would tilt their heads at you and try to stare in your eyes. The funniest ones would reach their heads out as far as they could, and then try to stick their tongues out and lick Annie's purse whenever she turned away from them.

After spending a few hours at the farm, Annie and I walked to a nearby castle (sidenote: what kind of small town has a nearby castle???) but it was locked! Ahhhh. Luckily we saw an old stone church on our way over. We walked back to the church and explored the cemetery out in front (sadly the church was also locked but the cemetery was open). We found a few graves of people would would have been alive during World War II and I took some photos on my film camera of a few gravestones and areas of the cemetery. I'll update this post if I find any ghosts in the photos :0

By the time we got back home it was raining so we decided to stay home for the night. Annie made spaghetti (!) and I started a little watercolour painting. I did bring my paint, paper and brushes all the way here ~just in case~ after all. I think it's pretty cute so far.

Day 6

I realized that I forgot to mention some things a few days ago (oops). We got our bikes! They're actually really nice (I mean, I'm just basing this off of looks. I am by NO MEANS a bike expert). We rode them around a bit and drove?/rode?/biked? into the city centre on Tuesday so Annie could buy some shoes to go to the farm after realizing that the only options at home were heels or flip flops.

It was my turn to make supper today so I decided to make a whole chicken. Easy right? A few of the things I learned were that:

1. candied fruit here (and France apparently, according to instructions in my recipe) does not mean dried fruit with sugar on it. It's actually canned fruit in syrup, like the fruit cocktails I'd get in my lunch when I was little. This led to a lot of time being spent searching all over the grocery store for candied lemons before asking an employee and being handed a can of oranges in syrup.

2. We do not have a lemon zester

3. Anything can become a lemon zester with enough desperation and determination.

And so 6 hours later, we had the BEST CHICKEN EVER!! Okay, maybe that's a little much but it was pretty great. Although after zesting and then peeling two whole lemons with a dull paring knife for a few hours, I never want to see a lemon again.