Europe 2022 - 2023

Apparently we love Flemish provincial capitals. Leuven is the capital of the Belgian Province of Flemish Brabant. The main attraction here is the Groot Begijnhof Leuven UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a well preserved "beguinage" (a french term for housing complex meant to house religious women, but not nuns). The complex is owned by the University of Leuven, a prominent land owner in old town Leuven.

The town is also home to Stella Atois brewery and has a lovely city center lined with shops and restaurants. Very appealing to escape the big city of Brussels as its only a 20 minute train ride east.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groot_Begijnhof…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeguinageRead more

During the German occupation, Anne Frank goes into hiding with her family and four others in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam. In 1944 they are discovered and Anne eventually dies in a concentration camp. Her diary was published after the war and became one of the most widely read books in the world. In this way, Anne Frank gives a face to the victims of the Holocaust.

Anne Frank was born in 1929 into a Jewish family in the German city of Frankfurt am Main. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled the growing anti-Semitism to Amsterdam. Between 1933 and 1937, about 140,000 Jews fled Germany, of whom about 35,000 ended up in the Netherlands for a shorter or longer period of time. The Frank family gets a home in Amsterdam's Rivierenbuurt. They hid there for over 2 years in the Annex area of the house above the warehouse until they were finally found by the Nazis.

 In total, more than one hundred thousand Dutch Jews are murdered in the various concentration and extermination camps. Compared to the rest of Europe, a relatively large number of Jews were deported in the Netherlands. Between 1933 and 1945, about six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other persecuted people – including Sinti and Roma, the disabled, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses – were killed by Nazi terror.

The museum was a tribute to Anne's and her family's life, time in the Annex, as well as Anne's diary left to Otto her father who eventually got it published. It is now one of the most widely read books in the world.

At the end of the museum, a video of people saying a few words about Anne Frank played. One young lady recounted that Anne Frank saved her life. She lived through the war in Yugoslavia in the early 90s and she kept a diary to help her process the atrocities she witnessed. Having been through Bosnia and Herzegovina recently, that hit home for us.

Appologies for the photos being a bit blurry I wasn't supposed to take any! 🙃Read more

Today Dave and Emily went to Zansee Chans which has a handful of traditional windmills north of the Netherlands.

First up, the windmills were quite interesting. The windmills were used by the Dutch for many things. First and probably most important, a lot of the northern Netherlands is swampland. See the picture of Holland. Anything in dark and light blue is below sea level. The windmills were used to pump water out of some land to make it workable. The Dutch would build a "polder" around an area of land (basically a dike), then put canals through that area of land. The windmills would control the flow of water inside the dam. In fact you can see the River in one picture is higher than the artificial canals. The canals concentrate the remaining water and draw it away from the land inside the polders. These canals run all over the Wetlands of the Netherlands.

The mills were also used mill grain or make wooden boards. In fact, the Dutch East India Company was able to rise to its economic power in the 17th and 18th century due to the Dutch ability to mass produce boats faster than all competitors. They were producing 800 boats a year.

Last fun fact, the top of the windmills can actually pivot to face the wind. One picture of the back of the windmill, should show how the head is on a cog attached to the wide base.Read more