Finger Pockets and Janssen Adventures

Last weekend we went to Belgium for a little climbing expedition. It's always a crapshoot with weather, but we lucked out and it was absolutely beautiful. It was also kind of an adventure. A Janssen adventure.

Janssen Adventure:

A glorious, action-packed adventure where things to slightly wrong, but not so wrong that it isn't beyond type two fun;

An expedition where something doesn't go as planed. Usually there is some sort of unexpected adventure, often involving a sketchy approach, trad lead, or poor decision making. All in all a memorable experience where nobody dies but you might think you're going to get hurt for a second or two. 

We were very, very excited to get on the train to Freyr, the "most important climbing area in Belgium." This was largely because we really, really were looking forward to climbing, but also because we haven't had the opportunity to travel by train yet. EasyJet is really cheap.

So we got on the train with our stuff. We had a lot of stuff, between sleeping bags, tents, and climbing gear, including 2 ropes (climbing with 3 people it's easiest to trail a rope up with the first follower).

Yup, I always make that face when I'm psyched

The only good part about hauling around all that gear is that people get out of your way when you're barreling through the train station trying to make your connection. Unfortunately, the parting of the people effect didn't do us any good in Brussels Central since the train arrived late and we rushed to our next platform only to watch the doors on the train close and it drive away. Thankfully we only had to wait an hour until the next train.

We arrived in Anseremme, Belgium around 9:30pm and proceeded to walk, in the dark, to the Freyr climbing area. Or at least that's where we hoped we were going, since the signage was scant and it was pretty dark. Thanks to my awesome navigation skills (using a screen-cap of Google Maps), we made to the Belgium Alpine Club site and alpine hut at (what we assumed was) the Freyr climbing area. After trying to figure out where we could set up our tents, we gave up and spent the night in the alpine hut. 

Saturday morning was beautiful, if a bit dewy. We decided to walk back into Anseremme to find some food and, hopefully, a copy of the Freyr climbing guide. We had no luck on the climbing guide front, but did pick up some fresh bread from a bakery. It really is a nice little town. 

During our excursion into town, we learned that the cafe where guidebooks used to be sold had burned down in a rather impressive fire in 2013. However, we were informed that the frite shop (that's fries to the non-Europeans) across from the climbing parking area sold them, but they didn't open until mid-day.

By the time we were back to the climbing area, the sun was out and the rock was well en-route to dry, so we shrugged and made our way down the trail towards a formation. A couple guys hiked down a few minutes behind us, and were kind enough to let us look at their guidebook. Unfortunately, it wasn't much help, since we, quite frankly, had no idea where we were or what we were doing. So we wandered around the formation a bit and picked out what looked like a fairly easy route. Figured we'd do a quick route and get the feel of the ratings there.

Ev took the lead and up we went on what turned out to be some incredibly smooth, glassy rock. Which Freyr is famous for. 

Yeah, that didn't quite as planned....

The limited beta available on the climbing websites said that the classic routes are "polished." That is the understatement of the century. Polished doesn't even begin to describe the smoothness and total lack of friction of the Janssen Adventure route. 

There was a lovely looking second pitch after the first, so we said what the hell and climbed that, too. But then we couldn't find a rap point. Welp, guess we're topping out. Our super easy first attempt turned out to be a 4.5 pitch "where's the route? Oh god, that's gotta be a 5.11 crack, abort! Go left! Go left! Man, I really wish we had a guidebook..." 

Ev took two leads, I took two leads, and thus our quick and easy climb turned into an all-day Janseen Adventure.

But the view from the top was pretty amazing, and it was still quite satisfying. 

To celebrate surviving our little adventure, we got some delicious post-climb beer and food. 

Sunday morning we decided to climb for a couple hours before catching our train back to Rotterdam. After all, the rock was big and tempting. 

Once again it was a beautiful day, so, with our newly acquired guidebook, we found a 6b (that's a 5.10d, boys) slab and I led a quick 5.6 to set a top rope.

Ev really enjoyed the pockets on the rock, especially since they were pretty much the only thing of any help on the route. In true slab form, it was barren of any holds, ledges, or particularly good friction (although the route was way less slick than what we climbed on Saturday). 

After Ev took an attempt, Deva gave it a shot. 

Then I took a run at the route, cheated the first crux, then made it within 1m of the top before the slab kicked my butt.

Ev took another try and managed to finish it (the only person of the day to do it!), then pulled the top rope and we called it a weekend.

Unsurprisingly, our train into Belgium Central was canceled due to track maintenance (boo), so we took a bus to a neighboring town, then hopped a train. Naturally, we missed our Belgium-Rotterdam train, so spent 1.5 hours hanging out until the next one.


.........................................


On a completely unrelated note, I should probably congratulate my parents on their 30th wedding anniversary. They're kind of awesome.

The Wall: German Edition

It has been pointed out to me that, once again, my blog entry is overdue.

Sorry, Mom.


The new quarter is now in its second week. Last period, a lot of the material was included in my undergraduate coursework, but not in the programs over here, so I had a fair bit of review. And a lot of hours. This period, I only have 14 credits (rather than 18), and the classes are, for me at least, much more interesting. And, while they are still very demanding, I actually have some time to do the reading, watch the lecture videos, and all of that fun stuff. Oh, and the RA thing, too. There will never be enough hours in the day.

In short, it's still early enough in the quarter that I'm feeling on top of things.


Last weekend Ev and I went to Berlin to visit the Stocks, family friends and family of our German exchange student. We were ready to get out of the Netherlands again (it seems like we need a trip every couple weeks to keep us out of our respective school/work/being in a foreign country funks), and seeing people who treat us like family sounded really, really nice. I should probably note that these particular tickets were obtained around a month ago.

Saturday morning we took the dogs for a walk and Wolfgang showed us around the trails behind the house. The Stock's house is located on the boarder of east Berlin, and there used to be a munition storage facility behind them. There is still some barbed wire and various footings, foundations, and old access roads where the facilities used to be. After our enlightening and educational walk, Ev indulged me as I fussed around in the Stock's kitchen. Our kitchen here has an oven (which, as I have mentioned before, is kind of a miracle), but there's very little counter space, which makes it hard to cook fancy food since you hit your head on various water heaters and stove hoods in the small space. So I was thrilled to take advantage of the open, well-stocked kitchen and cook dinner for everyone. Oh, and play with the animals.

I really miss my animals... enough that we've been talking about getting a cat. I tend to forget how allergic I am to cats. This weekend reminded me of this fact, and we are no longer thinking about getting a fuzzy kitty. I like to breathe.

But their cats are pretty fun...

After my day of pretending to be domestic, Burchard, our exchange student from bloody ages ago, took us on a tour of Berlin. 

The week before our visit was the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and it seemed that it was at the forefront of everyone's minds.

Some of the art on the Wall is pretty amazing. And very, very political.

You can follow the location of the Wall all the way through Berlin. The Germans have obviously gone to great lengths to memorialize their past, both good and bad. We saw monuments to the Romas and Jews killed during WWII, as well as tributes to the people who died, escaped, or were arrested during the Soviet occupation of East Berlin.

One of the most powerful stops on our mini-tour of Berlin was the section of the Wall still intact, providing a view from both the east (below) and west side of the wall.

I can only imagine how hard it must have been to see this separating your entire city. Burchard mentioned that there is still a perceived difference between east and west Berliners, which didn't exist prior to the construction of the Wall. 

Naturally, Burchard lightened the mood a little bit.

Other notable stops included the parliament building (which I failed to get a picture of), the "gate" built by Napoleon way back when, Burchard's brewery, and a couple nifty buildings of engineering interest.

The beer was excellent. DiMo's face.... well, that's for you to decide.

Before we headed back to the Stock's house, Burchard showed us this clock near one of the (many) train stations. Even from Berlin, you can keep an eye on Alaska (at least to some extent).

Is it sad that a world clock made me feel a tiny bit homesick?

It was fun being able to have discussions about the current political environment, differences between US and European governments and healthcare, engineering, medical research ... Wolfgang and Oriana are very up to date with the state of things and it's always interesting to hear other people's viewpoints and experiences. We had some excellent discussions that I (and Ev, I'm pretty sure) enjoyed immensely. 

Now I'm back in Rotterdam doing the whole school thing. Ev, Deva and I are going to Freyr in Belgium this weekend for some late-season climbing on real rocks!

You have no idea how excited that makes me.

Soooooooo hopefully I'll get another update out Sunday night and be back on this whole "once a week" thing. 

Maybe.

Post-Finals Pizza

I have a game for you:

Go through the alphabet and name a movie that starts with each letter. Rinse and repeat until you run out of movies. Then switch to bands.

This is how Ev and I spent date night. It was awesome. And lasted 3 hours, but hey, stopping is for quitters.

And then finals commenced.


I like to think that I'm decent at school and studying. However, I've never tried to study for oral exams before. It's kind of hard. Written exams you can go through, skip the questions you're not sure about and come back to them. Not so with orals. If you don't know the answer, you bluster and mumble and try to logic yourself to the right answer, with varying levels of success. And the professors can (and will) ask you just about anything. So, in short, oral exams are quite difficult to study for.

But I (and my classmates) survived. The only nice thing about orals is you get your grade pretty much immediately, whereas we have to wait for the results of the written exams.

So, as of right now, with grades for 3 of my 4 classes in, I have officially completed 25% of the coursework for my masters degree (I ran the numbers... but remember, there's also an internship and thesis).

Whee.



Maybe I'll make a chocolate cake to celebrate. Cake is delicious. (Ev can confirm, cake is delicious)

(I know, not super pretty, but I'm not super good at the frosting bit. That's what my sisters are for...)


Ev and I have been training endurance climbing to up our game for Mallorca this Christmas. A couple weeks ago we climbed all the 5a's (5.7/5.8) at our gym. Saturday, our friend Deva joined us as we climbed all the 5b's (5.8/5.9). All fifteen of them. It only took us 5 hours! (There was a bit of a food break in there, and we had 3 people switching off). Afterwards, we celebrated with pizza. Because pizza is delicious.

We. Are. Beat.

Oh, I should probably mention that all that climbing translates to about 375m. Better known as 1,230ft.



As part of our "let's climb pretty much everywhere in Europe we can get to" plan, we joined the American Alpine Club (a couple countries, like Belgium, require membership in a registered alpine group to climb). To celebrate, Ev got himself some sweet swag.

Other adventures (there sure seem to be a lot of climbing-related things in our lives right now) involved a Thursday post-finals excursion to Amsterdam for Reel Rock 9. For those not in the know, Reel Rock is an annual film festival that showcases climbing videos and goes on an international tour. Think Banff Mountain Film Festival, but all climbing. Oh, and it was hosted in a bouldering gym. Because awesome is, well, awesome. 

Usually, there are a couple different videos over the course of the night. This year, they showed a full-length documentary called "Valley Uprising." It documents the evolution of climbing in Yosemite National Park. I highly recommend it.

To compliment our evening (film started at 10pm... nothing here seems to start at a reasonable time), we enjoyed delicious beer, grilled cheese (aka toasti), and apple tart at the gym.

I think I've mentioned that all the climbing gyms here sell beer... it's kind of awesome. Anyway, the film was excellent and we left the gym at a bit after midnight.

Whiiiiiich brings us to that little thing we forgot to take into account in our evening travel plans...

Lesson of the Netherlands #8:
After midnight, the night train only runs once an hour. Ok, great. Try not to miss the train by 2 minutes, because you'll be sitting around for another hour, and train stations late at night are kind of lame. By some miracle, we caught the ferry to Amsterdam Centraal and made it about 1 minute before the train to Rotterdam left. Unfortunately, we neglected to consider that the night train stops literally every possible stop and that the ride that normally takes 30-45minutes will take 1:45. Oh, and the metro stops running between 1am and 5:30am.

Needless to say, we didn't get home until 3:30am. I am an old, lame person, and that was waaaaaaay too late.



All in all, this long weekend in between quarters has been quite enjoyable. Friday I dragged Ev out shopping to get a much needed pair of pants, replacement boots, and a shiny new jacket for him. Then we found a cooking store (in Rotterdam! Have I mentioned I love cooking stores?) and found some rosemary and vanilla. Real vanilla.

This probably should not make me this happy.

Tomorrow the new quarter starts and it's back to the school thing for the next 8 weeks. 

Yay?

How to Study for Finals: take 1

Finals are coming.

And it's evil. I totally forgot how much studying for exams sucks. And I totally didn't realize that TU Delft was on a quarter system until I was already here.

That's right, I have finals FOUR times a year.

I'm slowly losing my mind.

... OK, maybe not that slowly.

On the plus side, I've been spending lots of quality time in coffee shops the past week. On the slightly-less-plus side, I've been drinking a looooooooot of coffee.



Besides the massive amount of studying thing, we've been doing surprisingly well at getting out for a run or climb pretty much every day. The climbing this is really great, since we've both gotten a lot better since we came here. I think it's a combination of the endurance from the tall wall and the general difficulty of a lot of the routes around here plus some bouldering. Whatever the magic item is, I've managed to put up a couple 6a's (that's a 5.10a/b for the Yosemite people) and yesterday Ev and I both got up a 6b (5.10c/d). Well, I kind of thrashed and stemmed my way up it; Ev did it much more gracefully. And without the weird dyno at the top.

We're totally training up for climbing in Mallorca over Christmas. Apparently the routes there are super sand-bagged.

I'm so excited.

Next Thursday we're going to Reel Rock in Amsterdam, which is going to be awesome. And an excellent way of celebrating the end of my first round of finals in almost 3 years. We're planning on going to Belgium for a weekend of climbing next week, too. We even joined the American Alpine Club so we can climb there (Belgium has a rule that you have to be a member of a climbing club in order to climb there. They actually enforce this and will ask you for proof of membership).



On a completely unrelated note, it's time for another installment of:

Lesson of the Netherlands #6:
The trams always come in pairs. Just because one tram driver stopped for you to cross doesn't mean the driver coming the other way will.

This past week there has been something weird going on with the metros: they have an automated voice announce the current and next stations, but for some reason the automated voice has decided that the Stadhuis station doesn't need to be a thing anymore. So, instead of saying the current station is Stadhuis and the next station is Beurs, you get to hear that you're at Beurs! This is mildly annoying when you're familiar with the metro and know it's lying to you. It's been kind of funny watching people not familiar with the metro get confused and try to get off at the wrong station.

The metro has a sick sense of humor.

(I should probably confess that the conductors generally announce over the automated voice when they realize it's wrong. BUT they don't always catch it immediately... because of this, Ev and I have decided that we aren't going to turn any parents loose on the metro)

Lesson of the Netherlands #7:
Random, niche running shoes that are kind of hard to find in the States are impossible to find. Also, leaving the new pair of shoes bought when your shoe model was discontinued in a tote in Alaska buried in your parent's barn means you don't have a replacement pair of shoes when yours die.

OK, lesson #7 is kind of obvious. And I really should have learned the whole "buy many, many pairs of running shoes when you find a model that works really well for you, because they will release a new model and it won't be the same. In fact, it will probably suck and you will once again be forced to search for running shoes that fit just so" lesson years ago. This keeps happening to me.

But after several hours of careful searching, I managed to find what might possibly be the only size 9.5 Altra Intuition 1.5 running shoes for sale on the internet. I am way more excited about this than I should be.


Oh hey. I'm procrastinating studying by writing a blog. I should probably cut that out.