Tour of Doetinchem

  Doetinchem, Netherlands
Saturday, June 7, 2008

Since it's been a few days I thought I'd better give an update! The rest of my work week went well as I got used to my work assignment for the summer. On Friday another Calvin student, Mike, arrived here to my house to live with me for the summer and work at an internship at the "Waterschap Rijn & Ijssel", the local water board. On Friday night we took a little ride around town, but he was pretty tired from jet lag so we just took it easy and relaxed for the evening.

Then today, Saturday, we went on an extensive bike tour of the area. First we stopped by Mike's boss' house. It was nice to spend a little time with him and his family getting to know them a little. They had a beautiful house just outside the city with a nice yard, and it was a beautiful day, so we sat outside and had a coffee and pie. Next we rode just south of the city to a lake. On the way to the lake we saw a factory that made wind turbine blades... here's a picture of the blades, it's hard to believe just how large these wind turbine blades are, so fortunately I got a picture of a car in front of the blades.

Massive Turbine Blades

The lake we visited was a very special lake. Due to the fact that not many people have boats a company on the lake had a great idea: Invent a towing system that pulls wake boarders and water skiiers around the lake!... Here's a picture of what this looks like:

Water Skiing on a tow rope

It was quite a hilarious thing to see, but it looked really fun, and so I think some time again this summer we'll go back to the lake and try it out. The funny thing is if you fall off the tow rope (which many people do) you have to swim all the way back to the dock!

Next we rode around some more and saw this strange outdoor place where family reunions or school groups would go to have some fun playing sports or having a bbq or whatever... we watch a group play some games for a while, it was interesting.

The final part of the afternoon was spent riding around Doetinchem some more. Then we went to dinner at a snack shop downtown, and called it an evening. It was a nice day to just ride around and see some new sights!