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November 14, 2010

Sinterklaas Comes to Amsterdam

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Today I got a chance to see one of Amsterdam's more interesting Christmas traditions, welcoming Sinterklaas to Amsterdam where he arrives from Spain (he lives in Spain, you see) in the middle of November and stays until the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th, handing out candy to the good boys and girls and throwing the bad ones in a sack and kidnapping them away to Spain.

One of the more interesting parts of this tradition is how Sinterklaas is accompanied by his Moorish helpers, the Zwarte Pieten or "Black Petes"-- lots of people dressed up in medieval costumes and covered in blackface makeup. This looks pretty strange to American observers. And really-- the black Petes are like the stars of the Sinterklaas events: there are hundreds of them handing out candy and engaging in acrobatics. And if you think I am going to post pictures of people in blackface on my blog, you are sadly mistaken.

Posted by Dean at 3:13 PM | Comments (109) | TrackBack

November 11, 2010

A Great Time in Reykjavik

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At the moment, I am in Amsterdam, having arrived from Iceland early this afternoon, but I flew into Reykjavik on Sunday morning, which was only a 4 1/2 hour flight from JFK airport. This has been a great time. Now, Reykjavik isn't exactly a bustling big city-- it has just 100,000 people, and it's quiet in the winter time, but it's lots of fun with plenty of cafés, live music, and things to do. I spent some time hanging out at Café Babalu, spent an evening at the geothermal pools, went hiking on the Sólheimajökull glacier:

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and got myself wet going too close to the Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls:

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Posted by Dean at 11:55 AM | Comments (97) | TrackBack