Happy Easter

Despite all the very nice BBQ weather in The Netherlands lately, we predominantly have had rain here. And when I say rain, I mean rain. My shower produces less water per square inch per minute then the rain we have here. When I am in the car I don’t even turn on the radio, because the sound of the rain hitting the roof and windshield is so loud that I cannot hear anything else anyway. I don’t want to say that it is like this constantly, I did for instance manage to take some advantage of the sun during a hike in the park on Thursday, but a lot of the time it really is bad. There are however two big advantages of all this rain: 1) I don’t run the risk of getting a truckers arm, 2) I don’t mind the fact that we do not have any days of for Easter too much.
My colleagues and I had considered going to the Derby in Northern Kentucky (world famous horse races), but with the rain and low temperatures we figured that that would not be such a good idea. So what else to do when the weather sucks this much? I looked in my Ohio travel guide and decided that this weather calls for a museum, and one of the must-see museums is the Cincinnati museum center. So Saturday afternoon, after my regular swim, I went to the museum center. This is located in an old art deco railway station that now houses multiple museums and an Imax theatre. The building in itself was already quite nice, just like some of the museums in Leiden I like it when buildings are converted into museums in a creative manner. I went to the museum of Cincinnati history and the museum of natural history. Amongst others I learned that Cincinnati (or Losantiville as it was called in the early days) was dubbed the Athens of the West (in the time that the US constituted mainly the first 13 states), since this community was (and still is) very dedicated to the various arts and I learned about the glacier that has created the landscape with all its (steep) hills. Both museums were quite nice, however especially the last one was aiming predominantly for a younger audience.
Sunday started with the regular routine. I figured that the supermarket would be open during Easter (as most stores are open 24/7, 364 days a week (only for Christmas they close for one day)) and it was indeed business as usual. I also thought that perhaps I would be one of only few people going to the gym, but there there also was a regular crowd. After some cleaning (yes by now it really was necessary), I decided to go to the movies. During the weekend the weather was actually not as bad as I anticipated after the past week and knowing the weather forecasts. We had had some rain, but not too bad, however by the time I went to the theatre of course it was pouring and all the people that arrived before me had taken the parking spots close to the entrance. Since I have never invested in an umbrella here and since I could not find one in the house either, the 30 seconds it took me to get from the car to the door of the theatre was enough for a reasonable amount of damage. After the lack of Easter spirit that I had observed during the day, I was quite surprise by what I saw in the cinema. I think about half the people were dressed like me (very casual; jeans and shirt) the other half on the other hand was completely dressed up. Men and boys in suits, and ladies and girls in big, fluffy, brightly colored, gown-like dresses, that closely resembled the Easter eggs that probably nobody bothered to look for, since the grounds were soaked with water. I wondered what, if Easter clearly was such a big deal to these people, they were doing in the movie theatre quickly devouring a pizza slice or ordering a big popcorn before the movie. Anyway, I went to see ‘The Conspirator’ about the trial of the mother of one of the conspirators for the murder on Lincoln at the end of the civil war, I knew that one year of Mr. Butler’s American History course would come in handy at some point in my life :).
This morning I was off to work again. Before the weekend (as many times before) I heard about flood warnings on the radio, I always thought that that predominantly meant you had to be careful on the roads, since the drainage is sometimes not sufficient for the amount of water that comes down all at once. Last week I already had to drive through a mud river that came down the hill and made me check for incoming water, since I was afraid of ruining my fancy shoes. Today however it became quite clear that flood can really mean flood. Luckily ‘my’ house stands safely on the top of a hill (according to my landlady, our house is also connected to the same electricity network as one of the local hospitals, so in case the power goes down, usually it never is for more than 3 or 4 hours. This is a bit off topic, but she told me this on the drive home when she picked me up at the airport and I was quite amazed that 1) power blackouts are so common that she already knows how long it usually takes to get the power back on and 2) that 3 or 4 hours is not considered to be long.) Anyhow, both for excessive water and power-failure we are out of harms way on top of our hill, but in the dales of our hilly landscape in some areas it looked like the water had risen meters (yes multiple). It made me wonder how many fish are now wondering what all those colorful eggs are doing in the water.