The kids have started building a primitive hut, and architectural services are called for. That’s my excuse anyway to go play with them. They need no help whatsoever of course, and I let them boss me around as we gather sticks and leaves, the hut taking shape rapidly.

The family arrives in threes, fours, and fives, aunts uncles cousins, in-laws and new wives and new kids and old kids and many married people with children who I only remember as kids: we are all recalibrating and taking stock, even of ourselves. I have never felt older. We have had these reunions whenever my family came back from “The States”, more than 40 years worth of visits, and as a child I assumed these parties were typical. The family to my mind was monolithic, my father’s side bound to my mother’s side doubly by the marriage of my mother’s sister and my father’s brother. Only slowly have I come to understand and appreciate some of the fissures and alliances that define this family, the details that make this family so interesting and also so important to me. Those 40 years of reunions I now know only happened when we came to visit, but I also know for certain that they were not just for us.

It is 9pm and feels like 5pm, the sun is still that high.

I walk down Snorrabraut and take a left down Laugavegur, the main shopping street in the city.

Greenland

Sigh.

written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Boston, United States
from the travel blog: Heaven
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French fries in the Netherlands are frankly fabulous, almost as good as in Belgium where they were invented. They’re made from whole potatoes, not ground and reconstituted, and this gives them an authentic flavor and consistency. The potatoes are deep fried twice, crunchy on the outside and moist inside, a beautiful tan color, that crunch an elegant counterpoint to an eggy mayonnaise, which doesn’t dominate the experience as ketchup might. McDonalds makes a great French fry, but these are so much better.

Late in the afternoon we arrive in Kampen, another Hanseatic League city, but one of significantly more enduring stature than Vollenhove. There’s a boat on the river devoted to serving fish: paling (eel) and haring (herring) and even salmon, and this is our first stop. Smoked eel may not come to mind first…may not come to mind at all…when your taste buds get testy for something gourmet, but it is really something delicious. My father had a friend who caught, smoked and smuggled the stuff into the States inside hollow walking canes, it was worth that much trouble. Its just not something Americans eat, and I wonder if they even exist here.

Gunter Grass once wrote graphically about eels in the Tin Drum...something about yanking eels out of the severed head of a horse...imagery not likely to ingratiate the eel to anyone I suppose. I read this in high school and still haven't forgotten it. Herring on the other hand...who can resist? Straight from the vendor and down your gullet. Only in Holland...

It is Monday, and we pass through miles of open countryside, farms, small villages all closed and quiet. Those of us tuned to Monday morning industrialized country frenzy find it a little eerie. Echten, Echtenerberg, Munnekeburen, Scherpenzeel, Spanga: all closed. By 10am, concern mounts, and by 11am we have a serious, serious problem: where are we going to stop for coffee and pastry?

Ritual caffeination is deeply engrained in this culture, and 1030am is time for “koffie”. I always assumed “koffie” happened whenever you dropped in on someone, “I’ll be there for koffie” a frequent refrain, but when I once showed up at an aunt’s house at 1130am after suggesting I’d come for some coffee, I discovered punctuality was expected. These people need their fix ON TIME, or things get irritable.

We leave the streets and enter National Park “de Weerribben”, a beautiful sanctuary of waterways and bike paths. Lunch is a picnic beside a canal, the kids focused on feeding the ducks. It rains occasionally. We meander through the park, enjoying the quiet, the birds, the solitude…OK, there’s 16 of us…maybe not the solitude. Occasionally one child or another lags, and we become practiced at pedaling while holding hands, the stronger pulling the weaker, so that we all generally move along as a group…Kalenberg, Wetering, Baarlo…from our vantage point these towns appear to have no cars. There are signs for a town called “Mosquito Bite” (Muggenbeet), but we pass to the west.

In Blokzijl we get back on the roads, but the 4 hours far from civilization have seriously taken their toll: shopping spasms hit some of the women. Those of us unaffected try to stay calm and patient, but our nerves fray as we consider the possible cost. Some of the group continues on and we lose group cohesion, but the condition luckily passes quickly. We don’t ask how much. We move on. In late afternoon we reach Vollenhove, and the boat.

written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Lemmer, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Later, in the boat, the conversation drifts to an acquaintance who lost a foot to parrot disease, to the surprising challenges of navigating the Ijsselmeer, and to a German who sank and drowned by underestimating the conditions on the lake. A cousin I greatly admire and appreciate has disappeared with some inheritance money, and we discuss the abyss he seems to have entered and our inability to coax him back into the family. I tried to enlist him as a cameraman for my Sahara trip, but he didn't respond to my emails, and now we discover, except for flowers his mother received on her birthday, that his immediate family hasn't heard from him in a very long time. How can this end well? I fear for him, I miss his humor, I wish he would call. It seems slightly morbid, the present tide of our thoughts, and I can’t help thinking it is the town that has affected us so. The sun sets.

Note to Ted Kennedy: come to the Netherlands, embrace the beauty, Nantucket Sound will be just fine. Wind energy is worth it.

Here's a pump station from earlier in the trip...in this case, no nearby turbine. The lack of a chimney suggests that the pumps run on electricity though.

We buy some books in English at the bookstore, the girls shop, I write a little: a lazy day. Just what we needed. For lunch, Anina makes us a wonderful cup of soup.