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roel krabbendam

143 Blog Entries
7 Trips
687 Photos

Trips:

Harmattan
High
Heaven
Spare Change
Heat
Bhutan
Humidity

Shorthand link:

http://blogabond.com/roel


Here's a synopsis of my trips to date (click on the trip names to the right to get all the postings in order):

Harmattan: Planned as a bicycle trip through the Sahara Desert, from Tunis, Tunisia to Cotonou, Benin, things didn't work out quite as expected.

Himalayas: No trip at all, just dreaming for now.

Heaven: A bicycle trip through Holland. Most significant challenges: one injury, would the kids make it, and where to find coffee and pastry every day.

Spare Change: Cheap motels and greasy spoons from Boston, MA to Tucson, AZ.

Amazon: The backup plan if the Himalayas don't work out.

Heat: A week of dessication in the Grand Canyon. Thank god for that horrid powdered electrolytic drink mix.

Bhutan: A couple of weeks at the invitation of a client to visit the kingdom of the thunder dragon and gross national happiness.


Buddy List

Jason Kester
Jason Kester
Benjamin Satterfield
Benjamin Satterfield
olliejohnson
olliejohnson
Eric Broome
Eric Broome
astroadvise1
astroadvise1
Tina-RF
Tina-RF
nitishkaushal
nitishkaushal



Things

Vollenhove, Netherlands

Polly’s purple lump is moving south, descending towards her left eye, and I harbor ignorant concerns about what happens when they collide. We head north to Giethoorn, tourist mecca. The day is hot and sunny, and I will end the day with the sunburn I never got in the Sahara.

At Jonen we run into two American couples on matching foldable tandems, hop a tiny ferry, and discover a fabulous little café out here in what feels like nowhere. The inhabitants would no doubt disagree.
Coffee, pastries, ice cream, hot chocolate with whipped cream: we treat the kids and ourselves to a moment of gluttony, and with cholesterol levels satisfyingly elevated, wave goodbye to the storks and continue our travels.
Giethoorn, the touristy part in any case, lies amid a network of canals and a lake.
We rent two little electric motor boats and skim through the canals and onto the lake, my younger brother steering competently from the start while I ram banks and other boats until I get the hang of things…emblematic, emblematic…

Some purchases are next, trip remembrance beckoning at the pottery place or the stone place next door. The ceramic that catches my eye is not for sale however, and as we ponder the issues of carting some fragile piece back home, we uncharacteristically dissuade ourselves from a purchase. Its easier somehow in Ayacucho or Oaxaca or Cotonou, where artifacts speak in stranger tongues, to find something indelibly intertwined with your experience…something to hold and protect and give back to you in future years that experience.

Modern industrial objects it seems, servants to repetition and abstraction, remember little and speak even less. They seem reflective, not absorptive. Even handmade objects produced in modern, industrialized cultures have the same problem, infected no doubt by that infatuation with abstraction. It is difficult to find a trustworthy repository for your memories.

The ride back is uneventful, though the kids are noticeably tiring and require a boost here and there. When I trade bikes with one of my younger nephews and race clown-like on the tiny bike to catch up with the faster crowd up front, the humor falls flat. They band together though, these seven kids, and I am heartened both by their fortitude and there easy affection for each other.

Dinner at the boat is wonderful, as always, and so is chess with my sister. We take back our stupid moves and debate our strategies, fighting fatigue to finish the game finally at 1:15am.

Say THAT 10 times fast.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Vollenhove, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Medieval Interlude

Muiden, Netherlands

Stalling for time I suspect, and also eager to escape an impending downpour, we visit the castle at Muiden.
Former home of another treacherously assassinated nobleman, it is now filled with displays (this is how they poured hot burning oil on the heads of invaders…) and medieval video games (virtual jousting, anyone?) and medieval dress-up…
Outside it does pour for a short time, but the sun follows and after some hanging and milling around...
...we exit for lunch and for a demonstration involving falcons and owls
…the kids immensely pleased to handle these beautiful raptors.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Muiden, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Rock Mobster

Zwartsluis, Netherlands

The kids are tired, Polly's purple lump has swallowed her eye (oh my!) and today the Tucson clan stays on the boat. The clouds are back to help us with that sunburn, and we set out this morning for Sint Jansklooster (Saint John’s Parish), Zwartsluis (Black Locks, for the locks on the Black River), Genemuiden (I have no idea: my Dutch has its limits) and finally, Kampen (Camps). As always, Bram takes the lead, whoever is directly behind him stops and directs everyone else whenever we change direction at a corner, and someone serves as “sweep” to mark the end of the line. Evil nephew Tommy takes glee in directing stragglers in the wrong direction when he gets the corner job...R...E...T...A...he knows what I'm talking about...
The old windmill at Sint Jansklooster is unfortunately closed, and we are left to view this little bit of history simply as an artifact, from the outside. A few kilometers down the road I notice a small marker, however, and pull into a clearing to find odd solitary rocks and glacial detritus. I am alone here for a few minutes, the rest of the family not at all tempted by this peculiar place, and it feels as if I have stepped out of the ordered, measured, functional world into the past. It is slightly creepy.
I am staring at a rock transported thousands of kilometers from its origin, left here alone, alien to this place, weathered, graying... Seduced by its peculiar gravity, I'm lured into anthropomorphic thinking. Sometimes I feel like that rock.

Getting back on the road feels like time travel. At Zwartsluis our fearless guide leads us to Hotel Zwartewater for “koffie”. From the street it looks like a bowling alley, but we reserve judgement in expectation of, at least, a spectacular terrace or garden. Instead, we get an unimaginably banal hotel with elevator music and wall to wall carpeting. The place is deserted, but the coffee and pastry is luckily just fine, as is the view of the river. If there are Dutch mobsters shopping for an ideal conference locale however, this is the place.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Zwartsluis, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Kiss

Kampen, Netherlands

We found my brother’s family in some souvenir shop, (matte, very wide landscape postcards: irresistible), followed the three glasses of wine of just an hour ago with a couple of beers on the main square, and after dinner on the boat got a walking tour of the city from Bram.
I couldn’t get anyone else interested in buildings under construction, but I think they’re pretty cool.
There is a very nice shopping street here, with some interesting art nouveau details here and there and a wonderful scale to it all, plus interesting city gates and walls...

City Gate
...and some nice gardens.
The romance of those gardens swept Sophia off her feet it seems: we were privledged to be there for her first kiss at age 10.
It will get better, Sophia, believe me.

Bridge
The main bridge is mechanically unique, lifting the entire roadbed up instead of hinging it, and it is lit rather dramatically after dark.
Later that night: more chess. Junket for junkies.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Kampen, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Moment of Reflection

Amsterdam, Netherlands

We wake up early for our good-byes, send our stuff to Doorn with the contingent headed there by car, and then walk through the rain to a diamond dealer for my sister, who we count on to make all our jewelry, and to the Anne Frank house for the kids, by way of some souvenir store. I head to a coffeehouse for a few moments alone with my thoughts (translation: I was feeling grumpy…I will spare you my tirade about overpriced souvenirs we still can’t seem to resist) and then stroll through the north market looking at vintage books and records. A small embossed silver box catches my eye, and presto, I’ve bought Polly a souvenir too.
We all get together at a café for lunch, watch ourselves eating in the mirrors and then head to the Centraal Station for the train to Doorn. The last time on a train was to and from the hospital for Polly, and I am chastened by how easily things can go wrong in even the easiest and most comfortable of circumstances. Our bicycle trip is over, but there’s another week to our journey and we adjust our sights to that.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Steile Bank

Spakenburg, Netherlands


Steile Bank
This is the Steile Bank, the boat and crew that has supported us on our bicycle trip. "Steile" means "steep" and "Bank" has all the meanings in Dutch that it has in English. The boat is owned by Albert and Anina Koers, a couple that has been sailing together for most of their long marriage. They took a break when the kids were young.


Albert
Albert is a man past 60, a grandfather, and an Elvis Presley nut. He played for us an incredible CD of relatively unknown Elvis tunes: gospel and blues from his younger years I had never heard him sing. Even the kids were dancing. Albert expressed pride in a small plot of land he and Anina have, originally a camp of sorts, that recently got an occupancy permit as a permanent structure. He spoke a bit about banks, the power banks have, and the way they distort lives with their rules and their inevitability. He is getting ready to head down to France with Anina: he likes the life down there.

Albert


Steile Bank
Anina does the cooking, and lays down the rules. It is not permitted, for example, to store water bottles purchased elsewhere in the boat refrigerator...She is gracious about it though. Anina made expansive breakfasts and dinners. When my sister Nic expressed a desire for certain peculiarly Dutch vegetables, Anina found them and made them in the traditional style. Recognizing that we had lived in America for a long time, and that some of us had never eaten real Dutch food, she cooked an entire meal of traditional Dutch foods. Anina does the books for the couple, and it's obvious she keeps her eye on that ball. She also told us about her son and daughter, both of whom work on the water, and her son actually came on board to visit when we arrived at the same port one night.

Anina


Soren
Soren is a Danish student, friend of the Koers', studying to be a ship captain at the Maersk school in Copenhagen. He will eventually be given command of the biggest container ships on earth. In the meantime, he reads a lot and goes out to bars when he is in port, and states that he will frankly be lucky to find a wife as a sailor. He expects to be at sea for 3 months at a time, the disruption to family life obviously significant. Soren says that when Maersk experimented with shorter stints however, family disruption was worse. Couples and families didn't have a chance to re-acclimate to each other before the man left again, and so there was constant turmoil. On the Steile Bank, Soren takes shifts sailing the boat, and helps both Albert and Anina with errands and chores.

Steile Bank

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Spakenburg, Netherlands
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Youth

Maarssen, Netherlands

Rested and ready, we drive over to show Mia the house I lived in as a child. My dad's sister lived in it for 40 years after we left Holland for America, and when she died three year ago, my mother sold the place. I remember a brown brick rowhouse, the corner unit with yard on two sides and a separate one car garage, the largest unit in the row...
The smell of freshly cut grass on handmower blades, the smell of algae on the surrounding canals, the terror of lying in bed upstairs as bats dive-bombed the windows, the peaceful majesty of sitting on the living room floor with my sister one Saturday morning as my parents slept, lighting matches because we liked the smell, the opulence of receiving not one, not two, not a few, but the entire set of Okkie learn-to-read books...all these memories sweep in.

I stare at the neighboring house, the house where my friend Wim lived, and wonder what happened to him. I had heard disapproving comments from my parents at one point years ago, Wim in trouble or drifting astray, but who knows so many years later. I am staring at the life I didn't lead. The confidence and optimism and fearlessness I had then...

Mia sees a duck on the street outside, naming him and photographing him within minutes, the duck finally choosing algae in the canal over a movie role. My dad and I once skated on that very canal, following it to a larger canal and then finally out on an adjoining lake...or did that adventure sneak into the panorama of actual memories from my imagination one day, imagination now indistinguishable from reality?

The house looks impossibly small. The new owners have transformed a meager lawn and garden into an opulent terrace paved in brick and surrounded by a wall of ivy. Inside, kitchen and living room are now one room, a wall removed. The garage is transformed into living space, home to an older child. There is no smell of cut grass. I have not lived here in a very, very long time.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on May 30, 2007 from Maarssen, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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We begin our bike trip

Amsterdam, Netherlands

The horizon is a straight line, the land a mere smudge, and the sky immense. You grow self assured here, I imagine, or feel very inconsequential under a sky this large, a clue perhaps to the Dutch character. It keeps dumping rain on us, then plays gray, then teases us with blue sky. In the afternoons it clears and the wind dies and the sun and stillness last until 10:30pm. We go to bed feeling like we really accomplished something just to have experienced a day like this.
We take the boat out of Amsterdam up to Hoorn, loosely following the coast north. The Ijsselmeer is flecked with sailboats of every vintage fluttering about like moths under a dark sky. Wind turbines stand in the water in vast arrays, dutiful and beautiful. The objections to a wind farm of the coast of Massachusetts are proven ridiculous.
We are aboard the Stijlebank, a cement freighter converted to passenger use, and it will be our home base for a week as we ride a big circle around the Ijsselmeer on our bikes. The basic form of the boat is quite fluid and beautiful, though it is somewhat cluttered by the passenger use: I imagine it was exceedingly handsome as a freighter.
The boat is captained by Albert, and his wife Anina will cook for us. A young Danish guy named Soren is studying to be a sea captain for Maersk in Copenhagen, and is spending the week helping Albert. Bram is our bicycle tour guide. There are 16 of us: all one Dutch and American family.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on May 30, 2007 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Ouch

Hoorn, Netherlands

It is raining when we wake up, it rains through breakfast, and it is raining as we finally start out on our bicycles. We wind out of town behind Bram, most of us on 7 speed upright bicycles of a rather classical Dutch style, the kids on 3 speed models, and the youngest on a 1 speeder. Bram has his own racing bike, a model doubtlessly bursting with gear options, but in truth it is not necessary: we are in flat country with the wind at our backs.
The Ijsselmeer is gray and flecked with whitecaps, the sky is grey and flecked with white clouds, and the land is an intense green: we follow the coast north.
Modern wind turbines stake both the land and the water here and there. We travel in a loose line, the teenagers eager to stay in the lead, the youngsters happy to chat and putter along, the adults chatting among themselves or with the kids or enjoying some solitude. It rains, it stops, it rains again.
The wind helps us when we turn due north, and challenges us otherwise. We are pilgrims under a capricious sky.
In early afternoon Polly finds a house she wants me to photograph, chases after me at full speed, and flips here bike on the edge of the pavement. She lands hard on her head, scraping ankle, thigh, elbow, shoulder and face as well. We are aghast at the damage, and loathe to show it. Nic goes for ice from a nearby farmhouse and Wil pulls out antibiotics and bandages, keeping Polly warm and low against shock. She does not lose consciousness. A tremendous lump grows beneath the wound on her head, incredibly half as large as a baseball within minutes, but the ice from the farmhouse begins to reduce the swelling.

We are less than 10 km. out of Enkhuizen. There is no traffic or ready transport, so when Polly says after some time that she wants to continue we are inclined to let her. She keeps up a steady pace, she and I continuing ahead when the rest of the group is stalled by other bicycle problems. The boat should be waiting for us: we focus on that.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on May 30, 2007 from Hoorn, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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Hospital

Enkhuizen, Netherlands

By the time we get to Enkhuizen, Polly is feeling nauseous and we need another plan. I'm kicking myself that I let her continue biking, plant her in a café and go looking for the boat without success. It is about 45 minutes since the accident, raining now. I ask for a doctor, but find there is none. There is only a medical post in the town we left this morning. I ask for a taxi, but there is only one and timing is uncertain. We abandon our bikes at the café and I walk Polly across the street to the train station. I fumble with change at the automatic ticket machine, a train employee warning me the train is about to leave. Seeing Polly and recognizing the urgency, she kindly gives me the 10 cents I’m short, then helps me get Polly on the train with moments to spare. It is only 25 minutes to Hoorn, an excruciating 25 minutes. The hospital is just over a pedestrian bridge from the station.

Polly sits down on the platform, unable to continue.

I leave her sitting on the train platform and sprint for a wheelchair, finding one in the hospital and hauling it up and down the pedestrian bridge stairs to pick her up. There are no elevators, and Polly barely manages to pull herself up and down the stairs. We careen across brick plazas, every bump telegraphed to Polly’s head, her moans mortifying. Arriving at the hospital, we are directed to the medical post in an adjacent building. More bricks, more moaning. We are asked to pay 101.50 euro and then directed to a waiting room. There are 9 people waiting. I return to the desk and explain that Polly can’t wait. We are directed into an examination room where she can lie down. I turn off the lights and hold her hand. She says nothing.

A young doctor arrives within 5 or 10 minutes. He is young and relaxed and direct, jeans, sneakers, polo shirt, asking Polly questions in English about the accident, and about the contusions. A nurse begins to wrap the scrapes. He feels around the lump on her head and decides there are no fractures, Polly having hit one of the thicker parts of her skull. She did not lose consciousness, nor is she at all disoriented. He discounts a concussion. The nausea results from blood pressure fluctuations and shock, and it ultimately comes down to a prescription for pain and a prescription for nausea.

I pick up the drugs at the hospital pharmacy, and after 90 minutes of rest we are somewhat abruptly kicked out of the clinic: the room may be required if someone has a heart attack for example. “Maybe” trumps misery it appears, and we are slightly miffed as we head back to the train. Bricks again…and pedestrian bridge stairs, and finding the right track and waiting for the train. I call ahead to finally advise the group on events, the 650 year anniversary celebrations around us loud and irritating, almost drowning out the call.

Enough was understood that Nic is waiting for us when we get back to Enkhuizen, and a taxi is arranged to take us to the boat. Finally, 5 hours after the accident, Polly is able to sleep. The café owner where we had abandoned our bicycles that morning had communicated with the group, they had reclaimed our bikes, and everything is already loaded on the boat. Albert, the captain, is concerned about crossing the Ijsselmeer and decides to leave immediately for our next port. Mercifully, the crossing is uneventful, and we finally finish our day on the northern shore of the Ijsselmeer, in the port of Lemmer.


Headache

Polly will be OK...she's always been slightly unusual, in a good way.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on May 30, 2007 from Enkhuizen, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Heaven
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