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.]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=8390 0 52.6333333 6.0833333 Stalling for time I suspect, and also eager to escape an impending downpour, we visit the castle at Muiden.

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.

Say THAT 10 times fast.
]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=8281 0 52.6833333 5.95

]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=8085 0 52.3166667 5.1833333 Today, Polly and Mia and I stay on the boat. The girls are exhausted, Polly is more resolute than unaffected by her accident, and I am loathe to leave them. The others set out and we sail forth, toward the new town of Zeewolde through a light soup of mist, past bevies of swans and columns of turbines, the diesel steady with a low one-two beat.

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.

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.

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.
]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=8082 0 52.85 5.7166667 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

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.
]]> Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=8080 0 52.65 5.0666667 We take a ferry to Genemuiden, a small, conservative town with a few canal side eating establishments. Rudely occupying their outside tables to eat our box lunches, we at least order a round of beer, with sips going to the more curious kids. We can’t resist some patat frite with mayonnaise as well, and this deserves a few words.

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...

Greenland

Sigh.]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=963 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=7033 0 42.35833 -71.06028 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.

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.