Easter Miracle

Holland: beautiful and peaceful



This is so cool! Looks like a little blanket on the car.



I'm up and about again! Such a blessing to be out of bed.


After a long illness and operation, I have returned! It's Easter today, and I went out for a walk. It's snowing! Only the second time this winter, and absolutely amazing to see. I've spent a good portion of my life in places where snow just doesn't happen - so I feel the excitement in the air as if I was a child again when I get to experience this.





And yes, Mom, I am wearing, like, forty layers of warm clothing. I'm drinking lots of juice, and not overexerting myself.





The operation I had was to remove pre-cancerous cells from my cervix. I had the operation here in Holland, on Valentine's Day (which the Dutch do not celebrate) and it was... interesting. I learned there are many differences between American and Holland medicine and practices.





I'll write more about that later, after I've had a rest. For now, after over a month, the bleeding has almost completely stopped - and I'm feeling much more myself again. Just tired. It's been a difficult time, but who doesn't have that once in a while? A beautiful Easter to all.

New Years in Holland

They don't have exactly the New Year's Eve we know from America, but celebrate Old Year's Eve. There's no mistletoe, no party hats, no noisemakers, confetti and few countdowns. Instead, there are fireworks. And not that you go somewhere and watch them, every Dutch person gets fireworks and sets them off. Little children have sparklers, teens have what sounds like bombs (to me) and adults get the spectacular variety of lights and sounds that man can ignite with a match. The entire country is filled with thick smoke, and everyone is outside. After midnight, at some point, they walk around and say the Dutch equivalent of Happy New year.

Fire in the sky.

The smoke makes it difficult to get a good photo.

Another Dutch tradition - for New Year's they make appelflappen, which I am helping with in the shed, since it's quite messy to cook, and the smell of cooking oil gets in everything. My favorite for New Year's is oliebollen (the grandfather of our American doughnuts).

Okay - here it is. Finally the pictures of the furniture I PUT TOGETHER ALL BY MYSELF. Not really New Year's, but this was my first time EVER, that I did something like this without anyone else's assistance. A big thing for me, what with the brain injury and vision problems.

Sweet! I put together this one too. Luckily, I can follow picture directions pretty well, and it came out rather nice, I think.

Holland Holiday Season

Den Ilp is a village here in the Netherlands where everyone decorates their home with Christmas-themed lights and decorations (other than the religious). There's one main street where everyone drives through very slowly to view. Santa on a bicycle is more common than a sleigh, although occasionally he also turns up on a train or a motorbike.




I learned that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages in the world to master, so I'm lucky there's English everywhere.




Christmas dinner was fondue, not a goose or ham, or even turkey. Suits me just fine. Normally they use every excuse possible to have a party here, but as you might have noticed from the gap in my blog posts, I was ill for a while. So this was just a quiet Christmas dinner with Jeroen's parents.




I followed Santa's path on NORAD as he made his journey around the world. He didn't stop in either the Netherlands or Belgium, so we had to improvise gift giving with some help from Kabouters. In the US, we know them as Gnomes, but incorrectly so. They are completely different mythological creatures, and dang blast that Travelocity.com travelling gnome for confusing the two.




Santa on a fiets.

A present for me! How nice!

My very own pair of klompen. I'm doing a clog dance.

Comfy shoes made of wood. A Dutch tradition.

I made Jeroen get a live Christmas tree, and added American candy canes to confuse everyone else. We planted it in the garden next to the tulip bulbs after Christmas.

A real German Christmas tree, from Dusseldorf.

Winter Travel

Most of the motorbike events are over for the cold season, but since I just got here, I'm happy to travel by car or train even though with the wind chill it's often below freezing. I'm really enjoying finally seeing the change of seasons, which I haven't been through in the desert climate of Los Angeles or the tropical Florida for the past, well, it's been many years.


I'm standing in Belgium, almost to Luxembourg




Now I'm leaving Luxembourg, returning to Belgium




Even the churches (this one in Belgium) decorate for the holidays. There are stars everywhere, but no Jesus-in-the manger, wise men, or the like.




A Dutch cat that lives and works (catching moles and mice) in Belgium.

A German bakery in Dusseldorf

Even in Germany one can find American food. Look carefully and you'll see the Starbucks too. No, I didn't go to either.

Funny thing is, in Dusseldorf it's nearly impossible to find worst with sauerkraut. Most of the shops/food and merchandise is Dutch. Three and a half hours drive from Alkmaar to Dusseldorf (a while of which was on the autobahn), and it took nearly an hour in sub-freezing temperatures to find ONE place that had sauerkraut. And yes - I am wearing my stupid glasses.

Delicious! I am part German, and I love this food!

I heard this Christmas Market (for which Germany is famous, they have tons) was slow this year. Too bad, I was looking forward to pandemonium, and there wasn't any.

Holland Weather

It's the new year, and I'm finally updating my blog with photos from last year. The season changed suddenly, and it got cold. There was no Indian Summer here - I don't believe they even have that term.

Sinterklaas arrived from Spain to visit all the kids in the Netherlands, and a holiday vaguely similar to our Christmas ended on the 5th of December. After that, the Christmas season more like what we know in America began. Yes, there are differences - they don't know what candy canes are (they call them party sticks) and they celebrate two days of Christmas, not one.

But, like everything else in Dutch culture, there's always tons of food. They eat constantly, and drink coffee like we might do with water. In spite of this, I just got a pair of jeans from the US, size 2, and they're baggy. Go figure. Perhaps I mentioned in another post that I'm following a Dutch diet plan - it's really cool, and apparently works better than anything I have ever tried.

But enough about that - on to the photos!



This was the view from my window in the morning.

Looking down from the dunes - that's the local village church.

The dunes near Alkmaar are covered in forest.

This is a two-way road, where you can just barely make out a well-know architect's design/house. I believe they also use it in commercials here.

You can laugh - but I was the only warm person in Holland. And my mom made me this scarf, I think it's cute. I don't even know how many layers I'm wearing, but a lot, trust me.

Hiking in the dunes.

That was just green a day ago!

Klapkut Rally - Den Oever, Netherlands

Before I put up the photos from the Klapkut Rally, I wanted to say a couple of things that I've been meaning to post, but hadn't.



Ice cream. Good old American ice cream sundaes. They have no idea what these are here. There is some substance called Gelato from Italy (which I will try at some point) but IT ISN'T ICE CREAM. They call it schepijs. They also have soft ice cream from a machine. If you know me, you know that I am a gourmet (American) ice cream connoisseur. In the defense of this fine country, they do also have a couple of flavors of Ben and Jerry's ice cream available for purchase in supermarkets and a couple other places. But trying to find an ice cream shop, I eventually gave up. A fruitless search.



I've also learned a few things about the Dutch language. One, I need to actually learn it. And, it's going to be very difficult. They tend to combine words into one long sentence, so even if you know one or two individual words, you won't recognize them stuck onto the back or front of another word. It sounds like they are saying one really long word for a paragraph, and when they have another thought, instead of using a comma or period the pause is usually an "uhhhhh" sound (or breath cause they are pretty much out of air, I think) and then a verbal mishmash of sounds comes tumbling out at a fast rate of speed again.



SoifIwaswritinginDutchyouwouldhavetosayitalltogetherlikethis...uhhhh...andthenjumprightintoanotherinterestingideaorthought.


But, I digress.


So, on to the Klapkut Rally. I'm not translating that, it's something bad, I think. My friend Krul decided without my knowledge to nominate me to be considered as Miss Klapkut 2007. That bastard. Of course, if you win you have to go up on stage and so on. Guess who won? They announced it in Dutch, but luckily my good friends were there to drag me up on stage. Otherwise I would have hid under a rock. Krul - I will have my revenge. Some time, some day when you least expect it... Just wait...


So here we are all arriving at the Rally. We rode in with a group, and it's cold here now!


Krul and me.


Krul, Herrie, Cora and Ghans


They had a lovely warm fire going, and a banjo player. He was really good!


Jeroen, one of the founders of the Motorbike Touring Club Dippy. Yeah, dippy means the same thing here as it does back in the USA.


Jeroen and Krul


Hey, I don't drink beer - so I'm having something better. Back in Belgium, Jan had hooked me up with a really good whisky - Jack Daniels Single Barrel. It's better, stronger, and I'll bet I'll feel better than everyone else when they wake up in the morning! If you look closely at the picture you can actually see my breath. Brr.


The band they had were quite good. Nearly all the music they play here is American, and tonight was no exception. Mostly classic rock cover tunes. But, look at his shoes!





This is a Harley Davidson WWII Liberator. Mint.


A face like that is why we love you.

Belgium

Belgium, a small country south of the Netherlands and home to Belgium fries, Belgium waffles, and Belgium chocolate. As usual, food is on my mind. The highway down went through a place in Belgium where I finally saw what looks like a "bad" section of town, so to speak. I've been looking for where one might live if one was poor, but until this past weekend have not come across anything that seemed to be a European ghetto. There was grafitti along a small stretch of the highway, (much of it in English) and a factory spewing forth thick red fumes of something undoubtedly noxious. Luik, the Dutch name for the city, even had abandoned buildings. Of course, that's nothing compared to what we have in the US, so I'll have to keep looking. Once over the border, the roads were noticeably worse, but the drivers better. Go figure. I asked about gas prices, and it seems that if we translated correctly it might be somewhere between $6-$8 a gallon.



We stayed at Boele's place (a biker Inn) in the village of Lierneux.
http://www.boelesplace.be/



This is the view from the front. Belgium has hills and mountains. It is the prettiest place in Europe I have been so far.


The owner, Jan. He has a small collection of hats, and kindly tried on a few for me. I love hats!


My friend Krull looking cool. He gives me chocolate candy. Yay!


Belgian sunrise


Look closely, that was all green grass - it's now covered in frost.


I wonder where this road goes? Yeah, it's actually a road.


Jeroen with his new Motorbike Touring Club tee-shirt. It's a Dutch joke.


Lots of pine and forests in Belgium. I also saw quite a bit of logging.




Yeah, it's a French place to get frites! Which I did, of course. Why are they not called french fries here? Hmm... Now that I've had German food and Belgium food, I can tell you that it has been my experience that Dutch food is the best - particularly their patat with mayonaise. I have since learned that the Dutch mayonaise is sweeter, and made differently than what we Americans know as mayonaise.


It's warmed up enough, so we can sit outside and enjoy the sun.


Twin Hondas


An American war memorial. This is in the Belgian countryside along the Baraque de Fraiture crossroads. This hotly contested battlefield was the scene of a collision between Americans and German Waffen SS and Volksgrenadier units during the Battle of the Bulge. It was later to be known as “Parker’s Crossroads”, named after Major Arthur C. Parker III, the Commander of the 589th Field Artillery unit assigned to this sector. I also read somewhere that the nearby village where the Americans and Germans fought was completely destroyed save for one building. I'd link you to the photos, but they are too much for me to look at. Very sad.



A detailed history of the battle is in this soldier's account: Parker's Crossroads Revisited


There are a lot of war memorials here and in the Netherlands I've seen dedicated to Americans who fought in WWII. People talk about The War as if it was just a short bit ago. While when I was in America, the Gulf war seemed so far away, and not something that touched my life in any significant way. Quite a difference from over here... I think Americans would be better served by learning as much history as they can from the people who lived it. It really puts a different perspective on things.