Sylvia's Journal

I woke up from a dream (or dreams) that had my ex in it and various sinister figures with bad intentions. Anxiety dreams perhaps now that I am to throw myself int the arms of Africa again? I am certainly not looking forward to the long trip down south, interrupted in Khartoum before I land in Addis in the evening. It is now 6 AM. This will be a long day.

Our short vacation together in Holland went too fast. Two full unprogrammed days seemed endless, from the distance of time. But once started, they passed by quickly. Although I woke early on Monday morning, Axel did not and so, after breakfast I went back to bed for a bit and then it was suddenly noon. We had set as our destination for the day the center of Haarlem where, as I had assumed, we would find the weekly market with its cheese stalls, warm ‘stroopwafels,’ home-cooked Indonesian food and a place to eat herring or fries (Flamish, not French) in a pointy bag, or both.

We meandered northwest to Haarlem through the tulipfields which are always amazing, no matter how often I have seen then. They grow on the sandy soil right in back of the dunes. Axel noticed that the soil is really sandy, grey-colored like you would find it in the woods on Cape Cod, and that is was therefore no surprise that our tulips in Manchester don’t do so well, as they are planted in very rich dark soil.

The market was not there. Instead there was a midway complete with merry-go-around, bumper cars, shooting galleries and some scary thing with two arms that held people like a giant and took them on a wild right high in the air, upside down and then down again. There was a lot of screaming and it made me dizzy just to look at it. We did find the herring, the fries, and even a large piece of apple pie with whipped cream. It was lunch and part of dinner. We even found edible tulip fields in a pastry shop.

In the evening we drove back to Jan and Louise in Hilversum to pick up Jan’s car which he so generously loaned to Axel for the duration of his stay. The mother of the bride from yesterday’s dream showed up, by chance, and we had another wonderful evening and once again came home late. But not too late for a small glass of California wine with Piet, our host, who we still only see occasionally.