Sylvia's Journal

On our first day in Holland we drank too much coffee, bought licorice, and then got lost trying to get into Amsterdam for our breakfast date. This was undoubtedly a Hertz revenge plot because we had declined to rent the expensive GPS along with the car. We could buy the darn thing for the same amount of money we reasoned until we got lost.

Eventually we were guided by cell phone to our Amsterdam breakfast destination and filled ourselves up with eggs, Dutch bread and a variety of pork products.

We dropped our host off at a workshop in Huizen and then headed further East to help Axel discover Holland off the beaten path. We drove to the lovely but very cold town on the Ijssel river (Deventer) which is famous for its ‘koek’ (a sort of spiced dense cake) then drove to my country doctor brother Willem’s house near the German border, with a bag full of koek.

The cold in Holland is very different from the cold in Kabul – more biting, more unpleasant, even though the khak and teel (dirt and diesel) smells are missing. The weather, other than being cold, was sunny and clear and the fields and streams still showed signs of the harsh winter weather that covered Western Europe during the Christmas holiday.

Before dinner Willem took us to a local shopping mall that would compete favorably with American shopping malls. We brought electric blankets for our Afghan bed, lots of DVDs and the GPS unit that we had needed so badly earlier today. If t does as the package promised, we won’t ever have to rent a GPS.

We bought paper napkins at IKEA for which we had to walk the entire length of the IKEA seduction trail. This had Axel breaking out into a sweat and salivating alternatively.

For our pre-dinner aperitif we were treated to haring and beer – two extraordinary treats for us, while for dinner we had pheasant – one of those gifts that country doctors get during the holiday season.

That was as much as we could handle on this very, very long day that started eons ago in Delhi infamous Transit Space. Having arrived on time and as planned (with our luggage in tact) and having completed our first day program I am left with this wonderful light vacation feeling now, mixed in with the sleepiness that comes from traveling on a night flight across several time zones. It is nice to be at one of my multiple homes.