Sylvia's Journal

We are now back to a more typical American visit of Holland: it is Tuesday, this must be Holland. We ran the ‘randstad Holland’ from Rotterdam to Haarlem via Leiden and the tulip bulb region in one fell swoop. No tulips of course. They are all tucked away 6 inches into the sand awaiting spring and the tourists.

We visited my sister in law in Den Haag so I got to see the two nephews we had missed on the island. We went for a long walk through Den Haag’s many parks giving our friends the wrong impression that Den Haag is all meadows with sheep and geese and woods. After a very quick swing through the urban part of Den Haag we drove to Leiden, trying to squeeze in as much as we can of the remaining Dutch treasures on our last two days.

I showed my friends around Leiden where I spent 5 student years. One of the pilgrimage sites was the Frisian bakery which still has the same sweet bread specialties from way back when. I lived above the bakery and remembered the smell of freshly baked bread, and then bought a ‘pof’ (raising bread with a cinnamon sugar filling) and Frisian sugar bread plus a few leftover Saint Nicolas sweets.

On our way home we passed a wool shop and I couldn’t help myself, even though the same wool is probably for sale in the US. After I completed my selection I was asked to pull a chance card from a basket – to celebrate the shop’s 10 years of business. It was my lucky day and I won my entire purchase, having pulled a winning ticket.

In Heemstede I showed my childhood home and the woods that were such an important part of my growing up. It was dark and much of the detail of my early childhood environment was not really visible. I am sure such pilgrimages are really interesting for others – they are more significant to me – a nostalgia trip.

I had ourselves invited for dinner at the flat of our longtime (25 years) friends from Newburyport who have settled in Santpoort Zuid. She’s Dutch, he’s American but ready to get his Dutch passport. He speaks fluently Dutch. Although Lobster Cove is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen, part of me would like to do what they did – live in Holland for a bit. Now that I have spent two weeks as a tourist I am aware of all the things I miss. We had a fantasy about finishing 2011 in Holland but the realization of that fantasy was not very obvious.

But then again, there is nothing like home, and the promise of sleeping in my own bed two nights from now, and not having to pack and unpack all the time is increasingly appealing.

We have ended our grand tour of Holland at the house that has become my home-away-from-home in Holland, 15 minutes from Schiphol. Tomorrow is our last chance for Haarlem.

I know I am really on vacation when I only periodically check my email. This is indeed the case. For about 3 evenings I was obsessed with the 1000 piece puzzle which I finished just in time before we packed out.

In between these puzzle evenings we walked, in rain, wind, sun (all in quick succession) across the beautiful landscape of the province of Utrecht, in between museuming.

Today was our Rotterdam day. We checked into a wonderful Art Deco hotel smack in the center of Rotterdam and then we peeled away from our friends who did more musea. For us Rotterdam always requires a visit to Hotel New York, the old terminus of the Holland America Line, another Art Deco behemoth that stands on a small strip of land in the middle of the world’s busiest port.

Today’s visit took the whole afternoon as we lunched on cockles and whelks and periwinkles, shrimp and crab, served on a dish on stilts, filled with ice – a magnificent sight and taste. Armed with pins we pried out the little creatures from their shells, popping the tiny Dutch shrimp unpeeled in our mouths.

To and from the hotel one takes a water taxi. It took us through the very choppy waters from one side of the river to the other, that in itself is fun – looking at Rotterdam from the water is worth the fare which has increased by 300% since we were last here. It is a bit like watching the Statue of Liberty from the Staten island ferry. That used to cost 10 cents – you know you are getting old when you start comparing prices of 1973 with those of 2011.

We met up with our friends on a busy shopping street – a rather chance encounter in this big city – and explored more of the city, its yachting harbors (Veerhaven and Old Harbor) now by night before settling in a lovely restaurant by the water – just in time for the next weather change.

We are now planning our last 2 full days of our vacation – there is much we wanted to do and can’t anymore; people to see, musea to visit, cities to see – but the clock seems to be ticking faster than last week – unstoppable towards the 12th.

We are now happily ensconced smack in the center of Holland in the summer house of my brother in law – a birthday gift that keeps on giving for several days. We spend evenings sitting in front of the fire after simple home-cooked meals. I am working on a 1000 piece puzzle – a sure sign of vacation.

On our first day we visited the Kröller Mueller museum – one of Holland’s most spectacular modern art museums. We had a late start so we had to drop the tile museum nearby. The weather cycles between rain, sleet, sun and wind, alternating between cold and chilly and not so cold and chilly.

On day two we ventured into Utrecht, getting hopelessly tied up on narrow streets going back and forth over and along canals in always one-way-streets, looking for a parking garage. We can now advise others to not look for those in the center of the city.

We visited the Dick Bruna (of Nijntje or Miffy fame) house, part of the central museum and learned about his influences (French impressionists), his work illustrating familiar childhood books (Simenon, The Saint) and his relentless search for simplicity.

We found the same theme in the Schröder-Rietveld house, a remarkable piece of architecture with vanishing and re-appearing rooms, result of so many sliding walls and doors and windows – as if by magic.

From there we biked back into the wind to the central museum on our central museum bikes, graciously made available to get from one museum to another.

Back home I struggled with a forgotten timesheet and more re-integration glitches and the threat of not being paid for the last pay period. I had forgotten to take care of this before I left home and am now suffering the consequences. It created a momentary upset in the otherwise perfect vacation mood. Thanks to a good internet connection a temporary solution was found that will keep our automatic payments from bouncing. Sigh.

All day we walked, along the wide and endless beach of Schiermonnikoog. We could see seals play in the breakers just off shore. The wind was in our back blowing us fast and far for a very long and slow return. Just at the right time a small dune restaurant appeared which had hot chocolate with whipped cream ready plus countless other goodies for tired beach walkers.

Inside we found another part of our family clan, already ‘on the coffee’ as we say in Dutch. The Dutch love their coffee (and apple pie and, again, whipped cream). The only reason the Dutch aren’t all overweight is because of the bikes. That was another activity we could have done. But by the time we returned from our very long and windy back (against the wind back) we were too pooped for a bike ride. I fear that all the calories we did consume will be showing.

For our evening meal the hotel had given us a separate room far removed from the regular dining hall. I am not sure if we asked for it but we had been so noisy that some of the other guests may have complained.

After singing every birthday song known to mankind in two languages we had a most delicious meal. There were speeches in Dutch and in English from ‘the warm side’ (the direct descendants of my father and mother) and the ‘cold side’ (those who married into the family) and a side that has no name (those who are friends of the family). After the last dishes were served Saint Nicholas showed up and brought me presents, quite an honor as usually I always had to go to Saint Nicholas to get them.

At midnight there was another birthday and we sung again but by then many had gone to bed, especially those belonging to the older generation (that is us now) and some of the people who had been walking for 5 hours.

Most of the clan took the first of three possible ferries back to the mainland, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. From the Manchester clan only Tessa and Steve stayed in a suddenly very quiet hotel.

We parted from Sita and Jim who headed back to Amsterdam with their cousin who is graciously lending his apartment to them as he move sin with his girlfriend. Tessa and Steve are by now also in Amsterdam with another cousin on the other side of the city.

After our goodbyes we left for the east of Holland to my brother’s place, stopping along the way in a tiny museum, beautifully crafted in the lowland landscape, full of art from Friesland’s best modern and contemporary visual artists. The museum (Belvedere in Heerenveen) is situated on a large estate that is open to the walking and biking public.

We arrived in the dark at my brother’s house and were treated to a French dinner consisting of tartiflette (potatoes, reblochon cheese and bacon), a salad and tarte tatin (apple pie) for desert.

Afghanistan is still very much part of my life. On this day, my 60th, my first congratulations came over Skype from Kabul. M called and it made my day. I am sitting downstairs in the sitting room of the old hotel where my siblings and most of their offspring gather yesterday. The calm and quiet of the living room (I am the only guest from the entire hotel) with the extreme noise of us dining together last night.

The calm and quiet and warmth also contrasts with the howling wind and rain outside. The weather is even worse than I had imagined. All night the wind was like a wild animal nipping at our windows, banging into the roof of the hotel where we sleep under the eaves. But when I planned this trip this is exactly the weather I was longing for in hot, dusty and dry Kabul.

Our clipper ship experience was great albeit a bit cramped as we slid into our berths. The next morning we walked all over Groningen center to admire the city, visit the market and trying to unlock our phones. That it was a young man from Kabul who did this and sold Axel a new phone is hardly surprising. Fate keeps pushing us in the way of Afghans or Iranian. I have had more chances to practice my Dari in the last 2 days than in the last 2 months.

We drove to a tiny town north of Groningen to pick up my grandmother’s restored cookbook. The restoratrix introduced us to her husband, a doctor who used to live in Ken, who is now a coin collector. She herself used to be a biologist specialist in penguins but found bookbinding to be more than a hobby. She did a great job and I can now use the cookbook again.

We were received by the couple as if we were family. We got a tour of their enormous barn and living quarters and marveled about this beautiful moneypit. We got some glimpses of what the house may have looked like nearly a century ago.

By the time we arrived at the ferry terminal it was dusk. So I never quite saw where we arrived. Now it is dawn. In addition to hearing the bad weather I can now also see it.

All day I was a tourist in my motherland seeing and visiting sites I never had. After we picked up our rental car at the airport we drove to a neighborhood in Amsterdam that is called ‘Het Schip.’ It’s a vestige of and testimony to social housing efforts that took place about one hundred years ago. The housing cooperative ‘Eigen Haard” (meaning ‘own hearth’) hired architect Willem de Klerk of Amsterdam School architecture fame.

A tiny museum, that wouldn’t be on anyone’s list of ‘must-see’ museums in Holland, has the ticket counter integrated with the original post office in the building. At the time the state’s post office officials didn’t think illiterate and unschooled workers needed a post office but the socialists housing cooperative thought that was wrong and the architect threw all his creative and idealistic power into the design.

A young architecture student showed us around, pointing out delightful and playful details that the architect had inserted here and there for the uplift and education of the working poor. We walked around the building that was only later called Het Schip (the ship) because it resembled one.

According to our guide the design and execution derived from a wish to make people who would live there proud of their new home and lift them out of their very miserable existence. The apartments were tiny but built according to codes that had until then been considered unnecessary for the working poor: electricity, separate toilets, separate kitchens. Here too were small details that made every room a work of art and something to be proud of. Upstairs in the museum I saw pictures of the dwellings where these people had lived before – not all that different from the tenements in lower Manhattan at that same time.

There were public health considerations (separation of cooking and toilet space) and egalitarian considerations that inspired the whole enterprise. And it worked. I bet descendants from these first tenants are now white collar workers who earn a good living.

We then headed to Enkhuizen, an old fishing town in the province of North Holland where I had stayed lonely in a bed & breakfast on my return home from Sita’s wedding. The original plan to walk around was shelved when the rain started coming down in sheets. Instead we sat down in a fish store/café to a yummy fish lunch and watched how eels are caught, smoked and packed on a large TV screen. The eel trade is big in this town and the product considered a delicacy. So we had that, and haring, and salmon and fish soup and the fish equivalent of chicken nuggets.

Our next trip was across a dam with the Ijsselmeer on one side and the future Markerwaard polder (still water) on our right. But the rains came down as if a monsoon and the clouds touched the ground. It was naptime for everyone except the driver.

At the end of the dam is Lelystad, provincial capital of one of the large tracts of reclaimed land. We drove to the Batavia wharf where the four centuries’ old craft of ship building is being given new life by a small group of craftsmen and women. A replica of the Batavia, meticulously following the design of the original one, was built over a 10 year period. The original ship perished on a coral reef near Australia in the early 1600s. We visited the carving workshop, the rope-making workshop, the iron workshop and then walked up and down the ship itself.

Our final stretch of the day was the one hour ride to Groningen that turned out to be a bit longer, too long to the liking of our offspring who were already impatiently and tired waiting at the clipper ship moored in one of the canals where we overnighted.
We took everyone out to have a rijsttafel (a collection of Indonesian dishes), one of the many ‘must do’s’ in my playbook. On the way home we stumbled on a small store run by an Iranian refugee on whom we practiced our Dari in exchange for opinions about immigration policy that don’t make Holland look quite as nice as Americans believe it to be. He wants to come to America. We wished him luck.

My computer gadget countdown timer now says less than 24 hours till the big day. It makes me think of the time in Kabul when I was cooking this trip up and when the counter had more than a hundred days to go. Dreams do come true!

In exchange for spending time with his students I got my brother to get up this morning at 6:15 AM to drop me off at the train station so that I would arrive at the airport about the same time Axel and our friends from America did. I missed one train so I didn’t welcome them but they welcomed me, happily sipping their Starbucks coffee.

We took the train to Amsterdam and were whisked away to my friend’s house for a second breakfast of speculaas koek, tea, fabulous bread and cheese. We then set out to show Amsterdam to our friends – a walking tour towards the old Jewish neighborhood (the Jordaan) – and everyone realized we would need weeks to do a tour of Amsterdam. We settled for a day.

We met my niece the dancer at a lunch café and invited her to order whatever she wanted from the menu – it is not often that we can take her out and a dancer’s income is uneven and low. She’s off with her dance troupe to Germany to germinate a new dance. She will therefore not be able to join us on the island for the celebrations. She will also not see her American cousins, helas!

We ambled a bit more through Amsterdam and marveled at the open display of various mind altering substances that were for sale in a regular shop. There was the ‘opium-like’ high or the ‘beginner’s light;’ there were mushroom products and seeds, all wares with wonderful names.

Under the guidance of our own Dutch Master’s expert we visited the one wing of the Rijksmuseum that is open to the public. The remodeling has been going on for many years now with no end in sight. The good thing is that one could actually do two museums in the time it would have taken us to do one.

After tea in the art nouveau and smoke (and time)-yellowed Café American we took in the Van Gogh museum on our way home where we broke bread with our hosts who had prepared us a wonderful thai dinner with birthday cake for dessert. We got deep into a discussion sharia law – a topic that my friend who is professor of law is very knowledgeable about. I learned a thing or two from our learned friend, for one that Sharia Law is a misnomer and that it isn’t actually law, and then some more.

We had dinner last night at Omar’s house. Omar and his family fled Afghanistan in the early 90s. Dad brought out the photo albums – one thing that I love about Afghan families and that they seem to love to do – showing the family picture albums. I wondered later how he was able to flee with these pictures that show mostly men in uniform, many of whom are not alive anymore, victims of one kind of violence or another. He was close to one of the presidents who was killed. He was lucky I suppose, or smart, or well connected or all of the above.

I got to practice my Dari which had rusted a bit but I could still understand mom who spoke only haltingly Dutch. The sons, both lawyers were fluent, without even the southern Holland accent I had expected. They also speak Dari, the language of home but admitted they cannot write or read their father’s tongue. Their mother tongue is Pashto but it is not the language of home.

The house was decorated in a way I had not expected; stark modern in white and red. Even the carpet was white – no trace of the Afghan origin of this family. I had brought some Afghan treasures, destmals (checkered cloths) for the sons, an embroidered purse for mom and for dad a Nooristani carved wooden box. Now the stark lines and color scheme is a bit messed up. I should have brought a carpet although later I understood that mom prefers the plain white rug.

The unafghan-ness of this family’s living space may have something to do with their last memories of their homeland. Exiting a place full of violence cannot be without consequences; being Dutch may be better. That is certainly true for the next generation: the oldest is a doctor, there are two lawyers and a nurse. One wonders what would have happened had they stayed.

We were treated to a wonderful Afghan meal that was complete except for the traditional bread. I didn’t think Afghans could survive without their naan but apparently they can. My brother and nephew had come along. The latter held out his empty plate several times to the great delight of our hostess. He overdid it a bit, he later told me, but he surely honored the cook.

Over the last two days I have spent some time at the university, introduced as the sister of the prof. There is even a hallway named after my brother the professor, a real street sign that says ‘Vriesendorplaan.’ Underneath it, in small letters, just as at real street signs with names of famous people their claim to fame – professor in law from this date to that date. Actually as of January 2012 he will be a part time professor and working the other time with a law firm. Just as presidents, professors are forever.

I met many students who are second generation immigrants, the ones whose fathers came to work in the mines and factories because we didn’t have enough Dutch people to do that. These young people were born and bred in Holland, are at least bilingual if not tri-lingual or quadri-lingual. They are bridges between two entirely different worlds. We talked much about mental models – it has great relevance both to their future professions and their family live. Many have illiterate grandparents who live in far flung rural areas back in Turkey and Morocco – who don’t understand why their granddaughter is going to study for a semester in the US and what/where is America anyways?

I could have spent many hours listening to their stories. Most surprising was that they look at the US as a success story when it comes to immigration, and to Europe as a failure. I believe it is simply a matter of time – for Europe the kind of immigration that the US has known for over a hundred years is still only a generation or two old.

Axel later told me I travelled on the most travelled day of the American year, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Somehow I didn’t think that many people travelled between Europe and the US at thanksgiving time with a logic that is probably too European: Americans wouldn’t want to go travel to a place without this most sacred of American holidays, and why would people who don’t have this tradition go in the other direction? Of course I was only thinking about the Boston-Amsterdam flight and not about the other 100s of domestic Delta flights. We could have known.

While standing in line I met a colleague who was on her way to Southern Africa and Tanzania. She was accompanied as far as officialdom let them, by her 2 year old daughter and husband. I remembered those days, with Tessa crying hard until I was out of sight and then later calling home and that she had entirely forgotten the unpleasantness of parting, and maybe even me.

Every seat in the plane was filled, including B-class, so no chance in the world that I might have been pushed forward. That too triggered a memory of those days when I had a friend checking in on the Boston side and on the Amsterdam side, both employees of Northwest. It worked most of the time.

In Amsterdam I discovered that my phone was locked and wouldn’t let me use my Dutch simcard. I hope that my interactions with a nice T-Mobile lady will produce the coveted unlocking code. In the meantime people have to call me in the US, even though I am here, and I am piling more charges on top of the Japan charges. T-Mobile did good by me when I bought a smart phone. I could have known.

I am preparing for my trip to Holland this evening while listening to the Bunwinkies’ first record. We had most of the band sitting at our Thanksgiving table. We returned from Western Massachusetts with the record – a real vinyl affair that we can actually play because we are one of these people who never got rid of our record player. The record sleeve is the result of a collective design efforts and includes all sorts of things from Jim and Sita’s house (spirograph pictures, the patchwork kitchen curtain, the wooden table, cardboard cutout letters, etc.). The music is wonderful and gets better each time I listen to it. It’s happy music – what better accompaniment to packing?

Yesterday we met our friend, Sita’s classmate and the principal of the school we visited in Sikkim. He is studying at Harvard and comes up to Beverly in the weekends. We were able to snag him for a walk on Singing Beach and talk about schools, facilitation of meetings and graphics. There is much networking to do after that visit, in both directions.

It was like a spring day with little moths flying around as if it was time to come out of hiding; little did they know. Axel said if this was spring we knew warm weather was something we would get more of. But now it was just a little respite from more cold and colder weather. We enjoyed it anyways.

After our beach walk we walked into town for a coffee and a visit to the Stock Exchange, a second hand store with the best stuff in town. Although we touched nearly everything in the store, and walked around with stuff as if we were going to buy it, in the end we put everything back, showing great restraint. We need to get rid of stuff, not get more. We are very proud of ourselves.

The trip to Holland is about to start, with various contingents getting on planes over the next few days until we all meet up in Groningen on Thursday evening for our overnight on old clipper ship moored somewhere in one of Groningen’s canals.

In the meantime I enjoy still being ‘fifty-ish.’