Posts Tagged 'Holland'

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Eater’s digest

Published June 27, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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My brief vacation in Holland was nearing its end. I drove back to the center of Holland to my professor brother and experienced typical Holland weather: sun, rain, hard rain, light rain, sun, endlessly repeating itself in short cycles. There is an app that many Dutch people have on their phones. It is called ‘’buienalarm’ which means ‘rain shower alert.’ It is a handy app when you live in the lowlands.

I managed to squeeze into my short Sunday afternoon: a visit (in the rain) to Amersfoort centre, eating a new haring by the tail, accompanied by a ‘zure bom’ (sour bomb, a large sweet pickle) and a large pancake at a traditional pancake restaurant. In Holland pancakes are eaten for dinner not breakfast, and come with just about any topping you can imagine. I had two halve pancakes (this for people who cannot make up their mind): one half was called ‘the shrieking pancake’ (chorizo, bacon, cheese, mushrooms and sambal oelek) and the other half was called the farmer’s hand and included apple, raisins, walnuts and brandy. The two halves made for a whole pancake that took me till next morning to digest.

I took my brother to Schiphol the next morning, both as good company during the crowded commute into western Holland where most of the jobs are, and as a guide through the unfamiliar network of highways. At Schiphol he took the train to his office in Amsterdam and I handed in my rental car and spent the next few hours waiting for the delayed flight back to Boston. I decided once more that an upgrade was worth the money and the miles and got seat 2A which made the return trip quite pleasant.

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Nostalgia

Published June 26, 2016 On the road , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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On Sunday mornings most of not-church-going Holland is asleep. With a borrowed bike from a neighbor we biked into the quiet city of Emmen, hoping that the gate to the old abandoned zoo would be open, but it was not. Nothing was open. My friend called someone she works with as a volunteer and asked if she could come by for a visit. Unlike the rest of Emmen the couple was awake, and to my surprise, elderly. We had coffee and talked about religion, mostly or exactly because they have turned away from religion. And here I sat with a nice Muslim girl who volunteers through a Humanistic Society. In Holland everything is possible. I had a lovely time getting to know this active and activist couple in their 80s who had become friends of this young Afghan woman – they are part of a network that she had created around herself to help with a difficult transition. I was proud of my fellow Dutchmen and women.

We left to find the gates to the old zoo open. The new zoo is now a little outside the town, rechristened WildPark and based on the American model of a zoo with a whole lot else to do, hoping to attract crowds from all over Western Europe. This poor city, in economic decline, could use a few visitors with money to spend.

We peddled around the sad old zoo that was the destination of countless school trips in the 50s and 60s. I posed in front of a large photo of a class with their teachers made in 1957. It could have been my class. I have a picture just like that. Of course for us in the west the Northern Zoo was too far away – we went to Artis, Amsterdam’s city zoo, or maybe to Rotterdam’s zoo although that one was already too far away.

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We biked along the meandering paths, past empty spaces that once housed monkeys, elephants, giraffes, bears, and other exotic beasts that are now, presumably, roaming more or less wild in the new park.

Dutch Siberia

Published June 26, 2016 On the road 3 Comments
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Saturday morning I drove across Holland to a part of my country I barely know. Along the way I recognized towns from the old yellow and green maps that hung in our elementary school rooms, with red squares for cities and red circles for towns. There were no names on the map. We were supposed to know the names. And here they were, Hogeveen, Ommen, Emmen, Ter Apel.  The province of Drente was never a destination; a quick drive-through on my way to Groningen when I had a lover there, eons ago.

This time I would be visiting a young woman who I worked with in Afghanistan. A set of circumstances that are hard to fathom landed her in Emmen three years ago, after an arranged marriage with an Afghan man who had lived there for some time. In those three years she has learned to speak Dutch so well that we no longer converse in English, as we used to do in Kabul.

It is Ramadan, but her God in Holland is more tolerant than the one in Afghanistan. They are not fasting. She no longer wears a headcover and she rides a bike. She also works as a volunteer for a humanistic society. Her life in Holland is as opposite to her life in Kabul as one could imagine. She is happy with the freedoms but sad to be so far away from her family.

After an Italian lunch (go figure) we drove further north to a prison museum that has received much attention lately because of a book I happened to have picked up at Amsterdam airport sometime in May and had finished by the time I landed at Logan. The book describes a series of misguided attempts in the 19th century to reform poor and homeless people. Some of the author’s ancestors had been caught in that net. The “colony” was set up in what was then referred to as Dutch Siberia. That is where we were heading. I had to see this place.

The old colony houses are still there and later real prisons were added. We took a tour of the prison that only recently closed and the stories about prison entrance and daily life would be sufficient to deter anyone from committing a crime.

The area is no longer a Siberia though many houses were for sale – the economy is not good here. The old houses have slogans on their gables that harken back to the ideology that produced the colonies first and then the prisons, as the former were pretty much prisons – easy to get in but hard to get out. The slogans read ‘Rust roest’ (rest rusts), ‘Arbeid adelt’ (work makes you noble) reminding me of the Babson Bolders in Gloucester (Be clean, Be out of debt).

We drove back in the pouring rain, passing endless fields of soaked campers who had streamed to Assen by the thousands to watch the annual motor races.

Back in Emmen we had a ncie Afghan meal and caught up on not having seen each other for many years. We skyped with her sister in Kabul, another colleague in Amman and Axel in the US.

Inaugural

Published June 25, 2016 On the road Leave a Comment
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I arrived early in the morning in Amsterdam, got my rental car and drove to a hotel in Leiden where I claimed my nearly free night from booking our hotels in Southeast Asia through Hotels.com. Today was the Inaugural Address of my little brother as Full professor in Law at this oldest of all universities in Holland. All my siblings, their spouses and several of their kids had converged onto Leiden, not only to witness this amazing achievement but also to celebrate the 100th anniversary of our father’s birthday on the 23rd of June in 1916.

I found familiar faces sitting on a terrace across from the old Leiden University building, waiting for the ceremonies to start. It was a beautiful sunny day with Leiden at its best.

We filed into a special room in the old academy building from where we could see a closed on a TV screen the official welcome of my brother into the elite community of full professors. We all learned about what was on his CV, pages and pages, things I didn’t know about and we were all very proud. After that we proceeded to the old auditorium with its creaking floors, wooden benches and very high pulpit (much like a church) already filled with his current and past colleagues, professors, students and friends. It was all very formal and laden with tradition, with professors in full black robes filing in and sitting in the side pews. I should probably have known the title of the chief black robe but can’t remember. He is the one who holds an enormous silver staff which is put in a holder next to the pulpit and heads the line of professors in and out.

The nearly one hour speech was mostly about dilemmas and challenges in private and corporate law that many of us know little about. The room perked up when he gave some examples of how we as humans, even if we have studied Law, are full of biases that get in the way of objective conclusions when judgments are made. He referred to the Twelve Angry Men film as illustration and made public his own internal reasoning about seeing someone yawn, check a phone or close his eyes in the audience. I felt a surge of energy and recognition around me. We had talked about him weaving this into his speech while I was in Cape Town and I was happy to see how well he’d done this and the effect it had.

Transitioning home

Published May 15, 2016 On the road Leave a Comment
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I arrived in Holland where it was still cold but the sun was shining and all the trees were green. I stayed in a hotel, just blocks from my friend’s house (that has no guest room), very convenient. It caters to young travelers. There were little things that gave this away: one had to pay for internet, 4 euros per device for 24 hours; there was a kettle and cups for making tea or coffee but the packets/tea bags were to be requested at the front desk, which required exiting one building with very steep stone steps, and entering another,  with ditto.  The beds were made for skinny people, 80 cm wide or made be even 70 cm.

We made a trip to the local supermarket to get me my favorite foods for dinner, had a glass of wine, toasted to turning 65 and then I returned to my hotel.  The next morning IU checked out, walked in a completely deserted Amsterdam (it was Ascension Day) to have my breakfast and prepare my lunch for in the plane. We drove in no time at all to Schiphol. The roads were as empty as I have ever seen them. All Holland was still asleep. I kind of like Holland that way.

Back in the US, one month makes a big difference in spring time. Everything was green, trees flowering and an occasional tulip still going strong.  It was nice to be home.

Learning halfway around the world

Published April 22, 2016 On the road Leave a Comment
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Today (Friday) our Learning Summit with ICRC ended in Dar es Salaam, but I was already gone and spent the day in Amsterdam while Axel made his way westwards across the Pacific and then China to meet me in Kuala Lumpur. He should be there by now while I still have a 12 hour night flight ahead of me.

After a 10 hour not so restful night flight from Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam I decided to treat myself to an upgrade and managed to get the last seat for 40.000 miles and 250 Euros.  I have just this one night to get ready for the next assignment which will last from Sunday afternoon till Thursday next week. During that time Axel will wander around KL, find us nice places to eat at night and prepare our trip to Vietnam.

My assignment in Dar es Salaam was short, just three days. We had some 40 people from Asia and Africa and Europe participate in a “Learning Summit” – with the learning aiming at a better understanding of how ICRC program managers and their partners, rehab center managers, can better manage and lead the services for people with mobility challenges, and mobilize the disability sector to push ahead with the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. With four colleagues from MSH it was light work for me. I left the group in good hands. This may well be the last of a whole series of event with ICRC. We have made good friends and everyone has learned something about the others’ trade. It has been a wonderful ride.

Now I am getting ready for more wheelchair related work, a management training for rehab center managers and a stakeholder meeting to bring together Malaysian stakeholders who are critical to make services available and accessible to people who need them. It has been among the more rewarding assignments in my long MSH career.

In between Africa and Asia, in between ICRC and wheelchairs I enjoyed a day with my friend Annette who lives in the heart of Amsterdam. She bought me my favorite foods, raisin rolls with old cheese and osseworst (raw beef) on dark bread. We walked up and down the colorful Albert Cuyp market, had herring, a freshly made, still warm stroopwafel, with syrup dripping down my hands. We drunk coffee in a hip place (not a coffee house) and strolled along lovely shops as if we had all the time in the world. We did. Amsterdam can be so bewitching in spring (and any other time when it is not bone chilling cold and/or raining).

Dance while everyone is watching

Published February 8, 2016 On the road 2 Comments
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The second part of my Dutch program was a dance performance in which my big brother had an important role. He is more of an improv dancer but this was the real stuff, with choreographers who made him adhere to strict routines, until he wasn’t. Sometimes that was a good thing and his spontaneous addition was incorporated into the program, making it better or funnier, but sometimes he was told to try harder. All the dancers were over 55 years and the show was about aging – memories, loss and love. The oldest dancer was 80. It was a remarkable performance, receiving a standing ovation, especially from those in the same age bracket.

I was exceedingly proud seeing my brother dance and move across the stage with such energy and suppleness. At this same age, some 30 years ago, my father had entered a nursing home, recovering from a second stroke, his life about over.

It makes me ponder the lifestyle choices we made and make. I see many of us boomers – I am just on the tail end – realizing that the carelessness with which we treated our bodies some 40 years ago was irresponsible if not outright stupid. For some it is now too late. The lucky ones are looking for redemption in yoga, exercise, dance, personal trainers, diet changes, and abandoning all that’s addictive; and if they are not, they probably ought to.

The after party was a (mostly) family affair with two of my brothers plus wives, my nephew and his wife and my friend A. We had a wonderful dinner in a small Italian restaurant. It was one of the happier moments of this most recent trip, and doubly worth all the hard work in Rwanda and the long plane trips.

Nostalgia

Published February 7, 2016 On the road 1 Comment
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All of yesterday I walked down memory lane. I arrived in Amsterdam around 6 AM after a long trip that started at 1PM in Gisenyi, a three hour ride up, down and around a thousand hills to Kigali, a long wait at the airport, a 35 minute flight to Entebbe, an hour refueling wait and then the long run to Holland. With about 4 hours of sleep I entered the cold and clammy air of the polder where Schiphol is located in a bit of a daze. It’s home and not home anymore.

S. picked me up, and brought me to her lovely house, that, although right under coming and going planes, looks our over a large lake. I had a real breakfast, real coffee and outlets to recharge all my batteries. At the end of the morning I took the train to Leiden to meet with some of the women with whom I started my studies in Leiden in 1970. It was a slightly delayed reunion after 45 years. My trip to Rwanda has made my participation possible.

The experience of walking from the station (entirely unrecognizable) to the (still unchanged) center of the city is hard to describe. There was the restaurant where I last saw my first husband, some 6 or 7 years ago; both he and the restaurant are gone. The roads that crossed here are gone, both literally and figuratively.

There were dreams and plans and hopes and then everything slipped away, making room for new dreams and plans and hopes, some realized, some abandoned, some adjusted to new realities. For me this meant: a different husband, a different country/continent and language, a different profession and a different application of what I studied here. At one point this was a place where I had expected to live forever – how different everything turned out.

I am used to being a tourist at home, or rather at old my homes, and so this was no different. I ducked into my leather coat to handle the cold, noticing how no one wore gloves and many were lightly clad, as if it was a cool fall day. I have lost my ability to deal with the bone chilling cold that is not about low temperature but about wind and clamminess. I take New England snow storms over this anytime.

We met up with a few for lunch in a lovely restaurant; more coffee but also yummy Dutch fare like a ‘broodje met kaas’ (brown bread with cheese) and ‘karnemelk’ (kind of like buttermilk). Afterwards we strolled to the old and ugly building of what used to be the male students’ society clubhouse with which we were merged in 1971. For that we had to leave our elegant old mansion on Leiden’s main canal, a shift that many never accepted.

When we entered the building, made of concrete slabs and enormous wooden beams, it smelled of stale beer, just like all these years ago when we first entered, shy and uncomfortable. The building itself, its large halls and committee rooms are made to withstand large crowds of beer drenched and rowdy twenty-somethings and lots of testosterone. Its indestructibility also makes it the biggest eyesore in the city that stands in sharp contrast to our most elegant women’s clubhouse that still sits so prince(sse)ly on the canal, no longer ours.

With abandon

Published February 6, 2016 On the road Leave a Comment
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The reunion program was wonderful – time for catching up with each other, checking out how all of us are aging (some beautifully and some not so – an outsider might not have guessed we were all in the 64-66 age bracket). I learned about another friend who is dying from cancer at the young age of 66 – the third from my circle of friends in less than a year.

His wife was there and gave me a glimpse of this strange land of being with someone you love who is dying; I can’t even begin to imagine this waiting for the moment of parting: one going to sleep forever and the other figuring out how to be single again. In America people around us are dying of old age or heart attacks – but here it seems to be cancer. Holland is among the 10 countries with the highest rates of cancer in the world (Denmark is first). Experts and activists are debating whether this is simply a question of better diagnostics, life style (smoking and drinking) or stuff that gets added to make the food we eat (dairy and meat products in particular) more profitable. It’s sad, either way with people dying when life should be at its best – with worries about money, children and careers no longer weighing us down.

A voice/singing coach led us through a magnificent singing workshop that made me want to take him back to Boston and help us sing together at MSH and get some joy back at work. It is amazing what singing together does for your spirit. Of course my singing with total abandon didn’t help my vocal cords which are still recovering from two bouts of laryngitis.

Nearly there

Published December 11, 2015 On the road , Uncategorized 1 Comment
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I had a long drawn out breakfast with my colleague. It was nice not to have to look at my watch. We talked for hours. We were the only ones from our party who had not left. Downstairs in the lobby an unmanned piano played Auld Lang Syne and other seasonal melodies.

I had planned to have a massage in the morning but my Ethiopian friend E said she’s come to pick me up for a coffee at 9. She never came and I never had my massage. Instead I finished some administrative chores and then went to the airport.

The baggage check revealed something metal in my luggage. To the man behind the computer screen this appeared suspicious. I had to unpack my suitcase. I knew what he was looking for, the bronze Nepali temple bells which I use to indicate that time’s up in my workshops. He asked what they were and I told them they were bells for praying. His supervisor was called and this time I told him these were bells I used for praying. He smiled and decided not to confiscate them when I indicated that I really needed them for my religious practice.

In Nairobi I stepped into the wrong bus, the one that went to the terminal. When I was asked to pay 20 dollars for a transit visa I protested. That is 5 dollars per hour for my 4 hour wait, I said. When the immigration official understood that I wasn’t going to leave the airport I was handed over to a nice gentleman who organized a small bus to take me across the airport to the transit hall.

The KLM double-decker Boeing packed us like sardines, and then, 8 hours later, deposited hundreds of us at a drizzly Schiphol airport before 5 AM. Here I am now, waiting for the next and final leg of this long trip. I feasted on beschuit met kaas in the KLM lounge. I didn’t touch the speculaas or the stroopwafels and licorice because I am still on a no-processed-sugar diet, quite successfully I might say. I am experiencing that mental clarity I was promised 6 weeks ago. Indeed!

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