Sylvia's Journal

I keep forgetting that on Sundays the Dutch railway system doesn’t quite work as advertised. The schedule my brother had laid out for me included trains that never ride on Sundays and trains that usually do but not on February 1. Eventually I made it to Soest, a small town in the center of Holland close to where the royals have their palaces. Having left Holland so long ago I don’t have the associations others here seem to have. Soest appears to have a reputation of being a sleepy town for retired people. It is true that behind my brother’s house there is an apartment building for people who are 55 and over. For his kids and their generation this means old; for us it is nothing.

We walked the town from west to east and from north to south – it is stretched out with enormous fields in the center, a windmill, grazing sheep, Iceland ponies…all very rural and a far cry from his former city house in The Hague. When I woke up the next days he said, “Isn’t it quiet here?” May be that’s the thing about old people. Then quietness is nothing new for a citizen of Manchester by the Sea.

We had another family reunion, only missing one of the siblings and so this  is how I keep the family together; my transit through Holland always becomes a reunion.

When I checked in at the KLM desk at Schiphol I asked about the Boston snowstorm Axel had warned me about but there was no news other than the plane was taking off as scheduled. It is hard to imagine a snowstorm when the skies are blue.

Three and a half hour out of Boston the captain told us the ‘fasten your seatbelt’ signs would remain on for the rest of the flight. He gave a 20 minute warning which made for long lines for the toilets. We flew in total whiteness the rest of the flight and were warned that if we couldn’t land in Boston we would go to Philadelphia. Everyone clapped when the plane had landed and stopped. It was the braking that was a bit iffy given that the entire airport was covered in snow and the visibility was probably no more than 30  feet,  if  that.

The ride home continued under a total white-out condition and when we got home Axel had to shovel a path between meter high walls of snow to our front door.  It was the most challenging home coming ever.

The 24 plus hours I spent in Holland went very fast. I stayed in Amersfoort which lies more or less in the center of the country, and is the place where my youngest brother and his wife recently moved to.

On Sundays the train company does essential maintenance on otherwise busy routes (Schiphol – Amsterdam) in the night and early morning. This was the first part of the route I had to take to Amersfoort. A few of us lone travelers, coming from afar, were directed to a bus which took us to a station further east. We rode the empty bus through a dark and cold and completely deserted Holland. The station where we were dropped off was also cold and empty. If I had been a foreigner I would have been completely lost what to do next. There was no soul to give explanations and even the escalators to the platforms were inoperative. I was glad I had travelled lightly.

It took 2 hours to what would otherwise have been a short trip. Although now 8 AM, the station at my destination was also mostly empty though the coffee and bakery place was open and I started consuming the first of the many Dutch goodies on my wish list.

My siblings had been alerted to my brief stopover. They started to arrive shortly after I went on a shopping spree to get for Axel and the girls the things that are on their wish list: licorice, stroopwafels and traditional Saint Nicholas candy: random chocolate letters (the s, t and a’s were already sold out) and cheese.

Three nephews, one niece, two with significant others, two with toddlers, plus my sister and her husband arrived for a few hours of catching up and more eating which practically left us gasping for air. After everyone left, as if we needed dinner, we continued with my wish list: raw herring (and one left for breakfast and one for eating in the KLM lounge), boerenkool met worst (kale/potato stew with sausage) and then, as grand finale, mousse au chocolat with whipped cream.

I fell into a bottomless sleep, compensating for the lost hours during the flight from Kenya and filled with joys and worries about family members who are doing well and those that are not.

And now it is time for the last leg of this trip, to Boston. I got Axel his Corenwijn, Sita and Tessa their cumin cheese and Faro a little surprise, the only thing that cannot be connsumed. I had to get an other bag to carry everything home and dropped the idea of carry-on luggage only.

I am using my stops in Amsterdam to see a new crop of small children born to my nieces and nephews over the last year. This time the stop was in Amsterdam where a mini reunion was organized for me: one 5 month old, one 22 months old and my brother and his wife, grandparents to two in the meantime. Thanks to Skype and Facetime we were able to loop family from Easthampton and Brussels into the noisy event.

Relying entirely on the strength of my horse pills I participated a little too enthusiastically in the food fest that was based on my recommendations and would have been hard to resist – an odd combination of coffee, homemade cheesecake, raisin bread with old cheese and raw haring. Something I came to regret a bit, many hours later.

I returned home in the weekend traffic, worsened by large hail chunks, winds that shook my little Fiat and raindrops that splashed with such force on my tinny roof and windshield that I could not hear myself think.

And now I am preparing for the homestretch. I have to repack to fit in the gifts of books and Saint Nicholaas candy and the licorice that has to come home. For that I have plenty of time as I am three hours ahead of this time zone and woke up at 5 AM. May be the early wake up was triggered by worrisome GI activity. The horse pills I took the last 2 days were leftovers from Axel’s trip to Nigeria and expired about half a year ago. Will I finally find out how serious you have to take the expiration dates on medicines?

This makes me think how odd it is that at an airport like Amsterdam (or any busy airport for that matter) I have never seen anyone retching over a trash can or simply on the floor. You’d think that the odds are significant that some of these millions of people have consumed contaminated food or water in the last 24 hours and a certain percentage must be in the early stages of pregnancy, and some fall in both categories. I wonder whether ground and airline staff have been trained in how to handle these unpleasant aspects of travel?

I landed in Holland after a seemingly endless descent through thick cloud cover. It made me think about the early aviators who didn’t have instruments and had to find ‘holes’ in the clouds, sometimes discovering that the hole was only a few feet above the ground. Some of these descents didn’t end well.

Below the clouds everything looked very wet. Holland is a land of water, existing because of and in spite of the water. I once translated a famous Dutch poem about Holland. It is all about water too, and low skies. The poem makes me a little homesick. But I am no longer used to low hanging skies and water. I generally prefer Massachusetts.

The KLM lounge is a pleasant place to hang out between flights. I can eat stuff I miss in the US, such as ‘poffertjes’ (tiny one inch pancakes), mini ‘stroopwafels’ (thin flat waffle cookies stuck together with molasses), ‘speculaasjes’ (spice cookies), ‘krentebollen’ (raisin rolls) that are best with a slice of old Dutch cheese in the middle and cream puffs, filled with real whipped cream – I had a few too many of those. And now there is even ‘muntdrop’ – a large jar filled with my favorite kind of licorice. It is no wonder that I gain on average 5 pounds during a trip. I had just lost the five pounds from my previous trip and so I can start all over again. After posting this two hostesses came around with a platter with (raw) herring, also on my top Dutch foods list; and there was more, small tubes filled with ‘osseworst’ and ‘filet americain,’ two raw meat spreads, like steak tartare, that I miss much in the US.

You can also take a shower which is a nice way to pass the time while washing off the previous flight and get ready for the next 6 hours in a small cramped space.

And now it is time to turn my attention to the Pakistan work. We will be working with an organization that looks very together. I am not sure it needs any help related to organizational functions, my department. My colleague from Johns Hopkins will focus on social and behavior change communication approaches, products, strategies and techniques. That’s where the real work might be.