From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Tour 1998 -- part 11 Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 18:31:05 EDT Hi all, Thanks for the positive feedback and comments that many of you have sent. It's good to hear from you and know that you're following along. Here is the installment from our last full day in Holland. I'm lagging behind a bit in journal entires (just a day) and only a couple of days in emailing them. I reread the journal entry, and my concern about if it made sense the following day were alleviated when it did make sense. Hope things are going well for you. Cheers, Rainer Sunday, 10/4 The last full day in the Netherlands started with a trip to breakfast to the Big Bell restaurant on the promenade where we had the great Dutch pancakes earlier in the week. We ordered coffee and orange juice and waited for the waitress to come back with the menu. When she didn't we flagged her down, which was weird, because we were the only ones in the place, and she said that on Sunday's they don't do pancakes. So we paid our bill and walked over to another restaurant on the promenade. This one, when translated, was called the pancake house. It wasn't open earlier in the week, but was open today. We went in, checked to be sure that they served pancakes, but found out that they were still making the batter and that they wouldn't be ready for another 15 minutes. I told Vera and Monika that this would be a good time for me to walk over to the police station (part of the same building as the Scheveningen Casino -- hmmm) to inquire about paying the ticket from yesterday. I left the restaurant and headed up the steps from the promenade and across the street to the police (Politie) station. The place was empty on a Sunday morning. There was a bell, much like a bell you'd expect to find on a concierge's counter in a hotel. I rang it and waited. A blonde (of course) woman officer appeared and I showed her the ticket and asked if I could get an explanation for what it was for. She said it was for parking in a place I wasn't supposed to park in. I explained about the signs that I, with my limited Dutch, could read and that I parked in the visitor's parking lot. She said to have a seat in the waiting room, took my ticket, and disappeared through the door from which she came. I waited for at least 10 minutes before she returned. During this time I was the only one in the police station waiting room and that's where I took the first self-timer photo of of the trip. When she reappeared she asked if I wanted to pay now and if I had exactly 60 guilders since she didn't have change. It would have been easy to get change from the casino, but I didn't mention that. I said "yes", inquired once again about the fact that neither the visitor's parking lot nor the road approaching it had any "Toegang Verboden" signs. She said her colleagues thought things were well marked and disappeared again through her door for another 10 minutes or so. When she returned, she had a receipt book, took my 60 guilders and my name and address, gave me a receipt, and I was on my way. I hope the city fund from parking and tickets uses my money wisely. After leaving the police station I was in no mood for breakfast any more. I returned to the pancake hous, which looked like a good place. Monika and Vera enjoyed their food. I had another coffee and an orange juice all the time pissed inside. I paid the bill, and watched my family ride the carousel that had just opened up on the promenade. We returned to the hotel, me making a detour to the ATM to get more the constantly disappearing guilders. We got all our stuff together and headed off for Nordwijk for a boat ride. We found the town easily -- it was in the same direction we drove the other night trying to find Vera's friend's house. We drove around, asked for directions to the canal, and got our boat tickets. We were an hour early, so we headed back into the center of old town, parked the car, and walked around. The narrow streets and stone houses were reminiscent of France, but different. Everything was brick. The side walk, the street, the houses, the churches. So I started a series of brick pattern photos. When we were tired of walking (and cold) we headed back to the car and drove random streets for a while. We still ended up at the boat dock 15 minutes early. We boarded after another family did. The boat had a capacity of 125 passengers and it looked like only 7 would sail. Just before the departure time, another 15 or so people arrived carrying food and strollers and stuff. The boat was not full, but it was no longer empty either. We sailed promptly at 1330 up the narrow canal. We quickly left town and were in farm country. Dutch cows and horses seem much larger than US counter parts, at least on this trip. We cruised slowly down the canal passing pastures and caught views of a little grebe, Egyptian geese, and hundreds of lapwings. The latter was a first for all of us. Lapwings are large sandpipers with a long, pointy crest. We left the narrow canal and entered a wider channel where we saw many other water craft. Dutch boats seem to be modern or old- style in design. The old-style boats looked very out-of-place. Lots of wood, lapstrake construction. The large sailboat had huge wooden rudders and huge retractable side boards to serve as keels. As we sailed further through the country side it became evident that the canals were higher than the surrounding fields. Vera translated the tour guides comments -- the canals were already several meters below sea level. And the fields were even lower! I don't know how this place survives a heavy rain. The canals were quite close to spilling over their edges already. We got a change to stretch our legs for about 45 minutes on an island/town. The trip back was a bit quicker. We did see several wind mills along both stretches of the cruise. Most of the mills were quite old -- the oldest having been built in the 1600s. None of the mills were turning, though. We got back to the hotel after dropping the car off in the parking structure (until 2200) and did our respective things. I checked email and got 3 recommendations for hotels in Berlin from my cousin. Vera gladly relinquished her role as designated translator and travel agent since we were leaving Holland. I made note of the numbers and called Berlin. My cousin indicated that it might be difficult getting a room since the Potsdammerplatz was opening up or some such thing. The first hotel I called was full. The second one was a success. I was impressed by the fact that they didn't want a Visa card to guarantee the room. They just wanted a verbal assurance that we would be there. When I told the woman on the other end of the phone that our train wouldn't arrive until 1950 or so, she said it would be no problem, as long as we showed up. Around 1930 we headed off to dinner. It didn't take long to end up at one restaurant on the beach that had a fire going and good music playing through the open doors. This is the last weekend that the restaurants are open and we picked a good one. The food was good. We had to modify our choices a bit because not everything was in stock anymore. The waitress told us we were probably the last food customers this year. During dinner we watched lights on the North Sea. Some seemed to be blinking, and we tried to figure out if they were ships or buoys. The ship/lighthouse joke came to mind. We ended dinner with a last walk on the beach down to the water's edge, then back to the hotel. A sure sign that you've stayed in one place too long is when you know which side of the steps to go up in the dark to avoid the dog poop. The Dutch seem to have a reputation for being very clean. But the streets in Scheveningen just do not compare to the streets of Paris in cleanliness. People living here even have signs on the street-level apartments that read something to the effect of please don't let your dogs poop on the sidewalk in front of my window. It's really pretty disgusting. Maybe the 60 guilders will help pay for some street cleaning. That reminds me, I don't think I ever mentioned the fact that in Paris, every morning, water would flow down the sides of the cobble stone streets. There were the equivalent of water faucets all over town. The water would flow and street sweepers dressed in bright green vests and wielding bright green brooms would push debris into the flowing water and down the storm drains. Holland could learn something from the France. Just before 2200 I walked back to the parking structure to get the car out of hock. It was a lot more crowded tonight than other nights. We had to park on the 10th level. You get a ticket with a magnetic strip on it when you enter the parking structure. Before you leave, you take your ticket to the cashier -- a machine that requests you to insert your parking ticket and then tell you how much money to deposit. After you've deposited your money you get a validated ticket back which you have to insert into a machine as you leave the parking lot. The gate opens after your validated ticket has been read. I did all this several times in the last few days. Tonight, I got to the final gate and just as I was about to insert the validated ticket into the reader, I dropped it inside the car, between the door and the driver's seat. I groped for it but couldn't find it. I set the emergency brake, opened the door, got out and felt for the ticket under the seat. It was dark and I couldn't see anything. My had got all greasy from the tracks under the seat. Another car, then a second car, pulled up behind me waiting to get out. I walked back to the first car and asked him if he could backup (after asking the driver if he spoke English) and explained that I dropped my ticket and couldn't find it. He replied, in broken English, "Push za button." I walked back to my car and pushed the red button on the validator machine. A voice said something in Dutch that I couldn't understand. I went through the same routine with the voice on the intercom as I did with the driver of the car behind me and the voice just said, "Bye bye", and the gate opened. I drove out, glad that I had only kept two cars waiting. This was the casino parking structure and it was very busy. I lucked out. It's 0030 of the next day already. My family is asleep and I'm still wide awake writing this journal. It seems like a strange thing to do. Journals are typically not written with anyone in mind to read them. But I know that I'll be sending this off to family and friends in an attempt to share this experience which, I know, is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Most of the journal has been a recollection of events of our trip. I've tried to refrain from just enumerating what we did when, although there certainly is some of that. I've tried to describe more than that since this excursion is certainly more than just an itinerary. I am surprised at the number of things that go other than planned. I almost wanted to say "things that went wrong", but didn't. There are many things that are going as planned or better than planned. The three of us are getting along very well -- much better than I expected. It's seldom that we three spend 24 hours together back in Oregon. Our lives are so filled with work, school, Saturday Market, and home chores that some days we only "meet" for dinner and "good nights." The last 14 days we've spent in almost continual contact with each other. And, we're doing pretty well (my point of view, of course). I can sense where we each have given up our "private" time, the time we spent away from the family, and I think we all miss that. We sort of make it happen anyway when we get back to the hotel room. We each have "our surface" that we retire to in this small room. Once there, communication pretty much stops and each individual is consumed with an activity that doesn't involved anyone else. Our "surfaces" act as rooms that we have at home. There are occasions were we physically separate, too. On the boat ride today, for example, Monika was outside on the back of the boat while Vera and I stayed inside. Vera visited the local museum while Monika and I remained at the hotel. I went to the police station while Vera and Monika had breakfast. We all have our breaks from each other. I'll have to reread this tomorrow to see if it makes any sense then. Cheers.