Rick Wicks economics copy editing
Lourdes
After crossing four mountain passes full of snow – though fortunately the roads themselves were clear – I got to Lourdes towards evening, checked into a small hotel I had booked, and went out for dinner. I had stopped once for squash pastry in Spain, then again later (back in France) for tea and spice cake, but otherwise hadn’t eaten since breakfast (though I typically eat a big breakfast, so don’t really need lunch).
For dinner I (again) had just soup and bread. When the waiter asked if I’d like dessert, and I said no, I swear he said (almost inaudibly) “I wouldn’t either.” I asked if there was a cash machine nearby and, I swear, he said the nearest one was 15 kilometers away, which surprised me greatly. Then as I was leaving he said “there’s one across the street.” Go figure.
I walked down the street and found “Basque almond pie” in the window of a restaurant, which also had a flag proudly confirmed as Basque when I asked if that’s what it was. I liked the pie.
Lourdes is a religious tourist town, similar in that way to Nazareth (Israel), full of trinket shops and hotels (more per area than any French city besides Paris). I walked to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, made the suggested €1 contribution each for two small bottles, and filled them up (along with my water bottles) with “holy” water spewing out of multiple pipes (actually, Wikipedia says it’s considered “ordinary water taken from a sacred spring” – but that’s good enough for me).
Every evening at 9 pm there’s a torchlight procession. It was about 8:30, and there were hundreds of people – many of them in wheel chairs – lining up, getting ready. But it was rainy and I was tired, so I didn’t wait. Walking back, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the lowly cave where Bernadette Soubirous had her visions and the earthly power symbolized by the castle on the hill in the distance (not to mention the immense Sanctuary commemorating the visions).
Swedish royalty’s ancestral home
After breakfast at the hotel, I drove (via back roads) further west through the foothills to Pau, a lovely town which was the ancestral home of the Bernadottes who are now the royal family of Sweden. There’s a small museum – visited by about one person per day, more from Sweden (naturally) than from any other country. Jean Bernadotte was a poor working-class young man who was allowed to rise in the army because the French Revolution did away with the prerogatives of the aristocracy. He apparently had natural leadership talent, because he then became one of Napoleon’s top generals and – when in 1810 Sweden needed a new king – Swedes chose him. Consequently, his descendants have enjoyed the prerogatives of the aristocracy ever since.
Rabelais
I then drove 5 hours north to Seuilly, the village where Rabelais (author of Gargantua and Pantagruel) grew up, and where there’s a Rabelais museum, though by the time I got there it was closed for the day. I went on into the nearby town of Chinon – also a Rabelais stomping ground – where I found something to eat at a “pub” type establishment. I had finally realized that “restaurants” are fancier and more expensive, whereas other types of establishments might have less expensive food. A café which I first tried – based on that theory – proved to have food only at noon, but I persisted and found the pub.
As I started to drive out of town to look for a place to camp, I spotted a likely-looking area just across the river, which turned out to be an official campground run by the city (€8 for one person with a tent). It was well after dark and there was no one in the office, but I drove in and found a place to camp, with a view of the old royal residence on the hill. The campground had showers – but I didn’t realize it, so didn’t take advantage of them. (After a few more days camping out, I wished I had known about them.)
In the morning I had petit déjeuner (French breakfast) at a pâtisserie in Chinon, then drove out to the Rabelais museum, where – since we read Rabelais at St. John’s College – I bought postcards for a couple SJC friends. At St. John’s one reads “great books” very unhistorically – simply on their own terms – so I was startled to realize that Rabelais was writing well after Columbus “discovery” of the Americas, not really so very long ago. Of course one’s perspective on time and history changes as one ages, I’ve found.
Champignons and Angers
The evening before I had texted Ellinor to ask if she could find GPS coordinates for some mushroom-growing sites I wanted to visit next but hadn’t had time to mark in the GPS. She had – very cleverly – gotten from the library a copy of the same Lonely Planet book on France that I had with me, so I gave her relevant page numbers. The coordinates she came back with in the morning were in a slightly different system than the GPS was set for, but at breakfast I did what seemed like a reasonable conversion between systems and marked the location of the site closest to my desired route towards Angers, which got me close enough that I spotted a sign.
Le Saut aux Loops produces mushrooms (champignon and others) commercially – with a wonderful attached museum and restaurant – in caves quarried into the cliffs high above the Loire River. For lunch I had galipettes – large broiled mushrooms – “stuffed” with escargot (snails).
I drove on to Angers, where I hoped to see the famous Apocalypse tapestry in the amazingly impregnable-looking fort – and sure enough, it wouldn’t let me in, it was closed for May 1 (a national holiday all over Europe).
After snails, oysters and mussels
After taking a picture of Place du Président Kennedy I continued to Le Croisic, a small harbor-town on the coast. In the huge shallow harbor area – since the tide was out – were boats sitting on the mud, including sailboats balanced on their double-keels. I had oysters on the half-shell, followed by steamed mussels and fries for dinner, with a flaming crêpe for dessert.
Driving in the wrong lane
Then – since there was still daylight – I drove on to Carnac, on the southern coast of Brittany, so I could camp near the fantastic megaliths (prehistoric standing stones aligned in rows, whole fields of them). This made for a long day of driving – after a long drive the two days before as well – and my neck had stiffened up again. And this is when something really scary happened – in fact, I did it.
It was dark, on a fairly deserted, fairly small (two-way) highway. I probably had a headache related to the stiff neck. All day I’d been exercising my shoulders and neck, moving my head and shoulders every which way, as I drove, to keep them loose. Suddenly I misinterpreted a sign and thought it indicated that lanes were dividing and (for some reason) I thought I should be in the left lane. In fact I was approaching a circle – on a two-lane, two-way road – and I had turned into oncoming traffic’s exit lane from the circle.
An approaching car suddenly appeared out of the dark and flashed its lights to tell me I was in the wrong lane. I held to the right as we passed (fortunately, there was plenty of room), then I turned sharply right to go the correct way around the circle, and continued on to Carnac. I did not sleep well that night – and I can imagine that the person or people in the other car did not sleep well either (in fact, thinking about how I must have terrified them was part of why I didn’t sleep so well). After that – since two-way and divided highway often alternated along any given route I was on – I continually checked (especially at night) whether I was on a two-way road with oncoming traffic or on one side of a divided highway.
Carnac megaliths
In Carnac I thought to look for an official (public or commercial) campground, but first found the House of the Stones (La Maison des Mégalithes) and – though I couldn’t see any standing stones – figured I must be in the right area. Noticing that several large tourist vehicles (“dinosaurs”) were parked in the parking lot – and seeing a dark area of bushes and trees behind the building – I explored with my headlamp (it being cloudy, and no longer full moon) and found an out-of-sight spot to pitch my tent.
In the morning I noticed a group with a guide heading to the huge field of standing stones just across the road, and asked if I could follow along (since the area was otherwise fenced and locked), but was told no. I went into La Maison and got a ticket for the tour at 11:00.
I had tea and pastries (including a wonderful Binjamin) in town for breakfast, checked out the Prehistory Museum (which seemed to only offer group tours in French, with very limited hours), then returned for the tour, which was totally boring. I had thought we would walk some distance, but it turned out to be an interminable (though energetically delivered) lecture (in French of course) – obviously boring to the many children in the group as well. A French woman and her husband with whom I spoke – artists, photographers – were equally dissatisfied, eager to get moving. Finally I gave up and left, stepping over the fence, since the gate was locked.
La Maison itself had some nice displays, however (though little in English). I especially enjoyed the large model of the area showing the relationships among several sets of “alignments” (rows of standing stones). I also visited the “Giant”, a stone about 20 feet high set off by itself, some distance away.
Toilet-free zone at the honey museum
It was a bright blue-sky day in southern Brittany. As I came over the top of a hill I saw what looked like a 19th-century painting of forests, fields, and windmills, but with the old windmills replaced by modern ones. I wished I had a picture, but was already heading down – on a divided, limited-access highway – so didn’t go back.
I drove to a honey museum near Le Faou, on a small bay at the western end of Brittany, a private commercial apiary with B&B attached. As I went in I asked if there was a toilet I could use, but was told there was not, which surprised me.
After looking around the very nice (small, private) museum for half an hour or so, I decided I really needed to pee, so said I’d be back shortly and went out. In the trees beyond the car I noticed No Peeing and No Pooping signs (pictures with slashes across them), which was the first time I’d ever seen that (clearly it was a problem here). I went across the highway, thinking to go into the forest there, but it was very thick and thorny brush, so I instead went up a small track. When I had gone about 50 yards, I heard a woman’s voice behind me yelling “No, monsieur, it’s impossible!” So I turned around and came back down – but ducked behind a tree on the way and relieved my bladder.
The museum door was locked when I returned, but the woman I’d spoken to earlier soon appeared to let me in, and I realized that it was she who had yelled at me. Neither of us said anything about what had happened.
I looked around the museum awhile longer, and watched a great movie that I wished had had English subtitles. Then I let the manager offer me tastes of about ten kinds of honey, many quite different tastes – which she did rather hurriedly, feeling uncomfortable because of what had happened, I suspected.
I bought a variety of products (which I had thought to do all along, since seeing them when I came in): honey tea for Linnéa (who likes tea); honey cakes, bee pollen, and tilleul honey for Ellinor; and honey wine (mead) for our son Hendrik and his girlfriend. Ellinor and Linnéa wondered if the wine amounted to illegally supplying alcohol to minors, but – at 18, almost 19 – it’s not like they don’t drink occasionally.
Tilleul turns out to mean linden (tree), so this was linden honey – inexplicably called “lime honey” in Britain – and I wished I’d also bought a jar for my cousin Janie (van der Linden). Of course Linnéa is named for the Linnéa flower, named in turn for the Swedish biologist Linnaeus (Carl von Linné, founder of the genus and species system of binomial nomenclature), who was in turn named for the linden tree, so…
According to Wikipedia, “bee pollen is a mass of pollen that has been packed by worker bees into granules, with added honey or nectar, on which larval development occurs. Foraging bees bring pollen back to the hive and pass it off to other bees, which pack it into cells with their heads. In the process it is mixed with nectar, enzymes, fungi, and bacteria that transform it, resulting in higher nutrition than the untreated pollen. Bee pollen is the primary source of protein for the hive.” But what we’ll do with it, I’m not sure. Pollen is of course often an allergen…
Then the manager – who had earlier yelled at me – explained in a slightly strained voice (the confrontation having clearly been uncomfortable for her too) that because they were close to a sensitive body of water (a small, largely-enclosed bay), they were not allowed, by the environmental authorities, to provide toilets for their day-guests (though they could, of course, for their overnight guests).
But to think that this meant one couldn’t pee in the woods seems like overdoing it. And it wouldn’t seem impossible to construct an adequate septic (or composting) system, even in a sensitive environment. I have written to the honey museum requesting the name and address of the environmental authorities so I can express my concerns to them (though so far without response – though now I’ve written to the Brittany Tourist Office and they responded immediately, quite concerned). That was no way to treat a visitor. I left feeling a lot less happy than I had when I arrived.
Seaweed soup
I wasn’t totally turned off to Brittany by any means, however. I often listen to Irish music on NPR (National Public Radio), and sometime I’d love to attend the Inter-Celtic Festival – celebrating music and other arts from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Galicia, and other Celtic areas including of course Brittany – held in Lorient every August.
I drove across to the small harbor town of Roscoff on the northern coast of Brittany, where seaweed is harvested and I had read about a seaweed museum on rue Victor Hugo. I hadn’t thought to mark the exact location in the GPS when I had Internet access – or to get the coordinates from Ellinor – so I drove around town asking people if they knew where rue Victor Hugo was. Finally I found it, but the museum was closed. I went looking for a restaurant serving seaweed, which the first one I came to did. I asked for “everything with seaweed”, which turned out to be a thin but tasty soup with a chopped seaweed garnish, followed by steamed mussels (for the second day in a row) with a sauce with chopped seaweed. I licked every shell (after eating the mussels) to make sure I got all the sauce. But next time I’d like to find dishes with seaweed as the major ingredient, rather than as a garnish.
For dessert – because I love flan (Ellinor and I often make huge batches – unsweetened – and have it for dinner) – I had a prune flan with caramel, which was a disappointment, the flan much drier than I like, and the caramel minimal. I was tempted to say “I’m American, could I have more caramel?” If it were me, I wouldn’t even have mentioned the caramel on the menu unless there were at least three times as much – preferably (for Americans) ten times as much! But I suppose it was elegant or something.
Omaha Beach and the Bayeaux “tapestry”
Rather than waiting and going to the seaweed museum in the morning, I used the remaining daylight driving to Normandy so I could camp near Omaha Beach, actually getting there about 1 AM (it had gotten dark by 10 PM). While looking for a tent-site in an official campground I noticed shower-rooms, so in the morning I had a welcome shower, then walked out to cliff-top pillboxes overlooking the water before driving to one of the many D-Day museums and also visiting the huge American Cemetery. The cemetery is often described as rows and rows of white crosses – which it is – but here and there I noticed Stars of David as well. Some of the graves were for “a comrade in arms known but to God”, others included the U.S. state of origin as well as name and dates.
As is well-known, translations are not always accurate. One on rusting WWII equipment at a small museum said “It is officially forbidden to go up on all vehicles and displayed equipments. Direction declines any responsibility in case of not respect for these baggage rooms of security” (consignes des sécurité = safety instructions, not “baggage rooms of security”).
On the hard-packed beach nearby youngsters were sailing “boats” on wheels. Since I love sailing, and have long wanted to go ice-boating, I was tempted to ask if I could try it too, but didn’t.
I had a problem finding anything for breakfast, but finally found a pâtisserie in a small coastal town and ordered several pastries, then – since I’d had good luck before – I asked if the saleslady could possibly fill up my water bottle for me, but she declined with a simple “no” and a wave of her hand which I took to indicate there were other sources available, such as public toilets. I looked in the GPS and, sure enough, there was a public toilet only a few blocks away.
I drove to Bayeaux to see the fantastic tapestry (actually embroidery) – about 200 feet long – which, in amazing detail, tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066, with accompanying explanatory exhibits and an excellent film. King Harold of England had just defeated and killed another claimant to the throne, the Norwegian Harald Hardrada, before himself being defeated and killed by William the Conqueror (previously known as William the Bastard).
V1 and V2 rockets
Then I drove to the Atlantic Wall Museum in a huge concrete pillbox – a WWII gun emplacement – near Calais. In the dark – with now predictable (but unpredicted) stinging nettles – I found a place to camp in the woods off a nearby walking trail. In the morning I saw that the trail led past another huge pillbox – appropriately, with view (i.e., field of fire) over a farmer’s field to shipping in the English Channel.
The museum wasn’t scheduled to open until 10:00, so I went into the nearby village of Audinghen and got French breakfast from a friendly couple running a small hotel and café. I couldn’t resist adding the “floating island” dessert, perhaps some kind of parfait, with masses of whipped cream on top.
With another full day planned ahead of me, I was back at the museum at 10:00, but it was still closed. While I waited, at least two carloads of potential visitors checked it out and left. At 10:15 a man showed up and – saying “5 minutes” – went inside. When I went in at 10:20, I pointed out (rather sourly) that the advertised opening time was 10:00, thinking perhaps he would be apologetic – perhaps explain that he’d had a sick child to care for that morning, or whatever – maybe even offer a discount on the admission price. He responded arrogantly “I am the owner!” So – since I am the customer – I walked out. The time saved there allowed me to add an optional stop in Arras later to see the Giants!
I drove inland to La Coupole, a quarry turned into a V1 and V2 rocket-launching site during WWII (by slave laborers, among others). The excellent two-part exhibit (with a film as part of each) covers the experience of the local people during the German occupation and the development of rocketry both before and since the War. No rockets were ever actually launched from this site, since as soon as Allied intelligence discovered it, the Allies bombed it thoroughly and persistently. Instead the rockets that hit London (and Antwerp) came mostly from mobile launchers in the Netherlands, harder to bomb.
The Arras Giants
My last definite stop for the day was the WWI museum in Peronne near the heart of the Somme battlefields. But I was driving past Arras – a lovely city I had never heard about, but had read about their Giants – so I drove into town to find them. They’re in the City Hall – on a huge and wonderful square (actually the Petite Place, not the Grande Place), lined by rows of Flemish (Dutch) style buildings – but I didn’t initially know that. I saw a sign for the tourist office and asked eagerly “Where are the Giants?” I had just walked past them – turning left as I came in, whereas they stand in the lobby to the right, 15 feet high!
The Museum of the Great War
I hurried on to Peronne where it was easy to spend a couple hours leisurely exploring the WWI museum in an old fort, on top of which I was surprised, however – in view of the decisive role played by American forces in the war – to see no U.S. flag among the others. (I have emailed to ask them why not.)
I bought pastries for dinner – including a Paris-Brest pastry that I had heard about at the Michelin museum, commemorating a century-old race from Paris to Brest and back. The pastry was overloaded, stuffed, with sweet cream – so I had it for “dessert” after the other pastries. The lady in the pâtisserie seemed friendly, but I didn’t want to risk another rejection so didn’t ask if she would fill my water bottle. But – since I also hadn’t thought to do it at the museum – I found a city-run park and camping place by the river where I could get water.
World War I cemeteries, trenches, and “the great mine”
There I asked the helpful manager – who didn’t speak any English, but understood from my miming and stick-figure drawing of characters shooting at each from trenches – that I wanted to see where there were any still-visible trenches. He confidently sent me off to a town about 20 km away, where I expected to see a sign for something, but didn’t, although I drove past several cemeteries of various contingents of Allied war dead.
I pulled into a gas station and asked a couple who were filling up, who also didn’t speak any English, but understood what I wanted, and said to follow them. I have no idea whether we were going in the direction they were headed – probably not, I would guess – but they took me another 20 km, on a circuitous route that eventually brought us to the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Cemetery and Newfoundland Memorial Park where there was indeed still an entire complex of visible trenches as well as what appeared to be craters from artillery fire, signs warning of danger from unexploded shells, grazing sheep, etc.
I was (once again) almost out of gas, but I had discovered the setting that allowed me to see estimated remaining mileage, so checked the GPS to verify that there were gas stations within range along the highway heading north (which would be staffed with attendants to verify my VISA card), then detoured to La Grande Mine, another WWI site not far away, also known as the Lochnager Crater of La Boiselle. Here, in 1916, British forces tunneled under the German line, then detonated almost 27 tons of explosives, killing untold numbers and leaving a crater – still visible – 100 yards across.
Back to the Netherlands
Since I had now toured WWII and then WWI battlefields – and was heading north since I’d scheduled to meet cousin Janie in the Netherlands the next day – I thought to camp at Waterloo near Brussels, but when I got close I realized I had missed the convenient road, so looked for a campground north of Brussels instead. With help of the GPS I found a commercial one – though with no obvious showers (which I thought would have been appropriate for me, before visiting relatives!) – and pitched my tent in the dark. Some young partying Belgians saw me and – probably mystified at first by the “one-eyed” figure they were seeing in the dark – commented that they liked my headlamp.
Janie’s family: Erica, Austin, and Tessa
I didn’t have Janie’s phone number with me, so earlier I had texted to Ellinor asking her to email Janie and confirm my expected arrival in Breukelen around 11:00. In the morning I tried to find someone to pay for the night’s camping-spot, but eventually left without finding anyone, then (naturally) found pastries along the highway for breakfast. I got to Janie’s at 11:04. As it was Dutch Liberation Day (end of WWII) that day – May 5 – she had her national flag flying, and joked that it was for me. Her pugnacious little Chihuahua bit me twice before he got used to me, though fortunately didn’t break the skin.
I took a shower, then we walked through the town to visit her older daughter Erica, Erica’s husband Austin, and their lovely 3-year-old daughter Tessa. It was during the soccer game that would decide the Dutch championship, and Erica is a big fan of Ajax – the Amsterdam team and eventual winner – so, while being a considerate and responsive hostess, she also kept an eye on the game.
Austin, I learned – besides his day job (also with computers) – has a website where, for a small fee, one can put in a picture of one’s own and get back an embroidery pattern generating the same picture in stitches. Erica of course is into embroidery.
Ancestral villages: Zuilichem and Brakel
When I was there in 2008 Janie (van der Linden) and I had visited van der Linden (vdL) ancestral villages – Vuren, Gorinchem, Hoogblokland – on the north side of the Waal River, which is the southernmost and largest of three “distributaries” of the Rhine (what’s still called the Rhine at that point is much smaller). So this time we drove south to the vdL ancestral villages of Zuilichem and Brakel on the south side of the Waal (and a bit upriver).
We visited the Zuilichem graveyard, which contains lots of vdL graves, including many of relatives whom Janie remembers. Something struck me while looking at the graveyards – both earlier in Vriezenveen and now again here – how easily we assume that our “normal” is universal. My mother was born Gleysteen but married Wicks, so she was Dorothy Gleysteen Wicks. In the Netherlands – I had asked Wout and Betsie, and now confirmed it again with Janie – she would have been Dorothy Wicks-Gleysteen, with her maiden name last. The things that we think can be no other way, so “natural”…
We drove along the “van der Linden dike” (actually named the Meidyke) – along which several vdL homes have been located – and admired the grain-grinding windmill, then visited Janie’s double-cousin Bertus (and therefore a 5th cousin of mine as well) at his home.
Along several dikes we noticed a row of well-pruned trees that I was curious about. Janie said she didn’t know what they are called in English (willow, I found out later), but their Latin name is Salix. I was amazed. “How do you know the Latin name?” “We butterfly people learn these things,” she responded. Janie is an amateur butterfly expert, collecting the eggs of endangered species and rearing them through the caterpillar stage until they pupate and then emerge as butterflies. I was there in December in 2008 – the wrong season – but she enthusiastically showed me pictures she’d taken of emerging butterflies. But now – the height of spring – there were hardly any. Just as bees have been hit by colony die-off – probably induced by chemicals in the environment – so have butterflies been hit.
In Brakel we found Slagerij Daan van der Linden, a butcher shop (this was the traditional occupation of many van der Lindens – as well as working in the brick factory, of course). Then we drove back up the Waal to Zalt Bommel where we had iced tea at a lovely outdoor café/restaurant just below the bridge.
Janie’s family: Lisette
We went home so Janie could walk her dogs, then met her younger daughter Lisette at a small “pub” in town for drinks and dinner. (I had cheese fondue.) The three of us had had dinner at the same place in 2008, and it seems to be a favorite place. There was only one other party there for dinner (on a Sunday evening) – a young man celebrating getting his driver’s license with his sister, parents, and grandmother. Lisette knew (at least) the young man, and there was lots of pleasant banter back and forth between the tables during dinner. Afterwards, at Janie’s suggestion, I took a picture of the nearby “Breukelen Bridge” – which appears to be a drawbridge.
Then we drove Lisette home and got a tour of her lovely apartment, larger than ours in Göteborg (with a much larger balcony too), and less expensive (admittedly in a smaller city). She has a guest room, and invited Linnéa to come visit any time she’d like.
Desserts “from €3”
At Janie’s again, we looked through two books on old Zuilichem, including lots of pictures, very fun. Then I repacked so I’d be ready to drop off the car in the morning (at which point I had driven 5089 kilometers, over 3000 miles).
I had tea and carrot cake at the airport Sheraton so I could use their WiFi to check my emails. The Sheraton’s three desserts were priced at €3, so I objected when I was charged €4 for mine, but the waitress came back from checking with the manager and pointed out that the menu actually said “from” €3 – without specifying how much each one really cost (the other two did indeed cost €3). Very tricky, I thought. (I have emailed to the Sheraton to suggest they list the price of each dessert individually.)
Chaos at left-luggage
I took a train from the airport to Amsterdam, where I left my suitcase and backpack (with tent, sleeping bag, and air mattress) in left-luggage. This was quite a zoo, as the instructions were not at all clear. One puts one’s bag in an unoccupied locker, then is supposed to find the pay-terminal associated with that section (logical perhaps, but the instructions say nothing about it; I instead turned to the terminal directly behind me, which turned out to be for another section). Then one should make sure that the terminal-screen shows one’s locker number (again, logical, but the instructions say nothing about it) before putting in one’s card information for payment.
In the few minutes I was there, it seemed that everyone accidentally ended up paying for someone else. Two other parties and I did a 3-way trade in order to end up with the right tickets. (Fortunately we had realized the problem before leaving with the wrong tickets!) I have emailed (with pictures of the faulty instructions) to point out the problem.
Tourist Information and “coffee houses”
I hadn’t planned to have time in Amsterdam, so hadn’t taken a city map. Of course I had the GPS, but I wanted a simple tear-out map such as hotels often give out. I waited half an hour in line at the very busy tourist office, only to find that their fancy tourist maps (which I didn’t want) cost €2.50, so I decided to get by with the GPS.
Since I’ve long heard about “coffee houses” in the Netherlands selling legal marijuana or hashish, I was curious to know more about them, so asked the woman at the tourist office where they were, whether they were really legal, whether they were reputable, etc. She said (somewhat irritatedly) that they’re overall and of course they’re reputable, they’re totally legal, which surprised me, since I thought there might still be some legal ambiguity, even if in practice they were tolerated.
Wandering vaguely towards Dam Square (this is Amster-dam, after all), I came across Prins Hendrik Kade (street – like Swedish gate) on which were both the Hotel Prins Hendrik and the Prins Hendrik Hotel. Long ago we had discovered that there’s a Prins Hendrik flower, prints of which we sent to my mother (son Hendrik’s paternal grandmother), along with prints of Linnéa flowers, naturally.
Wandering further, I came across a place that, judging by the emanating odor, was a coffee house, so I looked to see what they sold, all to be smoked. Another place I came to later had several kinds of cupcakes and other cake, for €3-€5.
“Just a bookstore opening”
Wandering still further, I came to a large crowd in a narrow street, with TV cameras, clearly something unusual happening. I asked a policeman and was told “just a bookstore opening”. It looked more unusual than that, so I asked a middle-aged couple, and the woman told me that the chick-lit author Helene von Royen – who is apparently quite a sensation in the Netherlands – had opened a pop-up bookstore, just for a week, to launch her new book. It was she being interviewed for TV, while a man carrying a live owl was standing around. Quite a scene.
Later I picked up a copy of Metro, a free newspaper (supported by advertising) given out in metropolitan transit systems worldwide. Its headquarters is in Sweden, so we’ve been familiar with it for a long time. When we went to Spain in 2002 I brought back a copy in Spanish for Mormor as a joke. Now I brought her a copy in Dutch.
When I looked at it later, I realized that Helene von Royen was on the cover, at the top, and Ajax (Erica’s favorite team) winning the Dutch soccer championship was at the bottom.
Re:mbrandt remastered
In Dam Square there were lots of huge wreaths as well as loose flowers, left from the remembrance ceremony held every year on May 5 to honor victims of World War II. Lots of people were wandering around, hanging out, so I sat down for awhile, then wandered across the street, past the palace, to a large shopping complex of some kind.
As I walked in, a huge “poster” of a Rembrandt painting caught my eye, and a woman came up the stairs from a lower level and asked if I wanted to see the exhibition. I allowed myself to be persuaded, and it was quite spectacular. The exhibition consists of all of Rembrandt’s known paintings – which, of course, couldn’t be gathered together in the original, because they’re so widely scattered around the world – but these are life-size reproductions.
Since they have all the paintings, they exhibit them in chronological order with commentary about relations among them and the problems of form, color, perspective, or whatever that Rembrandt was addressing at each stage. Since they’re digital reproductions, they took the opportunity to digitally “re-master” most of them, leaving out the cracks, brightening colors that have darkened with age, etc.
In many cases the originals have also been cut – perhaps to fit a space smaller than they were originally intended for – but they’ve managed to show us how the original looked. Fantastic. I spent several hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.
At one point I used the restroom, and was quite puzzled by how to turn on the water, since there were no obvious handles nor any optical sensor. I took a picture of it. Perhaps you’ll guess how one turns on the water?
Organizing for the train: drinking water again
With help from Ellinor, I had booked a night train to Copenhagen, than an afternoon bus onwards to Göteborg. I hustled to the train station to find out what food (if any) would be available on the train: answer, none. So I hustled to a pastry shop and bought five for dinner. Having gotten a bit gun-shy, I asked if the manager knew where I could fill up a bottle with drinking water, and he kindly offered to fill it up for me.
After I ate – which, since my mouth is so dry, required drinking both of my small bottles of water – I went back to get a few more pastries to save for breakfast, and politely asked the manager (since he had offered before) if he could possibly fill up my bottles again. I was surprised when he quietly said “no”. I thought about walking to the nearest public toilets – according to the GPS – but I’d have to run about a mile each way or risk being late for the train, so decided to pass on that idea.
I went to get my bags from left luggage, then asked one of the managers there if he knew where I could get drinking water – and he offered to fill up my bottles, doing a very thorough job, washing them as much as he could in the process. When I got home I looked at one of them and realized that it actually had lots of mold growing in it. No wonder he was trying to clean it! (How can mold grow in “pure” water?)
I checked the departure board and was uncertain which platform to go to, since no train to Copenhagen was listed, though there was a train for Berlin and Warsaw at the scheduled departure time, so I decided that had to be it. Another traveler was concerned about the same question. (You know the drill: I’ve emailed to the station to suggest they put Copenhagen on the board.)
South to Copenhagen
I shared a 6-berth compartment with an interesting young Danish woman, soon to be MBA student, who is an experienced diver (in the tropics, now looking forward to doing some dives in Denmark too). Since Ellinor wasn’t going with me – and forgetting that I might end up sharing rooms at youth hostels – I hadn’t taken my “nappy”. It’s an anti-snoring device which – rather than sucking on it as a baby does – uses suction to hold onto one’s tongue, pulling one’s tongue gently outwards, which prevents snoring (and sleep apnea). I apologized to my compartment-mate for my probable snoring, but she said her boyfriend snored so she was used to it.
Sure enough, the train didn’t head directly towards Copenhagen – I was tracking us with the GPS – but aimed southeast and then even more south, to Cologne, where 3 more passengers joined our compartment, including a friendly Chinese man I wish I’d talked with more.
Mechanical problems
I awoke at 8:00 rolling through Germany, but the train soon stopped, and I heard we were many hours late because of some mechanical problem. According to the schedule I would have had 4 hours in Copenhagen before the bus, but now, fearing that I might miss it, I took the opportunity when they offered and switched to another, slower, but more sure train. That train had a small food service, so I was able to get cheese and a bun and tea to go with my pastries.
Where’s the bus station?
In Copenhagen I bought yet more pastries for the bus ride (and the salesperson kindly filled up my water bottles), then I went looking for the bus station, but there is none! There was just a sign, like a normal bus stop, on one side of a street, and I walked right past it (on the other side of the street) – carrying my backpack and pulling my large suitcase on wheels. Finally someone I asked suggested that the bus stop was back that way, and I found it.
Finding Love in Sweden
The bus ride was uneventful, except for the fact that – I noticed on the GPS – we went past the town or village (anyway, a spot on the map) named “Kärleken”, which means “Love” in Swedish. So if you want to find Love, it’s just north of Ängelholm – actually closer to Halmstad, but the association with angels seems more appropriate.
As we approached Göteborg I turned on my cell phone – I don’t keep it on, because it’s old and doesn’t hold a charge so long, and I often didn’t have a chance to charge it while traveling – and, since I was traveling with luggage, I texted Ellinor to ask about local buses coming the last few blocks up the hill to our apartment. She replied instantly – she’d already been on the computer, checking for just that information. Good service!
The next trip
Despite all the pastries, when I got home I was less than two kilos above the low I was at before the trip, one of which I’ve already lost again.
And I’m busy planning the next trip.
Sometime I'd like to take a Grimaldi Line freighter from Göteborg into the Mediterranean to Israel -- via ports on both sides of the English Channel, in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Cyprus -- probably in the spring, because summer is too hot in the eastern Mediterranean, while fall and winter might be too stormy in the Atlantic. Want to go?
Another possibility is a summer "blues tour" of the Mississippi Valley and southeastern USA. Suggestions where to go?