’nother netherlands night….
Thursday, June 18th, 2009by Rach
Stellendam, Holland
….or day, as the case may be
(but that’s not very alliterationy)
even if those lines rhyme just right
but speaking of night
let me just say
it doesn’t last long
coz the sun shines all day
it’s up before five
while I stay in bed
and it’s still shining past ten
when I rest my head
Gotta love these no-night northern summer days! (and we’re not even *that* far north)
Anyway, we got off to a netherlandsy start with pancakes and apple sauce. The massive cast iron pot earned itself a permanent place in our family – it cooks pancakes wonderfully! As we ate at the picnic table in the courtyard beside our vans, horses neighed from their top-half-open barn doorways, a dim-witted pigeon circled around (please don’t accuse me of being too harsh about this bird – it has flown into our window once and today we watched it try to land on our sloping bonnet – that was never going to work – it really IS dim-witted), the sun shone and it was all just netherlands nice.
Then while I beavered away on the internet searching for going-home options, finding airfares from Berlin, trying to work out where and when to sell the Womos, finding airfares from Frankfurt, wondering whether it would be snowing in Romania in November (surely not – what? it probably will be? No! Yes?), changing plans coz we’re not driving in the snow, finding airfares from Rome, finding airfares from Istanbul, wondering if we need Turkish visas, dreaming about real doner kebabs, corresponding with people we are about to stay with in England and ones we are trying to stay with in Romania, comparing airfares pre-Christmas and post-Christmas, finding bus and train options from Berlin to Krakow to Budapest to Brasov to Bucharest to Istanbul, looking for apartment rental in Romania and Turkey, finding a fantastic hostel in Krakow, checking out Auschwitz, discovering Interrail is only for EU residents, discovering Eurail doesn’t travel to the countries we need it to, looking for caravans on trademe.co.nz (don’t even ask! let’s just say we were exploring all the possibilities short of visiting India or South America), changing plans again, wondering how to get CastIronPot home if we sell the motorhomes early and train around Europe for a few weeks, making enquiries about extending travel insurance…..(I’ve been at the kitchen bench or computer All Day Long and haven’t even made a start on promised personal emails, and I can’t see it happening, because tomorrow is the day Rob has decided we book our Going Home Tickets. For months we avoided the conversation altogether, pretending time was not racing by. About the supposed-to-be-halfway mark we knew we were not ready to be on the coming home stretch and so an email was dispatched to work requesting an extension to the Leave Without Pay. When this was successfully granted, we were able to avoid the Going Home Discussion for a few more weeks. But airfares are going up and in the interests of being able to feed our children upon our return, we are now having to be responsible adults and face the future. Which we are doing grandly in a total of two days. You would not believe how many options we have considered just today even! And right now we have hardly any more idea than this morning of what is going to happen – other than we will not be motorhoming through Romania in November – by the way, is this the longest ever bracketted sidetracked comment? Back to the original sentiment that while I was researching…..)
While I did all that the others washed all the silk sleeping bag liners and strung up a Chinese laundry, rode bikes around the campsite (which is actually a small roaded village in a completely rural setting), completed Sudokus, kicked balls around (the one we fished out of the Rhein and the rattan one we bought in Laos), scribbled some maths, journalled, discussed the scientific method and went for a walk.
When they all got back we had to google “Stellendam 1 February 1953” coz you don’t look at a monument like that without finding out the details. It was as we guessed, and then some. The dikes to the north gave way (both of them), flooding the town completely and suddenly. Additionally, a tidal wave swept in from the south. What hope was there? Sixty-nine people perished. That’s a lot of people in a small town.
rayres