Blair's Blog

Sadly, not for the TT…  We were a week late for the motorbike racing. On the other hand, we were too early for the bowling.
After leaving our friends in the Groningen area after breakfast on Monday, we started to head south to our next stop in Assen. Brenda’s maternal grandparents lived in Assen, and their house is still standing. It is now a bowling alley! The bowling didn’t open until later in the day, otherwise we would have played a game in great-Oma Pilot’s parlour.
We walked through old Assen and found the church and Bartje. Bartje is a character from an old Dutch book, a small child from a poor family who is best known for his dislike for brown beans.  Anyway, it was very exciting for Brenda, as she remembered her Oma having a little a small statue of Bartje – now Brenda has one as well!

From Assen, we continued south to Holten, where we visited a Canadian war cemetery, then to Teuge where we found a memorial to an allied bomber crew that had crashed in the war. Eventually, we arrived in Arnhem where we had an invitation to stay with a cousin of Brenda’s mom. Romina and her husband Cees, have made us feel very welcome.

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Since the weekend, we have been quite busy so I have fallen behind on the posts. After a very full day touring Amsterdam with one of Brenda’s second cousins, Joost, we drove up to the north of the country late Saturday afternoon.
We arrived in Lageland, near Groningen, in time for a nice backyard BBQ as the heat of the day eased.  It was very good to catch up with the Nijeboer’s who used to live in Calgary about 7 years ago.

We stayed 2 nights and on Sunday toured the country-side around Groningen. To me, this part of the trip seemed to look and feel like what I pictured Holland to be in my mind – verdant fields dotted with dairy cows, tree lined lanes leading to tiny villages with cobblestone streets, and windmills overlooking canals.

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My Dad was raised on a small farm close to Breill. The farmhouse is no longer there but the farmland is. We saw vervent green potato plants absorbing vitamin D from the sun, imagined what route my Dad and his brothers might of walked to the school in the centre of town and climbed the 318 steps of the church tower of the Reformed kerk. We learned how the “waterguezen” (protestant rebels) hid in the bottom of boats (much like the Trojan horse) and defeated the Spanish. Brielle much like other places in Europe has been the place of different battles and part of various wars. Now it is at peace but while viewing the landscape it’s not hard to think that the next battle for the land will be more about a way of life and less about national borders.

The house that stands where the old farmhouse where Ron Langendoen grew up

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Well.
Just got back to being on wifi and noticed that the only bit of this post that uploaded properly was the title. Too bad, because the content was charming and witty. Oh well, I’ll just try again and you can imagine the charm and wit.
Anyway, Hellevoetsluis – we spent Friday morning there in a lovely Renault dealership having a tire replaced on the rental car. Thursday evening we punctured a sidewall while parallel parking on a narrow cobbled street. While I changed to the spare, Brenda started the process of getting a French rental agency to provide service to a customer. By Friday morning it turned out that service is of the “self” variety. It wasn’t all bad, the kids had wifi…

And I got to check out the cars…

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