Blair's Blog

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

No Comments »

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…

No Comments »

After 3 days and 3 church towers (in 3 different countries), we decided to mix it up a bit, so we climbed up a windmill. We spent most of Thursday in Rotterdam around the old harbour and the Markthal with Hans & Connie (Brenda’s cousin and husband) and their son, Patrick. Mid afternoon, we struck out on our own and went to the Kinderdijk. It is a very historic area where 19 windmills remain in an area where they have been used for hundreds of years to drain the polders. Also, it is a huge, expensive trap for tourists.

The Markthal, where Hans demonstrated how to eat herring (haring) like a proper Dutchman.

No Comments »

Brielle is the town in the area that the Langendoen family came from. We spent the afternoon walking around the town, looking for places that might have been familiar to Brenda’s dad, who was about 11 years old when the family immigrated to Canada. We saw the school and the church and we found ice cream, too.
Of course, we needed the ice cream since we had to climb the steeple of the church. 318 steps. The view was good though. Today was very clear and we could see the skylines of Rotterdam and den Haag.

No Comments »