Western Europe continued
Halsteren, The Netherlands, Aug 27- Sep 4, by Laura
We flew to Amsterdam from Madrid and arrived in the beautifully renovated Schripol airport. Stunning. In 1988 I remember I had to walk outside the airport and across the street to get into the train station and I thought that was cool. This time we bought our train ticket from inside the airport and took an escalator one floor underneath the airport to our specific track. Now why don't we have this sort of thing in the USA???
We took a train to Bergen op Zoom, and then called Peter & Mirium to come pick us up. They live in Halsteren just next to Bergen op Zoom. However, we somehow had mixed up the days and they thought we were arriving the following day. But no worries, within ten minutes Mirium's parents picked us up at the train station and took us to Peter & Mirium's house. We had met Peter & Mirium on our Crazy Kudu tour in Namibia and they invited us to stay with them during our time in Europe. Once we decided we didn't have the energy to do a tour of the Scottish highlands, we took them up on their offer and we were so glad we did.
Peter & Mirium were the perfect hosts and they had a wonderful house in a beautiful village. Aaron spent most mornings writing while I did running around with Mirium. It was so fun to do 'normal' life things, like shopping for furniture. We also did some fun things they had planned for us. One day we & Peter went with his friend down to Antwerp, Belgium, only 30 min away by car. We took an all day tour of the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, which was very interesting. We visited a Synogogue, walked through the neighborhood streets, ate a kosher meal at a kosher restaurant, and learned lots. At the end of the tour we walked the diamond trading streets. That was like something out of a James Bond movie! 80% of the world's rough diamonds are traded through Antwerp and over 150 nationalities are registered as living in this city. We saw people from all over the world walking around, briefcases in hand. You just wonder the value of what they're carying!
Another day, us four took a walk along the dykes and to some old fishing villages, very pretty. At dinner while planning their trip to visit us in Colorado, we were discussing what typcial Dutch things they should bring with them as presents to Americans. This is where we learned about Marta, their cow. Since every Dutch person wears wooden shoes, lives on a farm and has a dairy cow, they decided there's no reason Marta shouldn't accompany them to the USA. We agreed, how more Dutch can you get. Marta was a part of every conversation from then on.
Peter celebrated his birthday and they kindly invited us to the party. We got to meet Pete's diving buddies and we compared stories. Who knew that diving was so popular in Holland? We had American day, Aaron and I cooked American style French Toast and we drove to a 25 screen theater complex in Antwerp and saw a double feature (neither Peter nor Mirium had done a double feature before). We saw Final Fantasy, they saw Pearl Harbor, then we both saw Planet of the Apes. It was great fun, except the Dutch put sweet stuff on the popcorn, somehow that just didn't seem right.
In a few days our visit was over and we had to fly to England using EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), the cheapest way to get around Europe. We had a fantastic farewell dinner at the oldest hotel in Holland and bid Peter & Mirium adieu, until we see them in Denver, USA.
Peter and Mirium, deep in meditation in their garden
Their very cute house, all ready for Peter's birthday party
Laura & Peter walking along the dykes
Aaron learns local customs well. Here he's protecting the city from a leaking dyke
The beautiful countryside, complete with windmill
Peter is so dedicated to Marta, he has her picture on all important items
The old square in downtown Halsteren
Our goodbye dinner at the same hotel
