Visiting the Mother Country

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This morning we are going to see where Mum lived with Aunty Rene and Oma and Opa, I’m so excited!

So off we head with Carmen the Garmin leading the way.

As we get close and turn off the main road, suddenly we are driving in laneways so we park in the first empty spot we see (cowards!) and walk the rest.

We head to Strobloemstraat (straat means street) and hunt for Mum’s house.

The street is really quaint with trees down the sides, the houses all join together and are 2-3 floors high. They all have small front gardens, most full of flowers, a little fence along the footpath.

We find Mum’s house and sit out the front like paparazzi taking photo’s. It looks the same as the others but the gutters are painted where every other house just has white, and there is a cat in the top window!

At the end of the street is a big park, it looks more like a forest, full of big trees. I picture Mum and Aunty Rene playing there…

We walk around the neighborhood for a while, going up and down the streets, poking about in the laneways behind the houses, wondering how it was back in the day. We try to find Mum’s primary school but after speaking with a local guy walking his dog (another really common sight here) we think that it no longer exists.

So we head back to the car and get out of the laneway maze way as quick as we can and head on the main freeway to Rotterdam.

Tim’s driving for the first part of the day, and once he’s used to being on the wrong side it’s a good trip. It’s a nice easy drive, roads are good and well signed, only downside is not many speed limit signs and we think that Carmen may over estimate how fast we are allowed to go. But all in all it goes okay.

There are nice big green open fields along the way and loads of cows, gotta love a country that appreciates a good cow!

As we get close to Rotterdam we see a lot of signs for the Tour De France. It turns out that it goes through Rotterdam today, any other time it would probably be really exciting - for us though, our first thought is ‘please don’t make us have to take a detour!’

But we safely make it to Rotterdam in time for lunch so our goal is to find a café. We park up in a nice little area and head to the first café we find, only to be told that no food will be served until 4pm but we can have a beer while we wait though… We pass and keep on hunting. We get the same answer everywhere we go so we finally find a bakery and Tim gets a cold sausage roll and I get an Apple Danish. Both were not great. So, for us, no big smiley tick for Rotterdam…

My turn to drive now and we head off to Delft to go to the Delft Porcelain factory. At home I have a Delft windmill from Oma and Mum got me a plate when she came to Holland with Dad so I’m looking forward to seeing it all for myself.

The drive there is much nicer than my first drive through Eindhoven yesterday, at least I don’t stall the car now - well not so much anyway, and I can stay mostly in the middle of the road (insert big smiley face here!).

We found a nice big wide road with plenty of car parks free so we decided to park there and walk the rest of the way Delft factory. The extra bonus there was a load of geese and ducks in a canal next to the road so they got the rest of our Rotterdam food, at least they enjoyed it.

Didn’t take long to walk there, from the outside it was very plain and didn’t really give away the value inside. We did a walk through the museum part, which explained the history of Delft Porcelain, from there into the painters area (all Delftware is hand painted) and from there through the factory.

We found a chart that had the year codes so I’ll be able to see when my bits were made when I get home.

Of course, last but not least, the shop. Trying to find something that will (a) not break the bank and (b) survive the post home was easier said than done. They have also started making generic pieces that are not hand painted and are just stenciled on, so these are a lot more affordable, look the same but are just souvenier pieces, not official Delftware. I eventually get a little porcelain wooden shoe, small (cute!) but nice.

Drive the final leg to Amsterdam airport, thank God for Carmen, she got us through the hellish freeway network easy peasy. Handed over Veronica the Audi, nice car, but deep down, glad to see her go for now!

Our hotel is supposed to be directly across the road from Amsterdam Centraal (no, not spelt wrong, that’s it’s actual name) Train Station and there is an express train directly there from airport - perfect! Except the signs on the platform weren’t very clear and Tim misread it so we ended up on wrong train going in the opposite direction. Since nothing is said in English we had no idea. After a few stops (remember ours was meant to be express) we eventually found another passenger who spoke English and pointed out the error of our ways. So we hopped off, found out from train staff that we are not the first and eventually get on the right one.

Amsterdam Centraal is a huge old station with so much more character than ours. Lucky for us there aren’t people telling you not to take photos like some staff tell the tourists at home, because they’d have a huge job, it’s a photographers dream.

Walked up and down street looking for hotel, as it was supposed to be right across the road we didn’t think it would be that hard to find, and then to top it off it started to rain. How sad we must have looked, two tourists dragging their bags behind them in the rain!

Finally we found it, how were we to know there was more than the one entrance to the station - it was so obvious once we found it! It is called the A-Train Hotel and as the name suggests is a train themed hotel. The foyer looks like a carriage with overhead luggage holders, train seats as waiting chairs and all sorts of train paraphernalia - toys, photos, models and old fashioned luggage.
We were told our room overlooked the canal (which is other side of train station), but in actual fact it was on other end of hotel and just overlooked roofs.

The room was a teeny tiny 3x5mtrs, no air conditioning, just enough room down one side of the bed for a chair and the other side of bed up against wall. There are a few TV stations in English, mostly the News except for one with regular shows. For 7.50 Euros you can buy extra channels, but we passed. It will serve the purpose for shut eye.

Hotel rooms are in high demand and most hotels (including ours) have ‘Full’ signs on their doors. We saw a couple of young guys come in looking and were turned away, I’d hate to not have somewhere to go when I reached my destination. You could either end up in a flee pit or something waaaaay out of your budget, but I know a lot of people who travel like this and love it, just not me…

Went for a walk about, there are bicycles, scooters, trams, buses, cars, horses and people everywhere, it’s so busy! Bikes have their own lane that scooters can use as well. So for tourists like us who are not only still figuring out which way the cars are coming from when trying to cross the road, there’s the added problem of bikes and scooter flying out of nowhere, and those on bikes ARE flying, takes a lot of guts to ride a pushy that fast in traffic like this!

There are literally thousands of pushbikes parked alongside each other on the sides of the roads. How do people find their bike mixed in with the thousands that all look the same? And also people chain their bikes up, but will chain them to other people’s bikes if they can’t get to the rail or tree or bridge or… So again, if your bike is being used to chain up someone else’s, how do you get your bike to go home? Points to ponder…

Next to the train station there is a multi story parking tower just for bikes. There is even a tyre pump there. No wonder everyone here seems healthy.

The canals are everywhere, I expected there to be one (like a river) running through the city. But they are literally like streets in their own right. Lots of canal tour boats, houseboats and small boats fill up the edges. I imagine on a nice sunny weekend day, they would be buzzing with activity.

McDonalds obviously have a huge following here, they are everywhere! We use Carmen the Garmin to walk around with and they even show up separately from the generic food and drink symbol.

We find a Thailand Expo set up with loads of food stalls, a little market (but not like Phuket sadly) mostly crafty things, Thai shoulder massage and a concert. It looks like Thailand might be short a few lady boys this week… We had a Thai for dinner (yum, yum, yum!) on the steps of the church. There a lot of homeless people here getting food out of the bins and picking up people leftovers. As we were about to leave a man comes and sits down next to two girls sitting in front of us and starts talking to them, asking for money etc, way too close into their space. We stay as you could tell they were not comfortable, I ask them if they want to come and sit with us, but they are done as well and we all go our separate ways, crisis averted.

When we arrived in Eindhoven, everyone was wearing orange because of the World Cup, here everyone is wearing white. Curiosity gets the better of me and I have to ask - is it something to do with the soccer? Is it a religious thing? Is it the fashion here? What???? Turns out every year there is a big party and the dress code is strictly all white - any colour means no entry. But it’s not like a rave back home, all ages from all walks of life go. Sounds like fun to me!!!

So we go back to our hotel, fold ourselves up into our room and look forward to tomorrow.

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Comments

[abigail]

bags hanging out of windows
it means one of the children has just graduated, their exams have just finished around that time. :)

[Joost]

Bags out of the windows
The bags are sort of a tradition in the Netherlands. When a child graduates from high school his or hers schoolbag is hanged from the Dutch flag. This way everyone in the neighbourhood knows your child has graduated :) Glad you enjoyed my country, your report is a lovily read!