Thursday 4th August - Family history

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We started the day off with breakfast around the table (I don't remember the last time I did that, and Steve reckons he hasn't sat at the breakfast table for years!)
After breakfast we went for boat ride on Oom Arjen's boat (they back onto a river/canal type thing. Beppe is not fond of water but even she went with us (although she almost had a heart attack when a bigger boat created large waves and rocked our small boat quite a bit – we thought she was going to jump overboard!) We went around canals, poels (like a lake but deeper (I think)) and final out onto Lake Sneek, where we had been the previous day to watch the racing. There were lots of boats out, we even saw some small kids (no older than 7 or 8) at a sailing school so they were all out on their own sail boats hooning around! Oom Arjen took us to a new development with very nice looking houses on the lake front (he showed us his friend's house then informed us that you needed to be rich to afford a house here!)
By the time we got back it was lunch time – Tante Anna had stayed behind from the boat trip and had lunch ready and waiting for us (Steve is loving the fresh bread we are having in Holland – first at Aunty Margareth's and now at Tanta Anna's).
After lunch we headed to Belikum which is the town where Pake and Beppe (my grandparents) grew up. Tante Anna had used her connection and rung 7 people to find someone who was able to show us through the church Pake and Beppe went to. We ended up getting a really informative guy who spoke very good English. We discovered later that Mum, Dad, Monique and Daniel didn't get to go to the roof of the church... We did!!!! He told us about a endangered species of bats that come through a small space on the outside of the church and spend time in the roof space (between the church roof and the next outter layer. They are a water bat so they spend their day inside then at night go to the river out back and hoover over the top of the water to catch bugs. We started in the main church area and Beppe told us about where she used to sit with her friends and how she got told off and poked with an umbrella by the minister's wife. Before heading up into the next level we had to wait for the 2.30pm bell to ring – not good for the nerves... the thumping noise gave me a heart attack, thinking about earthquakes (in the olden days that was used to let the workers know it was time to go home for the end of the day) then the guy took us up a level where the organ was and the level Pake used to sit. Beppe waited down the bottom (which was a good thing because it was hard enough getting up and down the stairs myself let alone my 81 year old grandmother going it!) The roof space was where the bats were (I didn't see any but Brett informed me when we were back down the bottom that he saw one flying around but didn't want to scare Rebecca and I... Thanks Brett! We were expecting that to be the end of the tour but no... he went even higher, opened the latch and there was the very top of the church on the roof where the bell was. Just before we got to the stairs Rebecca spotted a beam where some people had carved their names and we recognised one of them – Our great Pake Schram had carved his name and two dates into the beam!
So after another challenge to my fear of heights we had to get down again... It took a while because the stairs were VERY narrow and we had to go down backwards!
After that we drove/walked arounf and saw where Pake lived, the window Beppe used to sit in to watch Pake, the corner where the two of them spent hours (I told Beppe I didn't want to know and her response was... Oh it was all innocent, none of that hanky-panky stuff! LOL). I think the coolest part was seeing the brick wall where Pake was shot at by the Germans, the bullet hole wasn't there anymore but it was still cool to put a place to the memory I have been told about so many times!
We went past Tante Fay's on the way home to have coffee and Geerie came around too which was nice to see her again.
Tante Anna and Oom Arjen took us out for tea at an 'EatCafe' which was delicious. Oom Arjen said they bring out food as well as what you order and he wasn't wrong... we got our food then out came 2 bowls of fries, 2 bowls of herbed fried potato, 2 bowls of beetroot, 2 bowls of cabbage (that actually tasted nice!) and 2 bowls of rubharb! And being Dutch we were not leaving until it was all eaten (well we did the best we could!)
At home we had yet another coffee and some chocolate (yum-ness) then 10pm hit and Beppe was up and off to bed so the rest of us followed too!

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Photos

Photo 2
Steve, Beppe and Oom Arjen on Oom Arjen's boat

Photo 3
Steve and I

Photo 4
The church Pake and Beppe went to when they were younger

Photo 5
This is my great-grandfather - it was engraved on a beam in the roof space of the church.