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Published: October 8th 2023
Utrecht
Friends since highschoolAnother long interval has passed since my last blog. Some of you might have thought I had stopped blogging, or, god forbid, stopped travelling. Neither is the case. It's more that I have yet to return to my old travel schedule. The pre-Covid one. I was travelling more then. It's taking some time to get back to that. But I haven't been idle. Since Saudi Arabia there was a Christmas and New Year spent with Jenni in Hagen, several visits from one of my best friends who lives in Australia, quite a few stints in the clinic, celebrating the unofficial Dutch national day, King's Day, in Utrecht with Jenni (her first), followed by one of the most Dutch of Dutch clichés, cycling through the blooming tulip fields of the Noordoostpolder, once the bottom of an inland sea, called the Zuiderzee. It's great having a Jenni by my side, without her I would not have seen or done so many typical Dutch things. In the last few years I have experienced the whole list of must-do's for my little country. The stuff tourists do, and which you see on promotional material of my country. I've always wanted to do them, but never
Gaanderen
Frosty morning did. The far-away, as often is the case, was more important. Jenni, and Covid, changed that.
Summer came, and with it family. The family has grown, it's not just sisters and brothers with spouses and kids, but kids with partners too. The kids have grown old! I don't know when this happened. And they love the annual get together so much, that they are dragging their partners with them. So, we had 16 people visiting. They didn't all fit in the house, but luckily one of our neighbours has a small guesthouse, where a few could stay. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't playing along. We had a sweltering June, but somewhere half July, the weather turned and it became wet and cool. Actually an old-fashioned Dutch summer, however, we have become so used to the new normal of hot and dry summers that it came a bit as a surprise. So it was wet and cool. Great for the garden, for once it didn't look like the African savanna.
A few trips were planned. Including another very Dutch tradition, so called wadlopen. Wadlopen, literally tranlates to wad walking. And a wad is bascially a tidal flat. In the north
Gaanderen
Dressing the Christmas tree of our country we have the Waddenzee, the Waddensea in English, with a string of island at the end of it. During low tide, you can walk from the mainland to some of those islands, this is wad walking. But you don't have to especially walk from the mainland to an island to do wad walking. In our case, we were brought by a boat close to one of the islands, Schiermonnikoog, and from there we started our walk, over the tidal flats outside of this island, in a big loop ending on the island. It was a nice walk, with one hard, but short shower along the way. A muddy walk too. And pretty strenuous. Twenty kilometres in all, and my mum, champion that she is, walked like the best of us. I hope I can do the same when I am 83!
Obviously there were the obligatory croquet games, and mölkky, the Finnish version of bowling, we managed to squeeze in a bbq on the one dry day, celebrated the all-important Swedish crayfish eating day, went to the Efteling for the first time in years (except for my mother and me, we were both pretty tired by
Hohen Limburg
Christmas market in a medieval castle outside Hagen that time), celebrated several birthdays and, my nephew Kim, got the news that he had passed his masters degree with flying colours, while he was visiting, so we had to toast him as well.
It was a lot of fun, and nice to see everybody again. But by the end of it I was a wreck. 16 people is a lot. My mother was even more of a wreck, and is still recovering as we speak. Another trial and I am off on another adventure. Expect to read more half way October. Until then, stay cool (or slay, as my younger nieces and nephews would say), be nice, and don't worry too much.
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Linn
non-member comment
Hello from Switzerland
Nice to see some photos of your walks around Groningen! I hadn't seen them before, nor had I seen some of the ones around Hagen. Looking forward to seeing the photos of your next trip! Love Linn