Odd and foreign stuff

A curious thing I’ve noticed.  As far as I know, I haven’t been logged into blogger for nearly two weeks.  but when I post comments, there I am with a link to Quiet Pictures.  Adding insult to injury really since I’m now here and I can’t do anything to the blogger blog anyway.

Well it’s taken two and a half days but I’ve organised the funeral trip all except kennels for the dog.  They won’t answer their phone.  (Maybe Jenny up the road will come and give him dinners and walks and love : )  Which would be good since it’ll keep the house looking slightly used!)  Usually it takes me at least a month to get organised to go abroad. And unbelievably, the hotel I picked almost at random is in the village half a mile up the road from where the funeral is to be and nearly the same distance from Sint Michiels Gestel, where my Grandparents lived and which I visited as a small child.  Better still, all these places are clustered round the main road we have to use to get there.  No struggling through big towns or cities.

I’m really hoping I’ll have a chance to wander around Sint Michiels Gestel.  It’s the next village to where the funeral is happening and my Dutch Grandparents lived there.  It’s full of memories and I particularly love the way all the dutch names start getting back into my head whenever I look at the map. I’ve always hoped I was one of those rare English people who can pronounce s’Hertogenbosch correctly but I doubt it.

My fiddle teacher loves going to Italy because she can understand so many of the road signs – they are of course quite similar to the Italian music instructions in classical music 🙂  and I remember loving that in Greece, I could understand a lot of stuff because I’d read Greek Myths as a child. And although the alphabet is different, you get a feel of the word from the shapes and as the names of Greek Gods and heroes figure largely in place names when you’re a tourist you get a good selection of recognisable bits of word to extrapolate from.

So.  I shall have to bring home some zoutedropjes (I loathe them but there must be someone who would like some – a kind of salt and sweet liquorice) and some Droste chocolates (My Groetmoeder’s best friend was married to Mr Droste and Groetmoeder swore that Droste was the best chocolate in the world).  And I shall try and get a picture of De Kleine Ruwenburg  Where our friends used to live.  Sadly, the Dommel House where the grandparents lived is long gone.  It was a tiny wooden house on the banks of the River Dommel and at the beginning of a long avenue of poplar trees.

I think I shall skip the bicycles – Dutch bikes don’t have brakes.  You have to pedal backwards to stop and I find this quite scary – as well as having to cycle on the right.

Well whatever.  There will be the ferry trip.  I am sad about Jacques and it’s going to be quite heart breaking going there and finding him absent from the places where he ought to be but a sea journey always lifts my heart and I’m not going to deny it.  I love journeys.

Here is one of my favourite pictures of Holland by a Dutch photographer.

And here is a rose.

Rose at sunset

Hey!  the hotel has wifi : )

But I doubt if I’ll have time for any of that : (

Oh well.  Sleep peacefully and be well and look after yourselves please, till I get back 🙂