Roden, Netherlands

Before I start on Roden, it's my turn at Vision and Verb today with a post on euthanasia.
Astrid's former cousin-in-law here in The Netherlands was euthanised two weeks ago after a short bout with incurable cancer. She was only 54.

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A week ago Saturday, after my Norway images were finally processed and I was ready to move on, Astrid and I drove to Roden in Holland's Drenthe province (220 km/136 miles) for a photo hunt with other bloggers. Fokkio was the one who set up the excursion for the 10 of us involved, including his wife, Karin. It was the first time for us to meet each other.

What a day! The meet-up started at 1 p.m. at a café in town but since we were in the area, Astrid and I decided to leave early enough to take in some nearby sights: the water tower in Drachten (but of course!) and a nearby special windmill in Roderwolde.

As we entered Drachten in the Friesland province, we first saw their famous bicyclist's bridge.
How's that for mixing art with utility!


By now I'm getting used to such art everywhere we go in The Netherlands,
utiliarian or not.


Drachten's water tower was built in 1959 and is 42 meters high.


After the water tower we continued on towards the windmill in Roderwolde and, you know me, stopped for this quaint Kerkje (Little Church) in Noordwijk and the gas pole outstanding in its field.
I've mentioned before that The Netherlands has its own natural gas reserves. We saw 2 such poles on this trip, where the flame at the top burns off excess fumes so they won't explode or pollute the environment.


You didn't expect me to forget the weathervanes, did you?

Then on to the windmill in Roderwolde, nearby our destination for the day:

This Woldzigt oil and grain mill was built in 1852.
It's the first windmill I've seen like this, extended out so horizontally.

Then we entered Roden, our destination, and walked around the café a bit before everyone arrived.

On one side of the café is the Ot (boy) and Sien (girl) statue.
These are storybook characters that Astrid has heard about all her life.
On the other side of the café is a statue of Hendricus Scheepstra, their author.


Then it was time to meet everyone over a cup of coffee.
All 10 of us from different parts of The Netherlands, even as far away as Haarlem!
The first Winsinghhof café/restaurant gave us free drinks because Fokko, our leader, hosts an ad for them on his blog site. It's next door to the Roden or Catharinakerk reformed church.
Midway through our 4-hour walk, we stopped at another café out in the middle of nowhere.


Then we were off and running. Well, more like stop-n-go walking for 4 straight hours!
Once we rounded Catharinakerk...


...and inspected an interactive stone sculpture...


...and the stork's empty stand but occupied chimney nest...


...we headed into the nature reserve surrounding Roden, fields and forests alike,
all 10 of us doing our photographer's thing at every whip-stitch.


First, the Shetland ponies...and the horses...


...proud of spring's wobbly new birth.


Then the Highlanders, first in brown...


...later in white.


And in bewtween, Mother Nature everywhere to be seen on a sunny day!


Quirks of nature, too...


...and things we didn't expect, like a Mandarin duck, a baby llama, horseriders (well, ok)
and a 'normal' cow!


No excuse for ever losing your way.
The Netherlands is known for its user-friendly signposts for everyone.


See how delightful it was everywhere we went for approximately 12 km.


Astrid and I had a blast and now Fokko is suggesting another excursion for July or August.

We felt like 180-year-old women that night when we fell into bed.
By morning we felt like 80-year-olds.
Maybe by July or August we'll feel back to normal?! :)

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A reminder that today I'm on at Vision and Verb...while I work now on the images of our just-past weekend in Ghent, Belgium, celebrating my up-coming birthday early. But more on that next week....

The Gorinchem 2010 Santa Run

HO HO HO! All one thousand of us!

When Astrid told me a few weeks back about our city's Santa Run scheduled for Saturday, 18 December, and that for €10 each we could participate, with money going to charity, it didn't take me long to say YES. And am I ever glad I did. I thought Sinterklaas coming to town made me a Kid again...but this was that multiplied by 1,000.

This was Gorinchem's third Santa Run. It started in 2008 with 400 participants, last year with 800, and this year 1,000. My guess its it'll just get bigger and bigger with each new year. We totally missed it last year but will do our best to be there every year from now on.


So anyway, Astrid went to a nearby participating store to pick up our Santa suits and race numbers. Since my age ends in a 5 and hers in a 6, it was easy to decide who got which number.
One size fits all! HA! One size, that is for the adults and one size for the kids.


Once Saturday arrived, we were off to the races! I took pictures of Astrid and she took pictures of me.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself, I see. Warm-up started at 10:30 a.m. near the Grote Kerk just 2 blocks away, with the race beginning at 11 a.m. Before we even got inside the Start entrance, a lady from the newspaper stopped us and took our picture (similar to the one above at the top of the post) and info, with Astrid's motto for 2011, "Stay Positive!" We'll see later this week if we're published. HA.

But then, almost at the same time, we bumped into Dries, our neighbor friend who, too, is a city paper photographer (he took the picture of us above). So as we now do, by habit, we take and send each other pictures of each other. Dries says that since he's met us, he'll now have to get a photo album for himself! You know how it is...who takes pictures of the photographer?? Astrid and I do:

Isn't life just grand! What would we do without our friends.

Speaking of which....
Last winter I bumped into Ernie while on a walk around our citadel wall. Ernie also is a photographer, so already there's a big-bridge connection. Since that first bump-into, we have bumped into each other several times while he walks his gorgeous dog, Laika. I fell in love with her at first sight.
How fun, then, to bump into them again at the Santa Run. Ernie had no clue what was going on. All he was doing was his normal walk-about with Laika, minding his own business. Maybe he and Laika will be Santas next year?
And all this happened before the race started!

Speaking of dogs, aren't these the cat's meow!

NOW the race can start....

The funny thing is, several minutes before the race, the Start line was full of all those girls on the top row (above). But at the very beginning of the Run, these 7 boys on the bottom row were on the line and they were the ones that started the race. I couldn't help but think of grandson Nicholas. He would have been in his element since HE's the King of all runners.


What I neglected to say is this was only a 3K run, just halfway around our citadel loop...using 'run' and 'race' loosely, since most of us did not run. Astrid started out running and then came back to walk with me the rest of the way, to take pictures.


We were so very lucky weather-wise!
As you can see, the sun actually came out for part of the time. The temps hovered around 28F the entire time but because we were all so excited, and had the Santa suits on, we were actually almost too warm. I got hit at least once by a snowball from behind. HAHA! If we can't take a joke, right?!


In fact, there was enough tom-foolery to last the entire day.

The Finish line came way too soon, especially once I discovered we would NOT be passing either of our two citadel windmills. I had been fantasizing for days about getting pictures of 1,000 Santas passing by one of the windmills. WRONG. But once I realized it just wasn't gonna happen, no matter how much I protested, I got over it and did in fact cross the Finish line, right in front of one of our favorite Greek restaurants.

I took a picture of Astrid getting her medal and she took a picture of me. How's that for being glad we're both photographers!


At the end of the race, servers were set up to give us hot glühwein, erwtensoep (pea soup...a big-time Dutch specialty) and rookworst...all part of our entrance fee. Tell me this isn't fun!
[You may remember a close-up picture of Astrid and another lady way up at the top of this post. That's Annamiek, who is an old friend of Astrid's, one of the servers in the line-up above.]


You know me. Give me a camera and suddenly I see all kinds of photo-ops. You photographers know this, of course. I am always attracted to the children, especially, wondering what they're thinking during these events.


The ones who stole my heart were these two sisters (I assume). I couldn't get enough of them.


The race was done, the food was eaten, and it was time to go home...but not before the real way-too-skinny Santa made his appearance. Talk about the frosting on the cake.


And thanks to Dries, here's a YouTube of the day.
€25,000 was raised from this event, with €10K going to a hospital for children and €10K going to war orphans. Totally worth the experience!

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We were back home by 1 p.m., riding a 'high' that wasn't from the glühwein. I really am a kid at heart. I've decided I'm making up for all the lost time in my own childhood, much of which I don't remember. Someone clearly knew I'd need my chance all over again, which thrills me to no end.

But...we had to segue from the Santa Run to our Christmas dinner celebration with Jeroen and Eva that evening. They arrived at 4 p.m. and everything was not only ready, I even had time to upload and look at all the pictures I took (287). Did I mention I made the main meal the day before, making all the difference in the world?

For the last many years in Atlanta, the Christmas meal had always been one of my kids' favorites from when we ate at G'ma Tiffan's eons ago: chicken paprikash. It's a Hungarian poor-man's meal but has become a celebration meal for my family. Jeroen and Eva (Astrid, too) had their first taste and all agreed we could continue the tradition. I don't want to forget it. It brings me so many happy memories.

Dinner and a movie: "The Family Stone," another favorite...and one that is also connected to my own family. My niece is married to a man who happens to be the cousin of the director (or some such big-whig). So much fun to know this kind of trivia, right?!

With that, Christmas will now come, the day. First, we'll celebrate our Christmas meal here at our senior-living complex tomorrow evening. Then Astrid and I plan to attend a Christmas Eve service at the Grote Kerk on Friday, followed by a quiet day here at home on Saturday, with dinner reservations at 4p nearby. It'll be just what the doctor ordered.

For you, may you, too, celebrate in a way that is just what you need. It comes around only once a year!

She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain

We're back after a week's drive through France...via car, not train...all 1960 miles!
This is a model train (HO scale) from the Dortrecht Steam Festival we attended back in May and is a welcome back from traveling...and my way to also say it's my turn again at Vision and Verb.

My job is now cut out for me...to go through my 1,000 photos and pare them down to half that number and then get them into collages. It was such an incredible experience to see France apart from Paris. It's like seeing Holland apart from Amsterdam. Seeing the real countryside and how the smaller villages look. I can tell you this: there's a huge difference between France and The Netherlands by landscape alone. I didn't expect, for instance, so much stone in the architecture of normal houses. Or so many hills and valleys. You'll see.

What maybe surprised me more than anything, however, is the proximity of France to Holland!

It was 50 km (31 mi) from our house south to the Belgium border, another 154 km (96 mi) through Belgium to the French border, and another 220 km (137 mi) to Paris. Pinch me: that's 424 km (263 mi) or 5.5 hours from our house to Paris! I'm still in shock. It's nothing for people here to drive to Paris for a long weekend! One day...maybe when you come to visit us.


Speaking of driving, that Granny Towanda sure knows what she's doing. Next trip I'll make a point of highlighting her a bit more. She deserves all the attention she can get!
(Top) our first B&B, in Thenioux. (Middle) at a small cemetery. (Bottom) at another cemetery.
(NO. That is not an omen. She is not ready to give up the ghost!)


Just a taste of a few activities in which Astrid is showcased. We saw more sunflowers than you can shake a stick at...raised for it's oil more than for its seeds. Our Dutch friends have their own spring-fed swimming hole, good for skinny-dipping. Yup. The Normandy coast was a must, in honor of those who came before us. And Mont St. Michel....
[Click on any collage and then on an individual image to enlarge.]


This was what we wanted to see more than anything else...and this is the first picture I took from several kilometers away. We arrived at 6:30 p.m., late in the day because we intended to stay till dark for time-lapsed images.


This was the last photo of Mont St. Michel, 11:15 p.m. In between photos, we walked all the way to the Abbey on top.

Next post I'll start being more specific about the entire experience. For now, this is the appetizer. The taste to whet your appetite. Or maybe to whet mine and get me in gear to tackle all my photos this week. I will love it.

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It's summer vacation for school but I am allowed to still go to the Learning Center as long as it's open this coming week...followed by 3 weeks when the school is totally closed, and then another 3 weeks of Learning Center before school is back to full operation at the end of August. It's a 3-day schedule instead of the typical 4 days, but at least it will keep me up on things. I'm committed to maintaining my momentum.

A reminder again that it's my turn at Vision and Verb today.