Mozart in Rehearsal

One thing that happens almost every Saturday morning when we're not gone for the day, is that Astrid goes out walking in the city center to see what's going on, usually around the open market.  If something catches her eye, she'll come back and tell me about it so I can see it, too.

What a woman!

So, back on Saturday, 19 September, she came across Mozart himself and his cohorts, inviting everyone to an open rehearsal at the Grote Kerk for his Requiem.

And what Astrid discovered was that anyone could join the choir or sit and listen/observe.
(Astrid's images above)

Guess what!

Ginnie had sung Mozart's Requiem back in Columbia, SC, days (1970-71),

while in the Columbia Choral Society.

So it didn't take any convincing to go check it out!

You remember the inside of our Grote Kerk, right?  

I love the openness.  The brightness.

The white against the green.

So we stayed for awhile to watch and listen.

And yes, Mozart was there, being the rascal he always is.

The gray hairs really caught my eye.  HA!

They all clearly knew what they were doing...bringing back the good ol' days for me.

Here's a listen and a look at the entire scene that day.
Heavenly!  And right at our doorstep!
[Addendum:  a day after uploading this video, I got a message from Vimeo saying
they had added it to their Classical Music channel (one of 286 videos).  WOW!]

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You can imagine the complete shock of our lives, after all that inspiration, when we went afterwards to our favorite pannenkoeken restaurant out in the polder.  Astrid was the one who first noticed the counter....

The owner's wife, who we saw and chatted with every time we were there,

had died during heart bypass surgery the night before.

She was only 73.  And Nicholas had met her in July.

The strange thing is that we don't even know her name.

But we know her son, Marco, who is a photographer and one of their cooks.

You could safely say we're still reeling from the fragility of life felt that day.

But as we all know, life goes on.

Other than the stork losing its head (???), Mother Nature was humming.

The cows in the polder seemed extra friendly that day.

Or maybe our hearts were more tender than usual and they sensed it?

Even the weathervanes that day seemed to hold extra significance,

like the old-timey wood planer (bottom-left) that carpenter-preacher Dad often used.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I don't normally post on a Tuesday but there's a reason:

bright and early tomorrow we leave for our Amsterdam flight to Atlanta

on our annual get-away to see my kids and friends.

Don't know if I'll post here again before we return on the 28th,

but I'll definitely be on Facebook.

Ta-da for now....

Out-n-About...and Rhenen, NL

Every once in awhile on a Sunday (after we've had a full Saturday), if the weather is spectacular, Astrid is chomping at the bit to go outside. I am learning this is a Dutch thing. Everyone wants to be outside when the weather is heerlijk = delightful. Duh. But of course!


So a week ago yesterday, when the weather was more spectacular than the Saturday before, we drove less than 10 km from home to look for a water tower for me to photograph. I "collect" them like windmills and one day will do an entire post on them because they're all over Holland in many different styles and architectures. Very soulful to me. Though this particular one is very plain in comparison to others we have seen, it did not disappoint. However, it ended up being the "after thought" of the excursion brecause of the other treasures we unexpectantly saw.

First, it was these Lakenvelder cows that totally astonished me. Have you ever seen such a thing?!

Dutch Belted dairy cows. Some of them produce over 9000 liters of milk per lactation!

Then, as though that weren't enough, within the same area we saw 4-horned sheep:

Again, have you seen such a thing?! It would be something to carry around either set of these horns...but both sets? Don't you wonder...WHY?! :)

Then we saw the windmill, "outstanding in its field" right in the middle of nowhere: the Oude Doornse Molen built in 1700:

Notice that the octogonal sides are made of thatch and not of wood. I was in heaven. This was the first such windmill style I had seen like this in The Netherlands, at least up close and personal. We were able to walk up that side road and stare.

As far as we could tell, no one was living there (though someone could have once upon a time), but there in the side yard was this family of goats:


See the water tower in the background? It was all together in one swell foop between the little villages of Uppel and Almkerk! The unusual animals, the water tower, the windmill, and these goats. We kept saying to each other that we couldn't believe it. So many things within a Sunday afternoon's joy ride just minutes from home!

[Click on collages to enlarge and then click again to enlarge further.]

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That was Sunday! The Saturday before was overcast but we didn't care when we drove 25 miles east to Rhenen, a city of approx. 19K people. We wanted to see the Cunera Church from the other side of the Rhine River, as well as up close and personal.

Again, we were not disappointed! But after visiting the Tourist Information center (the VVV), we were told it would not be open because it was being prepared for a concert that evening. However, as we walked around the church to see all the nooks and crannies, lo and behold, the front door was open for another half hour and we were able to go inside after all.


As is the case with so many European churches, this started out Roman Catholic in the Middle Ages but became Protestant in 1580. Over time it has been damaged and restored many times and today appears more bright and cheery compared to many of the Roman Catholic churches we've seen.


See why we love going inside these churches! They're heaven for photographers.

After the church we went to see the windmill called De Binnenmolen, built in 1893 and within a few blocks from the church:

Notice the difference between this mill and the one at the beginning of the post near Almkerk. See why windmills are so soulful to me....

....and why walking around these cities, no matter how big or small, yields such great treasures.

It so happens that Rhenen impressed us so much we decided not to see anything else that trip except for it's WW II military cemetery just outside the city limits, at the Grebbe line, where the Dutch withstood the German army for 3 consecutive days in 1940. It is Holland's first official war cemetery:

[Click on collages to enlarge and then click again to enlarge further.]

This post is chock full of a lot a stuff that happened in one weekend, I know. Sometimes that's how our weekends are. Chock full. If I don't stay on top of them, they all float away into the proverbial Black Hole, so thanks for bearing with me.

This past weekend we pretty much stayed put within Gorinchem, preparing for our upcoming Thursday and Friday in Amsterdam for Sail 2010 and the Tall Ships bonanza. That's my birthday gift to Astrid...and another post altogether.