All posts by Glen

Just a former garbageman living in New Mexico selling crap to tourists and locals alike.

Vacation is wearing thin about now, for me.

I’m thinking of home more about this time. I always felt that this would happen since this is the longest vacation we’ve ever taken as a married couple. Ten days was the longest before this.

I’m also thinking of my Jeep, my bike, and Erin. Not necessarily in that order. Erin has a iPhone now and we have been chatting on occasion. She’s cute on the phone.

We return home sometime Tuesday. See you then.

Nice dinner along the canal.

We had our laundry done today and it was just up the street from the red light district, a truly dingy and sad place. I had to walk back thru there several times to get the feel of the place. Yep, dingy and sad.

We had dinner at the same canal-side restaurant where we had lunch at an earlier day. I had steak and Nina had a rack of ribs that had to cause the slaughter of dozens of pigs. she ate it all. A couple of cups of coffee later, we headed back to the hotel.

The canal that runs along the restaurant where we ate.
The canal that runs along the restaurant where we ate.
I had dinner with this chick. She promised me a good time if I took her to my hotel.
I had dinner with this chick. She promised me a good time if I took her to my hotel.
The waitress did a great job taking the picture. I tipped her well.
The waitress did a great job taking the picture. I tipped her well.

The house that Dad was raised in.

So today we rented a car, a VW Golf to honor Carl and to annoy Ed, to head to Sint Jacobieparochie to try to find the house where Dad grew up. We drove around town for some time and headed out to the dike area to sightsee and hike a bit before tackling the job of figuring out which of the many was Pake and Beppe’s house. We had lunch at a restaurant on the inner dike and each had the Indonesian omelet that the owner recommended. Absolutely wonderful! Coffee and ice cream after lunch and we were quite sated, food-wise.

A toilet stop was mandatory at the end of the meal and I was greeted in the men’s room by a HUGE penis. Did I mention that this was an Indonesian restaurant? The penis was attached to an old statue. The door was to the right and penis stuck out past the wood edge beam.

IMG_1176

The picture below was taken by Mom or Dad, and was very misleading as to the actual building. The brick in this picture shows as being darker than any on the street where they lived.

 

jun-sept-19630010
When I was a child, w/Carl

I finally narrowed down to the one pictured and had it confirmed by the current owner. As you can see the bricks are lighter than the above picture and the windows are different. The owner was very nice about our stopping by and confirmed that this was the house owned by the Post family. He had changed the windows 20 years ago when they bought the house. and he remembers the name of the former owners.

Side view
Side view
Front view
Front view
Front view through the bushes
Front view through the bushes
Pake & Beppe's house in Sint Jacobieparochie, NL
Pake & Beppe’s house in Sint Jacobieparochie, NL
Front view
Front view
Front view
Front view

Anyway, there it is.

Sunday

Today we head to Nijvardal in the heart of WW2 Netherlands. Anna lives there and has promised to show us some of the sights involved in the the war. We leave here at 8:44 and get there around 10:15. I’m almost positive that we will be back in  Leeuwarden by the time most of you read this.

Tomorrow we rent a car for local explorations of the the area where Dad lived.

Edit #1

Shit! Literally. When you flush the toilets on the trains here, it all STILL drops down on the tracks!

Funny stuff.

Well, it’s happened twice that people approach me and think of me as a local. Just this evening on the way to dinner, a couple approached and ask me a question in Dutch, which brought out a resounding “HUH?” from me.  JK, I apologized and said “Sorry, American” and they apologized . . . I think.

Choo choo trains suck

We spent all day on the train! Damn, the European train system is efficient but not very familiar to this country boy. We’d step off of one train, take three steps to wait for another and we were off again.

Saturday we  will explore the town of Leeuwarden and contact Anna to get together in her neck of the woods.

More under the vacation tab.