Potloads of It...Our Last Post

There definitely is a first time for everything and, in all of our miles and years on water, today is the first time anyone ever ran into us.  Not just ran into us with their boat but really whanged us.  It is a good thing we have a steel boat because if this had been a fiberglass boat, we would have been severely damaged. 

Unfortunately, we were not here to try to prevent the collision because we were out hunting up a birthday card for a special grandson's 13th.  Poor Yogi-dog was in the boat alone and the thump must have startled him.

We are parallel parked at this marina and as the boat in front of us was leaving,somehow it backed into us and hit our rail, bending it.  They must have been going way too fast since their boat is brand new with a bow thruster and tons of power.  Too bad we weren't here because it is a mystery to us just how they managed to run into our poor old boat.

 The boat that hit us is bigger than the one in front of us in the picture.

They did leave their name, address and telephone number so when we called them, they promised to meet us at our next port of call to arrange payment for the damages.  They will.

We need to remember to be gracious about this.  Most boats have minds of their own so to keep it all in perspective, we could have been the hittor instead of the hittee.  Scary thought!

Excrement Occurs--Often

 Waiting for the lock bridge in Groningen

 The very large barge we all were waiting for.  We didn't have such big company when we were in the lock

I would like to speak to whomever is in charge because I have a few complaints.....

Thursday morning.
My camera won‘t work, the toilet is leaking, this morning the frost is so heavy on the grass and the top of the boat that it looks like it snowed overnight.  On Yogi’s morning walk I wore every piece of outer clothing I brought with me and I was still cold.  There is so much fog on the canal that you would run into any boat that’s out there, not to mention hitting the banks of the canal which you can't see until you are on top of them.  There is no frigging way I will ever be in Holland again before May first.

Thursday afternoon:
Oh, I was complaining about nothing.  On our way down the canal, fortunately, near a boat yard and “jacht-haven”, the engine lost oil pressure.  We put in to the marina, found a diesel mechanic who is probably the busiest in town, but who doesn’t have a clue as to what is wrong with the engine.  Our oil is right up where it is supposed to be, and is clean, clean, clean!   I am very nervous; it occurred to me that maybe our old Ford truck has been reincarnated.  Will we be throwing good money after bad for all the time we own this boat?  The mechanic seems to be as competent as the one we had France when Chapter III’s engine died. Tomorrow will tell….maybe.

There is an old adage that says:  When traveling, take half as many clothes and twice as much money as you  think you need.  Whoops!  Now with this engine problem, well, I wonder what value our mechanic would put on a really stunning purple and cream shirt?

We have landed in Burgum, a very nice little town, upscale, clean, well organized, with great shopping and a wonderful kringloop (the second-hand store).  An awful grocery store though, with short, crowded isles, nonsensical organization, and a certain young man, lookin’ like a fool with his pants too low, who, while showing off for his girlfriend kept getting in my way!

 This adorable house is more charming in person than in my picture,
  and is typical of the houses in Burgum

This the first country we’ve been in where chicken is one of the most expensive meats in the store.   Even in Mexico, chicken is cheap.  Here in the Netherlands, at $2.33 a pound, kip (as the Dutch like to call it) is food for kings, not peasants. 

I like the Dutch and their attitude toward each other.  Many of their gestures, inflections, and just their way of being, reminds me of Americans except the Dutch seem better natured.  They are more ready to laugh with each other than we are.  Not that I understand a thing that’s being said but from all the smiles it must be pleasant.
 
We are in a marina/campground with a few campers and lots of boats.  Fortunately, everyone is extremely friendly, speaks English, loves dogs and has too much advise about what should be done about our engine.  We have been in American campgrounds where no one at all spoke to us.   We do like this better.

There is a tile hanging up in our itzy-bitzy boat bathroom which says “Laat hier uw hoop maar varen!”  Our dictionary translates that as “late here your heap but sail”…..okaaaay, we will?

Musings

It is a fact, not just our opinion, that there is no country in this world that does food better than the U.S.A.  The quality, quantity and prices in an ordinary American supermarket put the rest of the world to shame.

Further, we can say without a doubt, that consumer products sold in the U.S., from toasters to refrigerators to fabric to plain old screws, are superior.  It's almost as if buyers in America have said to manufacturers, "Hey, don't try to palm off that inferior piece of garbage to us....we demand better."  Europe is is catching up though.

I am not sure that the Dutch are doing us any favors by readily and, oh so easily, switching to English for us during conversations.  We don't have to stretch and consequently have learned very little of the Dutch language.

Being strangers in a strange land with an unknown language makes us slobberingly grateful when someone does a favor for us.  For instance, we cannot add time to our prepaid cell phones because we don't speak or understand Dutch, especially automated phone instructions, so when a customer service representative took the time to recharge each of our phones, listening for the Dutch phone prompts, then punching in the numbers, we felt like hugging her but restrained ourselves to thanks, dank u vels and wide smiles.

Also, because almost everyone here speaks our language, we know when we are being insulted.  In France, much of the time we couldn't understand half of what was said to us, so we would smilingly go on our way thinking "ah,what nice people."  Here....well, it's not so easy to ignore some stinky comments, however few there are.  Although Dwight has noticed that it is mostly the younger people who are comfortable with English and that when you get out into the country, bi-lingualism gets rare.

Ladies, one of my better purchases before leaving home was a butane fired curling iron.  No electricity needed; it is small, portable and it does a great job.  I am so pleased.

I keep mentioning Dutch phones (plural).  We decided, before we came, that we needed 2 cell phones.  Each of us keeps a phone with us at all times, even when walking the dog.  We are old and there is no telling what can happen when.  It's comforting to be able to phone home.

We love our bicycles.  We also love the fact that we aren't the oldest among the bicycle riders.  It seems like Sundays is the time when couples, energetically young and the more sedately old, and families tour the countryside. Dads and Moms transport the babies, with the older kids riding their own bikes.  And, there are more ways to carry young children on bikes here than there are styles of bicycles; there are seats for the font of bikes, seats for the back, trailers, as well as seats for the middle bars of men's bikes.  If you concentrated on loading a bike with children, you could carry a young Brady bunch! 

Our only problem with our bikes is the traffic.  The city of Groningen has bicycle paths alongside of almost every road.  It's not the cars but the other cyclists that scare us.  They whiz by us, so close that their jackets touch ours, then cut right in front of us, as if to say, pedal harder damn you.  We also share the bicycle lanes with motorized scooters and those drivers do more than just whiz by....lordy mercy, they blur right past us, all too closely I might add.  Although, we can't take it personally, everyone behaves the same way to everybody else.   It is a wonder to us that there aren't more bodies lying in the gutters.  So far, we have remained upright!! 

Today

Following a large barge down the Eemskanal. The 2 upright 
sticks in front of the barge are parts of a lifting bridge.

 
We woke about 7am; Dwight started the engine so the heater would take some of the morning chill out of the boat, he threw on some clothes and took the dog for his early morning walk, while I made coffee.  We ate breakfast then I took the dog for another walk while Dwight disconnected our electricity and prepared the boat for its small journey.  When Yogi and I returned to the boat, we threw off our dock lines, backed out of our rented slip and started down the canal toward our first lifting bridge of the day.  After three honks of our horn, the bridge slowly opened and we were off down the Eemskanal.  Six bridges and three hours later, we moored at the Groninger Motorboot Club.

 A not-so-typical Dutch Windmill on the Eemskanal

After taking Yogi for another walk, we unloaded the bicycles off the boat and pedaled the couple of kilometers to an electronics store where we bought more time for our European cell phones and then another kilometer to a ship's chandlery where we spent entirely too much money on a new VHF since ours died....dead.....and it is hard not to have one here on the Netherlands' canals!

Proudly carrying the new VHF in his backpack, Dwight led the way on his bicycle, back past the boat to the grocery store where we bought dinner for today and tomorrow......plus the all important chocolate and wine, packing everything tightly in our backpacks and bicycle panniers.

Back at the boat, we unloaded the groceries, took the bored dog for yet another walk,  Dwight went to the hardware store looking for special screws, I made dinner, Dwight cleaned up and now, here we are; me writing this and Dwight talking on Skype to our banks about our no-money accounts in the U.S.

Today's been so typical.  Is it any wonder we've lost weight?

Yogi

When we began to plan our trip to our new-used boat here in the Netherlands, we naturally worried about how the long airplane trip would affect our Yogi-dog.  Well, that was a big non-event; it didn't seem to bother him at all.

We never thought, though, that Yogi would miss his home and his doggie friends, but he really does. He was seriously depressed for awhile.  His frame of mind is better now that the weather has improved and he can spend time sitting on a sunny front deck, protecting the boat from pirates. Yogi likes to bark at anyone who has the temerity to walk on the dock in front of our boat, unless, of course, it is a child.  Then his tail wags so hard that we fear he will fall overboard.

So, because Yogi can't type, he has asked us to say hey to Brenda, Archie, Dudley, Bella, Zeke, Cinnamon, Presley, Zoe, Austin, Bunny, Coffee, Skipper, Aimee, Bear and anyone else whose name he may have forgotten.  He will be delighted when he gets to see you all next fall.

Blessings

• We have a good boat heater, even though we have to start the engine before it will turn on and Dwight has to lay prone on his belly reaching way down into the engine compartment in order to disconnect the battery charger each time we crank on the engine so we won't blow a fuse.

• All of a sudden our pants are too big for us, so, we think we have avoided being too big for our britches.

• Luckily, we have warm clothes because this morning,wearing an undershirt, a shirt, a sweater, a light jacket, a heavier hoodie, a scarf, my foul weather jacket, and gloves, I felt warmish although not hotish.

• I remembered to pack gloves even though I packed 2 pair of our worst....with holes, yet!

• There is a big grassy area for Yogi-dog to run off leash but we have to carry him to get there because he panics and freezes when he is on the dock as he sees water on his left, water on his right and water underneath him.  He hates being carried; he stiffens up, wraps his legs tightly around our arms, and I think, holds his breath until he is safely on land.

• We have wireless internet access here at the Groninger Motorboot Club so we don't have to go sit at McDonald's which, I am sure, makes its employees grateful because they don't have to listen to hard of hearing Dwight yell when he Skypes our credit union in the States.

•  When we moved the boat 5 minutes down the canal to the Motorboot Club, our engine purred nicely and the bow-thruster worked beautifully.  It was good to be chugging along a canal again.

Easter Weekend

Easter is a big 3 to 4 day holiday in the Netherlands.  They not only celebrate Easter Sunday but Easter Monday too.  Today, Good Friday, is the annual flower market in Groningen, which is held in the Grote Markt, the pedestrian only old town square.  Groningen’s town square is old but not particularly charming; it could use some sprucing up.   Hundreds of people crowd into the square to buy from merchants selling everything from plants to de oliebol (supposedly doughnuts but in reality greasy lumps of tasteless fried dough).  There is also entertainment, a tiny old fashioned merry-go-round for the children, music and puppet shows.

 
When I first heard about the flower market I expected to see rows of cut flowers but it is just a giant plant sale.   The prices must be excellent because lot of tour busses from Germany come to this particular market every year.  Too bad we are not ready to buy plants yet.  We will need pots with flowers and a small kitchen garden on our upper deck.  Right now though, we are concerned with more mundane things, like our leaking toilet, which might necessitate taking the boat out of the water. Growl.

Dwight has had a very pleasant surprise.  As most people know, one of Dwight’s small pleasures in life is getting his senior discount for coffee, especially at fast food restaurants like Taco Bell, Burger King, etc.  Well, Ikea has put  them all to shame.  Dwight now gets free coffee at Ikea anytime he wants….well, whenever the store is open.  He signed up for Ikea’s Family Plan which entitles him to a discount on certain products plus a free coffee or cappucino or espresso…….49 times a day if he wants.  We spend a lot of time in Ikea. 

Yesterday, we bought a docking station-clock radio for our Ipod so we would have music again and, in honor of Easter, got a half a dozen eggs as a present from the store.  Terrific, 6 fresh brown eggs, yum.  Maybe we shouldn’t concentrate so much on our leaking toilet but rather on our nice Easter present.  Good idea?

If we concentrate on accentuating the positive, perhaps the constant rain won’t bother us so much.  It has rained each and every day we’ve been here.  It is cold, too.  Tiresome? Yup.  Can we do anything about it and will we come back this early in the season next year?  Nope.

More from The Netherlands

Monday March 28, 2010
Right now Yogi is burying a chew-bone under Dwight’s bed pillow.  Silly animal pulled back the pillow with his paw, spat out the bone, then used his nose to push the pillow over the chew-bone  There, he says, it’s gone.  Apparently, he likes American chew-bones better than the Dutch variety because he eats them right up.  It looks like he is holding off eating this one to see if something better comes along.

This morning at breakfast, our nice landlady, who is in her 70s, told us of a book she had written about her father, who had spent 3 years in prison for being a Nazi sympathizer in WWII.  Her mother never agreed with her father’s point of view but stayed with him through it all.  Our landlady told us that she had been very angry  at her father for a long time so she spent a year writing down the family’s war history to make sense of her feelings.  He was her father, she loved him as such but couldn’t reconcile her love with his deeds.  Her grown  children encouraged her to write more and she finally had “My Father’s Jacket” published.  Unfortunately for us, she wrote the book in Fries, the language used around here but the book is now being published in Dutch so that it can be exhibited aboard a train that will be touring all around the Netherlands to commemorate certain events of WWII.  And to think, a celebrity has been cooking our breakfast.  How lucky is that?

Not only is she a published author but she is way too energetic for her age.  Last weekend she participated in a 55km bicycle ride and this morning she is rushing off  to play tennis with her friends. We had a visit this evening from our landlady’s 20 year old grandson.  He had been an exchange student in his last year of high school and lived with a family in Wisconsin.   Small world, huh?

Jan was doing a little bragging about his grandmother and confided to us that she had been a champion speed skater.  When we asked her about her medals, she modestly pointed out that she’d only won silver medals, which she has displayed in her living room.  She admitted that she cannot do the turns anymore, confessing “That is over now.”

This afternoon when we returned for our last night at her B&B, she had a present of blankets waiting for us.  Not liking anything the local Ikea had to offer, we had asked her if she knew of a good place to buy blankets.  She just happened to have a couple she never used, so now we have blankets for the boat.

Her speed skating days with Apolo Ohono-like turns may be over but her kindness and generosity aren’t.  Neither Dwight nor I know what we did to deserve this terrific karma but we agreed that we will try to keep on doing it…whatever “it” is.

And then what happens……….



Thursday, April 1, 2010

We know how the Dutch celebrate April Fool’s day.  These fun loving people wait until the Americans are pedaling away on their bicycles and then they arrange a small sleet storm, followed by a freezing rain downpour which thoroughly soaks two foolish old folks and their groceries.   

With our heads down against the almost hurricane force winds impeding our pitiful forward progress we persevered while the Dutch cyclists whizzed by us, defiantly sitting straight up as if to say, “This is how it‘s done wimpy old Americans.”

We moved aboard the boat Monday night.  Tuesday morning it turned cold.  Neither Monday night nor Tuesday morning or Tuesday night or Wednesday night did we know how to turn on the boat’s heater.  Well, that and it wasn’t working right, so really, it wasn’t all our fault.  We did, however, know how to turn on the propane stove which kept us a little warm, a very little.  To think, we left Southern Arizona for this.

Poor Yogi is cold too.  Last night, even he was shivering.  Thank goodness for nice heavy blankets.  We all snuggle underneath them and keep warm.  I once read a book about the settlers of Greenland which told how the first inhabitants simply went to bed at the beginning of winter and stayed there until spring.  Our only question is, when is spring?

It’s strange to be onboard a boat again.  Familiarly irritating.  Why would you leave a comfortable house with hot and cold running water, heat, plenty of room, conveniences like a big shower and a real toilet to move aboard a wet, drippy, cold, tiny apartment that moves?  I don’t know, ask me again in another month when the weather turns reasonable.  Right now, I am missing Woodfield Court big time.  We knew we were arriving too early.  Another month would have been better, not for the airfare though. Oh well, a little hardship never hurt anybody….. as the survivors of the Donner party kept pointing out.

And then what happens……..