Last Sunday, Pete and I made a day trip to Friesland in the North of Holland. As best we can tell, Friesland is where his Mennonite ancestors came from. We managed to git ourselves some same-day discount fare tickets and so decided to make the three-hour-each-way voyage in one day. Hmph. First error.

Weather Underground assured sunny skies and a high of 9, but the fields were covered in thick fog the entire way there. Now, I rather like a bit of fog. It's so unusual for me landlocked as I was in Ontario -- oh but how magical it was when I was a child in Calgary when rare fog--clouds, really--would descend from the mountains and settle over the city. I remember feeling singularly safe in those mountain-borne mists -- hemmed dreamily in. It suited me just fine.

However, three hours of train travel seeing naught beyond a foot does not suit me... I was so excited to see the countryside -- it being one my favourite aspects of travel. In the end, I saw very little -- and no Frisian cows! The latter, however, are littered the world over, so I guess I can live with not seeing Frisian cows in Friesland.

At midday we arrived in Leuwarden, the capital of the Friesian province, and intended to go onward to the sea and catch a ferry to Ameland Island. Alas, this was not to be -- we were told there were no more boats running. This country really literally shuts down on a Sunday. [While fundamentalist friends of my parents might like the idea of this, it doesn't suit me at all! Tho I do confess that the Dutch really know how to separate between work and play -- they work moderately and play hard. All the shops close at 6pm every night, also. We've learned to work around it, and grudgingly admit that it's nice not to have to run errands after 7pm.]

So we found ourselves stuck in the capital of Friesland, with most everything closed (the island wouldn't have been closed, incidentally - it's all about renting a bike and riding the paths crisscrossing the place). We ended up having lunch and then high tea at a hotel across from the train station.

The food was terrible.

Like, really terrible.

The scones were the most miserable foodstuff I have ever come across. Felt some pity for those scones. Still do.

In the end we had to laugh at the dismal food, dismal travel, and our own grumpy selves. The fog cleared a bit and we wandered to the centre of the old town. It was lovely and in its own way, very different from all the other Dutch cities we've seen thus far. The squares downtown were so vast and rolling on either side of the canals -- so much room for an old town that hadn't been bombed in the war. Of particular note was an unfinished church tower (lacking a church) leaning crazily to one side looking liable to collapse at any moment. Will send out pics soon!

On the corner of the Westerstraat watching people on the outdoor market. It is raining. I am the only one sitting outside on a cafe terrace watching-
the bohemian
the gypsy
the tourists and cloth sellers
women in hijabs
and very tall blondes

I am waiting, I say.
In de regen
in the rain.
een thee met melk
een appel tart
alstublieft
if you please.

I cradle my lunch
close to me
shield it from the showers.
I smile at the ones who I (in my great wisdom)
think could use it
-and still I am waiting

At last,
A blazing four minutes and twenty seconds of sunlight and blue sky.
In this country, in the winter, you learn to worship the sun
if only arising from the long pursuit.

Just returned home from a weekend in London. Went specifically to see the Blake exhibition at the Tate. It was moving and terrifying --a touch of the holy and of the mad raging muse. Also a special exhibit on the Sublime in art--again, numinous terror. My knees almost gave out several times. They went all wobbly again as I stood before the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Friezes, and a pair of ten-foot chimera sentinels from the gates of an ancient Assyrian town--all at the British Museum. Saw a moving production of Troilus and Cressida--and fell half in love with Cressida--at the Globe theatre.
'
Found myself wondering why the Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian goddesses didn't move me nearly much as the Celtic and Romano-Celtic ones did in Bath. [erm, the Gaul and Roman ones at Cologne did move me rather, as I recall, though still not like Aquae Sulis]. As for the Greek and Roman sculptures, maybe they were too sophisticated: the best sculptors that money can buy, the grand patrons, etc. I suspect I have much to learn about the Egyptian ones, however. Elizabeth Cunningham's Maeve books have awakened some fascination--that added to H.D.'s poetry. Strange, realizing just now how so much of my weekend centred around sights and ideas that obsessed H.D. I even walked through Bloomsbury -- it being the 80th anniversary of Faber and Faber and all...though am feeling massively grumpy with T.S. Eliot lately.

My friend from New Zealand has been taken to jail.

I met the energetic New Zealander at church when we first arrived. Susan's husband is a university prof and she came with him for his six month sabbatical. We made fast friends and were soon spending our days biking over all Amsterdam, taking day trips to small towns where witches used to be weighed in true Monty Python and the Holy Grail fashion and the like. (I have, incidentally, been certified as not-a-witch).
We bought our bikes together from another church friend who managed a "stitching" (a nonprofit organization and *not* a quilting club as I was at first wont to think) that receives unclaimed bikes from the police and employs refugees and excons to repair and resell them. All above board.
It is due to one of these all-above-board bikes that Susan was arrested.
She was biking her merry through Amsterdam when a cop stops a few feet beside her, eyes her up and down, enters something on his handheld thingamajig and then promptly arrests her.
Apparently her particular bike had been reported stolen and there was some kind of identifying code on the frame that declared as much.

Erm, have to run -- am off to play video games WITH MY BRAIN!!!

...realize further explanation and conclusion of friend-in-prison-story are needed. Both are forthcoming, I assure you!

Train to Cologne

This entry comes as I sit in a hi-speed “Ice” train currently docked in Amsterdam Centraal. Am anticipating the speed part especially! We‘re on our way to Germany (finally!). Cologne, to be exact. It’s only a two-hour trip and we thought we’d start small.

I’ve just had a bilingual conversation with a French passenger. He’s a cellist and the entire car seems to be filled with the orchestra he performs with . I cannot tell whether he is being tremendously forbearing with me and my attempts at conversation, and (admittedly odd) questions or whether he genuinely enjoyed the conversation. It is difficult to read people from other cultures; difficult to read anyone, really…but I find that countrymen share and pick up similar facial expressions revealing thoughts and feelings…the way a new baby starts to make the same faces a parents does…I read Canadian faces! Am not a multilingual reader of physiognomy…yet!

I seem to meet mostly artist in my train travels. Met a young energetic poet on a previous trip back Brussels. We had an animated conversation about the poetic process, comparing notes on how our best works seems to come out as an almost completed whole in one mad rush of inspiration. Only a bit of tinkering required after the fact. I shall try to pull out his blog link and some of his poetry in a future post.

The train is beginning is departure now out of Central. NO impressive hi-speed as of yet.

Begin to see real forests. Shorter trees at first, with bare ground in between, widely spaced tress – but forests nonetheless. I am surprised at tears springing suddenly. How I’ve missed the woods. It is a sunny day and the light plays in generous swathes between the trees., on the warm brown bare ground.

As we reach Arnhem, the last stop before Germany, the trees are taller, the forests we pass through are thick with underbrush, still lush, but with higher ceiling. Patches of sunlight trip down the long branches and over the layers of greens: different leaves, different trees, folded each on each.

Arnhem is very pretty from the window – the windows and doors seem to me very German.

We have just been ousted from our seats. Apparently folks can reserve seats and if you happened to be of the plebian majority who did not, the former can kick you out. Thus displaced, we have wandered our way to the front of the train—amid the chaos of people with luggage standing next to their reserved seats as the former occupants wrestle their luggage together and move onward. We passed a good number of displaced young people who have simply plopped themselves down in the common spaces near the WCs. We persevere however, and find a haven for reservation-seat -system refugees at the front car – where many seats lay open. We can only hope we wont be ousted again before we hit Cologne. Oh, and we left our luggage four cars back above our sometime seats. Note: must remember to get these…

A final note about the speed of the train. It is fast, yes. But it is reasonably smooth and affords no plane takeoff thrill, in fact it affords nothing so much as a mild headache. Ah well.

Peter was bitten on the lips by a mosquito sometime during the night. His (already huge) lower lip is lopsidedly swollen. The mosquito net he purchased seems to have failed. Though the netting drapes gracefully over the bed and does lend a lovely fairy princess air to the room.

We just endured a week's worth of heat wave. I am reminded that my tolerance of weather conditions is so subjective; it's felt unbearably hot here, despite the fact that it's objectively far more comfortable than summers in Toronto (in my humble opinion). Toward the end of winter here, I found myself complaining along with fellow Amsterdammers about how cold it was at +10 C.

'Twas Canada Day yesterday and I felt a swell of pride. I seem to have developed a worrying amount of pride in my country--worrying because it's just so uncanadian. I find myself uttering the most annoying interjections along the lines of "did you know she's Canadian?" or "a Canadian invented that" etc. Feel ire at the fact that many here think Leonard Cohen is American. Moreover, was particularly put out when it was assumed Anne of Green Gables was the tale of a spunky redheaded orphan on the US East Coast. Harumph.

I am torn. Borders. Guarded borders. Military borders. Cultural borders. Grab what you can and run with it. Claim Cohen, claim L.M., claim Stephen Lewis: maybe you'll shine by association. On the other hand, our cultural exports create much goodwill. Artists are, of course, excellent ambassadors, however unwitting. If our government back home would only buck up and bolster the arts. Otherwise I may have less and less creative folk to boast about, regardless of how annoying I may well be in the doing :)

Speaking of international opinion of Canada, the seal hunt is much criticized here in Holland. Pete gets periodically mauled by his colleagues over the issue (not a dangerous as being mauled by mosquitoes, however). I confess that of all the issues I followed and was frustrated by back home, I never really gave its protesters more than a passing sympathetic nod. It took me moving here to consider the debate with any real attention. The Governor General's seal heart debacle up north and the ensuing commentary brought the issue into closer focus. I was arrested by the musings of a British friend who declared he felt vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that the G.G. is, in title at least, the Queen's representative as head of state in Canada.

I had returned to Canada a few weeks after it occurred and found the media coverage of the issue differed hugely on either side of the pond. With so much news worldwide to cover, I suppose the European media can be forgiven for an overgeneralized caricature of the event and the people involved. Still, there are complexities that are summarily dismissed by this kind of reporting. But, like any good Canadian, I shall not complain overmuch.