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See 2 Photo Galleries: Amsterdam and Belgium To see these images and many more, click on a links or images above. Once connected to either gallery, click first on a thumbnail and then use the arrows to move to the next image or page. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read excerpts of Charlie's log: Scroll down from his recent travels to Amsterdam and Belgium, The following narrative sets the mood and explains much of the action seen in the images.Read excerpts from email messages sent to close friends from Amsterdam and Belgium. It is sort of a log of this trip. -charlie Amsterdam Hello everyone, day 2 started out well and is still good at around 9:30 pm. We slept great! (imagine that). We started the day in a very lazy mood. Slept until 10:30am and did not go out until after 11:30. Had coffee and light breakfast and felt wonderful and refreshed. We walked around a bit to get familiar with the environments. Found our way to the Ann Frank museum and spent a few memorable hours there. We're not generally softies, but Lynn did get tears in her eyes. I kept staring at the lines of Jews marching to the trains under German guns and kept looking for my disappeared relatives. It is futile, because I could not possibly recognize them. I did look up names in a book they had that listed all Jews that deported from Amsterdam during the war. I found about ten Einhorns - no names I recognized, but I found what may have been my grandmother or an aunt. the first name, Ilona I don't know, but the last name was Riez - Rapaport I. My mom's maiden name was Riez, her mother', maiden name was Rapaport. Too close for a mere coincidence, eh? Moved from the experience we wandered in a daze. Seeing a group being ed by a guide through a Large wooden door, we followed. It turned out to be the Begun, an enclosed enclave of small houses surrounding a large church. It traditionally served as a refuge for needy women and to this day is run as a special service to women in crisis who need a supportive environment. Historical fact! It also was the refuge for the Pilgrims who head been chased out of England because of their intolerant zealotry. So here they were in Holland with a huge reputation of tolerance. They had sheltered the Jews fleeing their expulsion from Spain in 1492. They had sheltered protestant (Huguenots) fleeing from religious wars. Yet even for these tolerant folks, the Pilgrims were too impossible, not content with living their own chosen lifestyle, but insisting everyone do the same. So, the Dutch politely asked them to move one, maybe to the Americas where there was no one they would bother with their extreme views. So, now you know why we ended up as the most puritanical (and most silly) among modern Western societies. Our current trends to want to apply god to every aspect of government puts us right in line with Ayatollahs and Osama. Oh. well... Hungry and needing to sit, we stopped for Tapas. Surprisingly good! Walked to a nearby coffee shop. Schmoozed with Dutch and other expatriate hippies. We always go to places where Lynn drags me in reluctantly. She says I'm too cautious Then, I always find that I love the place and: "duh.. what was I thinking. Same here. We picked up a good tip for a possible Jazz we plan to explore. Called the Alto? We'll see. We have so far found all these places recommended by many of you: Grasshopper Coffee Shop, Abbraxas where Gail had her pic taken, the famous outdoor men's pissoir in the red lights district, and this Internet cafe Lynn
commented earlier how we wander from place to place without any plans,
schedules or expectations of being anywhere anytime. I said that was
exactly how one should travel and vacation! xxxxxxxx we
arrived three days ago. Feels like we've been here months. We did go
to a trade show, the METS, a huge international leisure marine industry
fair, on the our first day here, straight after the flight and well
into our 30th hour without sleep! But it went well. Lynn had some
good productive meetings and made interesting contacts, and we felt
that it was good enough we did not need to go back another day. So,
that took care of the "business" part of this trip. We're
now officially on vacation and loving it very much! We have no plans.
We start out the day looking for a friendly spot in the morning and
over coffee and croissants we pick a tourist spot we haven't seen yet.
Then spend the entire day going wherever we feel like and stopping anywhere
along the road. We've already had nothing but great adventures, and
of course, I'll have it all in pics... later. xxxxxxxx Lynn has just informed me that OSU is losing to Michigan State right now. Oh well.. we'll have to see what that means when we get back. Today there was a big sports to-do here because England is beating Australia badly for the world championship in rugby .I hear lots of English folk cheering very loud at the bar next door. L & I have just met up with Mike, Tom and Holly and we're sitting at the Bulldog cafe having a friendly coffee and chat. It's so neat to be here with best our friends that we see almost daily in the hood. Here we are all transplanted into an entire other, and very neat world. What a kick! They had just arrived from Columbus this morning and we were all glad to meet them here. They were a bit beat up after the long flight, but seemed to recuperate as soon as we went for a walk. Lynn and I feel like we've already walked three hundred miles! It seems like we walk everywhere, but then we always find a cool place to sit and relax. Nevertheless, we ARE getting plenty of exercise! The weather is sort of gray and often misty, but not very cold it. It stays in the mid forties to low fifties, rarely windy and so we bundle up but feel comfortable spending long periods outside with no trouble. Nor does anyone else here seem to mind being out. The streets are crowded with walkers at all hours and it is of course filled with bicycles. Public transportation is cheap and easy to figure out and Lynn and I are now experts at picking our trams. We hop them any time we feel like it. We have 6 -day passes. We dropped the Columbus folks off so they could get back to their hotel and get comfortable. Lynn and I went to the Van Gogh Museum this afternoon. It was packed. But what a thrill to actually see these icons - images implanted into our consciousness from early youth for all our lives. It is such a pleasant shock of recognition to actually see the Bridge at Arles, or any of the other paintings. I'm glad to have seen it. Everyone should see it. Yesterday was our time to visit the Rijksmuseum. It is an absolutely stunning museum of world class. The work, especially the large, magnificent Rembrandts are displayed so well in large, spacious galleries, they seem to pop out of the walls, they are so brilliant and full of light. And let me tell you, them Dutch masters were well fed, wealthy burgers, attesting to the fact that life was (is) always good to those who have means. And I was happy to see that the way I have started wearing my soul patch (little beard) would have been perfectly in style with those well heeled burghers. Later that evening, we wandered along a dark canal and came upon an artsy event, an art opening. Again, Lynn had to drag me in making me overcome my reluctance to "crash" what appeared to be a private event. But it turned out to be, like all gallery openings, an open house and of course it was great once we entered.It was low key, funky, mostly filled with local artsies and a few lingering drinkers swaying to loud rock 'n roll. As soon as we walked in someone handed us both a glass of cold Heineken followed with some good spontaneous art talk and such fun. Just the kind of openings we have attended many times before, hundreds of them. It was great. Lynn is waiting impatiently for me to finish this because we're supposed to meet up with our Columbus pals, so I'll quit now and promise more installments later. xxxxxxxx
Yesterday
was our turn to visit the hemp trade show. It took place at the Arena
hotel, where all the cup activities are being held. I saw products
I never even knew existed or even less that they were needed or useful
for anything. Inhalers ranging from high-tech to rather simple devices
are the rage and could be found and demonstrated everywhere. There we
also devices with multiple bends in the stem, forming a series of water
chambers, designed to cool and filter. I saw devices for cleaning plants,
growing them in a variety of solutions and chambers, some things I could
not understand at all, lots of paraphernalia, and especially seed catalogs
from vendors all eager to let you taste their newest and best varieties.
There was even a lounge where people could lie on couches and relax
or rest while ta! lking trade. We'll be bringing much literature but
-NO SAMPLES - (don't hold your breath... too long) Belgium Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen, Waterloo We
left Amsterdam sadly this morning and traveled by train, first to Brussels,
then a local to Rode St Genesse(sp?), near Waterloo, where our good
friends Elaine and Paco live. Elaine met us at the station around 3:30
pm and after walking all day, all week, it felt so good doing nothing,
just relaxing. They live in a beautiful house and their village is located
on the suburbs of Brussels. Pretty quite around here. Paco is still
at work and the kids at school but Paco and Daniel had left a detailed
set of instructions and itinerary that we should follow while in Belgium.
Who's gonna argue? Tom, Mike, Holly and Wendell are coming here on Friday
and Lynn and I return to Columbus next Monday. xxxxxxxx We
arrived in Belgium yesterday, and even though Paco had a fabulous trip
all planned today out for us in Ghent and Bruges, both beautiful old
medieval cities, we slept-in and stayed close to home with Elaine. We
needed the rest after all that walking, tourism and staying up late
we did in Amsterdam. Also, it felt just right hanging and relaxing in
an actual home, instead of a hotel room. xxxxxxxx Since arriving here in Belgium we've had a nice rest and a real contrast from the hectic pace we kept up in Amsterdam. There, we were tourist and only used our hotel room to sleep in. We would leave for breakfast in the morning and end up staying out until we got back home, usually after midnight or 1pm. Most of that time was spent walking to cafes, museums, shops, more cafes, some restaurants and sightseeing all the quaint streets. There is a canal at every other block. Now we are here in the suburbs of Brussels, near Waterloo. Our pace is much slower and less hectic, and that's just fine with us. Today we went shopping for last minute things for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. We drove around Brussels and then stopped in the town of Waterloo. The British, who beat Napoleon there in 1815, decided that the world would never forget their great victory. So they built a tall hill and put a bronze British lion at the top. The lion was cast from bronze melted from captured French canons. Today I climbed the 226 steps to the top of the hill while Lynn and Elaine stayed below. I took some pics but it was foggy and hard to see very far. We'll be eating our turkey dinner on Thursday at 7:30pm (1:30pm in Columbus) at about the same time you are eating yours. Hope it's good! Give our love and best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving to the family and all our friends. Hope all is well with Shana, Britty, and the house. Elaine has a beagle mut called Chilly. She is much smaller than Shana but very cute and sweet. Makes me miss my puppy. We are enjoying ourselves but we do miss you and everyone of our relatives and friends back home. We are scheduled to leave from here next Monday ( and arrive on Monday also, thanks to the time difference (6 hours). Lynn as well as Elaine, Paco, Daniel and Paloma wish you a happy turkey day and send their love, along with mine, xxxxxxxx Today is Sunday, our last full day in Europe. Tomorrow that big bird brings us back to Columbus, around 7pm. On Friday Paco took us on an amazing tour of Belgium. Whenever he gets a chance, Paco enjoys showing us a different sight, and it is always so much fun to do that with him, because he knows so much about each place. First stop was in Mechelen, a medieval city with a fine gothic cathedral and plaza surrounded by great looking old buildings. Very charming and lovely. More moving to me was a visit to the Museum of Deportation and Resistance, located in an old, brick, army barracks. During WWII, it was used as a gathering place for Jews rounded up by the Nazis in the streets of Belgium. Once there, daily, Each day trains left from there, stuffed with about one thousand people of all ages. These trains had one destination only, Auschwitz. Very few of these inmates returned alive. In one of the exhibit rooms they show family photos of people known to have been deported. The very few who survived are marked in red. Meanwhile,a loudspeaker reads off their names, one at a time. Just as I walked in they were naming Einhorns. Again, I don't believe I knew them, but it was shocking to hear those names and it brought that experience back to me in a very real way.The Mecehelen Center of Deportation and Resistance is only about 8 years old. It is a small, unassuming museum, but very moving and effective. From there we drove into Antwerp, my hometown where I grew up as boy from 2 to 14 years old. At first, nothing looked familiar. All of a sudden I felt something. I told Paco to turn here and then there and before I knew it, we were on Provincie Straat, #246, my old address. I also showed Lynn and Paco my bedroom window on the 2nd floor and where my father's former tailor shop was just a few houses down.It is now a small youth hostel near the corner, and I find it curious that the 4 cafes that were on each corner are no longer. Don't hey still drink the most amount of beer per capita in the world? I also pointed out my cousins Suzanne and Danielle's former address, right around the corner. We went further up the street and found Kleinblatt's, the world's best Jewish bakery! We stopped in, got a challa and some pound cake, and it was truly to die for. We also did some more Antwerp sightseeing. I got a kick out of finding myself on the Keyser Lei, the main drag in Antwerp, and we walked around the old cathedral dating back to around 1100. I got a kick out of seeing the hero of Antwerp statue in that cities Grande Place. I forgot the hero's name but the legend is that a very mean and big giant who lived in a castle on the river there, would charge an exorbitant fee to all sailing past. Anyone who refused or was unable to pay had his right hand chopped off. The hero killed the mean giant after overcoming him and chopping his hand off. He then picked up the severed giant's hand and threw it with all his might into the river. In Flemish, the word for hand is "hand" and the word for throwing is "werpen"; hence Antwerpen, the city's name. That evening we found ourselves in the Sablon district of Brussels, an upscale artsy district and there was a gallery hop going on. Lots of people milling around, Hungarian folk dancing on a stage on the small plaza, and lots of chocolate and champagne samples for tasting. Great fun. But mostly, it was fun hanging out with Elaine and Paco and the kids. We felt so warmly accepted and welcome. It is so much more pleasant than living out of hotel rooms and suitcases like we did in Amsterdam the week before. Thanksgiving dinner with their good friends Serge and Mary and their kids was down right homey! He is a doctor originally from Antwerp and she's an American who's lived in Belgium many years. We gave the doctor the honor of carving and he did it with such finesse. It was one of the loveliest thanksgiving dinners I ever attended. Something strange happened on Friday, our friends Tom, Mike, Holly and Wendell were supposed to meet us in Brussels. But when Elaine went to the train station to meet them, they weren't there. She waited for two more trains, but no show. So, she came home and we wondered what happened. Later, we called their hotel in Amsterdam and were told they had left that day for Brussels. We didn't know which hotel they had booked, and they seemed to have lost our (Elaine's) phone number. We called Amsterdam the next evening and found out that they had indeed missed the train station and by the time they came back no one was there to greet them and they were unable to call us. So they stayed overnight in a hotel on the Grand Place in Brussels, and went out to eat and bar hop. We had gone to the Grande Place that evening to pick up Paloma and her boyfriend who had been out on a date in the area. We were very likely less than a block away from them, and could have maybe run into them, but who knew? They returned to Amsterdam the next day and are on their way home today. We leave tomorrow. Paco and Elaine are ready to take us to a flea market, so I have to stop now. The rest of the story will have to wait for our return. We're
having a ball, but are glad to be coming home and seeing everyone. We
missed you all! See you soon. |
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