Dear Paula and Ted

Synopsis of camping adventure. Camping good, digs great!
First stop – city hall. We took care of the water deposit & scheduled the water turn on time. Found a small library in the city hall building. It has 2 computers available for anyone to use which might be helpful if you do not have a computer connection or WiFi available.

The person who was to turn on the water arrived at the house about the same time as we did. He was very nice and helpful giving us the phone number for Lane Electric. We played dumb about the water already being turned on. Since electricity was not turned on, I contacted Lane Electric. The clerk knew the water was supposed to be on. They sent out a tech. immediately to turn on the power.

We came prepared with 2 AAA maps & were able to find the Bob Straub Parkway/126 connection to Springfield & on to I-5. It came in very handy not only for going “to Town” for dinner, but also for driving on to the wedding.

As night approached, the challenge of the lights began. We soon discovered the light switches did not have a consistent on or off position & when there were multiple switches in a line there wasn’t a consistent pattern of which turned on lights or fans or for which rooms when more than one room was involved. Of course the room that had no working lights was the master bedroom. But, we had a full moon to light up the room. We will let you have the challenge of learning the light maze for yourselves.
We bought a cheap queen air bed to sleep on. We have never had a water bed, but this air bed must be the air equivalent. With all of the windows and skylights in the master bedroom, we were able to fully appreciate the full moon’s light. Ted, we left the air bed at the house, so if you want a moving camping experience, you can sleep at the house until the furniture arrives. Once we got used to everything, we really did sleep.

On Thursday & Friday we worked on clearing the large weeds & dead wood from the yard & containers and watered the front to encourage any plants still alive & to soften the ground so that we might be able to later dig out volunteer oak trees springing up across the front. We were working to give the house a more lived in/cared for look.

We went to Lowell’s finest (only) Mac’s Cafe for dinner one night. We were pleasantly surprised. It was fine and quite popular on Friday night. We ate breakfasts & lunches at the house. We had brought the electric cooler you gave us several years ago. It worked great for a small refrigerator. As we ate breakfast, we watched rowers skimming across a perfectly smooth lake. An eight had a small motor boat moving along side the shell. We thought it might be the UO rowers. Later we saw a fellow standing on a small flat board or shallow boat paddling from side to side. It appeared he was concentrating on limiting his movements to his upper body. It looked like a real workout for him.

We talked to R, the next door neighbor. K (Ted’s father) was charming as always. He even gave R some of our tomatoes which R seemed to appreciate.

We went to the wedding on Saturday. Had a great time, saw lots & lots of family. The outdoor evening wedding was beautiful. Unfortunately a cold wind came up during the reception dinner and chilled everyone to the bone. Last week it was in the 100′s there and Sat. the high was 70F. By the reception, it was in the 60′s with a 12 mph wind.

Back at the house on Sun., we checked all of the house outlets, finished cleaning up, packed up and drove home. All in all we had a very nice time. We found the house’s setting so beautiful and very relaxing.
Love,
Mom

So Ted will have plenty to work on when he goes to the house in a few weeks. Meanwhile, today we get to go look at some apartments here – I’m pretty sure most people get to be finished with that once they’ve bought a house!

Her train came in at 9:20 AM, so we had plenty of time to hang out before rowing – we walked around town, went to the art museum cafe for tea aand tarts because the bagel place didn’t open until noon (they’re not entirely clear on the concept of bagels as breakfast food here). Then we went back for bagels, then over to the Philips Electric Light in Art museum where they were having an exhibit by a Chinese artist, Ji Liu. He had three pieces on display: a bed lit from above by hundreds of red lasers that looked like silk threads when shown off by puffs of smoke; a ‘cage’ made of green lasers that entirely made us feel like characters from The Matrix, walking through something that seemed so solid; and a blue-lit plexiglass model with holes in its many layers that looked like an encased skeleton from a few feet away.

After that we vegetated for an hour or so, then went rowing, so now Rebecca’s gotten to try “rowing in a Dutch ditch”, as our cox said. (Much of it is a very pretty ditch.) We got rained on the entire time, but since she grew up and learned to row in Seattle I think it made her feel at home. Fortunately it wasn’t too cold out, though we were chilled enough to appreciate hot showers by the time we got back to the apartment. Once showered and changed we went out for Italian food – I guess I could have cooked for her, but I was enjoying having someone to eat out and share wine with.

On Monday morning after breakfast, I worked from home while she took my bike and rode to Helmond, about 36 km. (No doubt my bike was shocked – it’s never gone more than 10 km or so at a time.) This time she only got a bit of drizzle, just enough to feel like echte Nederlands weer (real Dutch weather) And I got to take advantage of being home, and of the cool weather, by starting a pot of chili. When she got back, I fed her stroopwafels, showed her our photos from South Africa, and then it was time to go to the train station. It was too short a visit and I think she spent nearly as much time on the train as here, but it was really good to get to hang out with an old friend and talk rowing, knitting, ants (her field of study), Arizona, travel, and mutual friends. I’m a bit hoarse now

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Either way, I think it’s kind of funny, because it’s plain to me that Dutch people see how much English is spoken here – noticing the unexpected – and don’t realize that there’s still plenty more Dutch spoken, plenty of opportunities for foreigners to hear and try to understand the language.

Yesterday, my friend Lieke and I went out for dinner and somehow managed to give the server the impression that I speak Dutch and Lieke speaks only English. It was pretty funny; I think that by the end Lieke was on the verge of saying “No, really! I’m Dutch! I’m Dutch!”

Language lessons are fascinating from a ‘how the brain works’ perspective.At the moment I’m getting to the point where I can understand a fair bit if I concentrate, and I can say a fair bit if I think about how to frame a sentence – but I can’t do boh at once, so I’m always answering Dutch with English, or giving a Dutch answer to something spoken in English. Luckily no one seems to mind, especially if I explain. I’m much more interested in understanding than I am in speaking; if I can understand what someone has said to or around me, it’s very rare that I can’t make myself understood in English. The other thing I find is that in lessons, there’s a point where my brain is full and we have to stop for a break (Ted found the same, when we took lessons together last time).

Yesterday I went with several other Americans for a cruise on the Rhine. These are guys who are here for a couple of months for training or two build a machine that will then be installed back home at a customer site. One is a trainer who’s been coming here for extended periods for years, and he and his Dutch friend Jerry (Geri?) like to arrange this excursion a couple of times per summer. We met early in the morning in Eindhoven and drove to Koblenz, where we parked by the river nad then walked across town to the train station. We got our train tickets (with a group discount); the guys bought beer and I got soft pretzels. (Paula’s travel rule #137: When in Germany, buy soft pretzels.)

We took the train to Bingen on the Rhine, where I tried unsuccessfully to figure out why that town name had such a familiar ring. (Google helped later: I’m fairly sure that it was due to this old poem.) Normally they get on the boat at Rudesheim, but there was some work being done on the tracks. When we got off at Bingen, we had a bit of a hike from the station to the boat dock, but then there was still some time to kill, so we repaired to a nearby biergarten for beer and wine (the guys had already gone through the beer they’d bought, on the train ride). This all took a lot longer to do than to tell; we caught the boat around two, having left EIndhoven around 7:30AM.

The train ride was scenic, but I didn’t bother taking any pictures through the dirty windows. From the boat we had a much better view, castle after castle as the Rhine rolled under us. It’s a World Heritage site: Koblenz is 2000 years old, first built by the Romans, while Bingen is even older. The castles we saw date back as far as the 1200s. Some still look lived in, or have been turned into hotels. You can see how things worked, just looking at them from the river: there will be a town lining the bank, with a castle looming high above, with fortified walls, arrow slits and crenellated look-out towers. The lords of the castle collects tolls from all commerce passing down the river – I’d guess the message was something like “pay our toll and we’ll let you through – and we’ll make sure no one else attacks you along this part.” The towns are not all that far apart; while riding on the train, we saw very distinct towns, separated by fields, close enough that you could walk from one to another in an hour or two. Along the river, I’m sure it was easier to go by boat.

I elected to come back that night, because I’d had a busy week and expect to have another, and there’s a lot I need to do. Most of the rest of the group stayed in Koblenz and were going to go walk around the old town of Kochem, on the Moselle River, this morning. I’ll definitely do this again when Ted is here; maybe we’ll stay over that time.

Click images to make them bigger.

That last word is closer than it looks, too, because the Dutch for “to be” is almost as irregular as the English:
I am -> ik ben we are -> wij zijn
you are -> je bent you (pl) are -> julllie zijn
he is -> hij is they are -> zij zijn
Note that ‘hij’ and ‘zij’ are pronounced respectively as ‘hay’ and ‘zay’ (well, nearly) and the connections are closer still. Looking at it, I’d guess that the Dutch, like the English, evolved from the mashing up of two or three roots that meant slightly different flavors of “to be” – which gets even more likely when you reflect that Spanish still has two words for it, “ser” and “estar”

Of course Spanish is Romance while English and Dutch are Germanic, but they’re all Indo-European. Anyway, English has a strong Romance influence from the centuries when it was ruled by Normans (not that they ever lost power, just that they integrated) and Spain ruled the Netherlands for a while, plus there’s a lot of borrowing from French due to proximity.

Anyway, I thought it was cool. Dutch is easy for an English speaker with a good ear to pick up anyway – my mom was nearly reading menus after a w

Well, I was hoping it wouldn’t end this way. Work tomorrow may not be much fun.

But someone told me Friday, “We’re good at switching very fast to ‘Oh well, at least we go second!’ ” I hope so.

Wow – another gasp – that goal just barely missed for Spain.

They took a few minutes out, so nothing much happening – here they go again.

Oh no – red card! So they’re down a player.

Sorry about all the notifications, by the way – I forgot about those. WIll try to remember to turn them off for this and all following World Cup posts.

I forgot to mention earlier that a lot of people in the centrum are wearing shirts that were obviously bought in case Germany beat Spain. I saw one that said “If you h*te f*cking Germany, clap your hands” and another that said “I support two teams: Holland and anyone playing Germany”. I was actually kind of glad Spain won because I was a little worried about things getting ugly, though someone told me that really only happens for local teams, not national ones. Makes sense – there is no one here rooting against Holland right now – at least, if there is they’re staying home and not going out in public. Smart move.

By the way, the live commentary says this is only the third scoreless World Cup in history. Into overtime!! (At least, I think that’s what they mean: “We’re heading to extra time just as in 2006 after the second scoreless final in World Cup history following Brazil-Italy in 1994. “

It doesn’t take much football expertise to see that the Spanish players are astonishingly agile – they keep doing this sort of pirouette around and over the ball.

Uh-oh, I think a Dutch player just got pulled out. They don’t seem to be short a player so I think it was just a substitution.

I don’t really understand offsides. It’s been explained to me, I just keep forgetting. So don’t bother – I should just go look it up, except I don’t know the Dutch word for it anyway so I wouldn’t know when it happened.

Things have definitely heated up after the slow start – I’ll actually be surprised if they do get to 90 minutes without a score.

By the way, there is commentary on the game from people who actually understand it here. I’m finding it helpful, since it’s actually in English and the broadcast I’m watching is Dutch.