First Impressions

Hold on to your pesos....I broke down and bought a 30 day pass to the internet through T-mobile. Now I sign on in German!! but once I get pass the sign in page, I can get English. That even happens on my blog. Okay here goes.

May 15, 2008 Amsterdam, Netherlands. A country that has tolerated differences throughout its history, opening its borders to those fleeing religious persecution and the perceived woes of homeland. Those who carried different ideas to the reclaimed lands were welcomed to live among the Dutch, to prosper, thrive, live free, and like natives from New Hampshire to die. Trouble is everyone came and this place is only one third the size of Michigan now crammed with 19 million people. It is difficult to get rid of some of the sketcher characters who have thrown away their passports and abused their welcome.

A country with open borders and no baseline values is doomed.

For the past two weeks I have been reading books on World War II. I started with Ken Burn’s War, but couldn’t manage to lift the volume in bed for night time reading. My Uncle David loaned me The Longest Winter. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the 99th’s platoon of eighteen men who fended off the German’s initial thrust into the Bulge December 1944. Absorbed and amazed by the heroic efforts of the men and their young captain who battled wave after wave of Germans until they ran out of ammo and they had to surrender and unknowingly changed the history and outcome of the war, I ventured into another book Citizen Soldiers. I started waking up in the middle of the night in battle scenes about the same time I came down with whatever bug it was that crept into my nightmares. Wanting to read more, but not wanting the nightmares, I quit reading. Sadly, I know more about WWII because of my reading assignments than what I ever learned in school. The Americans won, the Germans lost and Hitler hated the Jews. Simple details of good guys fight bad guys doing bad things. The hows, the whys and the costs were never told. And the details of who did all the fighting—the farm boys, the college kids, the rich sons and the poor scrappers from city street to country side—was never shared.

With images of a war torn Europe jarring me awake at night, supplemented with black and white photos in the books I had been reading I expected to see a very gray country side. What hit me first about Europe was (actually the first thing that hit me was the amount of cigarette smoke hanging outside the Schiphol Airport) the color green. Neat little pastures surrounded by ditches that keep the Holsteins from wandering on to the highways. The roads paralleled by bike paths which were swallowed by clumps of trees. Canals crossed the landscape, the banks lined with houseboats. And in the highway cloverleaves, the reclamation of land showed off tiny duck filled ponds. The Netherlands look pretty much at peace.

Except for the turmoil the striking bus drivers are causing. Noon time traffic resembled evening rush hour as those who rely on the bus scrambled to drive their cars to work, burning $9.00 a gallon gas. “We don’t have many strikes,” Jan Van Helder our tour guide apologetically explained. Those of us still awake after our transatlantic flights gazed out over the roof tops of the tiny cars scooting below our hired bus windows.

Jan had arrived at the airport about twenty minutes late. About forty of us were assembled under the Meeting Place, the checker red and white sculpture sitting in the train station. It is just a public spot used as a place to gather because who is going to miss a fifteen foot high cube in the middle of a train station?

“Welcome to Europe, Dad,” I said.

“Thanks. Sure looks different than the last time”, he replied.

“Yeah, not so black and white.”