Week 4 - Culemborg, Eelde, Ineke & Benno's Party, Camping at Sondel

by

Timothy Perrin

Culemborg - August 24-25

August 24-25, we stayed with a couple in Culemborg, Trijntje and André, who lived in a "green" housing project, one with solar heating, ponds to treat their own "grey" water, serious recycling, and as much environmentally friendly technology as they could design into the buildings. Trijntje was nice; André didn't seem to want us there. He would read her funny stuff out of the paper in Dutch and not share it with us, etc.

They had two darling boys and a great little kitten named Pippa. The housing project was fascinating. She said many of the locals considered the folks in the housing project crazies.

Eelde - August 19-21, 26-27

Before and after Culemborg and Bredevoort (August 19-21 & 26-27) we were in Eelde with Jan and Jitske, the nudists. (See my post "Nearly Naked in the Netherlands.") We went back up to catch the airshow on Saturday August 27 and they took us to a neighborhood party bar-b-que.

Jan colored Terre's hair! He said he always did Jitske's hair but he did hers in the nude. Terre wore a shirt. Jan wore his pants.

Jan and Jitske are an extremely nice couple, but we never did get to see them naked. (Damn!) And, no, no one rode their bikes naked as everyone seems to have supposed from my piece. That's against the law here, too. But there were a couple of naked folks around the pool at the club. But it was a miserable, rainy afternoon by the time we got to the club -- drenching rain -- so most people stayed inside fully clothed. (Damn!)

Ineke and Benno's Friendship Party - August 28

Sunday-Monday, August 28-9, we attended a 25th anniversary party for two total strangers, Ineke and Benno. It was the anniversary of their friendship, not their wedding. As Ineke commented, "We will never celebrate that institution!!! We arranged the wedding only because of the advantages we could get that time as a heterosexual couple!!" She has strong feelings on the subject.

The weekend was fascinating. A great guest list. They had lived in Warsaw and Saudi Arabia and Spain so the guests came from far and wide. There was a university prof from Warsaw who was great company. An Israeli couple who had come from Iran and Argentina who were going to Nuremberg. Arie said he wants to understand what happened. "I hate Germans," he told Terre. "Why?" she asked. "Because I am a Jew." That was enough. I spent a lot of time talking to Hans van den Berg, Benno's brother-in-law. He works for NATO in dispute resolution at a very high level. He's been at the head of the table in the Cyprus peace talks. He was a very interesting man and seemed to find me reasonably interesting as well. We're seeing this couple (the anniversary couple) again next weekend (Sep 9-10) and I'm hoping Hans and his wife -- a family court judge -- will be there again.

Camping in Sondel - August 29-30

We camped two days after the party, our first two nights on our own. We were really ready to spend some time without others around. We stayed in a little place on the coast of Friesland called Sondel.

We learned a hard lesson about keeping the secondary and primary battery systems separated when we ran the starting battery down to nothing and needed a jump start from a nice German guy who didn't speak English. I was ready to give up and push start but he kept bringing out better cables and a spare battery and a battery tester until finally Yoda -- that's the van -- started.