A Portfolio
The work and adventures of Dwayne Hodgson,
+ Learning Designer & Facilitator at learningcycle.ca
+ Storyteller & Photographer @ thataway.ca
May 11 to June 1, 2015
We did a lot of to-ing and fro-ing by bike, train, bicycle, hand-cranked ferry boat, car, bicycles, bus, tram, canal boat, and in Zoe's case, by horse. It's a bit hard to guesstimate, but we probably covered something like 1,200 km once you add in the side trips.
And this being the Netherlands, a good portion of our time was spent below sea level.
May 22- 30, 2015 / Vianen, & Hoogeven, The Netherlands & Sneek, Friesland.
Our kids are ¾ Dutch,* so one goal of this trip was for them to see where their people come from in the Netherlands.
We started by meeting up with Dwayne’s family, who all came over from Canada. What a joy to see family after months away from home. We biked around the little villages in Gelderland where my mother-in-law grew up, and we even had coffee with the people who are living in the house where she was born. Lovely.
After a brief stop in Amsterdam, we visited my father's side of the family. We first stayed with my cousins, Frank & Elly, Henk, Lisanne, and Gerwin, and then my Aunt Jannie & Uncle Henk. Our kids fell in easily with their second cousins – skipping, playing with a remote control mini-drone, and doing some more cycling. And then we met up with my dad in Sneek, ("Snake") Friesland and he showed us around where he grew up.
My dad, Frederick Wind, was born to a family with 13 children, but he was the only one to move to Canada. So I grew up knowing that I had a dozen uncles and aunts in the NL, umpteen cousins and various other relations. I used to think I must be related to at least a quarter of the population of Friesland. So it was not surprising that the neighbours living next door to our Air BnB in Friesland turned out to be "Wind's". Sounds like our grandfathers were cousins. Ha!
We also saw all my aunts and uncles at the 100th birthday party for my dad’s oldest sister, Nellie. I loved watching my 97-year-old shuffle forward with her walker, and bend over every so slowly to give her big sister a kiss. Zoe did a great job at the mouthful that is “happy birthday” in Dutch – “hartelijk gefeliciteerd met uw verjaardag”. And Isaac declared that "Dutch 100th birthday soup" was as good as Tim Horton’s Italian wedding soup. High praise for him.
During our recent travels in Turkey and Africa, we’ve often stuck out. For example, when our WWOOFing host in Turkey met us at the train station, he immediately picked us out in the crowd. We didn't look Turkish, apparently! Nor did we look particularly Moroccan or Spanish. But in the Netherlands, we could blend right in. And that was kind of fun.
Here are a few photos of our last two weeks there. Please click on an image to enlarge it.
* And 1/18th Irish (Editor)
May 19 - 23, 2015 / Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Although I may not be "much Dutch" culturally, I think my mother's genes may have expressed themselves through my life-long love of cycling.
Riding a bike has always been my favourite means of transportation, recreation and thinking -- the best ideas always shake out of my brain when I'm out for a ride. And I've gamely taken my life in my hands by cycling in Kitchener, Hamilton, Ottawa, Barcelona, Izmir and even Dar-es-Salaam.
But I have always wanted to ride a bike in the Netherlands, arguably the best country for cycling in the world -- although the Danes may disagree. So one day during our stay here, Tricia & Isaac, Zoe and I set out on three bikes (including a tandem) for a day's riding.
From what I've read, cycling wasn't always so popular here. In fact, by the 1960s and 1970s many cities in the Netherlands had started to follow the North American model of auto-centric, suburban development. But after a few years where over 500 children were killed by cars and the OPEC oil shortage, the Dutch introduced a combination of bike-friendly policies, infrastructure, and training which have made it safe for everyone to ride. Having a mostly flat country with little snow also probably helps; as does the Dutch penchant for saving money.
Most people ride upright bikes with just a few gears, and flopping panniers, and most just wear their normal clothes. Oh! and because it is so safe, only racers wear helmets here. In fact, the Dutch argue that mandatory helmet laws actually discourage people from cycling. Go figure.
Cycling is just so well established, safe, and mainstream here, but yet still very cool. It seems like everyone from ages 4 to 94 rides a bike. It is fascinating to sit on a street corner and watch the parade of cyclists whiz by (click to see the video -->)
Here are just a few shots from Amsterdam, many of which include a bicycle, even when I didn't mean to! There are just that many bikes here. As always, please click on the thumbnails to see the picture in full screen mode.
May 11 - 18, 2015 / Laren, Gelderland, the Netherlands
We arrived in the Netherlands on Mother's Day -- à propos given that we were going to meet my Mom near her hometown.
Before we set off on this trip last August, I had found an Air BnB rental for a large farmhouse in Laren, Gelderland -- just 4 kilometres from my Mom’s old house in Harfsen. After a bit of lobbying, my parents agreed that we would book the house for a week and invite my brother and sister’s to join us if they could.
The four of us then went on our way, visiting Turkey, Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and the United Kingdom in turn, but we were always looking forward to seeing everyone here in May.
But in typical Hodgson family planning mode, it all came together in a last-minute flurry of detailed planning, independent re-planning, a bit of miscommunication, and a glass of something soothing once we finally converged at the farmhouse.
The house, fortunately, turned out to be perfect for our group of 7 adults and 4 kids. It had:
Although the house was a bit far from the main tourist sites in Amsterdam, some of our group managed to see quite a bit of my mother's neighbourhood by bike, train and car, including:
It was also fantastic for the kids to have some cousin time to hang out and do cartwheels with Paige and Jackson. Paige also made great progress on her bicycle riding; no doubt because cycling is in the air here.
My brother, Brent, did a thorough job of photographing every square metre of the places that he saw; I'll ask to post some of his pictures another time. But for now, here are a few of mine from that week. (Please click on them to see them in a larger" light-box" format).
A highlight of our week was cycling down tree-shaded lanes to the my mother’s old farmhouse. There, we had a lovely afternoon koffie kletz with the current owners, who offered to show me the bedroom where my Mom was born. Despite my Canadian curiosity, I politely declined.
My mother grew up there during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. This was the house where my grandparents sheltered the Krukzeiners, a family of four Jewish refugees who hid under the chicken coop during the last winter of the war (November 1944 to May 1945). This would have been extremely dangerous for everyone involved; had the Germans found out, they may well have shot everyone on the spot. As a result, not even the neighbours were told in case they were Nazi collaborators.
For his bravery, my Opa, Frederick Kabbes, was later given the "Righteous Among Nations Award", and I understand that there is a tree planted in his honour in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Goed gedaan , meneer.
My mother’s family would later billet Canadian soldiers after the Liberation of the Netherlands, and my mother cites this experience as influencing their later decision to emigrate to Canada in 1953.
As new immigrants, my mother, then just 14, and her sister started cleaning houses to help pay for the family farm. A few years later, she took a job at a local bank in Arthur, Ontario where she interpreted for all of the incoming Dutch farmers who wanted bank loans. It was there that she met my father.*
My mother was the only one in her family who had "married a Canadian”, and she later left the Dutch Reformed vlok to become an Anglican. And because my father didn't speak Dutch, and because she felt that her Low Dutch dialect wouldn't be much use to us in the modern-day Netherlands, she never taught us how to speak it.
So in the end, my knowledge of my Dutch heritage consisted of New Year's Day olibalen, monthly visits to my Opa on the farm near Arthur, and listening to my uncles’ annual Christmas argument about the finer points of Calvinist theology and social democracy (in Dutch, of course).
And while I've had a bit of refresher course in Dutch-Canadian / Reformed culture these past 20 years with Trish, I'm a bit of slow learner. Until today, my sole phrase in Dutch is "Een kopje koffie met melk en suiker". Not a bad one to know, of course, but only useful three times a day.
Coming here to the Netherlands, however, I find it odd that everyone speaks Dutch to me. Apparently I look like a local. But of course, having only one not-so-useful-phrase in that language, I then have to admit that, “I'm afraid that I don’t speak Dutch.”
They then respond in perfect English, “Oh, sorry! So what part of America are you from?”
Sigh.
My search for my motherland continues. Maybe we should go to Portugal....I hear that my Godmother owns property in the Azores.....
* I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the first time that my Dad met my mother's family! I can imagine this shy Canadian sitting in a smoke-filled room with heavy-rugged tables and dark Rembrandt curtains while they talked about him in Dutch. It's a testament to his bravery that he didn't run away!
