Friesland Fietspads

Wow, our week in the Netherlands flew by!  With days full of biking and evenings full of family togetherness, not much time for blogging.

Since this is the land of my heritage and I know some people are interested, this post will have more detail than some.

Mike's mom and dad brought Cousin Amy along as a surprise for the girls.  Grandma wanted to show the girls the beautiful garden at their B & B and Amy was waiting at a table at the end.  Fun to witness all the excitement and they had such a great week together.

Our church visit on Sunday.  Trinitas Church in Heerenveen.  A Dutch service that was more traditional, like stepping back into my childhood at First Reformed.  And the elderly people there even looked like all the elderly Dutch-American people I grew up with!

I so enjoyed being able to put down roots for a week, being in a quieter area, and spending time with family.  We had a great place to stay that Mike's mom found in The Banner (Christian Reformed magazine).  Annette and Sjoerd have a house in front, this cottage behind, and then another workshop/cottage behind that.  Mike and I plus the 5 girls used this cottage and Mike's parents had the workshop to sleep in.  Annette and Sjoerd were more like friends than hosts and did so much for us.

Catching up with Grandma

And then the biking began!  I'll mostly share the positives, but let's just say that biking 55 miles on the first day after hardly sitting on a bike for a year was not a good start for me :)

Much of our biking looked like this--beautiful rural scenery with lots of farm animals--and you've gotta love the "flat" when you're biking!

We came through so many quaint towns, all with canals and old Dutch architecture.

A few times we had to wait for drawbridges.  This was the last week of summer holiday for the Dutch kids, so lots of people were vacationing on their boats.

At the drawbridges, the operator lowers this wooden shoe down to the boat and the toll is placed in it.

I think these bike rails are such a great idea.

Our first "real" stop was in Franeker.  This planetarium is the former home of Eise Eisenga, a wool carder and amateur astronomer.  The ceiling of his living room is a working model of the solar system with the model planets orbiting exactly as the real ones.  His upper floor contains the wooden gears and pendulum that control this plus a variety of clocks.  Pretty fascinating and you can google more about it too.

Wildflowers along the road

 On Tuesday we had a break from biking and Sjoerd took us on a tour of Friesland instead.  He was very knowledgeable about the area and pointed out lots of things we would have never caught on our own.  A personalized stop that we made was to Berlikum, home of one of the branches of Mom's family tree (Groenhout).

In front of the church where we found Mom's Grandpa's gravestone.

The only parking spot we could find in Hindeloopen.  The guys were convinced we would fit.  Hard to see in the picture but we had about a half inch clearance on the passenger side and about 6 inches on the drivers side. Amazing that with good direction, Sjoerd backed it right in on the first try--and then climbed out the sliding door.

Hindeloopen is full of canals (as are most cities) and is part of the Elfstedentocht, a 200 km canal skating event between 11 cities in Friesland.  Sadly, the last one was held in 1997 because the canals no longer freeze.  The town had an old skating museum and Mike even bought some antique skates.

Hindeloopen is also right on the sea. 

 On the second day of biking, Mom and I took a shorter loop than the others, stopping in Workum and then biking back to Oudega at a very relaxed pace.

Along the way, we happened upon this traditional windmill with a thatched base and sails on the arms.  It was open so we took a little tour of the inside.

One of our days was spent biking on Schiermonnikoog island, the northernmost Dutch island in the North Sea.

We were on the beach at low tide so it was unbelievably wide.

And unbelievably windy!  The girls took a quick dip, but we were getting pelted by sand.

It was sort of like a Dutch Mackinac Island.  No vehicles are allowed and there was one happening town in the center with these cute neighborhoods around.  The rest of the island was either farming or scrub.

Love this picture of Grandma and Celia deep in conversation in Sloten.

Entering the town of my mom's heritage.  We walked through the cemetery and didn't find any Wijngardens but so many other familiar names--Meijer, Hiemstra, Brouwer, and tons of Boonstras!

 

A reward when we reached our destinations was visiting the Dutch bakeries

As we were biking out of Franeker, we happened upon this!  Then as we were taking pictures...

...the owner walked up.  He sells sealants and things by this name and Mike ended up with a free pen!

We also biked through Berlikum one day, so I managed to get this picture of Mom biking up to her "family" church.

St. Annaparochie is the place of my mom's roots; Minnertsga is the place of my dad's.  Thought it was funny that their ancestors were also neighbors (my mom and dad grew up as next door neighbors)

These are typical front windows.  They're rarely covered by curtains and usually have either plants or cool vases on the windowsills.  Sjoerd says the open windows come from the days of John Calvin--that you shouldn't have to hide your life.

 On Saturday, we decided to take a day trip into Haarlem to visit the home of Corrie TenBoom, well known for her story of hiding Jews which was told in The Hiding Place. Our day got complicated as our rental van developed issues on the drive.  Mike spent the day having adventures of his own working through that while the rest of us spent the day exploring Haarlem.

This was Corrie's room on the top floor.  A fake brick wall was built in front of the real wall and that space is where Jews would hide.

This closet was along the side.  People would enter the space by crawling through this opening with a sliding panel.

Mr. TenBoom's clock shop was on the first floor and this is still TenBoom's today.  Many of you know this story, but if not, I highly recommend reading the book or watching the movie The Hiding Place.

Mmm--Dutch cheese!!

It took Mike a full day to figure out a replacement vehicle and find his way back to us.  Meanwhile the weather was cool and rainy.  The girls took cover at the HEMA makeup counter, using all the testers.  HEMA is sort of like a budget department store.

A trip to the Netherlands wouldn't be complete without pea soup, so we stopped at the Oude Schouw, a historic restaurant that specializes in it.  He included rye bread topped with bacon, which he said is a traditional accompaniment to the soup.

And then, Celia got to celebrate her 14th birthday with Grandma and Grandpa (and Amy)!

Grandma's "Sunday bread" is famous in this family.  The girls asked if Grandma could somehow bring along Sunday bread when they came.  Grandma did one better--she brought along her bread pans and flour and made it fresh for us on Celia's birthday.

A gift from home (beautiful notecards) and a gift from the Netherlands (Delft, of course) from Grandpa and Grandma

And a typical Frisian cake!

On Monday, we dropped the other Lansers off at the airport and continued south toward the Chunnel to Great Britain.  Always hard to say goodbye to family, especially since this is probably the last family we'll see until we return at Christmas.

So much more I could write about Friesland.  It was fun to zero in on that part of the Netherlands and learn so much about the history of "my" people.  Many of the traits of the Frisians still carry over to the Dutch Americans in West Michigan.