On Monday, Tom and I, Blair and Janice took the train to the beautiful city of Groningen, a few hundred km north of Amsterdam. Blair had been in contact with the Museum archives there, searching for information on the house, and the family that our Dad had lived with after the Netherlands were liberated and WWII ended, while waiting to be shipped home.
We had a great day, with little bits of serendipity.....I love how things always works out, if you let them.
Our first leg of the trip had us waiting for our connecting train at a small station about 20 minutes into our 2 hour trip. We saw it was arriving in a few minutes, all was good, then poof, train disappears from the info screen. A few minutes pass, and no train arrives. We started talking with a young, local girl who, it happens, was also going to Groningen. She looked up the train info on her phone, and after sharing with us that there was a train breakdown, told us which train she would take instead. We jokingly informed her she was going to have a few tourists following behind her, and she was happy to oblige. 2 trains and 2 hours later, after telling us she spent a year in Vancouver in 2010/11, going to school, she led us, like a mother duck with her babies following behind, right to the Museum's archive office. In a city the size of Richmond, she worked right next door at the tax office. We all thanked our new friend Hannah, and off we went to meet Blairs' contact, Klaas.
A family lives in this renovated water tower.
Klaas, (pronounced Klaas) was very impressed with the collection of War memorabilia that Blair had put together and brought over. When he saw Dad's bible with the bullet hole, he was intrigued, and when he realized the bullet had gone right through, his reaction was to literally jump back with a look of amazement. He took a picture of it, along with the story of how it came about. He then took us for a beautiful walk through the city, giving us bits of historical information as we made our way to Dad's old neighborhood. We came to the block that Dad had lived on....we are pretty sure it was this house...
Or could have been one of these....
Actually, we weren't sure about which house it was, but we think we got the street right......
pretty sure it was in Groningen somewhere. Apparently the street was renumbered sometime after the war, so finding the actual house was a bit of a bust, but we still had a great feeling just walking the streets and seeing what he had seen, walking where he had walked.
Had a great lunch in the sunshine, and toasted Dad on the patio in front of an amazing building...
Then we carried on our way back to Amsterdam. We passed some beautiful tulip fields, but travelling at 135 km per hour and taking pictures through a dirty train window don't give you great shots, but this gives you an idea of the colourful fields.
We met up with Jane and Kim, who had opted for a bike ride, and had biked 40 km through the tulip fields.
Blairs turn to try his hand at the "Slurp"..... Not bad for a rookie....
Discovered our favourite liqueur ..."Little Hans in the cellar"...flavours of apricot, cinnamon and
And I forget what else.
It was a great day.....stay tuned
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