Forgive my interlude. My brother and father (with some overlap) have kept me occupied the last 6 weeks and since a wise ass just inquired as to whether I had "lost my pen", I figured I better fill you in on the gaps. Much has happened in the past 2 months and I will start with a family road trip down south to see some of our heritage.
With only one weekend of overlap between my bro and old man, we decided to rent a car and travel to our grandfather Paul's (my dad's dad) place of birth and hometown, Dusseldorf. The drive was relatively uneventful but it was the first time for all of us on German soil and I must say an air of uneasiness did faintly waft through the windows as German road signs started to pass us by. We fleetingly cast our minds back 60 years before pressing on-wards to find Paul's house.
We found the site of the house with little difficulty. To our dismay, initially we thought the house was next door which was the only site on the street in the process of being ripped down. After already having discovered my grandmother's pre-war house on Sarphatistraat had been replaced by a 1960s behemoth, fortunately this time we had miscounted the street numbers. There are a few photos below of the site of the house (the building since demolished with 3 apartment blocks erected) and the park and Rhine river across the road. The house must have been enormous and the setting in front of the park and river felt rather stately.
With only one weekend of overlap between my bro and old man, we decided to rent a car and travel to our grandfather Paul's (my dad's dad) place of birth and hometown, Dusseldorf. The drive was relatively uneventful but it was the first time for all of us on German soil and I must say an air of uneasiness did faintly waft through the windows as German road signs started to pass us by. We fleetingly cast our minds back 60 years before pressing on-wards to find Paul's house.
We found the site of the house with little difficulty. To our dismay, initially we thought the house was next door which was the only site on the street in the process of being ripped down. After already having discovered my grandmother's pre-war house on Sarphatistraat had been replaced by a 1960s behemoth, fortunately this time we had miscounted the street numbers. There are a few photos below of the site of the house (the building since demolished with 3 apartment blocks erected) and the park and Rhine river across the road. The house must have been enormous and the setting in front of the park and river felt rather stately.
Our intention was to stay in Maastricht that night, so we dashed into Dusseldorf town centre to scope thing out. As we exited the underground car park into the historical city centre we walked head on into what can only be described as Germany the musical. The music, costume, body type and activities were hilariously German stereotype and we had a fabulous time wandering the streets sampling the delights before hitting the road back to the Netherlands.
We spent the night on a houseboat in Maastricht. Our room felt a little like a jail cell as the windows were barred to prevent post-natal swans from taking out an eyeball. The historic town centre was really very beautiful. The town goes back to ancient Rome and a good sample of historical periods have been quite well preserved. There is a roman bridge, walls from the dark and medieval ages and the rest is mainly from the last 400 years with very little modern development. We stayed mainly in the historic centre which takes around 3 or 4 hours to explore before driving back to Amsterdam in the evening.
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