More travels
In late March, I spent two weeks in the USA and Canada, doing secret, unbloggable stuff. Then back over the ocean, only two days at home in Maastricht, and off to Malta for a commencement exercise and business negotiations with our partner institution on the island. Malta, where the last Muslim (Turkish) invasion of western Europe was foiled. In 1565 the Ottoman Turks wanted Malta as a base for invading Italy. The Knights of St. John beat them back. Strangely, the Maltese have no problem with the British and other folks who succeeded in invading the island, but they paint the Ottomans, who didn't, as big bogeymen. A local colleague explained, "Oh, no, we've got nothing against Turks, it's just that it felt so good, repelling their invasion." One of our Maltese students is an executive of the Corinthian hotel chain, so when I checked in I was given a comp upgrade to the Presidential Suite, see photos. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| View
from private deck of Presidential Suite toward St. Georg's Bay |
View ditto toward Mediterranean |
A strange sword, with a gun built into it,
in the Knights of St. John Armory Museum |
 |
 |
 |
| Street
in Valletta, looking toward harbor |
Graduation
reception in the fortress of the knights hospitallers |
Seen
in Valletta |
 |
Dutch Easter is a
4-day weekend, but there was so much on my desk
after the two trips that Hyon and I compromised on two days
sightseeing, two days working. She had become enamored of an
early
20th-century artists' collective called "De Ploeg." Groningen's
Groninger
Museum, famous for quirky and controversial exhibits, was holding a
special Ploeg exhibit. Groningen is in the far north - about as far from Maastricht as one can get within the Netherlands. We conjecture that the forebears of Portland's Matt Groening, who draws and writes The Simpsons, came from the area. Exiting the museum, we wandered toward the town center and passed Groningen's large pre-war synagogue, only to see a parade of folks carrying long-leafed lulav-looking things. Wait a sec, this is Passover, not Sukkot, what's going on? Turns out these shoppers had come this way, coincidentally, from the pre-Easter flower & plant sale on the main square. Palms for Easter, of course. We continued on a counter-clockwise circuit of the Netherlands (actually an inverted-teardrop route, as Maastricht is squeezed into the narrow southern end of the country). This put us in Frisland. Remembering that Frisian is the language closest to English that is technically not English, I was eager to hear people speak it. But 20-some years back, they stopped teaching grade school in Frisian (switched to Dutch), and as in the rest of the country, signs are in Dutch and people ordinarily speak both Dutch and English in public. |
|
Can you say, "Sex, beer, rum"? Sure you can! So you'd imagine the Dutch town of Sexbierum would be the number one spring break destination for students worldwide. Strangely, it isn't. (If the name of the place appeals to you, you can have your own email address at sexbierum.net by registering here. Other information sources about the town are here and here.) Instead of turning off toward Sexbierum, we continued to Harlingen - the ferry point for excursions to the Dutch vacation islands in the North Sea - mostly to see whether it's anything like Harlingen, Texas. It isn't. Photo below. The next morning, we drove across the kilometers-long dike that separates the IJselmeer (yes, that's spelled correctly - we'll deal with Dutch orthography some other time) from the North Sea. Then onward to the spring flower fields and to Haarlem. |
 |
|
| The Keukenhof near Lisse is
one of the world's largest spring gardens - a Disneyland of tulips and
orchids. It draws oodles of Asian tourists, and we also heard
visitors
speak a variety of European languages. That's Harlingen on the right. |
 |
We had lunch in Haarlem, a charming city and an
interesting reminder
that upper Manhattan used to be a Dutch neighborhood. Our
guidebook is
correct, if you want a cheap holiday in Amsterdam, stay in Haarlem and
just take the short train ride into Amsterdam every day. (Or -
another
New York connection - stay at the Breukelen Hotel between Amsterdam and
Utrecht, it's right on the train line too. Hotel prices in downtown
Amsterdam
are outrageous.) |
Dutch spring flowers. That's a windmill in the center of the middle picture.
 |
 |
 |
April in Paris... We went
to Paris so I could
cover the joint meeting of the European Foundation for Management
Development and the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate
Schools of Business. Every day there was a violent thunderstorm
lasting precisely one hour. Otherwise, pleasant as could be, just
like all those "Paris in the springtime" songs. Tourists seemed happy
to be there, smiling, strangers exchanging digital cameras to take each
other's photos. Very expensive though, and upon our return a
colleague remarked, "You drove your car in Paris?! And you're still
alive?!"
Our first day there, on several occasions we saw one man walking or
dining with two women. Leading to this tongue-in-cheek
conversation as one such threesome strolled past our sidewalk cafe
table:
F: I think in Paris, men alternate weekdays with wife and mistress, but see both of them together on Sundays.
H: Then we can't live in Paris.
F: Which one do you think is the wife, and which is the mistress?
H: Look! The two women are holding hands! If I met your mistress, I'd rip her hair out.
F: Then she'd be wise to hold your hand. Both of your hands.
 |
 |
They make a light show of the Eiffel Tower at night, see above
right. Duh, Fred, when you use the camera in mpeg mode, you
shouldn't hold it sideways...
Now here's something completely fantastic (though it only seems to
work in Explorer, not in Netscape or Safari browsers): Go to http://framboise781.free.fr/Paris.htm
and when the photo loads, use Explorer's horizontal scroll bar to see a
complete 360o view of Paris at night. Thanks to Jim
Brinkmeyer for alerting me to this some months ago.
On the way home we had a good dinner in Mons, a university town just on the
Belgian side of the French border. Surprised to find two young US
Navy guys at the next table, one from Georgia, one from San Antonio,
they'd arrived in Belgium just a few hours before, weren't yet sure
what to make of it. Mons' interesting town square, below.
Departments
Truth is stranger than fiction. I met someone in Maastricht whose grandfather had been a slave laborer for the Imperial Japanese Army, in the mines at Nagasaki. Granddad was in the mine when the bomb was dropped, survived with no ill effect, and lived a long, healthy life. A nagging thought says there's more meat to this story than the simple tale of justice, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Let me know what you think.A friend and faithful reader of this blog responded to our Rhine trip entry: "Right after WWII was over and I left the hospital after recovering from wounds, I rejoined my division located at Kamp am Rhein, just north of St. Goar and St. Goerhausen - north of the Lorelei. [Recently my wife] and I revisited that lovely stretch of the Rhine and spent a day in Bacharach - which is my great grandfather's name. Heine wrote a book called The Rabbi of Bacharach."
Especially as we just lost another old school friend who had been battling cancer heroically for many years. This one's for you, Rick, and our thoughts are with your family.
Artsy section. Hyon's oil of spring flowers sets off her collection of napkin rings from Tanzania.
 |
Art by HOP |
Want to launch your own blog? USA TODAY did a good article on how to get started.