Another highlight of our trip to the Netherlands originated from our trip back in 2003. At this time, we had walked into the above corporation with hopes of finding out more of John's ancestry. The CEO of the company Dirk invited us in to his office and we left with a complete geneology which included John much to our surprise! Over the years, we have kept in touch with him and he invited us to visit his home. On this visit, we were able to stay at his guest home and see some of the city of Heerenveen where John's grandfather was born.
We toured the factory where they make butter and also the streets where John's ancestors walked.
Dirk and his wife, Han, took us out to supper at a Chinese restaurant. Dirk saved us from the challenge of ordering from a Dutch Chinese menu by ordering a great feast from which to choose. It was lekker!
This is the guest house where John & I stayed. It was built in 1856 and had many antiques and old Dutch paintings.
Dirk & Han were wonderful hosts and we enjoyed visiting with them very much!
I will never forget our visit with them and how they so sweetly waved us off as we left. Earlier, when we were having coffee in their own home, he took me back to his office and showed me the picture on his desk that we had sent to him of our family back in 2003. He called us his "far-away family."
6 comments:
WOW!!
:)
I just wrote a comment but lost it. So who knows, maybe it will be there twice. We just downloaded a bunch of pictures from your web page for Yara's project on Holland. All of the other web pages on Holland have boring pictures of Amsterdam or The Hague, but hardly anything on the great metropolis of Smilde! Yara is going to end her presentation with windmill cookies, and almond pastries with little Dutch flags in them. Maybe we can send the video to Maria to show her host famly in Spain.
That would be cool Dave!
Yara's presentation was a great success (despite the fact that my video camera's battery died about 3 minutes into it). The kids loved all the stuff about the canals and dikes. And now they know some new geography: major cities of Europe: Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Smilde... major water ways: the Rhine, the Danube, the Smildevaart... several kids came up to Yara afterwards and said she was famous. They loved the story of Hans Brinker, windmill cookies. Not so much the banket.
Thanks for the photos.
Ok, if someone put ME up in that guest house, I would not have come home. That is INCREDIBLE!
Great pictures.
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