Because I have Dutch heritage on my dad's side, I've always wanted to see the Netherlands. (His dad's parents immigrated to the USA with their parents and siblings; his mom's parents were the children of immigrants.) So from 14 to 20 July 2001, I went there with my friend Stéphane. I took along my day-planner for taking notes and keeping track of what we did every day. I almost never use my day-planner anyway, so it worked well on the trip. Click a date if you don't want to scroll through all 13 screens of this page.

14th -- I got up at 4am, and Stéph at 4:30. We checked to be sure everything was packed (one duffel bag and two backpacks) before leaving around 5:10. We went to Morges, which is only 12km away, and got on a train about 6:25 to Geneva Airport. By 7 we'd checked-in for our 7:55 EasyJet flight. Well, we didn't leave until almost 8:15, arriving in Schipol Airport (Amsterdam) around 9:45. After stopping at a store to pick up some food for lunch (mine included a can of Mountain Dew!), we took a train to Hilversum. I don't know how long it took us to find our hotel, but we managed to get checked in by 12:30 or something. After watching a couple cartoons in English (Addams Family), we took a nap until suppertime; then we went for a walk around the city. You're probably wondering why I got excited about a can of soda, right? Well, Mtn Dew and Dr Pepper are my two favorites, and I can't find them in Switzerland except at an American store in Geneva. (I haven't been to the store--just heard about it from someone.) All you Dew and DP lovers can imagine how hard it is to live without it. LOL.

15th -- Weather: cloudy, lots of rain, sunny and warm by 3pm. -- We hadn't been able to reserve a hotel for the second half of our trip, so after breakfast we took a train to Amsterdam--hereafter referred to as A'dam, as they do--and did a lot of walking. The city was more or less created in a horseshoe shape around Dam Square; with all the canals and bridges it's easy to get lost. There was a *long* line of people waiting to enter the Anne Frank House, so we didn't go yet. We stopped at one hotel, only to find they were full for the nights we wanted. After another hour or so (it seemed), we located one called Wÿnnobel. It's just a few minutes' walk from the Rijkmuseum and Hard Rock Cafe (different directions), on the south side of A'dam. The Wÿnnobel is run by a Frenchman, so Stéph was relieved that he didn't have to speak English the entire time. We made our reservations, then went out to see some more of A'dam. Well, our wandering took us through the main area of "coffee shops," though there are more elsewhere. These places mostly sell just coffee and soft drugs (I don't mean aspirin!), sometimes baked into cookies or brownies. Needless to say, I didn't go inside. I'll write more about this later. We also got on a 1-hour boat tour before riding the train back to Hilversum. We decided to stop at a Chinese-Indonesian restaurant for our supper.

16th -- Weather: sunny and warm. -- Today we went down to Rotterdam. The tourist information place near the train station was closed, so we decided to just ride around on the trams, watched a drawbridge, and Stéph went up in the EuroMast. It's this big tower-thing with a really fast elevator and you can see almost the whole city from the top. I have a "deep respect" for heights, to quote my army drill sergeant, so I didn't go up into it. We went back to Hilversum and had supper at the hotel restaurant.

17th -- Weather: cloudy, rain, but sun by 11am. -- After breakfast, Stéph somehow broke the frames of his glasses. We checked out and left our bags at the hotel for awhile. The reception person told us how to get to a nearby optical place, so we went there and Stéph chose a new pair of frames. With an hour to kill, we walked around Hilversum and stopped at McD's for a drink before returning to get his glasses. We picked up our bags and returned to A'dam. We checked-in at Wÿnnobel, then rented a paddleboat for a little over an hour. Stéph wanted to eat supper at Burger King--I have no idea why, since it's like McD's--so we went to the BK in Centraal Station (A'dam train station).

18th -- Weather: cloudy, a little rain in the morning. -- This had to be my favorite day of the trip. We took a train to Haarlem and arrived around 9:30. Following the signs and street names we made our way on foot to the Ten Boom Museum, aka "The Hiding Place." Well, we got there at 10 (?) and noticed that the first tour in English wasn't until 11:30. What to do? We walked around (yeah, lots of walking on the trip!), looked at stuff, then went inside the huge church -- Grotekerk. The interesting thing is that, like many old UK churches, the "floor tiles" were the church cemetery. Each has a number that corresponds to the register. Some were decorative, while most just had the number. I saw 6 with the same number all in a row, and each had a circled number on it. I asked someone about that, and she explained they had probably been from a women's nursing home. We returned to the museum just in time for the tour. I've read the book and seen the video several times, but I still learned some stuff.

1. Our tour guide, Loes ("Louise" in Dutch), was only 2 years old when her own family also helped hide Jews; Loes' mom knew Corrie ten Boom. (It was so much fun hearing Loes tell the story again!)
2. The name "ten Boom" means "the tree."
3. The prayer group was started by Casper's father, Corrie's grandfather. Their two biggest prayer requests were: 1. Rebirth of the state of Israel, and 2. Peace of Jerusalem.
4. The ten Booms were known throughout Haarlem for helping people by listening to and praying with them.
5. Though the family was Christian, Nollie's son Peter didn't accept Christ as his Saviour until he was in prison.
6. The family attended services at Grotekerk.
7. The day of the arrest (Monday, Feb. 27, 1944), the prayer group in the dining room was reading Romans 8.
8. The Allied forces dropped tin boxes of military biscuits from their planes, and the Swedish pilots dropped white bread.
9. One guest in hiding had asthma.
10. All furniture currently in the house was donated after WWII, except the clock over the mantel. (This was taken along with everything else. When the house was redone into a museum, they wanted a clock just like the one that they'd had. They managed to find one and bought it, and they later discovered it was the exact same one they'd had!)
11. The current bricks of the hiding place are not the originals; these were placed in 1988.
12. Two other important Bible verses for the family are Psalm 102:6 and Lamentations 4:18. (At the moment, I don't remember the significance. I just wrote them down.)
13. Anti-semitism (anti-Jew) is still very strong in Poland today.
14. Corrie's house is in Placentia, CA; she is buried in Santa Ana, CA.
15. Corrie's favorite text is "Jezus is overwinnaar." (Jesus is victor.)

After we finished, there was a group of at least 40 waiting for the 1pm tour! Stéph and I walked around some more in Haarlem, stopped for a snack, then returned to A'dam. We went to The Pancake Bakery for supper, then walked downriver (3 minutes) to the Anne Frank House about 7pm--a much shorter line now, so we went inside. They didn't put any furniture in, but there is still a lot to see. Some things that they left in place are Anne's pictures, the toilet, kitchen sink, and pen/pencil markings on one wall for measuring the kids' (Anne, Margot, Peter) growth progress. I'm not sure if the bookcase (secret door) is the original, but it's possible. I forgot to ask about that.

20th -- Weather: cloudy, a bit chilly. -- Not much to report here. We got up at 8, ate breakfast at 8:30, checked out and took the tram to Centraal Station for our 9:55 train through Germany to the Swiss station in Basel. There we took a train to Yverdon, then to Cossonay. Home at last!