On occasion I've been asked where I get my information. Some is looked up in passing, and, especially when travelling, some is often gleaned from the Michelin guide. But that is minimal, since most of what I present is original.

Changing Venues   So we did, as I said, move from Old Austria-Hungary to Dutch-Land by train, first the Bartók Béla, a beautiful Austrian train going from Budapest (-pesht) via Wien to München (Munich). As beautiful as the train was, the air-conditioning broke down, so I got the conductor to move us to a business-class compartment from the airline seating- type area. It was just a bit cooler, and I could use the laptop there as well. We had two hours in München, so we had a fast-food dinner right in the station: Bratwurst mit Semmel (on a roll), and a Löwenbräu with it. Fast, but good. [Note: It was Bev’s last meal in Germany.]

The overnight train München/Amsterdam was the Pollux. It would have worked as planned, but I made it better. When the train was ready for boarding, I took a look. Although the corridor was wider and there was more space in the compartment than usual, there was an upper and lower sort of a leather couch, with no bedding, on which you're supposed to sleep in your clothes. I spoke to the woman in charge, and asked for an upgrade. If she had given us a regular compartment, upper and lower, with the new way we've narrowed the wheelchair, we would have fit, but with the luggage it would have been crowded. She didn't even offer us that. She gave us twin compartments, with the door in between open, with two lowers, two uppers, two sinks, and decided to charge us just 30 euros each more, and that included two continental breakfasts served in the room(s). We get a lot more flexibility with the wheelchair.

Dutch-Land   Why am I using that weird name? There are two ways in my mind to look at areas, especially in Europe. Obviously, the political borders make the major difference, although keep in mind the diminishing in importance of them with increasing European unity. But the other way is language/cultural areas. Bev and I have always looked at Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as a unit. Books, newspapers, films, TV programs have a high degree of interchangibility over these political borders.

Now let me try to make something clear. There are lots of Germanic languages. For this discussion, I'll exclude all the ones in Scandinavia ("North Germanic"). I'll also partially exclude English. That leaves us with just two: High German and Low German. Not many people not in the language field really understand just what is meant by those two terms. That's not surprising, since most speakers of those two are vague as to what is what, since the terms are so stupid (stupid terminology is the plague of language study). The terms as they stand make people think that one is somehow "better" than the other.

Let's get some help from Scotland, where they speak of the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands (Glasgow and Edinburgh). Let's rename (at least for present purposes) what we have as High(land) German and Low(land) German, and one no longer sounds "better" than the other.

High(land) German originated in the hillier areas of central Germany, down to the Alps in the south. Low(land) German originated in the flat areas in northern Germany, and in what is now the Netherlands and Flanders (in Belgium). High(land) German became the standard way to speak in Germany, obviously including the north. Let's now put that out of consideration.

Low(land) German, in the north, is also known as Plattdeutsch (platt means flat in that language), often shortened to Platt. I am not saying that Platt, Dutch, and Flemish are exactly the same. There are dialect variables, as with any language. Bev has a friend of long standing from Oldenburg, in North Germany. She has told us that she always spoke Platt at home with the family, and standard German everywhere else. When she travelled to the Netherlands, she spoke Platt with her Dutch friends there, and there was very good communication.

For the sake of this discussion, keep in mind that "Dutch-Land" is larger than the Netherlands. I won't dwell on Platt either in this discussion, since it does maintain a sort of second-class citizenship in Germany, but keep in mind that it exists. Dutch-Land will be the Netherlands and Flanders (in Belgium), and somewhat beyond into North Germany, and also a bit into Northern France. This is the scope of the second part of this trip.

One final illustration:

Note that Platt uses dat instead of het. The Dutch sentence would be pronounced: et vahter iss deep

Amsterdam   I suspect that many people who've drunk Amstel beer don't realize that the Amstel is the river in Amsterdam. They built a dike/dam on the Amstel, and they presumably got from that the name Amsteldam (with an L), which later changed to Amsterdam.

The Amstel no longer has a mouth. Its waters flow into the canals of Amsterdam. As a matter of fact, the river presently ends just before the old part of the city. In the 1930's the river was filled in in the old city to improve the flow of car traffic. Thank goodness, they are talking about opening it up again to river traffic, as well as restoring several canals that had been filled in for the same reason.

There is a peculiar uniqueness about the layout of Amsterdam. Most cities, take Wien, have an old city, surrounded by areas that grew around it from the late 1800's on ("modern times"). That is not the case with Amsterdam. It has two cores, so to speak, one inside the other.

The oldest section is the oval center. With the Amstel no longer flowing down the middle, the two divisions don't seem to make much sense. They are Oude Zijd and Niewe Zijd (Old Side and New Side). Oddly, this section, although it does have a few things to see, is not overly interesting.

There are more parallels between Amsterdam and Venice than canals. They were both independent cities in their heyday, and became very wealthy. In the 1600's Amsterdam decided to extend its borders and add an incredible three times the area to what already existed. This is what I mean by the "second core", around which the more modern city later grew. They build three major concentric canals partway around the oldest part of the city, sort of forming a backwards J. This is the area of the famous Herengracht (Gentlemen's Canal), reserved originally for the wealthiest people, then the Keizersgracht (Emperor's Canal), reserved originally for the upper middle class, and the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal), for tradespeople (the further out, the less prestige). These three canals, with numerous connecting canals, form the charm of the city, much more than the old central core. 90% of the old Dutch-style homes on them still date from the 1600's, and all are landmarked areas.

It took most of the 1600's to dig these canals. Every bit of water area in the city except for the Amstel is man-made. Amsterdam has the highest ratio in the world of water area within the city, 34%. Curiously, Hamburg comes in second. Venice comes in later on, with 29%, and only some of it's canals are man-made, others are natural.

The Pulitzer   When I was talking about the Bowery, and Dutch, I used the following sentence as an illustration:

I used it since I felt it was easy to figure out. Although I did know the answer to the question, I had no idea at the time that I'd have a new answer:

I chose Starwood's hotel in Amsterdam, since it would be the second hotel after Vienna where we would get to stay on points. However, it turned out to be a very interesting hotel, worth visiting by anyone interested in historic preservation. For many years it was owned by a descendent of the person who started the Pulitzer prize. Let me describe it this way.

The Anne Frank House is in western Amsterdam, on the east side of the Prinsengracht. Below that comes the huge Westerkerk (Western Church), whose chimes she wrote about in her diary. Then comes a cross street. The entire block (almost) that follows between the Prinsengracht and the Keisergracht comprises our hotel. But it's not at all what you think. Many of the landmarked houses had fallen into disrepair. Some 25 of these houses (5 others remain private) in this square block were converted inside to the Pulitzer hotel. From the street on any side you cannot tell that the 25 houses are anything but private. As a matter of fact, it's hard to tell which are the 5 private houses remaining. We were given a ground floor room, that opened onto the garden formed by all the interior courtyards. While I worked on the laptop, Bev was able to sit outside in the garden. The neighborhood is already rather sedate and quiet, but the garden was even moreso. And, like Anne Frank, you would regularly hear the chimes of Westerkerk. On the half hour it would play "The Grandfather Clock".

The hotel had its own boat (leased). It was a gorgeous 1909 wooden beauty, with an interior sitting room. The woodwork had been restored with Tiffany-style lamps inside. In 1946, which Churchill visited Amsterdam, this boat gave him a tour of the canals. It's the oldest boat of its kind in the Netherlands. We signed up for a canal tour--and turned out to be the only ones who did so, so we had a private tour. We got Bev in the wheelchair down into the boat, and had a very interesting chat with the captain. A lot of the above facts came from him.

Two of the three nights there we ate rijstafel. We've had it in many places (Curaçao, California, New York, all over the Netherlands). It's a selection of Indonesian foods served in little dishes, eaten with rice, and has become our favorite. One night we had about 13 little dishes, the other night, about 23.

The Language   I was wondering what peculiar spellings I could point out about Dutch/Flemish, as I did with Czech and Hungarian, and rijstafel ("rice table") shows the most strikingly odd spelling one notices in Dutch. It is pronounced RACEtafel.

The vowel in English “take” is also used in Dutch, but that vowel is usually spelled IJ. Let me put that eye-catching spelling into an English sentence, just for the fun of it:

Now say this nonsense aloud: mane vane iss fan de rane

What you've said was: Mijn wijn is van de Rijn.

If you haven't guessed yet, you've said that your wine is from the Rhine.

Now you know how to pronunce Rembrandt van Rijn correctly. And you also know what his last name means.

On leaving Dutch-Land we'll be passing through Rijsel (RACE'l). [Rijsel? Where's Rijsel?]

One last point: the spelling IJ, which is considered a unit and is capitalized as a unit, is replaced in older spellings with a Y. If you think about it, there is a resemblance (ij--y). More surprisingly, this Y can also have a dot above each of its upper points, to represent what it's replacing.

Now you will understand that the artist Anthony van Dyck in the English-speaking world is, in the Netherlands, Antoon van Dijck (DAKE).

The first ship Bev crossed the Atlantic on, before we ever met, was the Ryndam (RINdam?). But at home it was the Rijndam (RANEdam) (=dike/dam on the Rhine).

In other words, any Dutch name you see that seems to have a Y in it does not, not exactly.

Breukelen   We got our third car of the trip in Amsterdam and drove off to Belgium, making three stops on the way. In this area, everything is close. Amsterdam to Utrecht is 20 minutes, and as we were passing it on the motorway, I saw the exit to Breukelen, and had to stop. On our last trip here, in 1981, we got Benelux rail passes, used Amsterdam, then Brussels, as a base, and would go to 2-3 cities or towns per day. I remember the train stopping in Breukelen, but we didn't think it worth getting off just because of the name. Now we’d take a look.

Breukelen is pronounced BRÖ.keh.leh. It is of course the town that Brooklyn, New York, is named after. It is ironic that Breukelen is an outer suburb of Utrecht, whereas New Utrecht (once a separate town), is now an section of Brooklyn.

It was just 1 kilometer off the road. It's a pleasant little Dutch town, all flowers in the main square. Traffic stopped as the bridge was lifted to let a small boat go by. We drove along that canal for a ways, back to the motorway.

To digress, regarding Dutch place names in New York City: When we were in the Netherlands some twenty years ago, we went to Vlissingen (FLISS.ing.a)--notice final N is not pronounced. Vlissingen was Anglicized to Flushing, in Queens, which was one of the first Dutch settlements, going back to the early-to-mid 1600's. I first checked that out when I was going to Queens College on the edge of Flushing. The park known as Flushing Meadows was the site of two Worlds Fairs, and has connections to baseball and tennis. [Note: Whitestone, where Bev’s nursing home was, is not far, and she did spend time in Flushing Hospital.]

Kinderdijk   As you know by now, that's KINderdake. We were there before, but UNESCO has now declared it a world heritage site. There are some 15-20 old windmills, and some were operating. They were originally used to pump out the polder (low area). In the 1920's they changed to steam-engine pumps instead of the windmills, and now there are modern computer-driven pumps to do the work. It's amazing how we romanticize old technologies. We like to look at windmills, and we light candles on the dinner table under the electric lights. Leaving the area, I realized I was driving along a dike. The river was to our left, and to the right we were passing the roofs of houses that were low in the polder. There are bicycle paths everywhere, not only all over the towns, but even along both sides of country roads, even along the dikes.

Baarle   Our last small-town stop was Baarle. You won't find the name just like that on the map, which is the reason we went there.

We like enclaves. I'm not talking about independent countries that are enclaves, like Monaco in France. I mean where two countries are adjacent, and a small piece of one is surrounded by the other.

In the time of the iron curtain, a piece of Berlin, Steinstücken, was surrounded by Potsdam, then in East Germany. Our trip there was interesting, but that's another story. Anyway, now it's all one country again.

Llívia In northern Spain, when you leave the Spanish (Catalonian) town of Puigcerdá to the north, you cross into France. What's odd is that after six kilometers, you drive into a piece of Spain again, the town of Llívia, entirely surrounded by France. It was odder than usual when we were there, because then there were still border checks between Spain and France, but not on this little road in France connecting two pieces of Spain. Apparently, several centuries ago, when one noble was transferring property to another, it was required that all villages be included. By a technicality, Llivia was considered a town and not a village, so everything around it became French, and it stayed Spanish. It's an exclave of Spain and an enclave in France.

Campione d'Italia Two summers ago, in 2002, we drove through the Italian Lake Region to Lake Lugano, which is shared by Italy and Switzerland. The border here is very irregular. A piece of Italy, Campione d'Italia, is surrounded by Switzerland, and they use Swiss francs. Campione d’Italia seems to mean "Champion of Italy", which doesn't seem to make sense, but further research shows that campione can also mean "piece", and a separated Piece of Italy it is.

Baarle So now in the southern Netherlands, we pulled into Baarle. If there were a contest for enclaves, this one would have to be the winner. I said that no one calls it Baarle. It's two towns entwined into what looks like one. The Dutch town is Baarle-Nassau, and the Belgian town, totally surrounded by the Netherlands, is Baarle-Hertog (Hertog means Duke, and the French know it as Baarle-Duc).

But it isn't as simple as that. The Belgian enclave actually consists of THIRTY Belgian enclaves in this town. I would guess that when lands were transferred, there were numerous farms, not adjacent to each other, that remained Belgian, and now with the growth of the town, some houses are Belgian and the others Dutch. It's a good thing they all speak the same language. I would have loved to have seen the map of exactly where the enclaves are.

You'd hardly know anything was odd if you didn't know in advance, except that at the entrance to the town, there are two signs, with both names, welcoming you, one sign sporting a tiny Belgian flag. There are two city halls. I found the Belgian one, and it must have been in a somewhat larger enclave, since a few of the street signs were also different here from the Dutch street signs. But for the most part throughout the town, you had Dutch houses facing, or next to, Belgian ones.

How do you know which are which? Easy. They're marked. The house numbers are on enameled black-on-white plaques, about the size of a playing card. If the house is Belgian, there's a tiny Belgian flag in the upper-right corner. If the house is Dutch, there's a red strip down one side, and blue on the other, to make the red-white-and-blue Dutch flag.

Only on one street did I see tiles in the sidewalk with a line labeled NL on one side and B on the other. Of course, I had to get out and straddle the line. Then I noticed that at that spot, the Belgian numbers went up to 10, and the Dutch ones over the line started from 1 again. Delivering mail must be interesting, but I assume there are two post offices, and they know what they're doing. I do hope the two towns work together on police and other municipal services. I don't know how many times we crossed into Belgium within this town, but when we left, in about ten minutes we drove into Belgium definitively.