Van der Valk Hotel Hengelo

... a wonderful repast of cakes and coffee/tea (very good tea!). And then we visited the pen room! One can only view this room with admiration. Later, as I sat down and dug through Biggy’s duplicates, Pete and Bert went off on their own. Pete doesn’t speak any German and Bert not much English, but Pete said they had a very nice conversation and told me later about how Bert ...

... farming communities on the German border, where things were slightly better. Dad used to tell us the story of when a bomb fell on the zoo. Opa cycled over there and came back with a chunk of the elephant's trunk, which they ate for a week. It was somewhat stringy, I believe.<br><br>Anyway, Dad was a thin and skinny thing, in danger of starving to death, so my Oma and Opa cycled all the way to Hengelo from Utrecht, in search ...

... my sleeping bag, only to hear the whine of a lone mosquito in the dark of my room. The kids had chosen to sleep together under a mosquito net, as if Overijssel was the last bastion of malaria. I pulled the hood of my sleeping bag round me, so that only my nose was showing. Half a minute later, the mosquito flew straight up my nose, causing me to writhe and snort ineffectually in my mummified, trussed state.<br><br>I don't know how the mozzie found me, but it stopped whining after that.

... and, even without the sound, could make out what was going on in the sitcom. This would prove helpful, because once we arrived at Coesfeld, I would be trying to figure out what was being said without the benefit of knowing German. Apparently I'm laughing in all the right places so far. On the train from Frankfurt to Munster we rode along the Rhein River. Beautiful vistas punctuated by a castle or two high on the ridge. Annette, the wife of Joysanna's host-brother, and her ...

... is outside of a small city, Enschede. I am only about 15 miles from the German border. It is like a foreigner signing up for a conference in NY and being discovering it is in Albany, not NYC. The University at Twente is similar to UAlbany. The campus was built around the same time, 1970. It was the only campus university in the Netherlands and the location was chosen due to the regional economic hardship caused by the loss ...

... paper, steel and shiny things Tell them they have more value More then memmories More then experiences Promise them the best that money can buy That thieves will take And time will breake RUN, little lab rat RUN! Run past the grey walls Climb your cage No more time to waste No more time to wait Run, Run away on your own Or stay and run with crowd Run but remember if you don't run on your own The only time You are taken out of that cage Is when your dead

... grote stad, die het eerst voor mij was, verworden tot een klein dorp. Ik stond, toen ik net een paar dagen in Arnhem woonde, bij de hoofduitgang van het station en zag Hotel Haarhuis aan de overkant, de hoge huizen rechts richting het conservatorium en het drukke verkeer met de bussen op het Willemsplein. Ik dacht toen dat Arnhem nooit mijn stad worden zou, dat ik me daar altijd het kleine meisje uit het dorp voelen zou. Nu, zeven jaar later, ken ik alle ...

After spending the last few days in Amsterdam I could use a more relaxed day. Heading to Deventer today to drop some stuff off with a friend. The original plan was to head to Nijmegen to visit some more people but we decided to head back to Amsterdam and finish the night with some beer instead.

... flamingos. How strange is that?! But I loved it and was so happy that I could experience Flamingo day with the Germans! So we biked a good few miles to where the celebration was going on, which consisted of a cook out, children playing everywhere, and good neighborly conversation. Oh, I missed Foley a little at this moment. Hahaha. Sandra's family showed us their local church, which was very old and then we had a drink at a pub. I've ...

Travelled by train from Amsterdam to Enschede which is in the east of the country. My purpose was to visit the School of Management at the University of Twente. The university is situated in a very beautiful parkland environment. Stayed at the Hotel Eden de Broeierd which is situated close to the university. The hotel itself is in a nice setting and very quiet.