Guest Entry: Belgian New Years w/ Rawitches
Trip Start
Apr 06, 2003
1
65
69
Trip End
Ongoing
Lommel,
Belgium
Monday, January 2, 2006
Here is a t-pod entry from my buddy Josh the 'Dodger Dork' about his and his wife Erin's trip to A'dam and our trip together to Center Parcs, a tourist village in Belgium where we met Erin's friend Christine and her hubby Dave for New Years. If you want to see where we stayed go to http://www.centerparcs-visitesvirtuelles.com/europe/visite_europe_uk.html and click on De Vossemeren in Belgium in the bottom right blue box. If you care to see Josh's pics (including his and Erin's trip to Newcastle after Belgium), check out http://www.snapfish.com/share/p=837141137278484179/l=76607709/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB
See ya folks.
-Stephen
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While I'm honored to have been asked to write a Travelpod for the Kantor's Abroad group, I also know that you people don't want every last detail of our 14-day trip to Europe (of which, only seven days was spent in the presence of a Kantor). So, with that in mind, I'll keep this brief and hopefully remotely entertaining.
After promising the Kantors that we would come see them for the past three years, we finally made good on our word and arrived in Amsterdam on Dec. 27, Erin's 27th birthday. Suffice to say, I was stunned at what I saw.
Prior to the trip, if I had to guess a city in Europe where I thought the most has changed between my first trip there in 1997 and our visit this winter, Athens would probably win hands down, given the billions of dollars poured into it for the 2004 Olympics. But no amount of money could have changed my perspective on Athens the way eight years and a wife did the trick for Amsterdam. The city was nothing like I remembered
it.
Visiting there with Jeremy (my twin brother) in 1997 was a little different experience. I remember The Grasshopper (a coffee shop), the Anne Frank House, the Heineken Brewery and the Red Light District and that was about it. The rest of the trip was a blur. It turns out, Amsterdam has canals. A lot of canals. Who knew?
Stephen and Julie's adopted city (and Natalie's hometown) is absolutely gorgeous, even in the freezing cold of winter. Their apartment is in an incredible location and in the winter, the streets are all lit up for the holidays, which made for a very inviting feeling in the city. Despite snow and sometimes bitter wind, we were easily able to enjoy walking around the town, a nice dinner cruise on the canals and lots of quality time with everyone's favorite Kantor, Natalie. She obviously took to us quickly and abandoned her parents upon our arrival (unless, of course, she needed to be fed and unfortunately, I left my breast pump back in the States, so that was out of the question).
Most of our photos from our time in Amsterdam are of Natalie smiling or doing funny things like the Moonwalk (she was trying to crawl), but we also managed to see the Van Gogh Museum, Portuguese Synagogue and Anne Frank House again, which has added tons of multimedia to the exhibit and created an extremely thought-provoking experience about civil liberties and discrimination around the world. It's a must-see if you ever get out to visit the Kantors (and you should).
After a couple great days in A'dam (as Stephen calls it), we rented a car and headed south for Belgium, stopping in the Dutch town of Utrecht for a few hours and seeing the nearby De Haar Castle, which was one of the highlights of the trip. Natalie was going a little bonkers at the time, so she didn't get to see it, but she told me later that she plans to go back when the next set of visitors comes through, so not to worry.
On Dec. 30, we arrived in Lommel, a small town in Belgium where our New Year's was to be spent. Stephen found a "three-bedroom villa" at the CenterParcs for the five of us, Erin's bridesmaid, Christine, and her husband, Dave. Much to our surprise, the place was a
resort for families with lots of kids and little to do for people over the age of 12. While that might've ruined the Griswald's European vacation, it was just fine for the Rawitches, Kantors and Dworkins. We had a place on the lake and we took advantage of what it had to offer.
For some of us, that was massages. For Stephen, it was a massage and then a visit to the sauna, where entire families of Germans ran around naked amongst French families, frolicking like medieval times. Stephen enjoyed this experience and as he put it, he was "the only one wearing a hat." It took me a minute to figure it out. Think about it. We were in Europe. Okay, that's enough thinking. If you don't get it by now, move on.
The massages were a nice start to New Year's Eve Day and we returned to our villa, where the ladies made fondue for all of us over a game of Trivial Pursuit, followed by a steak dinner (Stephen adds: so that this doesn't sound like Josh, Dave, and I are the biggest male chauvinist pigs making our woman slave away in the kitchen while we get massages, the gals got massages before us and started on dinner while the fellas were having ours and at the end of the night, the guys had kitchen clean-up duty). Natalie stuck to the baby formula, but you could tell she wanted the fondue. As they say, it all looks the same when it's spit up and she's very good at that activity.
She was not pleased, however, when midnight struck and every single villa around ours launched its own fireworks. It was very cool to see these bootleg fireworks shows on the lake, but we retreated when the Germans next door decided to set off about 45 minutes
worth of fireworks six feet from our back window. These people could have easily blown their hands off (or ours) and suddenly, we understood why this activity is illegal in America (and why it's legal in Tennessee and Georgia).
All in all, it was a very quiet New Year's and while some might read this and think, "Damn those people are old," we actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Natalie eventually crashed and New Year's Day brought a day trip to Antwerp, which was almost entirely shut down but still very quaint and beautiful.
The New Year's Eve meltdown didn't hold a candle to the New Year's Day one, as poor Natalie had a rough night on the first day of her first full year on Earth. She screamed for about 90 minutes straight, providing more than enough birth control for the other
married couples in the villa. Still, if you've seen the videos or pictures, they don't do it justice. She's arguably the cutest baby in all of Europe and obviously takes after her mother.
Stephen, though, did his part to look good for the trip. He was kind enough not to shave for the entire time we saw him (or go to work for that matter (Stephen adds: worked from home the week between Xmas and NYE)) and by the sixth day, he actually had a five o' clock shadow. Well, not really. He had a few long whiskers on his
chin and a nasty mustache that was the main cause of Natalie's major meltdown, but even I have to admit, watching him as a father was pretty cool.
So I guess this Travelpod wasn't so short after all. Six and a half day for nearly two pages of material. No wonder why Stephen's emails seem to go on endlessly. Someday, though, he and Julie will read them when their 85 years old (and Natalie's kids are
close to having kids) and they'll look back on what an incredible time their three-plus years in Europe really were (and how cool their friends Josh and Erin are). All kidding aside, their time in Holland is truly the type of experience that everyone should be
fortunate enough to have at some point in their lives and we're grateful that they let us share in it for a week.
- Josh
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