Europe - Trip 5

Day 2 - February 5, 2002

Repin's aptly titled, "Unexpected."

We doddled this morning and got out of the house at about noonish and did a tour of the sites we saw last night. Ite had kindly put together a list of shops that we might like to visit – we were looking for a couple of books and a step-up ring for the digital camera so that we could use the wide-angle on it. Never thought that a 49 mm to Class 7 or Class six format would be so difficult. We found naught and then walked through the market and looked through the stalls – opted eventually for vine leaf rolls, Sue had an apple and Todd ate a big hunk-o-herring.

We hit the provincial museum where they were having a Repin exhibition - Repin being a late 19th, early 20th century Russian painter, who painted things with casual subject manner. Todd did take pictures of the paintings but decided to keep only one. The museum also boasted an excellent ceramics wing with a catalogue of both depth and breadth. Sue thought the pensioners, that tend to populate museums during the day time, we quite pushy and rude.

Todd relaxing and laughing at the Marten pad.

We eventually met up with Marten for dinner at his place after finally figuring out how to use the Chipnip card (electronic cash) for the phone – Todd’s Dutch seemed to breakdown when the words got bigger than 2 syllables and he didn’t have the benefit of a dictionary showing how to properly conjugate verbs. Marten made a lovely dinner of boerenkool stamppot which we washed down with a selection of fancy Belgian and local beer – the whole thing ended with vanilla yoghurt.

We sat and chatted for a while longer in Marten’s hip student pad catching up and learning a bit about the family. Sue decided to head back to the house while Todd headed out with Marten and his lovely girlfriend Hanne-Renck to a Medical faculty party at a local bar. Sue found her way home without consulting the map much. Todd quite enjoyed himself but felt very old and slow – he wasn’t even going to attempt to speak Dutch in bar. Marten then made Todd eat part of a funky croquet from an automat before we hit the second bar - another place at about 3ish for about 30 minutes until Todd decided that he needed to go to bed.

Not even remotely crisp but less rain and wind today made for a pleasant improvement.