Europe - Trip 5

Day 8 - February 11, 2002

Us with Tante Ham

This day was to be interesting – we were going to visit Todd’s Beppe’s older sister Harmke in Heereveen, called Tante Ham affectionately by the family even though Ite found this quite strange. Willimien had very kindly called last week asking her if we could come by for a visit. We would have called ourselves but unfortunately Tante Ham doesn’t speak much English and Todd’s Dutch is better on the receiving end than during delivery.

We were able to borrow the car and headed west to Leeuwarden for a quick stop. Not much was seen here as we didn’t have much for time. Mostly spent time looking for a place to park that was close to the things that we didn’t see.

Next south to Heerenveen and Tante Harmke’s place – her daughter Annie, Annie’s husband Jeff, her son Otto, her son Jacob and Annie’s daughter Miriam. Through translation and some understanding of Dutch we had a great time learning about each other, looking at pictures and enjoying cups of tea. Tante Ham looked and acted quite a bit like Todd’s Beppe and made us feel very welcome in a Beppe kind of way, making sense because she was also Beppe to other people.

We spent the afternoon and headed back to Groningen. Willemien was out, giving a talk in Leewarden, and we enjoyed a late dinner with Rolf and Ite.

Nice and sunny with big fluffy clouds and only a little bit of rain and fewer German beer drinking type lounge tunes on the radio.