Our plan was to visit Iceland this year but Aric was very busy with his laundry shop and could not take leave. So I decided to go to the Netherlands on my own, four weeks. When I checked ticket prices, I found that the KLM tickets were very expensive and not even a direct flight. Emirates and Qatar also had a stopover, but were more affordable. I booked with Qatar and had a transit in Doha. A very modern airport, similar to Changi airport in Singapore. Easy to spend a few hours there. Here are some pictures

The first half of the flight was a night flight, leaving KLIA at 3 am (!), the second half was a day flight, leaving Doha at 8 am and arriving at Schiphol at 2 pm. Nice food for lunch, chili con carne.

I arrived in the Netherlands on Thursday 25 May and left four weeks later, on Thursday 22 June. To keep the blog readable, I will split it in four parts, one for each week, and each part subdivided in days.

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Thursday 25 May

I was lucky on arrival, the plane landed not far from the gate, immigration was fast and my suitcase arrived quickly on the carousel. I took the train to Amsterdam Zuid and walked to Backershagen, where I arrived in my apartment around 3 pm, about one hour after landing, a record! A vase of roses was waiting for me, a sweet gesture from Yolanda, Paul’s sister. But there my luck ended. My mobile phone was not working and I could not connect to the Internet.

It took me a few hours to solve the problems. I went out to buy a new sim card for my smartphone and (blurry after the long flight) I had not put the telephone plug back in the wall socket!

Finally I could relax in my apartment and enjoy my favourite Dutch food (cheese, herring, strawberries etc.).

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Friday 26 May

Beautiful weather, although the wind was still chilly. Usually I am back in the Netherlands during spring, when the trees are still bare and gradually are turning green. Now it was getting summer, everything green. Very nice. Here is a view of the Zuidas from my apartment.

Later I visited Pim and Nanda for a nice asparagus dinner.

Sunset very late, at 9:40 pm. It is setting behind the buildings of my alma mater and will still move a bit more North in the next weeks.

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Saturday 27 May

A lunch meeting with my friend Lambert in the OBA, the Amsterdam public library. I used public transport and arrived at the Central Station (left), The town was busy with tourists. Right the St Nicolas church.

The OBA is at walking distance from the Central Station. It is a nice modern building, opened in 2007.

The top floor has a cafe where I met Lambert. The view of the Amsterdam skyline is impressive.

We had a short meeting with coffee and cake. I stayed a bit longer and had my lunch there.

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Intermezzo

I enjoy de diversity of food in Malaysia, but when I am back in the Netherlands I am craving for traditional Dutch food 😉 . From left to right (using Dutch names), Schoudercarbonade met snijbonen, Bloemkool met worst and Witlof met een speklapje. All with my favourite potatoes, Opperdoezer Ronde .

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Sunday 28 May

Whitsun. A day trip with my former student and now long time friend, Yolanda. She was my student in the late 70s at the Snellius school, located at the Startbaan in Amstelveen. The school has been demolished many years ago and is now a residential area. The Startbaan is still there but only the Snelliuslaan reminds of the school.

We decided to walk around the Poel, a lake in Amstelveen. There were yellow irises everywhere. I used the Komoot app to record our walk. Here is a report about the hike, with more photos.

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Monday 29 May

The next day I visited Alphen a/d Rijn, where I was born and where my youngest brother Otto now is living in the family house.

It has become a tradition to visit my parents’ grave with Otto. We bought some plants to decorate the grave.

For lunch we went to McDonalds, where Otto’s eldest son Pascal is manager. He was busy but joined us for a while. We had something very Dutch, a McKroket, never seen that elsewhere in the world. Not bad at all.

During spring there are tulips, daffodils, hyacinths. Now there was a variety of wild flowers like klaprozen (poppies) and margrieten (ox-eye daisies).

I went for another walk with Otto in the region of the Bedelaarsbos. Beautiful Dutch polder landscape. Click on this Komoot report for more photos

One reason to (re)visit this region is that many years ago we put a so-called geocache here: Bedelaarsbos . We archived the cache in 2015 and were curious if we could still find its location. Here Otto is standing on the remains of a tree trunk where we thought the cache was hidden. While we were walking there, I logged another geocache, Tuf-Tuf.

Back home, Otto proudly showed his (first) grandchild and of course I had to take her in my arms as well.

Here Aswin, Xander (his twin sons) and I have pancakes for dinner, skilfully prepared by Otto. Spekpannekoek met stroop (bacon pancake with syrup), can it be more Dutch?

A very nice day. But unfortunate that my bicycle was missing from the (guarded!) bicycle shed where I had parked it that morning.

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Tuesday 30 May

When I am back in Amsterdam. Yolanda and I always have a “luxury” dinner in a restaurant selected by her. This time her choice was Visaandeschelde, a seafood restaurant in Amsterdam-Zuid. The food was so delicious, that I forgot to take a selfie of the two of us. I also forgot what were the many ingredients of the various dishes. They looked likes works of art. Very pleasant service.

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Wednesday 31 May

My “soulmate” Inez visited me in Backershagen for lunch. I told her about my missing bicycle, that I had tried to find it back, but in vain. That it was anyway an old barrel and that I wanted to buy another second-hand one. She said that there was a good bicycle shop near where she lived. After lunch I went with her to this shop, where I bought a “new” second-hand bike for 179 Euro. Left the happy owner, right how I will lock my bike from now on 😉 .

This was the first week.