Easter brought me to Emmen in Drenthe this year. For very clear and frightening purposes: meeting D.'s parents...
I survived, don't worry. I may never know what they were really thinking of me - their daughter's 14 years older lover boy from the West - but they were most friendly towards me, while I was doing my utmost to play the part of the likable, polite, loving, well-mannered and still youthful boyfriend.
I knew I was lucky when, after just a few minutes, their dog Benthe, a pretty girl Bernese Mountain Dog, decided I was O.K., making that clear by allowing me to stroke her enormous head which she had laid to rest on my lap. I knew right there that I was save for the weekend.
D.'s parents live in a beautiful house in a rural environment just outside Emmen. As for the house itself I was especially impressed by the wine-cellar her father and her brother had dug and built.
Outside the house it's all meadows, heaths and groves with tiny swamps and old farmhouses. All you'll hear is birds singing. Idyllic is the word, I believe.
D. and I spent a good part of our stay riding around on the bikes
her parents lent us. We stopped at a pond to look for green frogs,
which we didn't find. We did find tadpoles though, and leeches in a ditch. And we came across an intriguing yellow insect that we couldn't identify.
We watched the stir of some ant-hills. And we actually saw a buzzard - in fact we could almost touch him as he flew close over our heads! Yes, we were one with nature :-)
Drenthe is famous for its
dolmens, or 'hunebedden' as we call them. There are 54 of them in the Netherlands of which 52 in Drenthe alone. You can't visit Drenthe without seeing one. So D. took me.
They are about 5000 years old. I won't go into the theories of how those huge and heavy stones were placed on top of each other. It's inconceivable to think that it was done without the help of our modern machines. And for what? They were most likely build to serve as grave tombs, although human remains were never found in Dutch dolmens, apparently as a result of the degree of acidity in the soil here (human bones were found in dolemens elsewhere in Europe).
It must have been a hell of a job to build these things. But they still make an incredible sight.
Back in Haarlem I felt I had to show D. that we too have our idyllic spots in this part of the country - ancient and rural. So this Monday I took her for a bike ride through the meadows to the ruins of Castle Brederode. The castle was built in the late 13th century by Willem van Brederode. Although there's not too much left of it, he still is worth seeing. On top of what was once a fierce tower we spotted an Egyptian goose. Okay, it's not nearly a buzzard, but still...
After that I took her to the manor Beeckestijn with its beautiful French gardens. The house itself dates from the 16th century, but the manor got its true grandeur in the 18th century - the time
that well-to-do tradesmen from Amsterdam liked to show off with a nice estate in the countryside.
.
On our way back I got to showing off myself when we came across a tree where I had seen a beautiful pied woodpecker just a week ago. I was lucky: he was home. And this time he saw me only
after I took a picture of him.
