by Joan
Goor looked great. It had a lot of narrow alleys, and people walking around dressed like clowns. We didn't know it when we arrived, but it turned out Goor was getting ready for its biggest party of the year, starting the following day.
As Eric and I inched through the alleys, we saw a couple of guys sitting at a table drinking beer. They yelled to us in Dutch. Eric's the kind of guy who wants to know what everyone is saying to him, just in case they're being friendly. I'm the kind of person who avoids random contact with strangers on the streets. It's a good thing I'm hanging out with Eric. He's having a good influence on me.
So as I rolled slowly past, Eric yelled back to the beer drinkers, "Do you speak English!" One of the guys, with gray hair, yelled back. "Of course!" That's how all the Dutch say yes. It's never yes, but "Of course!"
Eric and I both stopped. That's when the other guy yelled out something about shoes. We looked, and it turned out the gray-haired guy, Jan, was wearing wooden shoes. Just like in the postcards. Jan got up and asked Eric if he wanted to try them. Eric didn't need to be asked twice. He jumped off his bike, parked it against a wall, and ran over to try them on. Soon we were all drinking beer. Before I knew it, Jan had run around the corner to his car to get out a second pair of wooden shoes: painted bright yellow, with painted-on gold buttons. He put me in them, put his on his own shoes, and started dancing with me around the table.
Jan, a 50-ish? toothsome truck driver, doesn't always wear wooden shoes. He just wears them for Goor's big festival, which was starting the next day. We asked his buddy Dirk, what he did for a living. Dirk was kind of a short, stout guy, and he got right to the point. "I'm a pig killer!" he yelled. None of this "swine sanitation engineer," or whatever they'd be called in the U.S. Dirk was a pig killer and proud of it.We had a great time drinking beer with those guys. Jan, who drove his truck all over the E.U., was in an especially festive mood because his daughter was about to give birth to his first grandchild. We all drank to his grandchild.
Jan and Dirk were so nice to us that Eric and I tried to give them a little gift. We went to our coin collection, which weighed about five pounds at that point, to fish out a few coins. But Jan said he already had tons of European coins, from driving all over the E.U. Instead, he and Dirk gave us a very special coin: a gold coin from Goor, wh
ich is good only in the town of Goor, on the weekend of Goor's annual festival. During that festival, you can use the coin to buy a beer. Jan told us to keep it in a safe place. Then he tried to convince us to stay for the weekend. That would have been great, but we were looking forward to seeing MaartenJan and Karin in Utrecht, so we had to turn him down.That evening, near Eerbeek, we rolled into a nice little roadside bar full of locals. We went in and with lots of help from the clientele, ordered Dutch fast food: meatball sandwiches with chips (French fries) and beer. One of the guys at the bar had lived in Florida for six months. He had learned to speak English there, and he was happy to practice on us. Later, we found out that just about everyone in the Netherlands speaks fluent English. They casually switch back and forth between languages all the time.
The Dutch also hav
e a very good English--in fact, more American than English--accent. I think that's because they tend to watch all their movies with the original soundtrack and subtitles, instead of dubbing the movies, as people do in the rest of Europe.That night, we camped at Eerbeek.
The next day, we zoomed 80km across the center of The Netherlands to Utrecht. We stopped all along the way to eat ice-cream and look in all the bike shops. The Dutch are really big on biking, so all the bike shops are extremely well stocked. In one bike shop, we bought a squeaky cow-shaped 'bell' for Eric's bike. Eric hadn't had a bell since his was stolen from his bike in China, and he hadn't really needed it. But in Holland, we were always riding on bike lanes, and we really needed bells to warn people when we were passing.
We arrived at Utrecht in the evening, headed for a large hotel, and called Karin. She said she'd never be able to explain directions, so we should just stay put and she'd come get us. Eric ran inside the hotel to go to the bathroom, and I waited outside. I was spacing out, so time passed fast. When I looked up, Karin was right next to me, hugging me hello! Then we followed her back to hers and MaartenJan's house.
next: Netherlands Chapter 3, Bachelor Parties, Utrecht style!
