Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
On a train
I look out the window and see the rolling hills of central Germany. Homes packed together on hilltops, so that none will fall of the occasionally very steep sides, a church tower which only shows its top, the rest hidden beyond my view by the hill in front of it and its weather vane moving back and forth in a sudden gust of wind. Trees in the distance, covering the sides of hills still left untouched. And I'm happy. Happy that I'm allowed, able, to see all these beautiful things. Happy to look out the window of this train that's racing at 200 km/hour from Wuerzburg to Hamburg, seeing the unsung beauty of Mediaeval towns, modern windmills and small lakes in a setting orange sun over the Germany heartland.
The train passes through a tunnel and I notice my own reflection and I realize my eyes are sad. Sad. Why sad? Because I just saw a beautiful landscape roll by? Sad because I'm able, mentally, physically and financially, to visit friends and family in other countries without having to bother about much besides having a good time? Sad because of what?
And then I realize: for all the wonderful things I get to see, there is so much more beauty I won't be able to see. Time or space simply won't allow that to happen. As much as I would like to, I won't be able to see all there is to see. I will try my best, but will miss out or have missed out on so much.
I won't be able to see pre-Khomeini Iran, I won't see the opening celebrations of the China Olympics, I will miss out on the next solar eclipse, I won't be there when man colonizes Mars, I've only heard that Columbus discovered America, I will never be able to really share Marco Polo's fascination with China, for me, Eastern Europe will never show me its former glory. Sad? This, I realize, is why I'm sad.
I look out the window again. Slowly, the sun is sinking over the horizon and is leaving a grey-orange cover over the hills that race past me. I feel regret and happiness at the same time, lucky while it lasts.
Why on the train?
It's July 2002. Like last year, I had decided to visit the LoveParade in Berlin, together with a bunch of friends. I took the opportunity to also visit family in Wuerzburg and Hamburg during the week prior to the LoveParade and meet up with my friends in Berlin.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
And so it ends.
I’ve been meaning to write ever since I flew back from Bermuda, but never came round to it. What a shame indeed.
I’m happy I managed for Jim to have Internet access on board, during most of the trip so that you all were able to read on what was happening out at sea and I have to admit that, although I was impressed by some of the stuff they encountered, part of me was happy to not have to sit through the heavey storms. Meanwhile, feeling very ashamed that my nerves weren’t up for the trip, I visited France and Luxembourg and flew to Cyprus and had quite a bit of fun back in Holland.
Last Tuesday, Jim finally made it back home. At first, communicating by satelite phone, he was going to be back, maybe on Sunday. Then it became Monday, then Tuesday morning, then Monday, then Tuesday. In the end, he docked at Stellendam on Tuesday evening. I had been waiting only a couple of hours. K1000 his father had been waiting 14 hours…
At first, we mistook another ship for ‘de Blauwe Maegd’, waiving at the crew and all, but it took longer as we expected and hoped, since a storm, thunder and heavy rain were giving us a bad time shortly before Jim arriving.
Still, the homecoming was good: the sun started shining again, temperature rose and, in the evening, we were some 12 people alltogether, drinking the cold beers everyone seemed to have taken with them. It was a good final night after an impressive trip.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
For the last two days of our trip, we wanted to rent a car because we planned on driving a bit further as before. In fact, we wanted to go to Lemesos (Limassol), some 65 km to the west of Larnaka and, after that, to Pafos, some 80 more kilometers to the West. There are a couple of highways on the island and, with the right transport, traveling can be reasonably comfortable. Still, we were unlucky; there were no more cheap cars available.
We decided to go for a bigger and faster scooter and drove west. After visiting Lefkara, we also went to Lemesos and came back at night. That was WRONG. Although we could travel quite fast, some 100 km/hour on the highway, it was impossible to do so. We were dressed for the warm summer days but, in the evening, the very cold winds rolling from the mountains made it simply impossible to drive anything over 50 km/hour and even then it was a terrible experience. The end result was that, on the last day in Cyprus, we rewarded ourselves with a day on the beach.
Lefkara, high up in the Troodos mountains, is a nice small village. However, you have to watch out not to be harassed by the army of women who try to lure you into their homes and sell you their lace. Originally, back in the Middle Ages, the women of the town started making lace to make money when their husbands were away at sea. At some point, probably after the men weren’t going out at sea anymore, the men of the town started to make silverware.
The small town, actually two small towns close together, is very enjoyable and made me think of a small Greek village if anything else. Here, too, the occasional busses with tourists stop on the town square but if you’re able to avoid these, the town is nice enough to spend a few hours in.
After Lefkara, we drove to Lemesos, another tourist hot spot for its many bars, restaurants and night clubs. The city is not all that interesting, culturally. The only real attraction is a small castle, not more than a tower, on which its site in the 14th century, Richard the Lionheart married his betrothed Berengaria. In the courtyard of the structure, you can find an olive oil press from the 7th century.
FOOOOOOD
The one typical Cypriot thing we did do in Lemesos was to eat Meze. Meze is basically the Cypriot version of eating Spanish tapas. You order ‘Meze’ and then, for half an hour to an hour, small bowls of food arrive at your table. As you can expect, one order of meze can feed about 25 people so at the end of our meal, we had quite a difficult to walk through the door on our way out. Then again, the extra insulation helped us in getting home, through the evening cold.
Return?
As said, we spent the next day on the beach, enjoying the sun before returning home to sunny (ahem) Holland. We later learned that during our week in Cyprus, temperature back home had risen to an impressive 25 degrees for a couple of days. So why did we actually leave?
Would I go back to Cyprus again? Well, there still are a couple of sites we didn’t have the time to visit. However, the country isn’t all that spectacular as some other countries in the Middle East. Would I go back? Probably not, although one trip is still a bit tempting: taking a boat trip from Turkey to the North of Cyprus.
The next morning we spent some time in Larnaka. The city only has a couple of sites that are really interesting, if you don’t consider the city’s boulevard where, every night, women walk in one direction, continuously, and men drive in cars in the opposite direction, continuously.
For one, there’s the grand mosque. Betsy had brought a piece of cloth to cover herself with, so that we could enter a mosque and she had used it a couple of times in Lefkosia. Here in Larnaka it wasn’t enough. She had to wear a blue coat to cover herself completely and with it, she looked more like a ghost then anything else.
Another feature is the Lazarus church. In the crypt of the church, the man-who-didn’t-die is supposedly buried. After he was raised, he moved to Cyprus and became a bishop in Larnaka for 30 years. The structure isn’t all that bad, but unfortunately, the church was closed when we were there and we couldn’t go in to see the man for ourselves.
After a day at the beach, we headed to Lefkosia, the country’s capital. Again on a rented scooter. The country has two mountain ranges, one in the center of the island, in the Greek part of Cyprus, the other in the north of the island, in the Turkish side. On the hills of the Turkish side, the locals painted (I suppose) two large flags that you can see from miles away. The two flags are the Turkish Cypriot flag and the Turkish flag.
Of course, Lefkosia’s main feature is that it’s the last divided capital in the world. We first decided to visit the Turkish area. Although close to Pyla, there’s a border crossing where border control isn’t strictly enforced, the one border crossing inside the capital is the only place were you’re allowed to cross from the Greek side to the Turkish side. Given that you’re back by 5pm. It’s impossible to cross from the North to the South.
North
There’s a small area between the two border crossings with a large UN post in the middle. The UN post is a former hotel that has been confiscated by the UN for sleeping quarters. Strangely enough, there are also a couple of shops inside no man’s land that are still open. They didn’t seem to sell much though. Although the cities in the south occasionally have a Middle Eastern atmosphere, the Northern part of Lefkosia is unmistakable Turkish; the small streets, the shops, the houses, the mosques, all point to Turkish rule.
The most awkward feature of the north, although occasionally, you also find them in the south, is churches that have been converted to mosques. The most popular one, and the strangest one at that, is the Selimiye mosque. The building was finished as the gothic Church of Agia Sofia in 1326, after Louis IX, on his way to the Crusades, offered the help of his retinue of builders and artisans. When the Ottomans arrived, they stripped the church, built two minarets and converted the church to a mosque.
Another fine structure we visited was the Kumarcilar Han. The building is a caravanserai, or middle age Turkish hotel. The structure was recently renovated and radiated a very nice and quiet atmosphere, the kind of place you could imagine Mediaeval travelers would love to stay at, enjoying the coffee, women and tea.
A very nice feature of the whole city is the Venetian walls, built around the whole city by you’ve guessed it, the Venetians. The walls were built to keep the Ottomans out and although they’re pretty big and impressive, they never managed to serve their purpose.
South
The southern part of the city is in better shape as compared to the northern part and has a couple of nice features. One large Venetian building is fronted by a huge statue of Archbishop Makarios and, supposedly, the most photographed subject in the south is the Famagusta gate which, as it happens, is always closed. We didn’t find the gate very impressive and we’re more intrigued by the way the north/south line divides the city, with border posts along the whole line.
In some locations, you get a glimpse of the area in between the Greek and Turkish borders and its strange to see the area, where people used to live up to 1974 has been mostly grown over with weeds.
The next day we kept the scooter and drove to Pyla, the only city in Cyprus where Turk and Greek Cypriots still live together and. After Pyla we drove all the way to Deryneia, where it’s possible to view one of the country’s ghost towns, occupied by the Turks, departed by the Greeks.
Pyla, close to Larnaka, is a strange anachronism in Cyprus. In the middle of the town, there’s a UN border post, with a guard, who’s keeping an eye on everyone in the town. On the one side, Turkish coffeehouses, on the other, Greek coffeehouses. It seems nothing is really bothering the people in Pyla, the country’s division the least, but who knows. Above the town, on a ridge, on the Turkish side of the island, a Turkish border guard keeps track of what’s happening in the town.
The island is divided by what is called the ‘Green Line’. The line was drawn by a British official, on a map of Cyprus, with a green pen and divides the country into a Turkish side and a Greek side. Along the whole of the line, it’s forbidden to take pictures and every 500 meters or so, three border posts make sure you don’t (but of course, we did).
Driving to Deryneia, we drove past another ghost town. Already from far away, it was possible to see the gloomy dark church tower of the town of Ahna and only when we came closer (because the main road was going close past the town), did we notice that all the houses were abandoned. The main access road was blocked by fuel cans, walls, mines and a sign saying that you would probably be shot if you tried to cross. We decided not to try and moved on.
Deryneia was much less interesting than Ahna. Although many people try to make a living by hosting viewing platforms into the deserted town of Varosha, the abandoned houses are much further away from the viewer than the houses in Ahna. Although what is interesting is that, in the distance, you can see the former largest port of the island, the now occupied Famagusta.
Deryneia was the subject of international upheaval, as short as 6 years ago. Two Greek Cypriots were killed in fights. The first victim seemingly was beaten to death for no reason whatsoever but being in the wrong time at the wrong place. The second guy, a good friend of the first, was so stupid as to climb the flagpole with the Turkish Cypriot flag. Of course, he was shot down. The first guy was plain unlucky, the second guy was plain stupid.
A colony of tourists
Before heading to Agia Napa, the tourist colony of tourist colonies, we drove to the quite pleasant town of Paralimni and already got some hints of which tourists mostly flock to this area of the country. Deli’s, Irish pubs, English restaurants filled the town center of Paralimni. Besides that, the main feature of the rather quiet town are the Agios Georgios churches, a new and an old church, devoted to the same saint.
Agia Napa is terrible. Although only some 2500 people live in the town, it’s filled to the brim with tourists, mostly young people looking to party. The large tourist strip as well as the town center are filled with Indian, Chinese, French, Russian, Italian restaurants and more. Bars of all sorts and clubs complement the party scene.
Luckily, for the culture buff, there is something that is of interest in the town. The highlight of the monastery, built around 1570, is the fig tree in front of the main entrance, said to be 600 years old.
Cyprus is not very well endowed as far as public transport is concerned. Although it's a very small island (some 250km from east to west, 150km from north to south), only occasionally does public transport go between the major towns on the island. It basically means that you either travel slowly or get your own transport, so we rented a scooter.
Although the island has quite a cultural history, the earliest settlements have known to exist more than 10.000 years ago, the historical sites are relatively few and far between. We spent the first afternoon in the area around Larnaka, driving to a couple of places and trying to not get into too much trouble with our scooter. Since I was driving, this was harder than you might think. And not just because sudden accelerations or braking meant my girlfriend holding me even tighter.
A mosque
Close to Larnaka airport, we drove to the Hala Sultan Tekkesi. In fact, it's so close to the airport that, when landing, it's quite hard to miss the small mosque on the side of one of the country's salt lakes.
A couple of years ago, in 674, the foster aunt of the prophet (that's Mohammed for you infidels) was so stupid as to fall from a mule and die. Supposedly, it's the fourth most important pilgrimage site in the Muslim world. However, I've heard that about a couple more sites around the Middle East. Although it's difficult for Northerners to go to the south, twice a year, in a sort of exchange agreement, people from Northern Cyprus are allowed to make the pilgrimage to the mosque. In exchange, Southerners get to visit a monastery in the North.
The mosque isn't all that interesting and almost empty at that. When we visited, a group of people were working on the outsides, renovating the courtyard and building a small park. Inside, we got a tour from a friendly curator for whom, it seemed, we were the first visitors of the day, at two in the afternoon.
A church built by angels
Our next stop was the Panagia Angeloktisi Church. Although it sounds like a curse, the title of the church means nothing more than 'built by angels'. How could you NOT know, eh? Before getting there, we had to drive through a bit of country side and we encountered a bunch of goats and sheep with a goat herder. Trying my best goatese, I immediately scared them into running away from us, causing quite a bit of trouble for the Egyptian goat herder.
The church itself is rather nice, even though every 30 minutes or so a new bus with tourists is unloaded on the square in front of the church. The main feature of the church is a small collection of 6th century mosaics, which were only discovered in 1952!
A monastery
On a 700 meter high hill, just a bit north of Larnaka, there is the Stavrovouni Monastery, which is the oldest monastery in Cyprus. Its main feature is its location, since it truly allows for some very nice views over the coast and also the Troodos mountain range. The biggest problem with it is that no women are allowed to enter. We thought about not going there, but since the views were supposed to be great, we decided to go anyway. It's not like they can block out the views when you're not inside the monastery itself.
Betsy stayed outside; I went in for a short while and was welcomed with open arms. I was wearing a long robe and it seemed the monks received me as being very faithful and pious. I didn't contradict them.
The name of the monastery means 'mountain of the cross', where 'stavros' means 'mountain'. The mountain is obvious; the cross is the silver cross, inside the church, in which a piece of an original cross is preserved, where a nail from the cross on which Jesus was crucified was used in. Geddit?
A royal chapel
Close to the monastery, there's the 'Chappelle Royale', built by king Janus in 1421. Its French name and the French wall frescoes are its main assets. King Janus, the last Crusader king of Cyprus, was French. The chapel itself is rather small and only mildly interesting and here, too, we realized that the country as a whole mostly gets tourists who only stick to the coastline: at 6 in the evening, we were the 4th couple to visit the chapel that day.
The main airport in Cyprus is Larnaka international airport. In 1974, after the occupation by the Turks, the Greek Cypriots hurriedly built a new one at Lefkara, and it shows. The airport area is nothing more than one large hangar with some desks along its walls. The airport gives new meaning to the word ‘basic’.
The one good thing about organized trips is that they are, well, organized. We went through customs, picked up our bags, were welcomed by a hostess, were guided to our transfer bus, were welcomed at our hotel and invited for the next morning’s meeting with our wonderful guide. Of course, we didn’t go. A few hours of organized travel is all I can take.
We had no clue, before we arrived at our hotel, where exactly the hotel would be located. Although we knew it would be in, or close to, Larnaka, it could be either in the city itself, or in the uninteresting tourist strip to the north. It turned out to be the tourist strip, not really within walking distance of the city center, 8 kilometers away. And of all the people that were on the chartered airplane, our hotel was one of the closest to the town center! There was only one option left: we had to get some transport.
Cyprus still is a divided nation. In fact, its capital, Lefkosia, is the last divided capital on earth. During a Greek coup in the mid-seventies that later failed, the Turks occupied the north of the country to safeguard the interests of the country’s Turkish population and haven’t left since. Although in daily life you don’t notice much of the ongoing occupation, when you approach the border, Greek, Turkish and UN guard posts strung along the ‘Green Line’ make it very clear that the animosity is still riding high between the two countries.
Besides the division, Cyprus is an interesting holiday destination. One of the few countries in the world where it is possible to ski in the morning and lie on the beach in the afternoon (although not in summer), it also has a long cultural history, dating back 10.000 years. The only difficulty is actually being able to avoid the masses of tourists that flock here continuously.
About a year ago, I did some work for a travel site, www.elmar.nl. They repaid me in full. In travel vouchers that had to be used within one year. I like to travel, but most travel organizations only organize trips that not totally completely accommodate the style of traveling I prefer. Additionally, I only was allowed to get a package deal, not just a plane ticket.
I try to visit all countries in Europe and have visited far away places such as Iceland and the Baltics. Two European countries that are harder to put on your list are Malta and Cyprus. They’re really out of the way. If you go to either one, you can not really go anywhere else. It seemed to make sense that I would use my travel voucher to go to either place. The more since Elmar had been having significant discounts for both countries over the past year. I only had one issue still to solve: These discounts only applied when traveling with someone else.
Lucky for me, I recently bumped into a new girlfriend and the decision was easily made. We went to Cyprus. Significantly bigger than Malta with the intriguing feature that the country’s capital is the last divided capital of the world. Now if only we could manage to stay away from the beach and get out of the holiday resort we had to book our hotel in.
A long weekend in the north of France and surroundings, together with my girlfriend. Visiting Metz, Strassbourg and Colmar, Luxembourg, Brussels and Kehl.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
It’s always fun to be abroad when something important is happening in relation to the Dutch nation. On the 30th of April, the queen’s birthday is celebrated. Not that it actually is her birthday, but hey, who cares. In the Netherlands, the “summer” season generally starts on the 30th of April and abroad, the consulates and embassies all throw parties for the Dutch who are around. We managed to convince the honorary consul to the Netherlands in inviting us to his wonderful home. Mr. Mulder’s private garden was the size of a soccer field, but hilly, and covered with small trees and bushes and overlooking a bay on the northern side of the island. The house was huge and on three levels. In short, Mr. Mulder didn’t do all that bad. Some sixty people were at the party, of which about forty were Dutchies. By far the best parts were the food and drinks. Typical Dutch fare, such as raw herring and eel and oranjebitter a truly terrible schnapps of orange flavor. The orange, of course, in reference to the royal Dutch color.
Afterwards, we joined a Dutch guy who had been living in Bermuda for six years on a night on the town, Hamilton that is, the capital of Bermuda. We had quite a bit of fun but since we already had been drinking since the early hours of the day, we very quickly became dead drunk. Jim had to empty his stomach at the yachting club, in-between two songs, on the dance floor, I emptied my stomach from the taxicab window on the way back. It was a good evening.
After 7.5 days at sea, we arrived on Bermuda, an overly expensive but nice island. Sijmen went to see a doctor in relation to his stomach cramps and was sent home to visit a specialist in the Netherlands. It seemed that after visiting the doctor, his health quickly got better.
I myself was debating whether to continue or not. Although I felt really bad of having to leave Jim by himself, in the end I decided to have to call it a day. We would need to find a replacement crew. I needed to go home by plane.
When I was a kid, I had the utmost fear of being on a boat. The first boat trip I remember, a 2 hour ferry ride to one of the Dutch island, resulted in my not being able to sleep for weeks before the trip. I was completely overcome with fear that the boat would sink with me trapped inside. The fact that if the boat would sink, half of it would still stick out of the water because of the waters in Holland being so shallow, didn’t help. Rationally, my fear was based on nothing at all. It was only the comforting words of my mum and my decision that I wouldn’t leave deck during the trip allowed for my being able to board the ship and, of course, nothing happened.
Over the years, my fear for the sea slowly mellowed, although for years, every time I would go on a boat, I would feel a little bit anxious as to what could happen. I guessed it was a bit like some people’s fear of flying they manage to overcome, over time. I was wrong.
1-0
The first point the ocean scored was making me seasick. Jim later confirmed that we had quite a rough sea on the first couple of days. Nothing bad, but rough, and even Jim himself didn’t feel completely at ease with his bodily functions during those first two days.
1-1
It took a full two days, but I did recover and I was able to return to a regular schedule of three meals a day. Later in the week, after an evening of heavy drinking, I had one more day with an upset stomach, but it was more likely that it was rum-induced not sea-induced.
2-1
After two days of not being able to do much but moan and wait, life returned to reasonably normal. Almost immediately after that, the ocean was able to score another big point: boredom. 

There truly is totally absolutely completely nothing at all that makes an ocean sailing trip, on average, interesting. Jim admits that for him, out at sea, 75% of the time he’s bored. The relative high quality of the remaining 25%, however, does make up for it. Supposedly.

I seem to disagree. Not only does it seem it’s more like 90-10 configuration, the 90% not only is mightily boring, it’s can also be downright terrible. I think that, if I would have had the time, I would have been able to beat the boredom. It is what I prepared for and I had brought a number of things to try and beat it: Some 20 books, a laptop to do some writing, music and a language course.
3-1
After a couple of days at sea, we entered an area with almost no winds and a shiny, mirror like, sea surface. Through phone contact with “home” (praise to Iridium), we learned that this lack of winds could continue for some three days. Later, in Bermuda, when we met another group of Dutch sailors, a situation like this was commented on as being “the ultimate sailing”. Right.
I didn’t really like it, but didn’t really mind either, the largest issue being the loss of time. Although I had freed up a number of weeks to allow for this trip, I still had clients to think about. I couldn’t come back weeks later as planned. We decided to use the engine to maintain some speed. There was enough diesel on board so, if necessary, we could use the engine for a couple of days on end. Only fifteen minutes later however, the engine broke down. I freaked. We were in the middle of the Bermuda triangle with no winds and no engine. No engine makes it impossible to generate electricity. No electricity means no navigation, no lights, no RADAR, no toilet, etc. We were halfway St. Maarten and Bermuda. I freaked. When I was in my early teens, like most kids my age, I was very interested in “the unexplained”. Stuff like UFOs, Egypt, Nasca and, yes, the Bermuda Triangle. Now being stuck myself right in the middle of it, thoughts of our boat becoming a statistic kept on going through my mind. Later, I learned that every year, “60 boats and 4 planes still disappear”
3-2
During one of my watches, shortly after the engine had broken down, we were floating around, not being able to do much of anything. I looked up, at the mast, and realized that I was sitting below a huge cross, the boat being like a floating coffin. However, I survived, with reasonable sanity, so I guess I countered the point.
4-2
The worst was still to come. After the period with no winds, winds slowly returned and, some two days, later we were getting 30 knot winds straight from the back. Still using the Spinnaker (a huge sail), we occasionally got over 10 knots! Then, very suddenly and with little warning, the wind turned a full 180 degrees. So we were on a sailing boat and the wind was coming from the exact direction we were headed. Not good. In addition, the current was still going north, which resulted in significant waves rolling in from the North.

The only option you have when the wind is coming from the direction you’re heading in, is to make a zigzag like motion, each time making sure the wind comes in at about 40 degrees, alternatively on the left and on the right. It increases your travel distance significantly, but it’s your only choice. This was going to affect our travel time too, of course, but that wasn’t the worst. With the wind and waves coming from the north, we were alternating between NE and NW, meaning that the surface of the hull on which the waves could break was maximized. Every time we would hit a wave, and this was every 5 seconds or so, a very loud “THUD” was followed by a drop, as we would clear the wave. Additionally, since the wind was strong, the boat was hanging on a 50 degrees or more angle. This went on for some 30 hours. During the night, the wind also occasionally suddenly shifted from NNE to NNW. If you’re not quick enough to alter your course when this happens, the sails can get “blocked”, where one is bent one way and the other sail the other way. If this happens, the boat isn’t propelled anymore by the wind and you’re just afloat, riding the waves any which way they prefer to take you. I was terrified.
The 30 hours that the storm lasted were easily the scariest part of the trip, if not the scariest part of my life. I thought I was over the fears I had for the sea as a kid. Apparently I was wrong. It took a couple of days for me to make the decision, but did call it a day. I was going home.
A rematch? Most certainly, but not anytime soon.
It took me four days at sea to finally find the time and the ability to write a message. Lots of stuff happened and didn’t happen.
We had planned to leave on Wednesday the 17th, but that was slightly optimistic. Buying groceries, checking out with the port authority, obtaining diesel and water and some other semi-official stuff simply took too long to allow for an early take off. Leaving in the evening wasn’t considered a very good idea; a morning departure seemed more favorable.
Not that, in the end, that helped us much as far as comfort goes. All three of us weren’t in the best of health during the first two days. Sijmen actually slept for 42 hours in a row, which left Jim and me to do the first two nights of watch duty. Not that I was in the best of shapes. I was seasick and couldn’t eat much for the first two days, not in the least because what I’d eat, I’d loose almost immediately. Only after my second watch on the second night, when for the fourth time did I give something back to the sea, did I finally clear up; on the morning of the third day I finally was able to actually digest something that resembled a regular meal, although it still took some two days before I completely recovered. Jim totally recovered on the third day, which he celebrated with a good deal of alcohol, basically being totally drunk already before dark. Sijmen took much, much longer to recover.
It was clear that Sijmen’s illness was due to seasickness. At least, that’s what Jim and I thought. Even after four days, however, when he could already deal with the movements of the boat, did he still have problems with his stomach: Pains, cramps, not being able to eat much etc. His state of health resulted in us deciding to visit a doctor in Bermuda to get some professional advice on his situation. A maneuver that would require us to be at sea for an additional two to four days, since we originally hadn’t planned on stopping in Bermuda.
Already I understood the boredom that would await us and the fact that my decision to join this trip wasn’t the best one in my life. Sure, our arrival in Rotterdam will be quite an experience, but to be trapped on a couple of square meters with nothing but the same two guys, a significant amount of alcohol and a couple of books isn’t quite everything. There simply isn’t enough to do to make life interesting. I would be happier at home, doing my regular stuff, enjoying the sweetness of my girl’s arms. What was I thinking when I said “yes”?
Yesterday we did send our first messages in bottles; all to our loved ones. On Sijmen’s and Jim’s previous trip, from the Canaries to the Caribbean, they sent out some 50 bottles. Only one, so far, has made it back.
Some things I find missing, already after such a short time are “smell”, “taste”, “touch”, “fresh fruit” and “chocolate”. Although I just discovered we have some chocolate (“hagelslag”) on board, we of course didn’t bring any fresh fruit. So that’s one thing I’m going to get as soon as we arrive in Bermuda. The other three, smell, taste and touch are closely related. I miss the smell of my girl, of home, of my parents place, of familiar stuff. “Touch” should be obvious; there just isn’t much to cling on to. “Taste” is about the canned food that just doesn’t have much of a real taste. The lack of the three combined make for a pretty bad depletion of the senses.
I had started to read up on the Caribbean and it didn't appear like an area I would go to out of my own free will. The history of the area is made up of the whims and dealings of European powers. All its fruits, plants, animals and people have been imported from either Europe or Africa The area doesn't have much to offer, ethnically, the only two ethnic peoples having totally disappeared several hundreds of years ago.
In addition, the couple of days spent on St. Maarten were not only days of rain and wind, I also still needed to work on the Geekcorps site for which we finally found a workaround, late Wednesday morning. Hard work! The most enjoyable activity being shopping for our five weeks at see. Three shopping carts, 20 bottles of whiskey, a total of $800.
Finally, the projected route has also been decided on. We're first going to Bermuda, from there to the Azores and then on to Rotterdam. It means that, in a couple of weeks time, we will be welcomed by friends and family, standing on the shores of the harbor of my hometown. That has to be a mind-blowing experience.
When I visited Russia back in 1999, one of the things I was completely baffled about was the totally skewed pricing scale of all products and services. A Big Mac would be the price of 100 bus tickets; a hotel room would be cheaper than a cheap restaurant meal and so on.
Another thing I noticed, when visiting the US last year was the apparent similarity between Russia and the US in terms of culture and architecture. Now I know that the US also has quite its own version of the awkward pricing scale.
I already mentioned that last year, my train ticket for getting close to North Adams was some $70. This year, taking a “commuter” train, I paid less then $10. On Friday, I took a bus to New York and had to pay $35. Although the bus was fairly empty, it wasn’t quite comfortable and took an amazing 5 hours, where a normal car ride only takes some 3 to 3.5 hours.
Since neither mine nor Betsy’s cell phone operates in the US (we both don’t have a triband), we had to resort to such archaic methods as arranging a meeting at a particular time at a certain place. The time was “as soon as possible”, the place was Grand Central Station. Once a beautiful romantic place to start a journey across North America, this time it was the backdrop for the start of our discovery of New York and our weekend together.
I was losing hope after waiting for almost two hours when, almost like a happy puppy trying to jump up towards his owner after not seeing him for a couple of hours, Betsy almost pushed me over on the ground and we started kissing in a happy embrace, enjoying the touch, smell and look of each other, forgetting for a moment the sweaty experience that travel generally is and the tons of looks we got from people clearly not as happy as we were. This was a couple clearly in love, New York was ours for the next three days.
We indeed enjoyed each other and the city, “doing” the staple diet of Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Wall Street, Broadway, the Staten Island ferry, the Statue of Liberty and more. We even, by chance at first, bumped into Ground Zero, the smell that supposedly was unbearable shortly after 9/11 being completely gone. The location itself was rather boring, how often have you seen a bunch of people working on a construction site? The instant memorials, sheets, pictures, flowers, t-shirts and more, hanging on the fences of two churches close by, remembering the event and people that got killed on 9/11, were reasonably interesting. For the most part, however, since these instant memorials, however touching, were silent hints for the exact reason for the attack: America’s hypocrisy. But I truly don’t want to get into this here.
Betsy and I had decided to not visit any museum, if we could help it. Not that New York’s museums are not worth it, but since it would be a shame to stay inside, when we had only such a short period in that wonderful city. However, when admiring the facade and entrance of the American Museum of Art, three girls just coming out offered us their entrance tickets, which we gladly accepted for a short tour on the premises. We had the luck of enjoying a live classical music performance on the grounds, interspersed with very bad and inaudible poetry. The other museum we visited was the Brooklyn Museum of Art, a museum as big as the Met, but far less popular (you know, it’s in the middle of Brooklyn, gasp!) The reason was the Star Wars exhibit they had on. I simply had to see it. And Betsy not knowing much about Star Wars at all, gave me the chance to go over it all once more in my mind and tell her, full color, what all this mumbo jumbo was all about.
When we were walking towards the museum, the sun was shining brightly, we were sweating profoundly, we bumped into Tim and Claudia. Tim and Claudia are married and run a web business together. A short while ago, they moved to New York since Tim is working on a project for the High Times, a magazine on the use and possibilities of cannabis.
Claudia was on the exact same plane as Betsy. We already had thought of the idea of contacting Tim and Claudia for a Sunday evening beer. Now, of course, things had gotten even easier. We went for dinner in Chinatown, but everyone seemed to be just too tired to be lively enough for the whole evening. The food was good; we were all dead tired, went home early and almost could only think of sleep. Of course, in the end, I only slept for three hours since I had to get up at four to catch a metro to catch a bus to catch my plane. Saying goodbye is never enjoyable. However, it was far better then only slightly over a week before, when we had already said our goodbyes and felt we had still so much unfinished “business” to do before my leaving. Betsy and I had had a great weekend in New York City and we both seemed as certain as can be that, come my return to the Netherlands, we will fall into each others arms and live happily ever after.
Additionally, I have learned by now that taking a quiet leave is the better option when saying good bye for an extended time. Apart from the fact that my projected 5 week journey is far less than what I experienced in the past, as far as travel time is concerned, if you linger for too long on your departure, it becomes harder and harder to actually say goodbye, realizing more and more that the closeness of “the other” is like a gift from God and that your upcoming journey is only a gift from yourself.
And at four a.m. you’re still basically so much asleep that a whole bunch of hugs and kisses do seem to be the most appropriate.