KOCKENGEN

July 20-23, 2015

After side tours to Rotterdam, Zeeuws Vlaanderen and Brabant we are back on our home base in Kockengen, which is a dot on the map in central Holland in the province of Utrecht. It has served us excellently, because from here we have found no destinations that were more than an hour and a half car ride away. Our ‘home away from home’ is a converted farm house in a landscape that is prototypical Dutch. It is low land, dissected by canals and ditches, which is still in agricultural use for livestock. It is definitely situated below sea level and part of the Netherlands that would be inundated by the sea if the country was not protected by an elaborate system of dikes, locks and pumping stations. Most windmills here were built not for milling but for the pumping of water away from the low laying areas. As secluded as it is, the highway from Amsterdam to Utrecht is only 5 km away and from there any destination in the Netherlands is within easy reach. Just outside the city of Utrecht lays Oudenrijn, the major intersection of highways going West-East and North-South.

The house in Kockengen is owned by the widow of a fraternity brother of mine. She is spending here summer in France at her property at Lescure Jaoul. Thus we have the (guest) house to ourselves. It could not be better for a relaxed vacation and home coming.

When I think of the Netherlands, and the reasons why we left for America, I think of the crowdedness, the congestion and therefore the lack of living and breathing space. But back here for this pilgrimage, I find the country much less confined than I remember it even though the population has grown from 13 million to over 16 million. Admittedly we have not spent much time in the ‘Randstad’, the triangle between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, where the roads are indeed congested and living space comes at a premium. For this trip, we have, intentionally, focused on the islands of unspoiled natural beauty that still exist and are jealously protected by the people living there with help of the government. One of those beauty spots was Zeeuws Vlaanderen, so was Brabant, or at least the ‘boswachterij Ulvenhout’ where we biked from country estate to country estate on unpaved roads and bike paths. We discovered another one, named the ‘Utrechtse Heuvelrug’ a sandy, hilly ridge east to southeast of the city of Utrecht.

Another typical Dutch landscape we found when we entered the ‘Flevopolder’ one of the land reclamations from the ‘IJsselmeer’. Here the land is as flat as a pancake and roads are straightlined and intersect at 90 degree angles as is only possible in the prairie or in newly reclaimed land. Boring but very efficient for the creation of large farms and efficient traffic flow. We drove ( in 75 minutes) from Kockengen to the Flevopolder, now 53 years old, to visit with one of the few old friends mentioned in my book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, A First Immigration Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’ who lives on a golf course in Dronten. The landscape here is still too immature to be of exceptional beauty, but serene and quiet it was. We accomplished another goal of the pilgrimage: to catch up with old friends we had not seen in the longest time.

Now we are leaving our home base in Kockengen for a week and a half to head North and visit the province of Drenthe and, later on, the barrier island of Vlieland. Our first stop on this journey will be Epe, in the province of Gelderland, where we will visit with Jacco Eltingh and his family. Jacco is one of a handful of Dutch top tennis players, who won major championships with his playing partner Johan Haarhuis. We know Jacco from when he was a budding young talent, participating in ATP tournaments, who stayed with us when the tour brought him to the ATP tournament in Tampa, FL. It promises to be a nice drive. The weather is sunny, the temperature a mild 70 degrees and we will see another beauty spot of Holland, named ‘de Veluwe’, rich in forests and dunes. We will not dwell in Epe too long, because our destination for the next four days is Diever, in the province of Drenthe, where my brother-in-law and fraternity brother Kees lives with his wife Wietske. High expectations: a few years ago, Kees was able to buy the house that the village of Diever built for its mayor, some 100 years ago.

I must be looking at the Netherlands with different eyes than I used 35 years ago, because I can find no flaws with the style and manner of living here. It all looks so clean, well-organized and prosperous. Air and water are clean. Everyone seems to be doing well and the mood is generally optimistic. I love the fact that tax and gratuity are always included in the menu prices at restaurants: you know that you will pay exactly as advertised. With the Euro at about $1.10 we find prices here very comparable with what we are used to at home. The burden of taxation does not appear to be weighing too heavy on the population, even though the price of gasoline, at about Euro 1.65 per liter, is about two and a half times the price in Cleveland. And the Dutch pay a value-add-tax of 21-26% on just about anything they buy but is nearly invisible since it is always included in the price as advertised. We see no visible poverty here, no homeless or mentally deranged roaming the streets. It seems that in the Netherlands citizens get real value for the taxes they pay!