This is Lucie (left, in yellow), me, and Eva (right) visiting the schoen huis at the Veenpark near Emmen. Veenpark means "peat park", as the area was once covered by a few dozen feet of peat, now a museum. Lucie is my dad's cousin (their mothers were sisters), and taking the photo is Lucie's husband Gerjan. Eva is their daughter. The Grevinks have graciously welcomed me into their home, and over the past week answered my many queries about the Netherlands, all the while patiently translating for me and being my first teachers of the Dutch language.

Ik begrijp het niet...

It's been approximately 20 years since I took on the challenge of learning a new language (the high school Latin and university Ojibwe classes don't count, seeing as one of those languages is dead and the other I never heard spoken outside my classroom), and I had forgotten how hard it really is. In the French classes of my grade school, at least the teacher spoke slowly and with a poor accent; here in the Netherlands, everyone's words are a blur of guttural g's and ch's and strange-sounding vowels. I can barely read the Dutch subtitles flashing across the screen when the TV show is an English one, let alone figure out which Dutch word means what. I've learned that German shows are even worse, as the spoken words in German are suspiciously similar to the written Dutch ones, and this conspires to create some nasty habits in my already-laughable pronunciation -- ich bin ein Berliner, anyone?

According to my gracious hosts, my Dutch is improving every day, but to me some days feel like I'm sliding backwards. It's true that I already have a vocabulary of a few hundred words, though only a handful of them naturally fly off my tongue ("please'' and ''thank you'' being the ones I can recite in my sleep), it's true that I can make up short Dick and Jane sentences at will and usually to the laughter of those around me, it's true that Dutch is very much like English and I'm constantly surprised to ask "what's the word for...?" and hear that it's pretty much exactly the same as the English one, tongue-tying pronunciation aside. I can read bus-stop ads and newspaper headlines and street signs and get the gist of what they mean, but it's the everyday conversation that's the killer. How can these words on paper sound so different when they're spoken aloud? How can I never get the accent on the right syllable when I try a word for the first time? And how can I not remember that "ij" is ah-ee and "ui" is ehh with your lips pursed as in oo, and g is hchch like you're clearing your throat except when before n or in some arbitrary word when it's actually pronounced as an English hard g? Getting these sounds to be second-nature is proving to be the hardest part of learning to speak Dutch and there are times I despair that I will always sound like an English-speaking person mangling this new language, never a truly native speaker.

All angst-ridden prose aside, I am enjoying it here quite a bit and even the daily language grind is fun because the Dutch are wonderfully adaptable and accepting people. So many of the English-like words in Dutch are there because they really are English words, adapted into Dutch over the years. There's none of the chest-thumping "courriel" versus "e-mail"debate as in France, or constant dubbing of foreign TV shows and movies like in Germany. The time and energy spent by other countries protecting and glorifying their language is simply spent speaking and living it here in the Netherlands. And from what I can see, it's a popular and thriving language, spoken by people who would rather look outwards to the rest of the world than inwards at themselves. I think this attitude shows why such a tiny country has survived as it has, through wars and floods and ever-changing world powers. The people just go with it, and get on with it. I had always wondered why Den Haag was the seat for all things international in the world, and why Maastricht was the place that the treaty for the European Council was created. But now I know.

Tioraidh an-drasda, Breatuinn

This is my last day in the UK before undertaking the next leg of my journey in the Netherlands. Still don't have this packing thing down pat, I keep changing how I organise everything hoping to hit upon something that works! But I did survive my 10 days on the road in England and Scotland not having lost or forgotten anything important (losing my mind doesn't count, especially when in crowded rail stations, and forgetting my manners is par for the course once in a while). It was surprisingly freeing to be beholden only to my backpack, no car or phone or permanent address -- this is something I've never really experienced before and I have to say I liked it. Not that I want to be a nomad for the rest of my life, but I should really do this "backpacking" thing more often.

Scotland was a wild and woolly place, full of "heery coos"(as our thickly-accented guide would say, the rest of us would say Highland cows), lush green hills and always the hint of rain if not driving gales. After spending a few days in Edinburgh, I jumped on a three-day tour of the Highlands with 15 other people and was pleasantly surprised to be part of a really good group, with people from five different continents ranging in age from early 20s to mid-30s. We drove from Edinburgh north on the first day, stopping at a range of historical and natural Scottish landmarks and our guide was a walking Scottish history book, at least the kind they teach in Scotland; I suspect the English view of history is quite different. This did not surprise me, though, because after years of watching Willy on the Simpsons I fully expected to get a passionate, proud, and slightly cranky member of the Independence for Scotland brigade -- after all, the brochure promised "real Scottish guides!" One thing he did do well was tell stories, and we heard a lot of great tales of battles, clan feuds, legends and fairy, oops, faerie fables. No need for a television on our bus as our guide single-handed entertained us the entire time with his vast knowledge of Scotland's culture and environment.

Our second day was spent on the Isle of Skye, once home to 40,000 thriving clan Highlanders, now down to less than 10,000 folks eking out a living through tourism (the number one industry there), whisky, and of course sheep. But it is a magical place, with its craggy peaks, paths worn down over thousands of years of use through the hills and the ever-present peat underfoot. Despite the fact that literally every bed and breakfast or "guest house" we passed had no vacancy, we ran into very few tourists and that helped retain the perception and atmosphere of Skye as a wild and natural place. Some of our group were not the best prepared for the off-road walks we did up the slopes of the countryside, but they soldiered on and were rewarded with wonderful views of the sea and islands around us. On the roads and in the towns, all the signs were bilingual with English and Gaelic; even in the supermarket the aisles were marked with Gaelic. The attempt to keep the this dying language alive, however, was most noticeable in the aisle with chocolate and pop: "seoclaid" and words that translated as "drinks without alcohol".

Our third day we returned to Edinburgh, checking out Loch Ness on the way, which was right up there in the kitschy tourism department with Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. I did get to see the monster, albeit the large plastic one residing in the pond beside the visitors' centre. We arrived back in the city in time for dinner and the next day I headed out on my own again, flying back to London and taking the train to Ipswich where I am now organising myself for Holland. There awaits another adventure, to be sure, but hopefully one that's easier on the wallet! Britain, for all its charm and culture, is what everyone warned me it would be: expensive. If I came back here to live I'd definitely need a great job to pay the bills.

By the way, the title of this posting is Gaelic for "farewell, Britain".

Maryka

Gardyloo

I'm sitting in a hostel in Edinburgh right now, I couldn't get a private room (it's the end of festival season and things are really booked up here) so had to settle for a four-bed dorm. Having lived by myself for about five years now, I don't really relish the idea of sharing a room, but maybe it will be good for me -- force me to socialise a bit or at least learn people's names. Generally I'm happy to just come and go, merely waving at fellow hostellers, but that's not obviously the best if you want to meet people. But truthfully, I'm pretty happy just doing my own thing and I don't miss the social interaction too much. Hmm, what does this say about me? (rhetorical question, don't answer!) I guess I just prefer to be in control of my social interactions, I hate it when people try to engage me in conversation when I'm not interested. So hopefully the four-bed dorm thing works out. At worst, I'll be in earplug land for the next three nights.

There's a guy playing guitar right next to me as I'm on the computer, free music to type to! The hostel environment reminds me of summer camp, all free love and happy people and sleeping in bunk beds. I'm feeling a bit old for this kind of thing these days and from the looks of the crowd here, I actually am a bit old. Edinburgh is a funny place, a little more rough around the edges than London (and that makes me wonder what the hell Glasgow must be like, Edinburgh's supposedly more earthy cousin) and lots of action on the streets of the rowdy variety. In the daytime, it's all kilts and bagpipes and shop after shop proffering wool scarves and tartan skirts to the middle-class tourists, each storefront hiding a huge shelf full of Scotch whiskey at the back. At night, it turns into a city of youngsters prowling the streets in their low-cut jeans and belly shirts, shouting from the top of a double-decker bus and scuffling on the sidewalks, cursing in that thick Scottish brogue. I have to laugh when I hear them; having been a teenager myself during the Mike Myers years on SNL, the Scottish accent is more quaint and funny to me than anything else. I suppose the day that a pack of these teenagers tries to swarm me for my moneybelt, I'll feel differently.

Otherwise, Edinburgh is a jumbled mess of modern and old and really old. Buildings have been built on top of other buildings, buried beneath or still part of the current-day structure, depending on what worked at the time. Tonight I did a tour of a 17th century "close", which were a series of narrow passageways perpendicular to the main street that held long 8-storey buildings where people lived (think of long farm buildings like greenhouses, lined up one next to the other, then translate that into tall buildings). The term "gardyloo" comes from the old days when people would throw the contents of their toilet bucket out the window to run down the street into the lake; as a look-out-below, they would yell that word (bastardised from the French "gardez l'eau"). Some of these closes still exist, albeit with modern plumbing, and it's fascinating to see how all these people could have lived in such narrowly spaced and tightly contained squalor. The plague of the mid-17th century originated in Edinburgh in these closes, and it's no wonder it wiped out such a huge part of the population. See the following link for more interesting stuff on closes: http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/MaryKing/welcome.html

Tomorrow, it's off to the famous castle on the hill here, followed by a visit to the Museum of Scotland. The weather has been holding out admirably, which meant I spent most of today outside enjoying the sunshine as I climbed up the bluffs at the eastern end of the city for a wonderful view. This can't last, being Scotland, and I'm taking advantage of it while I can!

Maryka