Venlo and den Bosch, Lisa's Ancestral Lands

Lisa's ancestors came to America a bit later than mine, and she has much more solid information about their origins.  This led us to western, western Germany and then Venlo and den Bosch in the Netherlands.

A comment on Germany.  I love German food, but the worst German food I have ever had I had in Germany.  Enough said about that.

Venlo was a shock coming after Meppel.  It is much larger, and it is a greater mixture of old and new.  Even the old town is less quaint than Meppel.  That's not a complaint, but it is a fact.

Our hotel was directly across the street from the railway station.  Oh, the glories of public transport in this country!  If only ... Well, you know.  If only.

If I leaned past the "Danger!" sign on my window, I could see the lovely fountain at the crest of the roundabout.  At sunset, it could be spectacular.



I soon learned that many/most of the roundabouts -- and the roadways were dotted with roundabouts -- sported art at their mounded cores.  I theorized that the art is to warn drivers that the roundabout is coming, plus it is just ART for art's sake.  I even saw one where the art turned out to be alive:  On one side numerous vertical "structures" appeared flat and whitewashed, but on the reverse side you could see that they were actually living trees split in half vertically with fine limbs sprouting out the tops on the still-rounded sides.  These split trees were growing and they were art.

Walking from the hotel into the old town, we saw this adorable fountain -- a series of water spouts, each going about 12-15 inches high -- in the middle of the street.  In most towns this might be a kiddie fountain.  But in Venlo, we observed a person taking his dog to play in it.  The dog was clearly having a blast, as the water spouts shot up into his belly and mouth.

Doggie play fountain

Netherlanders seem to love their dogs, all kinds of dogs.  I met a friendly (and beautiful) Italian Hunting Hound, and I saw dachshunds of every size, color, and hair length, among others. In fact, Dutch doggies were too numerous to count.   Despite this, the absence of green areas for the dogs to go plus the absence of dog poop in non-green people areas, was flat-out remarkable.  The other thing of note is that I don't believe I ever heard a dog barking anywhere.  In short, Dutch doggies are well behaved.  I am sure my constant commenting on the dogs was an annoyance to Lisa and Robert.  But I missed Berkeley, and I was surrounded by dogs to enjoy vicariously!  Some restaurants permitted dogs (at least in their outdoor seating areas).  Churches were less dog friendly.

's-Hertogenbosch or den Bosch, another of Lisa's family's origins, was even larger than Venlo.  While Lisa went off to find her roots, I spent some time alone there getting lost and found again.  It was delightful; my favorite kind of traveling.

Among the many things I found was a massive "Wednesday market," in the square in front of the Stadhuis (city hall).  Stalls and stalls of foods (cooked for take-away and a staggering array of fruits/vegetables), flowers and plants (many still blooming in September), leathergoods, buttons/zippers and a zillion other sewing notions, TWO (or was it three?) stalls selling fabric by the meter, another staff selling undergarments, and on and on.  I didn't know that the market was just for that day, so I missed my opportunity to get a real, honest-to-Dutch stroopwaffel.  At that point, my only cash was a €50 note that I didn't figure any vendor was going to want to break.  My reluctance was just as well:  I could have spent a lot of Euros at that market.