We spent about a week in Belgium and the Netherlands, and had a constant feeling of awkward familiarity. Dutch is similar enough to German that I feel I should be able to read and follow it, but of course I can't really. The Antwerp cathedral provides a liturgical pamphlet, and there I was able to spot cognates in the readings: "terug" = "zuruck", "dienaar" = "Diener", 'deel" = "Teil" (and is related to the English "deal"; it is odd to think for a moment that one read that Mary has chosen the better deal). The straight narratives, Genesis and Luke, were almost readable; Paul, with theological reflections, definitely not.
And then there are physical resemblances. Quite a bit of the population of Amsterdam looked like second cousins or shirt-tail relatives that I really should remember. Well, a lot of my ancestors lived in northwestern Germany, not far from the modern border.
The bicycling culture interested us, with persons everywhere on bikes, sometimes with a dog in the basket, children in a tub, or goods in a locking container. I think it more practical for a city such as Amsterdam,which has no visible grades, than for one like Washington, where one has the flat and fill, then a steep grade up to piedmont. I have not in many years seen so many of what we called "girls' bikes", with the lower crossbar to accommodate a skirt.
It was unusually hot in Amsterdam. It occurred to me one night that the last time I regularly slept in hot weather without even a fan would have been the summer of 1980. Then, though, I was in a suburb under tall trees, not in a built up city. I slept, but would have slept better with a fan.
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