Finding my roots
And there it was, standing in a swamp, close to a jail in a industrial area. The ''Merwede te Huis" or "van der Merwe Castel" ruins. It is almost impossible to realistically think that it is a 13th century castle and has therefore been standing (or part of it) for 700 years. I have seen a few castles in Ireland and England, but this is the first one I saw that has patterns in the exterior walls. It must be the van der Merwe talent that came throught :). This is of course in the lovely town of Dordrecht. On my way here from Arnhem I stopped by in the two towns.The first one was Den Bosch(s'-Hertogenbosch). Here I entered and found the town centre turned into a market place. This apparently happens every wednesday and saturday and is any travellers dream. Lovely stalls with fresh fruit, sweet stroopwafels, choclates, nuts and cruchy stuff, bread and almost anything else you can think of, added with the friendlyness of the dutch. I made a few interesting contacts here as one was with a political promoter. After he very finely confinced me why I should vote I took the change and slipped in the sentence "Ik ben van Zuid-Afrika". He then laughed and he told me how he respected Mister Mandela on how well he handled the situation in South-Africa.When talked for a while, it is not the first time that someone told me how good an example South-Africa is to the rest of the world in that aspect. One cannot help but feel proud. Another was in a shop that sells cartoon merchandise, and specializing in "Tin Tin"or "Kuifje,in dutch" artifacts. Lovely little shop with cuddly "Snowy the dog" dolls that you can buy for your girlfriend and every Tin Tin book you can by for you dad. And a even friendlier manager. I'm banging my head because I can not remember her name but she was number 4385, website is www.cartoonclassics.nl Breda, the second town has a lovely park you walk through to the the town centre . A very nice cathedral to take a few photo's of and nice streets to stroll around in. On wednesday there is a 2nd hand book store in the town centre, I unfortunately only caught it as the people where packing up, but still nice to stroll around in. Last night I then arrived in Dordrecht. Making a phone call to find out how to get to my hostel, I ended up travelling the last part of my journey on the back of scooter!The hostel is a bit out of town and you have to take a taxi from the last busstop. The bus driver did call me a taxi but it never showed up! (although two did pass me by....) An generous old man on a scooter saw me standing on the side of the cold road and after I told him in broken dutch of my situation he said "Spring op Jonge!" - "Jump on young man!" Another to point for the dutch! Despite finding my roots today I also cycled around the intriging town. I visited the "Simon van Gijn" house museum. A definate must for anyone. I've been around.....and this it the best house museum that I have seen. Very well preserved artifacts,furniture and lifestyle you can even smell it. My favourite part is the "speelgoed zolder", any boy's dream. I bought myself a still realiable antique compass from and also walked into a very nice and cosy gallery with works of Wim Bals. This artist uses animals in a realistic but imaginative way to mimic human behaviour almost childlike behaviour. Very amusing, colourfull and just plain happy paintings.When I'm rich one day I'm gonna get me one, www.veenvendelbosch.nl, and I told this to Koos van Veen no. 4425. I very nice two days, tomorrow I plan to go to the Biesbosch and Kinderdijk park to capture some genuine Windmills, I end my day on 4460.
