Marvelous Maastricht

On Friday Rita and Els took us to the railway station where we said goodbye.  Nancy and I were both a bit teary.  We have come to love them.  But we were off to Maastricht.  While on the train I chatted with the gentleman in the seat across from me.  Turns out he's Dutch, but his wife is from Vancouver, B.C. where they live in the summer.  When in Canada they attend the Christian Reformed Church she grew up in.  Very nice guy.  Small world.

We transferred in Utrecht to the train to Maastricht.  I promise that at some point I will stop remarking on this, but I am continually impressed by the cognitive dissonance between the U.S., where we're constantly being told how taxes must alway come down or it will be economic death for the country, and the Netherlands.  Here people are apparently so deeply unenlightened economically that they flourish.  People look prosperous, the infrastructure is superb.  I'm sure people have not all maxed out their credit cards and suspect the national debt is under control.  Taxes are high.  Everyone has health care. What's wrong with this picture?  Poor ignorant things.

We're in Maastricht primarily to visit Erik and Sylvia.  For those of you who don't know them they are friends of our oldest and his wife, Chris and Jen.  Fortunately for us, they are also our friends.  They have two beautiful children, Sadie and Nora, as you shall see.

Erik works for Expedia.  He also paints and gardens and has completely redone the first floor and grounds of their home.  He makes me tired just listening to what he has done, rather like Chris.  Here's Erik's painting of, as best I can learn, a gorilla contemplating the essence of what it is to be human.

And here's Sadie who fell asleep in the car.

A few photos of the redone grounds on yet another exquisite evening.

Sadie, in contrast to her dad, is into sculpture.

And here's Nora.

 And here they are together.

Sadie's patiently explaining something to her dad.

Here she's looking at an airliner leaving contrails high in the sky.  She's saying "Goodbye, goodbye".

We brought Sadie some Dutch books which we later read together giving her an opportunity to teach me some Dutch.

We're hoping against hope that Erik and Sylvia will go out to dinner this evening or next thereby giving us a chance to do some babysitting which, truth to tell, we miss.