DINNER:
- 2 Soup of the day: soup with wurstel fat
- Summer stew with chicken thighs, mushrooms, shallots and cream
1 September 2010 - DELFT
DELFT - Netherland
After four days, we are now used to having wet feet as soon as we put shoes on. The mats of the rear seats of the car have turned into a shoe rack that welcomes our shoes stuffed with newspaper sheets and an unspecified number of socks clotted in a shapeless heap of mud, cut grass and water, lots of water.
Since I have now sold that car, I can't swear that the new owner didn't find any war remnants from that trip.
Mud, dirty socks, humidity and cold are now a core component of our camping experience. Being in a constant challenge between our bodies chronically hungry, our rational mind, the irrational one, and nature, we now realize how little things can radically change the mood of the day. Buying a couple of extra shower tokens can switch from being a huge mistake that affects the daily spending budget, to being an unexpected and very happy morning gift.
I can see how, being able to take a hot shower in the morning is an incredible privilege that puts me in a good mood for the whole day (or at least until I have to pack the humidity-soaked tent).
NEW DAY
Today we woke up in Dordrecht with PaperRyo (our guardian duck) who probably thought about himself as a chicken. After packing the tent, we have breakfast with a gentleman who strikes up a conversation (with Pollo, I am more aloof). He was Swiss and he came by bike. We started talking about this and that, until he asked us about our tent: how it opens, how it closes, how much it weighs, how much it costs...
This guy told us that last summer he went cycling in Iceland with his daughter. But how can an old man (I believe in his 70s) go on holiday by bike?
However, today the weather has held up good. We went to Delft and asked for a spot at the only campsite marked in our four booklets. When we arrive at the place we are welcomed by two chicks (slightly dumb girls, not the bird) and one tells us that, given the rain from the past days, the ground is damp. We check the place and the mud level is huge. We try our luck with another campsite that we saw signed on the road but we find out that it’s a fancy last generation one, with a supermarket and a swimming pool. In the end, following some rickety signs, we arrive at the last campsite of the four which is located inside a farm with yelling owners with farmer’s boots.
We tried to rent bikes, but they couldn’t find the keys for the locks, so we walked from the campsite to the center of Delft (good 4km, 2,5 miles).
Delft churches are impressive and beautiful from the outside, but a little bare inside. We went up to the tower of the new church and we left some gas while going down the spiral stairs. Shame to have
discovered that the smell tends to go down also so we had to move as fast as possible, leaving an elderly couple going upstairs to enjoy the aroma.
Soon after visiting the old church and searching in vain for a hair dryer, we went to a bar. I (Pollo) had to order a hot chocolate and a warm milk, so I said “Hot milk and a chocolate, please” Too bad that the waitress made me ask it three times before asking me: “In which languages?” And again, I told her: “In english, a hot milk and a hot chocolate, please” and only then she seemed to understand… Well, look at that! And then Bruttone, the nice guy, also gave her 10 cents as a tip. We went back to the campsite really destroyed.
BRUTTONE'S NOTES:
This mushroom cream with chicken is as light as a barbecue...
After a careful research mission, I am pleased to say that we have Dulb the Lightbulb back on the team.
The local beer ``Gulpener`` (beer) is excellent. ”
Here in Holland the old folks in the campsites use the camper or the caravan only for sleeping. They spend their days sitting right in front of it, with a chair on each side of the table, reading books or newspapers careless of the ticking clock. Every so often one of the two gets up, enters the camper, and comes out with a steaming cup of coffee, sits on his chair and starts reading again. The ritual is repeated from dawn to dusk and it's only interspersed with a couple of light meals, eaten without making any noise, and without any excessive exchange of words between the two. Thus they spend their days perfectly respecting Newton's first law of motion which states that ``an object with no net force acting on it remains at rest or moves with constant velocity in a straight line``. Probably the external force they are waiting for is the two of us and our lack of skill in opening a tent which is made for switching between closed to opened as soon as you remove the latch that keeps it closed.
Scene of the day: “when the tent opens, it explodes on my face and I’m able to see the two old folks laughing out loud before they go back into a vigilant coma.”
