George Esser

Staying with relatives on the German border allowed us to visit Germany a few times; by foot and op de fiets (on the bicycle.) Where we stayed is by Ijzerlo which is between Aalten and Dinxperlo; both about 5km on each side. The interesting thing is that each of these three towns has its own distinct dialect. Not huge, but the locals know which town you are from.

We rode our bikes to Dinxperlo and went to a store to buy a good Dutch knife. Janet wanted to buy one for each of our four children. I told her I wanted two for myself. She didn’t think I needed two (my (Janet’s) comment – “what does he need 2 little knives for? I’ve never seen him peel a potato in my life!) but decided to also get two for herself. So €100 later, we walked out with 8 good Dutch knives. They are actually made in Germany and can be difficult to find. They are definitely a staple in most Dutch-Canadian kitchen. The funny thing is that they look so cheap and they rust, but they are razor sharp. The blade on Janet’s old one is half the width it once was because it is so worn down from usage. She also uses a second one that she got from Tante Gerda 3 years ago, but she doesn’t ever want to be without a Dutch knife.

Dinxperlo is right on the Germany border with one side of one street in the Netherlands and the other side in Germany. I am not sure how this worked during the war but my understanding is that it was this way before the war.

We have a relationship with 3 young Germans; Mark Wehrmann, Julius Se and Matthias Schuster. Our son Joshua went on a German exchange program in high school. During that time, Mark stayed with us for three months. Then Josh went to Germany for 3 months to stay with Mark. On Josh’s last day, he somehow had a “last day party” in which Matthias and Julius attended. From what I can figure out Josh had some contact with Matthias and Julius was Matthias’s cousin who met Josh for the first time, on the last day. Well, being hospitable Josh announced that “If you ever want to come to Canada, you have a place to stay.” A number of months later, Julius and Matthias took Josh up on the offer, bought their tickets and announced their arrival. The only problem was that Josh was now working in the oil fields in Alberta Canada and was about a 4 hour plane ride away. So Janet and I had the privilege of receiving them into our home.

They stayed two weeks and just somehow got sucked into our whirlwind of a life. During those two weeks, we were headed for St Stevens New Brunswick and dragged them along. They had a great time hanging out with all the youth and got to see a lot more of Canada than most “2 week” visitors.

A few years later, Matthias asked if he could stay a couple of months in the summer. We were delighted to have him and it ended up being a pivotal point in his life. He ended up becoming a Christian on that trip along with some other life shaping experiences. Again he just got sucked up into our whirlwind and we dragged him along. One memorable trip was when he went with us on our annual wilderness camping trip.

We met the 3 long lost friends in Xanten at a Roman archaeological park. We also met Melissa Hettinga and her new love Carlos (él es de España.) She had met the Germans during their two week whirlwind stay at our house and also went with us to New Brunswick. Melissa has been living in Germany for the past year and has kept up some relationship with our German friends. It was great to see her and meet Carlos. We liked Carlos and seemed like a nice decent guy.

After the park, Mark had to leave for home. The rest of us ended up at Julius and Matthias Oma (Oma is Dutch and German for grandmother.) Apparently they “requested” the contents of the meal that included 5 different kinds of meat and stamppot met wortelen en uien (potatoes “stomped or mashed down with carrots and onions”). We then were treated to an apple pie and coffee.

Their Oma (who is 83)lives about 50km from Aalten, where Janet’s relatives live. Janet’s relatives speak a dialect of Dutch called Achterhoek or Plaat. Janet found it really interesting that she could converse with their Oma in Plaat as their Oma spoke a dialect of German that was also called Plaat. While not exactly the same,”” Janet was in there “like a dirty shirt” praten(talking)away with Oma. Oma was a very nice person and it was great to see that Matthias and Julius had a great relationship with their Oma. When we said good-bye to her, we said “hartelyk bedankt” for the great meal (translates “a big thank-you from the heart) and she sweetly said that she glad to do it and that she did it from her heart. You could tell that she just loved to have her grandsons over and was so happy to be able to cook a meal for them and their friends.

She lives only a half a kilometer from the Rhine and we ended up talking a bit about the war and the trauma that everyone went through, including the Germans, who didn’t like at all what had happened. It was made clearer to us how the average citizen there was also a victim of what was going on. They spoke about the fact that all of a sudden, in one day, they had to be enemies with people who were their friends for years. It is not something that the people chose to do, but it was chosen for them. It felt good that we could sit around a table together and be friends and feel love and affection for each other, where there has been a lot of pain in recent history with the 2 people groups. Our three young German friends, Mark, Matthias, and Julius, hold a special place in our hearts, that’s for sure!
It somehow even felt like a time of healing for us, as just days before our visit, I stood before my uncle’s grave in Bergen-op-Zoom where all the Canadian soldiers who died in the war are buried, and cried tears over what had happened to him. I am named after him and am honoured to own his war medals and personal paraphernalia.

Well it was time to head back to the Netherlands as we had to be in Apeldoorn the next day to meet people who were going to help us market the product in the Netherlands.

We arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday but have been too busy to write. Not because I couldn’t squeeze it in, but because we are taking this as a rest. We get to sleep in, drink coffee and Nederland spreken (speak Dutch.)

We flew from Ireland to Eindhoven Netherlands via Ryanair which is a low cost carrier. It is so low cost that you have to have your boarding ticket with you before you arrive at the airport, or they charge you €35 each to print it up. It only costs €16 euro to fly, but by the time you add 1-20Kg bag (€35) and various sundry items it still adds up. There are no seats assigned, so when you get on, you just find a couple of seats as it is similar to a bus.

We were picked up by a distant relative, Bert Esser whom I met around 10 years ago. There were 2 brothers in the 1800s and from one brother came my father’s side and from the other brother came Bert’s side. It is amazing how similar Bert is to my father in looks and mannerisms. From there we went to see my Uncle George Esser’s grave site in Bergen op Zoom. This was a moving experience and I will write about it separately.

 

Next, we travelled to the Achterhoek where Janet’s parents are from. We are staying on the farm where her mother was born which is now owned by her mother’s brother and his wife; Henk and Gerda Tolkamp. The farm is between Aalten and Dinxperlo on 149 Dinxperlosestraatweg. The farm is right on the German/Netherlands border as you can see on this satellite photo. I think it is really different how jagged the border is.

The farm is a varken boerderij (pig farm) and the house was originally built in 1924. In those days the one side of the house was the living quarters for the people, and the other side was where they kept the animals. Janet and I are sleeping in a former pig pen. They built separate barns for the animals around 1980 so there is no evidence that we are sleeping in a former varken hok (pig hutch). They now have more than 3500 pigs on the farm.

 
My Nederlands is niet zo goed (Dutch is not so good) but I am surprising myself how well I am getting along with conversing in Dutch. Janet is rusty but fairly fluent and if you gave her a month here, she would be very fluent. I love to watch her converse in Dutch. If you know her, you know how personable she is and how family orientated she is. She just loves being here with her family. When she was 18 years old, she spent 3 months in Holland in this area and lived with her Grandmother. She also was here, with her father and her sister Selene in 2009, so this is all fairly familiar to her.

Her relatives are all very nice and hospitable. The feed us well and let us feel right at home. We went for a walked out the back of the farm, through the bush and crossed the German border which consists of just another farm.

 

We also went out for a horse and buggy ride. Her uncle has a Friesian horse and took us for a long ride through the back of many farms. Janet was in control of the reigns for a while and then I had a turn dictating commands to the old hay burner. It was very leuk (low’k i.e. nice) seeing all the countryside by a walking/trotting horse.

We leave Saturday morning to meet up with 3 young German guys, (Matthias Schuster, Mark Wehrmann and Julius Se) who stayed at our house for various lengths of stay. (Melissa Hettinga may also join us).They are all somehow connected with our son Joshua’s German exchange program a number of years ago. We plan on going to Xanten and meet up at the Roman Museum.

So that is all for now.

 

Yesterday we arrived in Dublin after missing a night of sleep. While we did catch a few zzzz’s on the plane, it was not very restful. We arrived at 10am Dublin time; five hours ahead of our time at home. We found a taxi and got to our hotel where we ended up taking a long nap. We had trouble getting to sleep after that and I finally went down around 1:30am and got up at around 10:30am.

Today we took a train and a tram to Dublin City Centre. My goal was to get my Vodafone SIM card to work on my cell phone and find a printer to print up our brochures. I can now receive calls but my data plan doesn’t work yet. It seems like it always takes hours for things that should “just work.”

Dublin has some great spots including places like Grafton St. It is a street with lots of people and no vehicles. There are also lots of shops and street entertainment.

Here is a video link of some street performers playing music. There is another street performer who did a little jig and was very worthy of capturing on video. You will see her at the end. For some reason, I cannot get this to be an embedded video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC1Lh-nknP0

There were also a selection of statue-street-performers who made it very difficult to tell if they were real or fake. They were dress in all gray and also had gray leather face and arm masks on. If you looked very close, all you could see is the odd eye movement. After throwing a Euro in their basket, which caused them to make a “thank you” hand gesture, we figured it out.

 

Another interesting thing that happened was this homeless lady who was pushing a baby stroller with two babies in it, on a much crowed street. As I was passing by, she picked me out the crowd asking me for me for help while ignoring the others around us. I.e. I seemed to be the only one she approached for help. It was like there was a sign on me “Willing to help homeless people,” at least that is was Janet perceived. I did reach in and give her a few Euros.

We finally did find a print shop and get our brochures in the queue to be printed tomorrow.

 

We went to “Health Matters”, a health food store which was our first retail store in Europe that carried our products. They still sell our products consistently and the customers seem to love it and come back for more. It was great to see our product on the shelf.

So tomorrow will be a chill day to enjoy.