Europe! You can get anywhere on the train. But of course that means you have to get to the train station.
Having thus determined by 11am that I was on my way to the Netherlands, I asked the reception to call me a taxi. None available till 3pm. Okay…. At least they had the grace not to charge me for the next night and let me stay in the room until the taxi arrived.
Amsterdam, on the other hand, is apparently in high season in April and May and most places were either far away or upwards of $300/night! Finally I found a small BandB, right next to the Orthodox parish of Saint Nicholas! for about $100 – well over my budget but desperate times and all that… It was not a direct booking but I finally heard from the owner and the reservation was confirmed.
I had bought the train ticket online, with the proviso that I was to collect the actual ticket at the station via a kiosk or agent. Audruicq to Lille-Flandres, walk to Lille-Europe (international part of station); Lille-Europe to Bruxelles-Midi; Bruxelles-Midi to Amsterdam Central. I would arrive around 9pm.
So I was on my way. Arriving at the tiny stop of Audruicq, it turned out that the kiosk was only for regional tickets, and the station was locked up tight. A couple of elderly French passengers advised me to throw myself on the mercy of the conductor, and thus we waited for the little train.
There was no conductor, so I was able to continue on to Lille-Flandres without incident, where I collected the rest of my tickets via another, this time functioning, kiosk.
I arrived on time in Amsterdam, with memories of the last time we had been there (on a weekend visa-run from Istanbul in the days one could go out and come back like that) with Issa and Ibrahim baba. I found the BandB, very charming with another nearly impossible staircase (the landlady later confirmed they moved the furniture in through the front windows, I guess using some kind of winch…).
The next morning, early departure for Groningen, a town north of Amsterdam, and a bus, then a walk to Radical Design, where the owner/designers were just finishing lunch. They made me a cup of tea and then we proceeded to the workshop.
It was a good thing I went, because he put it together for me (since I got the braked version it was a bit more complicated) and discovered a few things that needed correcting, which would have caused me no end of grief had I discovered them alone in a provincial hotel room somewhere in France.
I tried it on and walked around the workshop – should I say pranced? – and then it was off to the bus again, this time towing my (empty) chariot.
It’s a good thing the creators are from the Netherlands, as this was an excellent place to get over the feeling of ridiculousness of human-pulling-cart. Everyone rides bikes everywhere and there are all sorts of contraptions attached to them to haul groceries, children, etc., so no one batted an eye when I went off down the street, got on buses, trains, etc. And all the trains have spaces for bikes where there are seats, too, so it was easy to transport.
The to/from the workshop took all of Friday.
Saturday I went on errands to replace a lost microphone – I think I’ll need to do a post reflecting on all the stuff I have managed to lose in the space of less than a month, and what that means, later – buy a knee bandage and a few other things. The electronics store was in a modern part of town full of tall buildings. After the few days in the French and English countryside and long hours in solitude, I felt a bit of a country bumpkin in my long walking skirt and hiking boots. The modern city seemed strange to me, also, as if I had already forgotten this type of place.
In the evening I attended vigil at St Nicholas and was able to visit with Fr. Meletios, who is a good friend of many in California, among others. The parish is big and the services are part in Slavonic, part in Dutch, which, hearing it sung in a framework that I know, always gives me the feeling that it’s in English but I am somehow not understanding, since the cadence and some of the words are close in some respects. All the music was familiar to me and made me quite homesick. The evening service, the incense, the gold icons and the candlelight, and the beautiful choir all bathed me in a spiritual warmth that was welcome.
At the same time, when the deacon came out to cense, I looked at his robes and thought about Byzantium and had the usual reflection that this world inside the church, no matter how much I loved it, was so alien and therefore most likely irrelevant to so many in the world outside.
But then, something reversed in me, so to speak and took me by surprise. Maybe it was the alienation of those big buildings earlier, maybe the genuine response of Fr Meletios when I met him – the first person who knew who I was since I left Anna in Scotland almost three weeks earlier – no matter, but suddenly and perhaps for the first time, I truly felt like this was indeed exactly what was needed, right, and good – ancient vestments, archaic practices and all.
To be in a beautiful place praising God and praying for the world.
After vigil I thought I might eat something (I hadn’t eaten all day) and walked down the trendy streets of the Jordaan neighborhood, but I felt out of place alone on a Saturday evening and was grateful for Uber Eats (yes, in Amsterdam, too), which delivered nice vegetarian Thai to the guesthouse.
On Sunday morning, I left the guesthouse with the help of the landlady to get the chariot and backpack (reconfigured to have the weight in the bottom to sit over the axle) down the narrow stairs. I pushed the chariot down the street to church to attend Liturgy and was able to park it safely inside.
Did I mention that the parish was on the old calendar? That meant it was the Feast of the Annunciation. I had deliberately planned to be at the monastery in Essex before the start of my walk on the Feast on the new calendar, and later, not really having thought about it, I realized that since my goal was to be in Bethlehem for Christmas, this pilgrimage was in some ways a gestation, although I know not yet of what. Now with this new mode of traveling about to begin, I felt like I was being given a gift of a reboot, so to speak, by being able to celebrate this feast once again.
After church, I saddled up (or bridled up, I guess more correctly) and set off for the bus and the train to Maastricht. Although I only went a short way, I felt very encouraged by the walk attached to the chariot. In fact I spent most of the day wondering if I had forgotten something, since I felt so light.
Gratitude!
