A Walker in the Suburbs

I’m glad to be home, to fall asleep in my own bed and wake up in familiar surroundings. But I wasn’t away long enough for homesickness to set in. This wasn’t true for the 19th-century traveler to Paris. In those days it took long and often torturous weeks at sea to reach the continent, so trips were longer.

As we traveled in France this summer I was reading David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, which is not about the “Hemingway generation” of expats but about an earlier group of Americans bound for the City of Light, beginning in the 1830s. For them, this was the trip of a lifetime, and it was not just for pleasure but for study. Writer James Fenimore Cooper, painter (and later inventor) Samuel Morse, educator Emma Willard and poet and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes.

These and other Americans thrived abroad, but they did get homesick. In fact, it was an American in Paris, John Howard Payne, who wrote the song “Home, Sweet Home.”

“Be it ever so humble,” he wrote, “there’s no place like home.”

(My last glimpse of France as our flight departed from Orly early Tuesday morning)

As we closed in on Dulles Airport yesterday, I studied the interactive map on the screen in front of me. It’s fun to see the progress of the plane, though I found myself lingering over the map of Europe.

What I noticed most was the route taken by our Portuguese Airlines jet. Unlike many flights heading to or from the continent, which hug the Canadian coastline and cross the ocean at a narrower point, our flight struck out boldly across the Atlantic.

We were flying through Lisbon, so that was part of it. And I’m sure that the weather, air traffic, jet stream and other variables were factors. But it also seemed in keeping with the Portuguese, who were some of the first to venture forth into the Atlantic centuries ago. And it matched my go-for-it mood.

It’s invigorating to venture out into the world, to find one’s way out and back again. To find the correct train platform when it’s announced over a staticky intercom in a foreign tongue. To roll with the inevitable delays. It’s a bit like flying over the fathomless depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

(The North Atlantic, viewed from the Portuguese island of Madeira.)

As we wing our way back to the New World, I can’t resist a backward glance at the old one. I’ve been a “Europhile” since I first traveled to the continent as a wide-eyed 20-year-old. This trip has done nothing to dispel that. If anything, it’s intensified it.

We’ve had the chance to see new sights and visit old friends, an unbeatable combination. My only regret is that I can’t stay longer. I don’t want to be greedy, though.

I return with many memories and images. An Alsatian village seen from the Wine Trail. The glistening western facade of the newly restored Notre Dame. Flowers spilling from a window box on the Herengracht. Rembrandt’s self-portrait as the Apostle Saint Paul.

But mostly my mind is filled with Europeans, the old friends and the new ones, even just the fellow travelers. It’s a different world over here. I’ll miss it when we’re back.

Resistance was futile. On my last day in the Netherlands I had to see a windmill. Most are in the countryside, but I’d heard of one in the city so I set out on foot to find it.

I started from the Maritime Museum, where Tom was spending the morning, and headed southwest in the general direction of the De Gooyer Windmill. I quickly realized I was on the wrong street, and the directions I’d copied before leaving the hotel (to conserve data) were making no sense. But once I saw a few street names and figured out my general location I was able to make my way slowly to the landmark.

When I finally found it, I took in the windmill from all angles, snapping some shots from across the street, others from a different direction. The molen wasn’t exactly standing in a field of tulips; there were cars, motorcycles and bicycles zipping around it. But it was there, in all its glory.

A tourism cliché? You betcha. But at least I’m planning no posts on wooden shoes.

You can stroll the canals and cruise the pedestrian zones, but when you’re tired of those, Amsterdam offers another option: hidden courtyards.

The first we discovered wasn’t all that hidden, given the quasi-bouncer guy who allowed us in. We quickly learned that only 50 people are allowed in the Begijnhof courtyard at a time because this quiet enclave of homes and churches (there are two of them, a Catholic and Protestant) is still occupied.

The Begijnhof began with a group of women who lived in community to help the needy. Women still live there, and when I visited the place its underlying calm was punctuated by the sound of workmen hammering away, keeping the place in repair. The oldest house in Amsterdam is located within this quiet space, built in 1528. (I’ll let that sink in a minute … a house, still standing, built almost five centuries ago.)

Yesterday, we saw another secret-seeming place — St. Andrew’s Courtyard, one of several hofjes (subsidized residences) around the city. To enter we pushed on what seemed like the door to a private home. But it opened to reveal a hallway lined in Delft tile leading to a sweet garden square.

Amsterdam is a busy, buzzing, captivating city. These quiet places provide contrast and sustenance. After visiting them, I felt calm, peaceful … and ready to roll again.

Photographs aren’t allowed inside the Anne Frank House, so I took notes. So many heartbreaking details: the movie star photos Anne tacked to the wall, including one of American actor Ray Milland. The growth chart in faint pencil, similar to the one on the inside of our pantry door back home. Anne was only 13 when her family went into hiding in the “secret annex” of a house near our hotel in Amsterdam.

And then there were the words themselves, Anne’s words. The tour focuses on them, as it should. It was through words that Anne became an icon of the Holocaust, the single individual we can mourn when the sheer number of victims — six million — overwhelms us. As someone who’s kept a journal since high school, I got goosebumps when I saw the diary with its red plaid pages.

“Lieve [Dear] Kitty,” Anne began every entry. Her penmanship was fluid and even, and her margins were small. She used every inch of paper, a girl after my own heart! On one of her journal pages, she wrote these words:

“I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?”

She did become a writer, of course, with a fame that far exceeds anything she might have dreamed of. But what a price she had to pay.

(An exterior shot of Anne Frank’s house, as noted on the small plaque to the right of the door.)