Meeting Truus

Monday I went to Delft to meet up with my friend Becky from AWC so she could introduce me Truus. Truus is a 64 year old Dutch woman who had been a member of AWC and took Becky and her husband under her wing when they first moved here at the same time I moved here. From the first day I met Becky, she told me she had a lady she wanted me to meet because she'd be a good person for me to know in the Netherlands.

Truus and her husband lived in Saudi Arabi for 20 years on a compound with mostly Americans, her sister and husband immigrated to Chicago years ago, and her oldest son married an American out of a family they knew in Saudi. He is a KLM pilot and they live here but his wife is not integrating...been here almost 5 years and hasn't completed an inburgering course or knows the language, and only watches US tv. Yes, Becky was right, Truus was very happy to meet an American here who can speak some Dutch and is inburgered and I was happy to meet an open Dutch woman who knows Americans well but is echte (real) Dutch like Arjan. (Too many of the American woman married to Dutchies that I've met at AWC have what Arjan and I refer to as "Americanized" Dutch families that do things like celebrate Christmas with presents and a big deal and celebrate Valentines Day.)

They returned to the Netherlands 7 years ago when her husband retired but once he turned 65 he received all kinds of job offers, they can pay him less, and is back in Saudi for 6 months where the family will be going to visit him next month.

Truus was going to take us to her favorite restaurant for lunch, but remembered it was Monday and it's closed, so she had the usual Dutch spread of assorted breads, spreads, and things for bread. (I'll cover that more in future posts of the typical Dutch meals.) Then first she called her American daughter-in-law to see if she wanted to come over but she had a sick child so couldn't come then she called her daughter who works at the Royal Delft Factory, the only one left and it's not doing well. Her daughter wasn't working but called back and said if her Mom would pick her up, she'd go along and show us around. I was really excited because Arjan has no interest in going there.

That took us on a road trip to what she called the "new" part of Delft where her daughter lives. It was built in the early 1980's with totally poor planning. It's a large area with a mix of "social" housing and owner housing...all row houses with narrow one way streets and one way in and one way out and lots of speed bumps and Truus is a speed demon, which thankfully she warned me about. (A real change from my slow driving Arjan.) Truus told us at least 5x how hard it is for emergency vehicles to get in and around in that area, which you can see.

We picked up Caroline who totally confirms what the Language Development textbook I taught out of said...if children learn a 2nd language early, they will speak both languages with the right accents. This 39 year old speaks perfect American English, normal accent, and then I almost fell over when I heard her speak perfect Nederlands. How she can turn the hard "g" and "r"'s off and on is a miracle to me and speak English with no Dutch accent. She is in sales at the factory and said her contract is up on June 1 and she's not expecting them to renew it due to business so she's already searching for another job, which is not going to be easy in these times.

As always when visiting a place, it's best to go with a native or someone in the know of the place, especially when they can get you in for free:), and it was no different here. Caroline was able to tell us so much about Delftware and it was interesting to learn just how popular and how used Delftware has been. Probably what amazed me most was the life sized Rembrandt's Night Watch painting in Delft tiles. She explained how they projected the painting on a wall, charcoal traced it, broke it into tile pieces and artists painted the tiles going from the outer tiles to the inside tiles.

It was a nice visit and Truus dropped us off at the train station, driving by their house that was near the train station which the city bought from them 10 years ago to put the train underground but it's still there...some of the houses have started to be boarded up so it looks like there's progress but Truus is still mad that they moved them and then haven't done anything. Truus said she'll see me in April, after she returns from Saudi, and then she'll take me on a drive around Delft. How fun...

Delft is one of my favorite cities, you'll learn I have so many, so it'll be fun to see and learn more about it then the touristy center.

One day I'm going to write about the American cars, old American cars, I see here but when we we got in the car to leave the factory I couldn't believe this car that was parked in front of us...


Sorry I forgot to enlarge it. It's a CA licence plate MI6BOND with a Chicago Bears rim. I told them I think it's someone military related, making it easier to get their car here, who moved to CA from Chicago. I have only seen one other CA plate here and it was an old, old plate on an old car. You'll be seeing that picture.

Here's a picture of the Delft architecture that was done in the 1800's-early 1900's. This garden area showed off the different styles that could be done.