A man travels the world over in search of what he needs
and returns home to find it.
George Augustus Moore, The Brook Kerith
My dad’s more of a philosopher than a scientist but even so it seems that he may have found a way of avoiding jet lag. To ensure that you’ll hit the ground running after a 24-hour journey across the world, all you have to do is emigrate from your homeland, live in a foreign country for 60 years, learn a new language, raise six kids and reluctantly retire. Then 60 years later when you fly back to the place where it all began, you’ll be so full of joy at being back in your mother country that the concept of jet lag won’t even occur to you, and you’ll spend a week running around the country with the energy of a man a third of your age.
OK, so the evidence may be apocryphal but that’s the way it worked for Dad when he flew in from Australia last week to spend four days in his hometown of Amsterdam and then travel south to see a live performance by his favourite musician in his hometown of Maastricht.
Last Monday morning at 6:00, I was waiting at the arrivals gate for Dad’s flight to come in from Perth via Kuala Lumpur, having myself flown in from Geneva the night before. This was to be the first time I’d seen Dad since I’d spent a month with him in Australia after the sudden death of his second wife eighteen months earlier. I knew that he was a little nervous about travelling alone so I was not just looking forward to seeing him but also anxious to make sure that he was OK after the long journey.
Passengers coming out at Arrivals 2 could exit from one of two doors, so I was standing back a little to ensure that I had a good view of both when a man approached and spoke to me in Dutch. Embarrassed as always about my linguistic incompetence I confessed that I don’t speak Dutch, at which point he seamlessly switched to English and said, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve been watching you since you were sitting over at that café earlier. Your face is so full of love, anticipation and excitement, I just had to come over and ask who it is that you’re waiting for. They’re very lucky to be so well loved.
Soon the man’s wife arrived, as did one very much loved Old Man, and I was relieved to hear that all Dad needed to recover from the flight was a nicotine fix. As we headed outside Dad filled me in on the details of his journey and I realised that I should never have had a moment’s concern about him travelling without a companion; a man of Dad’s charm and chattiness will never travel alone. People had gone out of their way to help him along the journey, showing him to his connecting flight and waiting with him as he collected his luggage at his final destination. Ah yes, I remembered, people are kind.
Once the fix was in we took a train into Amsterdam Centraal and then a taxi to the houseboat I’d got the keys for the night before. The taxi driver entered the one-way street on one side of our canal, the Prinsengracht, and was about to cross the bridge to go back the other way on the side of our houseboat, when Dad joked to him that he could just let us out there and we’d swim across. OK! said the driver, slamming on the brakes and waiting for us to get out. Ah yes, I thought, that Dutch sense of humour! I remember it now!
I’d thought that Dad might be keen to get some rest after his epic journey across the world but the first thing he wanted to do when we got to the houseboat was unpack a gift he’d made for me and carted all the way from Australia. When we were kids, Mum and Dad had a nativity set that they’d set up every year in the fireplace of the house that we all grew up in, the house where Dad still lives now. (By some amazing coincidence of the orientation of the earth, it’s only at Christmas time that a small, rectangular shaft of sunlight shines down the chimney each year and falls directly onto the little baby Jesus in the centre of the scene. To six little Aussie kids in the seventies that seemed like something of a miracle.)
Now that Dad’s finally given in to the joys of retirement one of his hobbies is making nativity sets reminiscent of that one that we all loved as kids. I knew that he was making one for me and I also knew that he was going to the trouble of making it flat-pack so he could carry it in his suitcase. What I didn’t know was that he’d based the structure of my nativity set on the photographs he’d seen of the house that M and I are renting in France. Within minutes of our arrival on the houseboat, Dad had constructed an instantly recognisable Petit Chateau. We left it set up on the kitchen table for the four days we were there in Amsterdam, so that every time we got home to our little houseboat in Holland I also got home to my little house in France.
Once the Petit Chateau was constructed, Dad was keen to get out and soak up some of the vibe of his old hometown. Within minutes of stepping off our houseboat we’d seen the famous Skinny Bridge and stumbled upon the De Magere Brug café-restaurant, which immediately became our local. It may only have been ten o’clock in the morning in Amsterdam but Dad was on Perth time and four o’clock in the afternoon was certainly not too early for his first Dutch gin of the day! It was also his first proper opportunity on this trip to chat with people in his mother tongue; at this little café and in every place we visited in the days that followed, I watched as Dad’s town and its people re-embraced him as one of their own, laughing with him and enveloping him in a warmth and solidarity that’s surely reserved for a returning prodigal son.
One of our first intended ports of call after that liquid sustenance was the street that Dad’s family had lived on until they commenced the five-week-long boat journey that would lead to a lifetime’s stay in Australia in 1952. Dad remembered from his childhood that we could take a No. 13 tram from somewhere near Dam Square. When we looked around for a while and couldn’t see a tram No. 13 Dad started to wonder whether his 60-year-old memories might be muddled, so we got on another tram going vaguely in the right direction. Dad rapidly realised that we weren’t heading back to his old haunts, however, and after a long walk and a short journey on a metro train we were eventually led back to the correct tram – the No. 13 – which took us right to Dad’s old door.
After Dad and I had spent four beautiful days in Amsterdam, the holiday got even better when one of my four gorgeous sisters flew in to join us from her home in Inverness. One of the first things she commented on was that the woman sitting at the table behind us in the airport café looked exactly like Dad’s sister. It was true; everyone in Amsterdam could easily have passed as one of my sisters, my brother, an aunt, uncle or grandparent. The twisted diphthongs and guttural consonants of the Dutch language were a strange and beautiful music to our ears too, reminding us as they did of our childhood.
When my sister and I checked Dad into his room near the Vrijthof Square in Maastricht, we sat around chatting and at one point got onto the subject of passports. I became a British citizen about four years ago but haven’t got around to getting my British passport yet so I still travel on an Australian one, and I also have a Swiss Carte de Legitimation. Dad also has an Australian passport, having decided just before his fifth child was born in 1970 (me, as it turns out), that he should be naturalised Australian to avoid being dragged away from his family in the (however unlikely) event that war should break out in Europe. And my sister, having been born to a pre-naturalisation Dutch father, has been able to claim on that heritage to get a Dutch passport. The irony is that Dad, a fluent Dutch speaker and the most Dutch man you’ll ever meet, is no longer able to get one of those, having renounced his citizenship all those years ago, although I have no doubt that with a few quiet words and a joke or two in the right ear Dad could manage to rectify that.
My now Dutch-Scottish-Aussie sister, (let’s call her Kalinka here, as Dad does), has decided that there’s something other than a nativity set that she’d like to have created for her in Dad’s wood-making workshop. Just as we were leaving Maastricht on our last morning in the Netherlands, she saw some ornamental Amsterdam houses in a shop window, and realised that there could be no more fitting gift from Dad than a symbol of his beloved homeland. She put in her request to Dad and he assures her that when he gets back to Australia her wish will be granted.
I made a wish before I left the Netherlands too, though I’m not sure who will ever be in a position to grant it. My wish is that when I return to my hometown of Northam in 35 years from now, which will be 60 years since I first left, I’ll be welcomed back with the same warmth, joy and enthusiasm that Amsterdam offered to my Dad during our wonderful stay there last week. I think to have any chance of this wish ever being granted I’ll first have to ask Dad for some charm lessons… Oh, well. Happily I have a few years to work on it.
