"Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, Northwest Airlines flight 64 is now ready to begin descent into Amsterdam, where the temperature is 13 degrees Celcius and the local time is 5:15am thus Sunday, June 1".One might think that this journey began by descending into Schipol International in Amsterdam, but it most certainly did not. It began nearly 17 hours earlier with a mild headache and a rude awakening. You might think that I would be so excited to leave on this trip that I would not have slept and would be laying in bed awaiting the justification for rising that an alarm would provide. However, I had been up rather late on Friday, and was thus exhausted at 6am on Saturday. Oops.
Uncle Gary Aikema drove Kyle and I to Buffalo. Largely uneventful. Except for the fact that I remembered that I had forgotten to email my relatives in Holland to ask them for their phone number-- a problem, since I had told them I would call them as soon as we arrived in Groningen. Another oops.
After a short flight, we arrived in JFK airport (west of Manhattan Island, New York) at 11:15 am, retreived our bags, and contemplated how we would get to Newark Airport (in New Jersey, which is apparently a different state). This was something I had sort of neglected to plan. We were presented with the option of taking an Airport Shuttle bus at $24US per person. I found this too expensive.
Therefore, we (meaning, I, foolish Joshua) thought we had plenty of time to take the subway to Grand Central Station in downtown Manhattan, chill for an hour, and then take a shuttle to Newark. We thus boarded the "Airtrain" which promised to deliver us from the airport to the nearest subway station (Howard Beach Station). However, we boarded the train which takes passengers in circles around the airport instead of the one that leaves the airport. (Is a pattern emerging for anyone?)
Well, we eventually got on the subway (at a steep $7 per person). And this is where the fun began. A third of the way to Grand Central, three kids (about 6, 12, and 14) boarded our train car. One shouted "What time is it?" and the others answered "Show time!" They placed a boom box on the floor and started belting the tunes. Their timing was rather poor, though, and just as they started to break dance, the train came to a stop at a station and people rudely but understandably walked in and out of their dance floor.
After the train began to go again, they had better luck. These kids were ridiculously skilled, and Kyle and I (as well as most of the black people on the train car) showed our appreciation. The youngest kid did a one-armed handstand and maintained his balance even as the car came to a rather abrupt stop. When the show was over, the kids asked for donations. I had a $1 bill in my pocket, and gave it to them.
How should that event have made me feel? Who were these kids and where was their money going? I appreciated their industry but hated that they needed to be so industrious at such a young age. Was someone directing them and taking their money? What was the (visibly unimpressed) black woman sitting across from me thinking about the whole scenario?
I didn't have enough time to process all this, because we were finally on Manhattan Island and ready to get off our train. By this time it was 1:30 and our flight to Amsterdam was scheduled to leave at 4:15pm. We were nowhere near Newark.
Kyle suggested that we go to the surface and take a taxi. There was one waiting for us (or at least I like to think it was waiting for us) when we ascended the escalator. He popped his trunk, we got in, said "Newark Airport-- Northwest Airlines" and we were off.
It was Kyle's first time in a taxi (I know, I couldn't believe it either) and he loved it. We saw New York City like we couldn't have seen it from the subway or from a shuttle bus. Our driver's name was Bartzos Christos, a former professional pool player from Greece who had been living in New York for 40 years since the age of 17. We drove past the former site of the World Trade Centers (see below), past Central Park, and then through the Holland tunnel (see picture above) to New Jersey.
We got to Newark at 2:05, paid the ($60!!) taxi fare, and checked our luggage with the unfortunate, terribly beleaguered Northwest Airlines staff, a process which took approximately forever and a half. Our seats had not been properly assigned, so Kyle and I had no official seats until we were told where we were sitting by boarding officials at the gate.
Kyle sat in 24C, with two noisy, newspaper-shuffling, bright light-requiring journalists. I sat in 39C, at the back of the aircraft right near the bathrooms with an engineering consultant and his wife, who spilled a small bottle of red wine down her white pants midway through dinner (for Rosalie and Lee, it was a Chilean cab sauv-- Dona Dominga, I do believe?). She was frustrated that no one on board had scissors, because she was embarrassed and wanted to cut her pinkish pant legs off to make shorts.
It was a long flight, and Kyle and I got about an hour of sleep apiece.
When we landed in Schiphol, we immediately collected our luggage and I proceeded to freak out about trying to contact Annemarie and Harm Frans. The phone number I had retrieved from inside sources was a little off. I found an internet cafe where I bought 15 minutes of internet access for 3 Euros. I emailed our relatives, bought four danishes from a grocery store, and ran down an escalator to meet back up with Kyle and board the train to Groningen.
On the train ride, we saw sheep.
Harm & Annemarie Frans & family
Groningen is beautiful. Our relatives are wonderful. They were waiting for us at the train station and drove us through the gorgeous countryside to their quaint house in the tiny village of Huizinge. After settling in, we walked through the village. We saw a striking brick church built in the 12th century. I saw the very house where my grandmother grew up. We saw fields with endless rows of potatoes, learned to say a quick "Moi" (pronounced "moy") when neighbours passed us on their bicycles, and generally enjoyed the historic beauty of small-town Northern Holland.
I saw the place where my great grandparents were buried.
This place completely filled me with peace. If God can turn my disorganization into a blessing on our trip, if His eye is on the sparrow, if he sent us his Holy Lamb, then he can bless those three kids performing on New York City subways.
