First Stroll across Naarden

Diary

The alarm raged in my ear, and knowing that the next step in my patented Jet-Lag Survival Method was a life-or-death one, I somehow lugged my lazy butt out of the nice, nice, nice down blankets. Shoes on before I changed my mind, downstairs to the hotel bar for coffee, down the hatch!

Time to walk the 5 km to the new workplace. I hear that it's scenic enough.

Now some readers of these hallowed pages will consider this, well...retentive, but from my Illinois office last week I logged onto the wonderful http://www.maporama.com site, I printed relatively detailed maps of the hotel vicinity, Naarden (where I will work), and Bussum (where I will live), and then I taped them together to make a supermap that would just fit in the black-and-pewter Euro-style satchel that I found, amazingly, at the Schaumburg Target--for $19.

So, I abandoned my little hotele-op-de-polders, and with map and camera in satchel and satchel in hand, I loped east to the medieval village of Naarden and then a kilometer farther east on Huizerstraatweg to the place where I will work. The distances were short, and the round trip over there and back to the hotel was easy--not exactly a lot of hills.

Here are some pictures!...

The main driving/riding entrance to my new worksite (once I am graced with a car and/or bicylcle again, that is). Huizerstraatweg 28, Naarden. Whatever the interior looks like...I'm sure I've never enjoyed a more gracious entryway.
 

Panorama of the west corner of Naarden. The history of Naarden is strange and bloody and beautiful, all at the same time, a combination that, personally, I associate more with Corsica than with rural Netherlands.
 

Indulge me for just a moment, would you? Unworthy as this scene would be on a postcard, the location is important. This is on the fietspad between Naarden and Naardenbos to its west. The A1, the main motorway in the area, stretches across the background, and the white specks are sheep.

This photo is taken from the exactly the point where, last December when I was interviewing for this job, I got caught in a freezing windstorm without adequate clothing, and very far from shelter. Five days later, back home in Florida, I came down with a case of the flu that put me in the emergency room twice over three days. The first time it was the crash cart and paddles, just in case. It could have been worse--had it been two months later, I would no doubt have been quarantined for SARS.

Anyway, the weather was better this time (as you can see).