In my SPAM folder, I had a little missive from a descendant of the "other" Caspar Kerkhoff. Apparently, the father of this guy read the newspaper article about me in the Meppen paper and was a little put out that I had claimed that my Casper owned 4 Hasestraße. He thought "his" Casper did. So I quickly came up with a little response (with links included) explaining how I know that my Casper owned it. After I sent that, I found another e-mail retracting the previous e-mail and acknowledging that my people owned the house. Woops. Oh, well. :)
But in that 2nd e-mail, the other Kerckhoff said this about what his father assumed, "If the informations my father got are right, both Caspar Ker(c)khoffs didn't like each other very much. Why? We don't know." LMAO! My friend Missie wondered if they fought over the 40 year old wife. Perhaps. But maybe they fought over Lisette. My Casper was born in 1808, their Casper was born in 1818, and my Lisette was born in 1824. Maybe the 2 Caspers went after her, and she chose the old guy. :)
After this little drama, Trish and I were on our way to Amsterdam. Google Maps and Yahoo Maps told us it was about a 4 hour drive. Well, not so much. Just a wee bit longer. And may I say that there are some things that Americans do better than the Germans and the Dutch. Highway signs are one of them. We were lucky if we were given a 3 second advance notice of which exit we needed. More than a couple of times, we had to turn around and go back because we missed our turn off. Or we finally figured out that our Autobahn number had somehow turned into another number.
However, one thing that the Germans are superior in is the truck stop/rest stop place. In the States, I'm just thrilled if a rest stop has a bathroom. Here, it's like a 4 star restaurant. "I'll have a Bitburger and Jägerschnitzel, please." And here's the most surprising part, it's actually good! Plus, they had a really cool seat for me to sit in. I'm easily amused. We could take a lesson from the Germans in this. And we'll trade highway sign knowledge with them. LOL!
At least I finally saw a "real" windmill on our drive. Germany and Holland have a lot of "environmental" windmills for power purposes. But I hadn't seen any like those on postcards. And I was a bit (a lot) disappointed. Finally! A real windmill.
We finally got to the Amsterdam airport, checked in to the hotel, dumped our luggage, dropped the car off, had a drink, got some snacks, and went back to the hotel. All I can say is "I'm Sooooooooo Tired!"
After all of this travel, I can't imagine how our Kerkhoffs made this journey. I was bitching up a blue streak by the end of today. I was tired. I was hungry. I was irritated. BTW, when I say that I was all of these things, just assume that Trish shared in this misery. How on earth did Lisette put up with her journey? I just can't imagine.
"Caspar, Lisette, and Caspar" = "Romeo and Juliet, the German version" ;-) I like it! :-)
ReplyDeleteI imagine Lisette and company could have really used some of their good German beer on that voyage :-)
What a wonderful trip for you in so many ways!