1996: Wow, The Trains of Europe

     One of the things that impressed me the most during our trip to Europe were the trains.   I had never done much traveling by trains.  I had gone on some long poky train trips in Mexico, were where we sat, rocking back and forth on old hard seats, watching the dry countryside slowly go by.  We felt spoiled, sleeping overnight, in an ancient Pullman Sleeping car. 

    I knew well, the bad reputation of Canada’s Via passenger trains that come through McBride, which are extremely unreliable, arriving either very unexpectedly early, or unexpectedly late.  I knew that when passengers thought they were making good time, the Via train would pull over, sometimes in sight of the destination, and sit on a side rail for 30 minutes to let a freight train go by.

    Anyway, while being aware of those train experiences, I expected that Europe’s trains would be a whole lot superior, but I was blown away at just how much more superior they were.  They were fast, modern, comfortable, convenient, and very efficient.  They ran like railroads were supposed to run, always on time.

    My wife’s experience in Europe had led us to purchase EuroRailPasses, and although expensive, they ended up being worth it.  The passes allowed us to board any train traveling through any European country, without making any reservations.  It was pretty mind blowing.

    I remember one incident, when we arrived at a train station, planning to go somewhere in one direction, then upon discovering that the train departure time was an hour away, we just decided that didn’t want to wait around, so we immediately changed our minds about where we wanted to go that day, and got on a train that was about to leave going to that new destination.   We didn’t have to make a reservation or buy a ticket for the train, we just got on the train and showed our EuroRail Pass.

    On our first European train trip, we got onto the modern car, settled down in the comfortable seats, and being very impressed with it all.  When the ticket clerk came around and asked, we showed him our EuroRailPass, and after looking at it, he said there was a mistake.  “Yikes,” I thought, “What could be wrong?”  

    Then the ticket collector said, “You are in the Second Class Car.  You should be in a First Class car.”  

The Second Class Car was fancy enough for me, but we did gather up our things and walk up to the even more comfortable, First Class Car.

    A lot of Europeans travel to Canada to vacation and I often wonder how they feel after being used to those European trains, and probably expecting much the same train experiences traveling in Canada.  I know it must be a shock to them, to see how our old trains run here.   There is a plan in the works for a fast, modern, efficient train to be built between Calgary and Banff National Park, which I imagine will be closer to the European train experiences.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Yummy Dutch Treats: "Frits with Mayo" and Vla

     On our 1996 trip to Amsterdam, I was introduced two Dutch gastronomical treats that I remember with great fondness and hunger.   While my wife and I were wandering through the streets, we came upon a small food trailer with a crowd of people congregating in front of it.  It was a vendor selling Frits (French fries) with a generous glob of mayonnaise on top of it.  The only condiment I had ever had with my North American, French fries was ketchup, and I found these freshly fried frits topped with mayo, amazingly delicious.  Just now writing about them, makes me hungry.  

    The other food we were introduced to while visiting my sister in Amsterdam is vla.  Dutch vla, also known as vlaflip is a creamy, silky vanilla custard pudding, but what I found unique about it (besides its scrumptious creamy taste) was the fact that it came in milk carton-style containers.  While originally a vanilla flavored puddling, it had evolved, and now also came in chocolate and caramel flavors.  There were rows of Vla cartons lining Dutch grocery shelves.  

    When my sister served us some vla for dessert, she mentioned that vla was very popular with heroin addicts, something that has always stuck in my mind.    You really didn’t have to be addicted to heroin, to also become addicted to vla.  It is probably a good thing vla is not available around here, because it would be something I could probably not pass up in the grocery store.

    I am sure that there were other delicious Dutch treats that were available while we were in Amsterdam, but these two are the ones that are most memorable to me.

        You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1996: Our First Day on the Streets of Amsterdam

      While my wife had grown up in Berlin, I had never been in Europe before, so I found our first day of wandering around through Amsterdam, full of new sights and sounds.  We ambled down the city streets with the tall skinny Dutch buildings on one side of us and canals on the other.  We visited an open market, and bought some cheese and apples for lunch.  

    While walking in Amsterdam one has to be very attentive, because of tremendous number of the bicycles that are zooming by on all of the streets.  Amsterdam has long tried to discourage automobiles, encouraging its residents to use bicycles, buses, and trams.

            Regular bicycle lanes often run adjacent to the sidewalks, and while I was used to watching out for vehicular traffic, I was often caught off guard, not noticing the bicycles speeding toward me, immediately beside the crowded sidewalks.   Several had to “jing-jing” their bells, to get the unobservant tourist out of the way.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Those Dreaded Words: "The Water Pressure is Going Down."

     Last night just at bedtime, my wife spoke those dreaded words, “It looks like our water pressure is going down.”   Those words are something I ever want to hear.   If I am lucky, losing water pressure means I need to change the water filter under the house, but it also can mean that we need to hike up to Sunbeam Falls to change the filter on our waterline intake.  

    I called Nick our neighbor, to see if they were also losing pressure on the waterline, and he said that theirs was also falling.  That confirmed that the problem was with the whole waterline, and we would have to hike up to the falls to change the intake filter.   The falls is always a dangerous place (it cost me a finger) and because it was night, we arranged to wait until this morning’s light to do the work.

    The recent temperatures have been unusually mild +7°C (45°F) for a January in the Interior of BC.   A lot of the snow in the yard has melted, and I was expecting that the ice that usually forms over Sunbeam Falls had also disappeared, but as you can see in the photo above it hadn’t.

    Nick and I weren’t really prepared for breaking through a lot of 6 inch (15cm) thick ice, but that is what we had to do, just to get to the big culvert that collects our water.  The creek was still flowing briskly into our waterline culvert under all of the ice.

    We took turns poking at the ice with a big iron railroad pry bar.  (photo below)

    The ice was hard and didn’t break away easily, but eventually we broke away enough for us to get to our culvert, and pull up the watergate to drain the culvert.  We were tied to a tree for safety, because it is always treacherous working on the steep falls, even in the summer, and trying to stand on the irregular slippery ice that covered everything, made the job even more dangerous.  

    Once we had the water drained from the culvert, Nick climbed into it and removed our intake filter.  The filter’s surface was covered with pine needles and other small detritus, which prevented water from going into our waterline.  

    We replaced the dirty intake filter with a clean one, then lowered the watergate back into place, and watched the flowing water from the falls once again fill our culvert with clear, cold water.  We were not able to remove all of the heavy big chunks of ice that we broke off from the culvert, so they remained floating around the top of the water that filled the culvert.   Once the culvert was again filled with  water, we hiked back down to the truck.  

    Despite all of that early morning exertion, it was very gratifying when I got back home and turned on the tap, and see water coming out of it again.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Arrival in Amsterdam, 1996

    We arrived at Schiphol, the famous Amsterdam airport at 7:15 PM.  It was gray and raining.  We took at nice train to Amsterdam’s Central Station, then a subway.  We walked around in the rain, trying to find Nancy’s house, and after several inquiries, we found her tall, skinny, iconically-shaped, brick Dutch house.  After cheerful greetings, with my sister and her family, Nancy gave us a tour through her heritage-designated house which was built in 1640.  

    Her living room was comfortably and tastefully adorned, and like the rest of her house, very narrow, maybe 16 feet from wall to wall, but deep, with the kitchen at the far end.  A steep, squeaking, wooden staircase in the living room, led to bedrooms on the several upper floors above.   Nancy, who is an Internationally-known knitter “the Queen of Brioche”  https://knitwithfriends.pt/en/blog/speaker/nancymarchant/  used a couple of the smaller upper rooms, for storage of the skeins and skeins of accumulated colorful yarns, and other knitting supplies.

        Above, is a painting that I did of Nancy’s house.  It is the dark-colored house on the right.  If you look carefully, you can see Homer, Nancy’s cat, peeking out of the corner of the window beside the door.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Latest Painting: "Splits The Sky"

     I finished my 77th painting yesterday.  The image shows some striking morning light created by a break in the clouds, illuminating the Cariboo Mountains in the Robson Valley.  I started the painting which consists of 216 two inch squares, at the beginning of August last year, and it took me 120 hours to complete.

    The painting is 24 inches by 36 inches and was done using acrylics on canvas.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Sun Sinking Down The Dore River Valley

     I have blogged before about how I am constantly looking at the natural world for indications of the changing of the seasons.   A couple of days ago I observed another of those markers I look for.  It was the position of the sun as it dips behind the Cariboo Mountains.

    During the winter, the sun is always low on the horizon, and sets far to the left of what you can see in the photo above.   Slowly as the year unwinds, the sun sets further and further to the right of the photo, and by summer, it no longer sets behind the mountains, but at the far end of the Robson Valley.  From our house, one of the things I look for, is when the sun begins to set west of the Dore River Valley, and the other day, when I took this photo, the sun was setting in the cleft of the Dore River Valley. 

    For me, once it begins moving west of the Dore, it is a positive indication that our slow march to spring has begun and the Universe is unfolding the way it should.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca