HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM VIENNA

We had a leisurely dinner at Wienerwald.  The only thing I did was buy a jar or Preisselbeeren (similar to cranberries) to add to our meal.  We went with our friends, Jon and Karen Green, who are serving a mission here in Vienna.

MOM TRIES TO CONFESS (1972)

In 1972 Mom sometimes walked Bill, a 2nd grader, to school.  One day she came home quite distraught.  She had gone into a beautiful church on the way home just to look around and a priest came along and kept trying to shove her into the confessional booth. She was finally able to escape without confessing. 

After our visit to Bill's former school we passed a church just up the steps from the school.  We think we found the church where this terrible incident occurred!  It's the only church between the school and our apartment.

The beautiful church Maria am Gestade

We had quizzed Mom about what exactly had happened and what she had said.  She told us the priest asked her if he could help her and she had told him she was just looking.  But instead of saying it in German she had used Dutch, "eve kijken" (I'm just looking).  We decided he must have thought she was speaking Viennese dialect and had said "i will beichten" which could sound a lot like "eve kijken" and means "I want to confess".  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.  The priest probably went home with a funny story just like Mom did.

The infamous confessional booth

BILL FINDS HIS SCHOOL

Sept. 2015

Jeanne, Bill & Laurie at our 9172  Vienna apartment building

When our family lived in Vienna in 1972 my brother Bill was 7 years old and attended a Viennese elementary school in the 1st district.  
When he visited us here in September I wanted to see if he could find that school.  I had tried to find it but failed because I had only gone there once in 1972 to pick him up and couldn't remember much about it. 
So we had him start at our apartment on Tuchlauben and walk the route he thought he took to get to his school.  Sure enough, he walked right to it, even though it was 44 years ago since he attended there!
He had so many funny stories to tell.  He was beat up a few times and thinks it was because he wore American jeans and tennis shoes which were coveted items then and hard to get unless you were rich and had been to the U.S.  
Fortunately he had a picture of himself standing in front of his school that we used to make absolutely sure we were at the right place.  The building is still a school but has had a few changes made to it.  Can you see what has changed?

Bill was swinging around a sign pole on the way home from school in 1972 and it fell over!  He was accused of breaking it and police were involved.....

           Bill and Laurie ride the bumper cars at Prater, then and now.

Bill turned 8 years old while we lived in Vienna and
was baptized in this font in the Boeklinstrasse church building. The funny looking back wall is a mosaic.

FUNNY HYMNS

My sister, Laurie, and her son, Taylor were in church with us in Vienna in 2011.  When we sang the song "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel" they couldn't stop laughing.  

Where the English chorus says "Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along...."  the German version puts the words "frisch und frank" in place of "push along".  The words literally mean "fresh and strong", but don't you think they sound like two brothers, Frisch and Frank?

An even funnier version of this song was sung in Relief Society in Holland when we attended church there in October.  It's called

"Steek uw handen uit de mouw" or "Stick your hands out of your sleeves"  (I imagine this expresses the idea of rolling up your sleeves and getting to work).  Isn't that cute?

WHY I LOVE VINCENT VAN GOGH

Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait in Straw Hat

One of the first artists I came to know was Vincent van Gogh. Because I lived in Holland as a child at the impressionable (no pun intended) age of thirteen and saw his work in person I really bonded with it.
Then in high school I read Irving Stone's biography of van Gogh, Lust for Life.  I was hooked from then on.  I love the thick paint and emotional brush strokes.  I love seeing the paintings in real life up close and feeling as if I can see him applying the paint with great energy and passion.  I am still drawn to impressionist art. 

VIncent van Gogh, Starry Night

Here is a story of a basketball coach whose life was changed by Vincent van Gogh:

Coach Richard “Digger” Phelps, Notre Dame Basketball coach 1971 – 1991

“Winning is Not the Only Thing”, Parade Magazine (10 July 1983)

I had a very narrow vision of the world, and when I became a basketball coach, I guess my vision became even narrower. I lived basketball 365 days a year. When I became a basketball coach at Notre Dame, I thought I had gone to heaven. Then, in 1975, I took my first trip to Europe. It’s hard to explain the impact, but all of a sudden, I saw another world. I went to museums – in Paris, London, Amsterdam – and I was overwhelmed by what I saw. I couldn’t absorb all of the painters, so I fell in love with van Gogh. I studied his art. I studied his life, his struggles, his sorrows. I stopped being consumed by basketball. The change was visible. I took down the plaques and trophies in my office and I put up paintings. I switched off the hard rock music and tuned in to classical. I even gave up the colorful sports jackets that had become my trademark and bought three-piece suits. I still care very much about basketball. I still want to win. But there are so many other things in the world, so many things just as important, more important. Give me a choice now between winning the NCAA championship – for the first time in my career – and getting a van Gogh for my wall, and I’m going to have to do some very heavy thinking.

HOLLAND -- A DAY OF MEMORIES

16 October 2015  Saturday

Today we spent the day in Wageningen where I went to school in 1964.  My school building was just blocks from our Bed & Breakfast so we drove past and noticed it was open.  It is now a private music school.  Roger talked me into going inside and asking to look around.  A lot of memories flooded over me.  It was a hard year attending that Gymnasium.  I was in the first form and the regular students took so many subjects:  History, Dutch, English, French, Greek, Biology, Algebra, Geometry, Gymnastics and Art. My school at home required me to bring along my American textbooks and study them, so I did not take all the classes the others students did.  I took Algebra, Geometry, Art, Biology, History, Gymnastics and for awhile, English.  I dropped English when it became apparent that the teacher spent too much time mocking my American English and I wasn't getting anything out of the class.  So I would go up into the turret of the building and study my American texts during those classes.

I was pretty shy, didn't know Dutch yet and the students were not friendly to me.  I'm sure it was hard for them to want to befriend someone who was shy and didn't know their language.  Our desks were two-seaters and we had the same seat partner for most classes. My partner was a large girl named Jos.  She didn't seem to be pleased to be placed next to me instead of a Dutch girl and ignored me most of the time. 

At the beginning of the year I rode my bike the 4 kilometers to school from Renkum where we lived.  But as the weather got colder and the skies darker in the morning, Dad would drop me off on his way to his office at the University of Wageningen.  He would first drop off Marolyn and Janet at their elementary school and then drive to my school.  Since their school started a half hour earlier than mine it meant that I had to stand outside for half an hour.  So Dad began driving me around the countryside until it was time for me to go to school.  We saw such interesting things--barns attached to houses, farmers wearing real wooden shoes out working in their fields, charming little villages.  And Dad would give me pep talks while we drove.  I'm sure this cut into his work time where he had important projects to do, but I didn't think of it then.

My Gymnasium -- my homeroom is the left window on the bottom floor
You can see the turret on the far right where I studied my American textbooks

                                             The entrance to my scary school

                                                  Hallway inside my school

  In the stairwell of my school

Then Roger and I went to the church square in downtown Renkum to the open market for lunch.  We couldn't find parking that allowed us to pay with coins or that would take our credit card. We drove through many parking lots and finally had to go very far from the square where we finally found a parking machine we could use.  I know this was divine intervention.  As we locked the car and turned to walk to the church I looked straight across a small canal at a view I hadn't seen since I was 13 years old!  My dad's office!  I have visited Renkum several times but never before had been able to find this building that hasn't been used by the university for many years.

I was instantly in tears.  There's a lot of story to that office.  We had a really neat gym in our school with fun equipment that we played lots of games on.  I loved that class and wished we had it every day.  Sometime after the weather turned cold we stopped using that gym and rode our bikes down to the University of Wageningen to use their gym building.  This building just happened to be right next to the building where Dad had his office!

This worked for me as long as I had my bike.  But I never figured out exactly when we would be having gym class and it was getting too cold to ride my bike (most the other students didn't live in another town like I did so they always rode their bikes and of course, they were Dutch! Dutch children ride bikes from almost as soon as they can walk and no weather stops them.

So on the days when I didn't have my bike my poor seatmate, Jos, would have to PUMP ME to the gym on the back of her bike.  I could tell it was hard for her and she hated it.  I was also sure she hated me.  So then I started noticing that sometimes I had a free hour before or after gym class when I was to work on my American schoolwork.  This was perfect!  I could walk to Dad's office during that hour and save Jos from having to pump me.  I would arrive a little early and spend the time reading in Dad's office.  Or if my free hour was after gym I could stay with Dad for awhile and then walk back to school.  Jos was spared from pumping me!  And wasn't Dad lucky that his daughter could spend time with him (oh, I wonder what he would say about this if I could ask him.  Was he embarrassed of having a terribly high-maintenance daughter?  What did his colleagues think about this arrangement?  Did they approve of my being there?)

So as I stood in the parking lot looking across the canal at Dad's office building with the little gym building next to it I couldn't help remembering all that Dad did for me to get me through that difficult Dutch year.  Not only did he drive me around and build up my courage to face another day at school and help me for hours and hours at night with my math homework.  He also had to have me hang around his office a couple of times every week.  I will always be grateful for having such a devoted father.

                        The view I saw of the former University of Wageningen.

                          Dad's building is on the left, my gym on the right behind the blue truck

Close-up of my gym building

       Dad's building -- his office was in the short addition on the right side

HOLLAND -- THE RIJKSMUSEUM

15 October 2015   Friday

The last time I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I was 13 years old.  The only thing I remember is my mother pointing out the huge painting called "Nightwatch" and her telling me it was by the famous artist, Rembrandt.

It was so exciting to be able to go back over 40 years later.  Here are some other of my favorite paintings on display there.

Vermeer, The Milkmaid

Rembrandt, Apostle Paul

                         












                   

Vermeer, The Voorstadt Harbour in Dordrecht

Vermeer, The Little Street

THE FIXER-UPPERS

We have been doing a lot of repairing, cleaning and fixing-up of this apartment lately. Things only get fixed or cleaned if the current tenants notice and want to do it or know how to.  Since we like fixing and cleaning, aren't they lucky to have us come every other year?  Ha, ha, ha.

Our latest project was to buy an IKEA curtain rod, drag it home on the bus and subway (it was taller than the bus and subway doors so quite fun to get in and out of with).  Then our little cheap drill I had bought at Obi (what do you expect for 11 Euros?) couldn't handle drilling the holes in the plaster walls.  So we had to borrow a heavy-duty drill from Peter Mayrl at church and lug it home.  Then we put up our ladder that wasn't quite long enough to use without feeling like we would plunge off of it while trying to reach the high walls (we estimate they are about 11 feet high) to drill the holes.  But we did it and got the rod installed in our living room. 

The whole project started because in 2011 we took down the bedroom curtains because they didn't come close to blocking out enough light from the park below so that we could sleep.  We got BYU to pay for some better curtains and stuffed the old ones in a cupboard.  I wrote a note to future directors that they could hang the curtains in the living room if they wanted.  No one ever did.  So we decided it would be a fun project and would give us a little more privacy at night and add hominess and cut down on echoes.

Since there were 4 curtain panels I had to sew the pairs together so they could be opened and closed more easily.  Then I also had to hem them.  They were very long so it took a lot of time to do by hand.  But I got it done and we proudly hung them and are so pleased with ourselves.

Didn't you want to know all of this?

   THE NEW LIVING ROOM CURTAINS

 CLOSE-UP OF THE "INTERESTING" FABRIC

Our other projects include replacing lost knobs on dressers and cupboards, ordering parts from IKEA to fix the kitchen kickboards that have been constantly falling over onto the floor and even caused a huge chip on the dishwasher door when it caught on them. We realized the IKEA dishwasher door is made of painted cardboard so no wonder it broke so easily.  But it looks terrible taped back together and we wanted to prevent further problems.   We discovered that all the attachment parts on the inside of the kickboards had broken off so we ordered new ones and installed them.  Problem solved!

We have cleaned pigeon droppings off our window ledges and thanks to Uncle Bill's suggestion rubbed a layer of Vick's Vapor Rub on them to deter the pigeons landing there anymore.  We sure hope it works.  So far, so good.

When we got here the entire front of our building was covered in heavy plastic with scaffolding all the way to the top of the building.  Workers were repairing and re-painting the stucco. We could not see out through the heavy plastic so it was terribly dreary inside.  It took until the middle of September to finish and then all the front windows were covered with drops of plaster.  So we also had a lot of windows to wash.  Some of them open outwards so it was quite a job to clean them without plunging to our deaths.  It always feels good to have clean windows!

So there's your report from the Vienna Fixer-Uppers.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK: a tour of the apartment

HOLLAND !!! DAY 2 AMSTERDAM

October 15, 2015  Friday

AMSTERDAM and THE VAN GOGH MUSEUM

It's about an hour and a half drive to Amsterdam from Wageningen so we headed there on Saturday to go to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.

                                            Amsterdam -- it was a very rainy day

                                          Canal in Amsterdam

     I wanted to buy some Delftware at this store, but the smallest plate was 95 Euros.

                   The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

                   SOME OF MY FAVORITE VAN GOGH PAINTINGS WE SAW:





               Potato Eaters

        Irises

                 The Sower

Sunflowers

          The Yellow House

One of my favorite Van Gogh paintings, "Starry Night", isn't in Amsterdam,

 but rather in the Modern Art Museum in New York City.

We were told that people are always asking at the museum for "The Scream".

They have to tell them it's not a Van Gogh.  I think people have so often

seen the combined "Starry Night" and "The Scream" picture that they

think it's a Van Gogh.

While we were at the museum there was a special exhibit of

Munch and Van Gogh that had one of the four versions of "The Scream".

(A week earlier I had seen another version of "The Scream" in Vienna).

The real Van Gogh "Starry Night"

Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

Someone put the two together to make a very scary scene.

WE GO TO HOLLAND!!! DAY 1

OCTOBER 14, 2015

We had a free weekend in the middle of our third research trip.  Since we were close to Holland Roger decided to take me there to the town I lived in as a 14 year-old.  We booked a bed and breakfast in Wageningen on-line and it turned out to be a really fun place.  Our room was on the top floor of a house on the Dutch historical register. 

                     B & B Guesthouse, Hinkeloordseweg 13, Wageningen, The Netherlands

                    Our room was the top one on the left twin dormer.

                Looking down the very steep Dutch-style stairs (almost like climbing a ladder)

                       Our charming room

                       As children my sisters and I called rooms like these "tent rooms"

                      The only drawback was that we had to go out into the hall to get to our bathroom. 

                    But it was modern and spacious.

                    In the morning I looked out our window and saw the Gymnasium I attended for a year.

                      It's the building with the pointy tower.

             Our hostess served us a breakfast in her dining room that was so generous I couldn't eat it all.

                    Although you can't tell from the picture, the dishes were pretty.

               We asked for hot cocoa and it was served flavored with anise (a popular flavor in Holland).