August 2014 Trip: Amsterdam

A couple of years ago my sister suggested that we take Mom to the Lorraine region of France for her 80th birthday in 2013. A number of our Mennonite forebears hailed from this area, and we thought Mom would enjoy another visit to the ancestral homeland, which she had been to once before. Because I was already planning to go to London for the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention, we all agreed that we would combine the trips, which would still get us over there before Mom turned 81. Eventually Mom said she'd like to spend a couple of days in Amsterdam as well so she could see the Van Gogh Museum and the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum. Thus it was that on August 3 the three of us met in the Amsterdam airport, because I flew over on a separate flight from theirs. We were about to discover a vibrant but peaceful city that was the perfect place to acclimatize ourselves to the new time zone.

( Refuge in a Refugee City ... )