Whisper House Press

No promises about regular posting this year. Just a hope to keep up a bit of a travelogue. Photos included.

My son and I arrived yesterday (July 9th 2024) in Holland and checked into our hostel. We toured the city on foot and, by 4pm, had walked a full five miles. With aching feet and confused circadian rhythms, we took to the hostel and rested until morning.

Watching my kid experience this city (his first outside the United States) is better than advertised, as high as my hopes have been these last six months. I told him I’m interested to hear what he notices as new or different from what he’s used to seeing, and we had some good conversations about the hooks and family names up near or at the tops of buildings, the bronze plaques marking the deportations and murders of Jews in the city, and the ubiquity of boats and bicycles (the boats outnumber the cars, and the bikes outnumber the people). He also noticed that everything is made of brick: the buildings, the streets, the sidewalks… this was something I never attended to outside of Bruges.

“Is Berlin as cool as Amsterdam?” he asked near the end of the first day.

Keep up with our travelogue here as the four-week trip unfolds.

– steve