| What are we doing?
March 23rd, 2003 Across the Netherlands from Top to Toe: Ommen-Rijssen  You can be miles away, but there are things that will still stick out a mile. That surpass reason, logic, philosophy, ideology, and the reality of things. The national railways should never have been privatized. KPN Telecom should not be allowed to exist. To prevent worse, one sometimes must wage war. A queen is better than a president. And Shell Hammerstein should never have been sold.
 For the fact that this has happened, and this most profitable gasstation-location, near Amstelveen, is now a Q8-pump, is a disaster. It kills a worthy tradition of daystart, for the Wandelsoc.. Gone are the great assortment, of Isostar, properly packed sandwiches, combustively stimulating coffee, and highly eroticizing checkout lady. Gone, therefore, are the animating truck drivers. And the Wandelsoc.. Along with, if not all, at least some of that profitability.
 What, namely, do we get in return? Empty shelves, weak grounds, doughy ham-and-cheese slices and a mouth way too loud. From a vulgar fatso, playing king in a dying establishment. "I'd watch it with the photography around here if I were you. I believe that's illegal without prior permission of the press department. Used to be like that when this was still Shell too." GO TO HELL, YOU FILTHY ROTTEN BASTARD! LEARN TO SERVE! 'ERE! HOLE IN YER EFFIN' LEG, SOD! BANG!
 We are way too decent for that, of course. So we amiably say "Thank you" and "Have a nice day". But we shall never eat there again. And we immediately drive on to the closest Shell, to dramatically increase its turnover still, as pertaining to the Isostar. We will decide for ourselves what it is we buy, you ass-hole. There. At that Shell, by the way, the homecoming was complete: friendly smiling, good-natured, correct and swift service, in a clean shop with a great assortment, and no complaints, about the photography. Marco van Zijntergen, who had only driven by that Q8 another time in my interest, so that I could tell the difference, knew it already: the Royal Dutch isn't that for nothing.
 Contented after all, therefore, we drove onward, through delightful morning quiet, at great speed, to Ommen. Somewhat earlier than we had for a long time now, since this was going to be a long march, as our -leader had announced. Much to our joy. For those teenie-weenie stretches of the bygone two editions do not get us properly warmed up for the official marching season, which now is not far off.
 In all fairness, we must admit this was not entirely van der Schelden MA's fault: it had much more to do with the emptiness we were walking through. When villages are few and far between, this demands a change of course: for it is hard departing, at night, from nowhere at all. But: contented is what we were, very much so, when we parked Marco's Polo, under the bridge across the Vecht. And Henk had, moreover, acted swiftly, as a result of last time's events: we drove past the sign 'Flater', and did not meet the others there, but on the far side of the river, in hotel De Zon (The Sun).
 And this is a typical Wandelsoc.-haunt, barring 1 detail: its stylish interior. Reason, almost, for us and for Harm, him being the first one we ran into there, to proceed elsewhere. But Schelden is often put in the right after all, and was so in this case. You sometimes have to give them some time, the establishments he picks, but you will end up undisappointed.
 As was the case now: the businesslike feel of the interior was completely compensated, by a grand view of the other side of the river, fine coffee, and a most attentive waitress who, moreover, smiled seductively and went through life in a well-lined way, much to Peter Weij's joy. "My colleague tells me there are to be six of you? Shall I shift a table and put some chairs around it then?" She had hardly finished doing so, or in came Weij, with Henk, Bert van Prijzen, Raymond de Gisser and Albert van Geyningen.
 Van Heijningen who, in a fresh fit of madness, had pinned to his chest what are most probably the two largest of his medals: two identical, enormous ones of the 'Holland-Israël'-friendshipmarch, with large lengths of ribbon attached. Beautiful political incorrectness, and roguishly clanging too. Henk, of course, didn't like this one bit (it also led to a much disapproving look on his face), but it does tally with the rules he himself once cooked up: you can, after all, on a Wandelsoc.-uniform, wear anything you want, as long as you've earned it. Moreover, and by the way, Albert does not yet wear a Wandelsoc.-uniform, but his own variant of it. So this was funny, all the more so since Marco contributed to it all too. He showed up in a counterpolar Wandelsoc.-garb today: green on top, brown below.
 Yes very funny, but a load of bullshit too, of course. The sooner these gentlemen appear in decent uniform dress again, the better it is, Schelden's quite right in that. Doesn't, of course, alter the fact that he'll then have to chip in himself for Albert, for agreement binds. There were, by the by, more fashion gags. For Weij was in great shape too. He'd not only fitted hisself out with hip sunglasses, but also knotted the green Palestinian shawl around his head that he had had with him before to "maintain a bit of that Gretta-feeling".
 Yes, if there's anybody who knows how to be politically incorrect... ...then it is Peter Weij. I could definitely learn something from that. Or run away with it. As we did, shortly after leaving Hotel de Zon. We made a dash for it just as Weij, runnning too, had almost caught up again, having fallen behind as he mailed some witty letters to fellow ex-commandoes, so that they'd be asking themselves why in God's name they would receive mail from Ommen. Typical commando-jokes, just like the running of, although I do believe I thought of that myself. And you're not supposed to laugh at your own jokes, but funny it definitely was. We hadn't yet finished giggling by the time Peter, loudly yelling "All' akhbar!", caught up with us. Yes yes, this is how the notion of 'best man', on this, the road to Besthmen, gained an entirely new meaning.
 The cow-around-the-corner failed to understand most of this as, having fallen behind myself whilst fighting the controls of my camera, I ran past it. Yes, as a photographer you definitely get your exercise, during practice marches like this one. Not that I wouldn't have otherwise. For the part that now followed would turn out to be a foretaste of the rest of the day: real, wild heather, hilly stamping through shifting sand, upward. The juniper bushes that had, by Bert, once been introduced to us as utterly rare, and surrounded us once more now, would not be the last ones of today, either. Even Bert had to admit that "things are looking up after all, where the macro-environment is concerned - too bad the micro-environment is doing so bad, because the houses are getting worse and worse and it makes everyone ill". Personally, I think that illness and swift horrible death of humanity as a whole would be very good for the macro-environment, but never you mind.
And gorgeous they most definitely are, those juniper bushes, so this was cause for enjoyment, as mensch, as we worked our way past them, and up the Besthmenerberg op. Better yet, there's a great panoramatower there which offers, apart from, for someone with vertigo like me, disquieting memories of parachuting, grand view of a bit of the Netherlands I didn't know we had: a hilly, forested area that reminds me most of that of the Belgian Province of Luxemburg, so beloved because of the MESA.  Mind you, that landscape probably is a lot prettier in the kind of weather we had today: cloudless clear blue below burning sun. But, contrary to the start of the last leg, near Coevorden, this is the kind of landscape that remains beautiful whatever the weather. Breath-ta-king. And handy too. Because you can clearly see where it is you're going to have to get to: the Archemerberg, trembling below the sunlight in the distance.
 This hill, of the kind again that, being in Holland, hits you totally unexpectedly, was immediately redubbed 'Ahmed-berg' by the politically incorrect illiterate Weij, reason for him to indulge in a vigorous and noisy bout of prayer-in-the-direction-of-Mekka (previously checked on compass), as we arrived atop it after a bit of hard trudging (accompanied by explanation, on Harm's part, about his time as hempfield-constructor in Alabama). Weij's "All' akhbar!" was audible in Deventer. May have been disconcerting, for some, given today's global developments.
To the astonishment of innocent daytrippers at the summit, he continued this for a while. But more beautiful than this prayer, for sure, was the 'Jerusalem' that Schelden and I, once on our way down, broke into at the request of the uncannily pretty female half of those daytrippers. Although that then did not get close to the beauty of the landscape. It remained exceptionally beautiful, from top to top, as we continued our way along the Salland range of hills. 
And adventurous too, since here, between the Archemerberg and Park 1813, where by the by juniper bushes were rampant again, the paths were so puny that they could not be found on the topographic map. A first, for marchleader Schelden: that you cannot even take a wrong turn, because there no longer is a route.  And so Weij's compass offered the solution: as southernly as possible, on we went. Nonetheless we would have entirely missed the monument, which then again was on the topographic map, had we not, entirely by chance, suddenly seen it, through the trees, standing some ways off to our right. "Oh how nice! A large penis in the woods!" More precisely and somewhat more serious this, of course, concerns the red brick monument that, proud lion atop, commemorates national freedom, regained in 1813 from the Napoleontic Frog.
Beautiful thing, that monument. But easy to reach from the road, alas, and therefore beset by daytrippers. All the better that they didn't see what followed. For again the topographic map turned out to be insufficient, so much so this time over that we had to go and trespass, for the first, but not the last time today. Fence hopping therefore, and then on through the juniper bushes, back to the straight and narrow, onto the Lemelerberg. There, the air was so thin it made us behave childishly no end. Which expressed itself in crazy photography and in, on the other side of the mountain, a foolhardy descent by Albert, straight down through the brushwood, on a slope much too steep. 
I can still hear myself screaming: "Schelden, next time you get any cute ideas?! Get stuffed!". Truthfully though, I thought this rambling-through-it-all was great, really. I am, after all, fond of adventure. And also this was good for practice, since it was tough going. There was, by the by, a break in that now. For between the Lemeler- and Eelerberg we walked between pastures for a long time, a landscape much different from the heather we'd just left.  And this break offered the three ex-commandoes, Harm, Ab and Peter, a fine opportunity for a happy, joyous discussion of methods of torture. From the months-long watertap to the extraction of fingernails: S.H. in B. could learn, from our own human rights violators, in marchingly menacing mood. Not entirely unjust, the 'Go back, to zero'-sign by the roadside, therefore. High time, then, for the light-footed intermezzo that the Hellendoornse Berg (with explanation, by Bert, of the phenomenon of the 'Hunting lane': a double row of trees placed in surrounding fields, which was to provide shadow to damsels rattling along between them in carriages, who could thusly watch the hunt, as it proceede in those surrounding fields), and the Adventurepark atop it (which, however, was closed at the time we passed it) offered us.
 This, by the way, did not help me at all. Because on the long road to Haarle, which now followed, and where, by the by, it was insanely crowded (what are all those people doing in a stuffy car on a gorgeous spring Sunday like that, fer Gawdssake? You'd expect sports cyclists, but no, only automobiles and motorcyclists clad in tightly heating leather), I was stupid enough to run ahead, in order to make a nice approach-shot of the group, with my digital camera. This I, wickedly caught by the anti-derailment-soundridges on the left side of the road, had to pay for with a sudden thudd upon the rigidly hard shingle cover. Where my camera brilliantly withstood that thunkthudd (pure luck, although I do thank the firm of Nikon), this did not go for myself: I tore open the edge of my left handpalm considerably, just below the little finger. The blood cinematically curled down around that little finger, and had that unrealistically bright colour that you never see in the movies, but only at real accident scenes. Biting away the pain I did after all take that picture, naturally. And luckily, the wound was light.
 For otherwise I would never have made it to the municipal border of Haarle, that village the 'M' has dropped off. And even now, by the time we got there, I needed it badly. Although I do believe that went for all of us: this was, after all, the only rest planned by Schelden, in a course so long that he needed multiple maps for it and thus had to change to a fresh one just before we reached Haarle.
In Haarle, however, all sorrow passed. Where the adjacing hotel De Haarlerberg (avoid and oppose), on calling prior to our march, had tartily told Schelden that they were not going to keep the lunch menu available until three in the afternoon for a group of marchers, the excellent personnel of the great Café-Restaurant 'Vloedgraven', Kerkweg 14, 7448 AD Haarle, Tel. 0548-595208, did just that. To our utmost content. In the sun outside it (visions of Yser and Bornem, one of those oasis-like joints in an ugly, barren village) we enjoyed bacon pancakes, tomato soup, half litres of beer, countless Grolsch Wintervorst special beers, etcetera, after I'd cleaned my wound and treated it, with the help of Weij's First Aid-kit, with iodine and plaster.  The total turnaround that we generated, after we individually settled our bills, must have provided even the local intelligentsia, who were holding a lively discussion about radials, cubic planes and other mathematical phenomena under the approving eye of the landlord, with food for further thought. And rightly so. For as ugly as Haarle may be, the fact that you can walk through surroundings as beautiful as these and then also be welcome in a fantastic café like this one, this village is a wonderful tip. Go there, everyone! But not all at once, okay?!
 Because it will be way too crowded there then. Now, barring some cars and byciclists, it was relatively quiet there. Once topped off satisfactorily, we laid down a fresh and festive pace again, through the Bergbosch to the Sprengenberg. Mere hundreds of metres later we already found ourselves on the beautiful heather again, hoping we would be able to visit the Palthetower. This turned out not to be possible, due to the privateness, of the estate. And so we marched on, to the foot of the Sprengenberg.
There, having photographed Albert, who had zipped off his trouserlegs in Haarle (Do something about that man! Get him a Soc.-uniform! This is NOT a pretty sight!), we were forced to break the law after all. But, noblesse oblige and responsibility binds. So, should we receive any tickets, for illegally entering birds' breeding grounds in season, which we now namely did, those fines will immediately be directed towards van der Schelden MA. I have, by the way, not seen a single bird, for the entire walk across the Grote Koningsbelt. But this, possibly, was more due to my own appearance, since I do look like a scarecrow in my regular outfit. What we did see, however, was all of Twente. For the view from the Grote Koningsbelt is in-cre-di-bly pretty. Add to that the fact that the sun burned our necks into a fiery red within two minutes, and here we have a bit of marching that can easily compete with the better parts of the MESA. Wonderful.  But once out of that birds' breeding ground, and on the way to Hexel, things went awry again. From between the juniper bushes, we were led, by our marchleader, across a non-live electrified fence, and straight through a freshly verticulated farmfield (whilst Harm fulminated about how farmers do this to evade the restrictions on dispersal of manure by no longer spraying it above ground, but cutting it in under the grass, and about the damage that does to the nests being chopped up). Two completely confounded horses watched us, as we trekked around them in a three quarter circle, then to lay down a brisk pace towards Zuna. Bert namely had some family history to confront there, which by the way did not get into the limelight all too much.
However Schelden, on this stretch, did find out why he was plagued so much by incorrectness, of his topographic map: this was the fault of Landschap Overijssel which, according to Schelden, "buys up all these swaths of land and then removes the paths".  Yeah, right. Anyway, our marchleader, who had totally had it fatiguewise too, now having handed his topographic map to him, Bert van Prijzen now unerringly found his moment via Hexel: at the municipal border of the city of Rijssen, just before the bridge across the Regge (which was totally orange, discoloured by industrial waste), we made his portrait, below the municipal sign. Great imagery, that we shall add to the row of similar photoes of Wandelsoccers, which will decorate the walls of our society building some time in the future. Yes, this was a beautiful end to a wonderful day which, by the by, did not end just yet: because as we entered Rijssen, even today's final judgement of our marchleader turned out to be faulty: with Albert and Peter, he accurately headed in the wrong direction, whilst Bert, Raymond, Harm, Marco and I, knowing better, made straight for Albert's car, that was parked here. After we had therefore waited there for the other three for at least another half hour they, totally unexpectedly and following a trek by the òther discotheque in Rijssen, came at us from the opposite direction.
 After, following that, Harm and Bert had reluctantly said goodbye to us and had, with Albert, Marco and Peter, driven back to Ommen, there to collect the cars, we enjoyed an utterly pleasant meal (admittedly, this also had to do with the fact that, this time over, we requested separate tabs for each of us, so that Schelden could not con us like he did last time), in the unsurpassed Pizzeria/Shoarma 'Yorgo's', Grotestraat 43, 7461 KE Rijssen, Tel. 0548-520990, which is a definite and big tip. For although, by its description, one would expect a strip-lighted snackshop, this is a fully fledged restaurant (and also the only one open, around eight PM on a Sunday night, in Rijssen) which, apart from a cosy interior and, at an absolutely reasonable price, large quantities of excellent food, offers utmostly attentive and pleasant service to boot.
Go there, everyone! But not all at once, okay?! Because those great ladies serving would stress out, otherwise. And this would be a shame, since they perform so well, in pictures too. To your health gentlemen, excellent walking there. Aken awaits. |