Still, the ride home was interesting. It was like a big title wave of Dutch cars moving slowly North. Almost every single car on the road had a caravan trailing and had a Dutch license plate. It was rare outside of the major cities to see French or Spanish license plates (or anything other country for that matter). I suppose this is a digression, but it was really pretty incredible how many Dutch
people we saw while we were traveling about.  The Dutch do seem to get out and about… I wonder how many we will meet when we are “full time” travelers….

But back to my original point… During our last day on the road, the Dutch caravan cavalry was charging North to get out of the hot weather when all of a sudden the traffic slowed down exactly like it does in Holland. (think *screeching stop*) Mark and I looked at each other and knew that there was some sort of Dutch caravan accident ahead. Sure enough there was a caravan with a
Netherlands license plate overturned with camping contents spilled all over the freeway. In a typical Dutch driving maneuver, I’m sure, one caravan had cut off another and that was the result. We saw not one, not two but three of these incidents before we arrived home. Pretty amazing, ‘huh? Just think, when have you ever seen an overturned caravan in America let alone three in one day? I genuinely felt bad for these people, but at least they were on their way home from their holidays rather than on the way out.

My other big observation was that all the men driving the Dutch caravans were not wearing shirts. Picture this – you’re uncle, shirtless, sitting in the drivers seat of his caravan pulling station wagon, kids in the back seat, wife in the front seat, no one is talking but the drivers side front window is slightly rolled down. Your uncle’s chest hair is blowing in the wind. They were all exactly the same!! It must be some unwritten Dutch cultural rule – when you are driving home from Frankrijk after your two, three or four week summer holiday the man must drive and he must not wear a shirt.

Shirt or not, we made it home. (Mark did keep his on at all times while driving.) In many ways this feels like the halfway point of our time here in Europe. We’ve passed our 11 month anniversary and are nearing the year mark of living overseas. Our current plan will have us living in Holland until the end of June next year, so that’s just 10.5 months to go but boy does that feel like a long, long time!  I’m trying to keep myself going by thinking about the future trips we’ve planned – Austria & Slovakia in two weeks, Finland & Estonia in four weeks and then a trip back to Seattle for my 10 year high-school class reunion in the middle of September. We also have a few things in the works for the fall. It will be an interesting ride to see if we make it all the way to next summer and if we choose to leave Holland or just ask for a sabbaticle....