Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Taste this, sweetheart. It's a goat's milk Gouda!” Mark and Hannah were out for their
usual Sunday afternoon grocery shopping. Mark had slipped away from Hannah to find the
cheese counter. It turned out there were several Dutch cheeses available, and Mark was
eager to sample more of the tastes of Holland. As a smiling Hannah came over to try the
cheese, Mark thought about how enjoyable the last two months had been since the emotional
night when he committed to buying the plane tickets. Hannah had come back from her walk
that night still crying, and had tried to go right to bed without talking to Mark. But he had
been able to explain why he had been so hesitant, and to tell her that he had bought their
tickets. Her tears of sadness had become tears of joy, and the trip planning had started to
take a larger and larger place in their lives. They had long since finished their thirty lessons
of Pimsleur Dutch, moved through the Michel Thomas basic program with a little more dif-
ficulty, and were now almost done with the Michel Thomas advanced course. Hannah had
found a course on Amazon called “Living Language Dutch” that they planned to start doing
together in the evenings. Mark was really looking forward to it
.
“Here, sweetheart.” He held out a piece of the delicious Gouda. “
Dit is voor jou.
” For some
reason, it felt really good to him to say even a simple phrase like “this is for you” in another
language. Language learning had always seemed so out of reach to him, and now he was
exploring a part of himself that he had never known was there
.
“Yum, sweetheart
. Deze kaas is erg lekker!
” Hannah had told him that the cheese was very
tasty, and the two of them laughed at the strange word “lekker.” It didn't quite mean “deli-
cious,” but the Dutch people they had watched in travel videos said it a lot, so they assumed
it was an important word
.
“Isn't it great, baby, that we can actually say 'Gouda' the Dutch way now, and that maybe
we'll even visit the place?” Hannah asked. Gouda, which turned out to be pronounced
“how-dah,” was a town in the Netherlands that wasn't far from Amsterdam. Since finding
out that the Netherlands is about the size of Maryland, Hannah had been excited to discover
that most of the country was within a reasonable train ride of Amsterdam. “And that re-
minds me, sweetheart, we really need to get down to the business of planning the details of
our trip!”
Hannah was right. Although they had done a lot of preliminary research, they still hadn't
decided where they were going to stay or even what sights they were going to see. Mark
