Where I grew up

This is the house I grew up in the small town of Bilthoven. My parents moved my two older sisters (9 and 11 then in 1956) and me from the northern city of Groningen. Our house in Bilthoven was a "two under one roof", and my parents rented the house for some 30-odd years. Initially our backyard bordered a large forest area, but - as in so many other places - eventually the town expanded. The streets in our neighborhood were always full of kids playing, mostly middle class (even though the municipality was back then one of the higher average income places in Holland). A real bubble of welfare back in those days to grow up in, and now - 50 years later - still looks like a nice tranquil place.

I cycled from Soest to Bilthoven (about 6 km) on the good old bike. Caught in the rain halfway, but it could not dampen my pleasure of this cycling memory tour along the places of my childhood. The little body of water looked to me like an ocean when I learned to skate there at age 4. My skates were wooden and bound under my regular shoes. A few years later the modern skates made their entry.
 

That water was right behind my high school. A relatively strict school (all was relative during the sixties and seventies; the time of the "flower power"), but I remember having some of the very best teachers at this school who prepared us well for post-secondary education and training. Close to this school was the field-hockey club, where my two sisters became avid players. I chose to go the route of soccer in my early years (probably because my father had been an excellent soccer player in his years), and only later - at university - discovered the fun of the field-hockey game. Tennis was my game during teenager years, and I basically lived at our tennis club for a few years (clay courts).

The hockey club has expanded much since my childhood and offers only artificial turf fields anymore, a huge difference from the natural grass fields of "back then". In the old clubhouse I did attend many - in my memory fantastic - youth parties. The shopping area of town next to the train station has been transformed completely. The old railway crossing has been replaced by two tunnels, one for cars and one for cyclists which offers a much safer traffic situation.

This was the old condo building where my parents moved when my mother's arthritis got too bad for climbing stairs anymore in the old house. This was the first place they purchased while they were well into their sixties. The store on the left hand was then the largest grocery store in town. I found my old "snackbar" (Dutch style fast food place) and ordered my favorite childhood comfort food....

"Frikandellen" (sausage type things - you don't want to know what all is used to produce them, but hey, they tasted golden, also yesterday). "Patat" (French fries) with mayonnaise and even a small salad (a salad was never served there in the old days - way too healthy). The snackbar has certainly been improved from the grease joint it was in the early seventies. However, they did still have a Dutch favorite: "patatje oorlog" = fries covered with warm peanut sauce ("sateh sauce"), mayonnaise and chopped cold onions. It has some similarity to the Quebec "poutine"; equally disgusting really....

Who rules the road here? It was not like this when I used this road every day to my high school, but now the two bike lanes sort of "overrule" the car lane. Cyclists are the kings and queens of the road in many towns and cities in Holland nowadays....