Tag Archives: Netherlands

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Travel Flashback: 1974 trip to Europe

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

I recently wrote about my 1983 trip to Hinton, Alberta, which was my first “independent” travel experience. Today, I’m going back even farther…to my 1974 trip to Europe with my parents. While I have some souvenirs from that trip, most of these pictures were taken on subsequent trips.

The front cover of our menu – April 1974 Swissair flight from Montreal to Zürich

Travel was different then. Even in economy class, there was an element of elegance and style. You had to wear your “Sunday best”. Check out the menu from our flight…you’d never see this much fuss about a meal in economy class now!

Pages two and three of the in-flight menu

My mother put together an album of our trip, so it is easy to recall exactly what happened. We flew from Montreal to Zürich on SwissAir flight SR161, a DC-10 that covered the distance in 7 hours and 10 minutes.

My grandfather’s chalet (straight ahead) in Weissenbach, Switzerland (August 2006)

For the Swiss part of our trip, we stayed mostly in my grandfather’s chalet. It is located in the quiet Simmental village of Weissenbach; my uncle still owns it today. I loved being in the mountains, even before I had ever tried downhill skiing.

Skiing above Zweisimmen (March 2018)

We also stayed in the nearby town of Zweisimmen, where I have been skiing on many occasions since then. From there, we drove up to the Bühlberg mountain restaurant above the village of Lenk…where I went skiing (see also the photo at the top of this post) with my cousin 44 years later!

My cousin and her family – at the summit of “Lavey” between Lenk and Adelboden, Switzerland (March 2018)

From Zweisimmen, it was on to Montreux on Lake Geneva. The climate was much milder here; it almost felt tropical compared to the mountains we had just left. From Montreux, we moved on to my uncle’s house in the Basel suburb of Riehen. Now owned by another cousin, I also stayed here in 2011 en route to a ski week in Wengen.

Benny, my uncle’s dachshund (May 1991)

We then left Switzerland and spent a couple of days in Frankfurt, (West) Germany. Once again, there was a family connection: we stayed with my mother’s cousin.

The beach at ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands (August 2014)

The last couple of weeks of the trip were spent in the Netherlands. We made our way by train from Frankfurt to Hoek Van Holland (via Mainz and Köln). We then stayed at my aunt’s house in ‘s-Gravenzande…I stayed there many times over the years, and it was also the “base camp” for my extended 1991 backpacking trip through Europe. Although it is no longer in the family, I did take a picture of it in 2014 during my even-more-extended travel odyssey.

“Our” house on the Monsterseweg in ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands (August 2014)

We visited Delft, Rotterdam, and The Hague, just like I did with my wife 40 years later in 2014. I really enjoyed a day trip to the Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam…one of the few “sights” that I haven’t returned to in the intervening 49 years.

Market Square in Delft, the Netherlands (August 2014)

A lasting impression was how great Dutch breakfasts could be. Of course, being not yet 6 years old, this assessment was based mostly on the ubiquitous availability of chocolate hagelslag (sprinkles) and chocolate vlokken (flakes). Actually, chocolate was a common theme on my childhood European trips. If I eat too much of it now, I can trace it back to those formative experiences!

Me and my friend, the skiing “Milka chocolate” cow (March 2020)

We flew back to Montreal from Amsterdam on KLM flight 0671. This time, the plane was a DC-8 and it wasn’t as comfortable as the outbound flight.

Maassluis, the Netherlands (two of my cousins live here) – August 2014

It would be another 5 years before we were able to return to Europe, despite all of our family connections there. My international travel, at least for a little while, would consist only of brief trips across the U.S. border to northern New York state. But European trips were major events, and my memories of the 1979 trip are much more vivid.

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Changes in my ancestral DNA

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Six months ago, I published a post about the surprising results of my ancestral DNA test. You can find it by clicking here. At that time, I expressed surprise about my significant Swedish/Danish ancestry and the lesser but still unexpected Norwegian ancestry. Although those two regions only accounted for 8% of me, it was much more Scandinavia than I was expecting. But the remaining 92% was also a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be far more “Northwestern Europe/England” than “Germanic Europe”.

View from the Christiansborg (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Well, DNA knowledge and technology changes quickly. A mere month after posting those results, I learned that there had been substantial changes. My DNA hadn’t changed, but there had been refinements in assigning regional ancestry in several parts of Europe. As a result, I learned that my original results were no longer accurate. Just when I was getting used to my distant past, I had to deal with another new reality!

Tivoli Gardens (Copenhagen, Denmark)

So while I likely still have some Norwegian DNA kicking around, it is now too small to be significant. However, my Swedish/Danish ancestry has remained at the same level. To acknowledge that, I have illustrated this post with images from my 2016 trip to Denmark. I felt at home there too…so maybe those are my true Scandinavian roots?

You can’t have too many pictures of Nyhavn in Copenhagen!

As for the even larger (now around 94%) remainder of my ancestry, the majority of it is now in fact Germanic Europe. A slightly smaller, but still significant, portion is traceable to “Northwest Europe and England”.

The Wish Tree Garden on Papirøen, Copenhagen (my collaboration with Yoko Ono)

As some other friends and family members have tried this testing too, I have also learned just how random this DNA business can be. Even siblings can have significantly different outcomes. You almost certainly won’t get the same 50% from each parent that your brother or sister did. And of course 50% is lost with each generation.

The Fish Kiss Spa in downtown Copenhagen

What now? I will certainly be checking in from time to time, to see if my results have been refined further. I now know there are some other regions in my family’s past, and I’m curious to see if they will appear for me too.

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The DNA Test – Travel through time

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Today’s post is a little different, but still very much in the spirit of travel.

Although I had been thinking about it for a while, I finally got around to requesting an “Ancestry DNA” test this spring. And the results have now arrived.

Getting caught by the waves at the same beach where my father played as a child (‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands)

On the surface, the expectation was simple. With one Swiss parent and one Dutch parent, one would expect the results to be 50% from each country. But I also heard some other distant echoes from the past.

My ancestors lived in Maassluis, the Netherlands, many centuries ago

Over time, family stories become almost accepted as fact. And one of my family stories was that we had some Spanish ancestry, due to the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands in the 16th century. With respect to the Swiss side of my family, I wondered if there might be some Italian influence, given the fairly close proximity of Italy to my ancestral place of origin. And I also wondered what other interesting connections may have been forgotten in the mists of time.

A church in Lenk (Switzerland) – I wonder what important family events took place here?

I was pretty excited when the results finally arrived. When I clicked on the link, I discovered something very interesting. Switzerland and the Netherlands each belong to the same two broader groups: “Germanic Europe” and “England and Northwestern Europe”. And I had almost complete (92%) ancestry in those two regions.

Lots of choices, high above Lenk and Adelboden (Switzerland)

I found the “England and Northwestern Europe” region interesting. Consisting mostly of England, Belgium, the southern Netherlands, Northeast France and Switzerland, I had never really considered that DNA from England would be connected to both of my countries of origin. This region even contributed more to me than the anticipated “Germanic Europe” region.

Mårten Trotzigs gränd – the narrowest street in Sweden (Stockholm)

And what about the other 8%? The stories and guesses were, in a word, wrong. No Italy. No Spain. As it turns out, most of my other ancestry was from Sweden/Denmark, with a smaller part from Norway. I had always been looking south, but it appears that I should have been looking north.

Terminus of the railway to Flam (Norway)

I know that these tests are not 100% accurate, and of course some ancestry is lost with each passing generation. But way back in 2012, I felt very comfortable in Stockholm (see photo at the very top of this post). I thought it was a place in which I could live. It makes you wonder why I had that feeling.

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The other Pierre van der Hout

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Today’s genealogical post is a little different…but there is still a travel element.

I had long assumed that I was the first and only “Pierre Vanderhout” in the world, as our family’s genealogy has been documented in book form back to the mid-1500s and there wasn’t any other Vanderhout (usually written as “van der Hout” in Dutch) named Pierre.  However, it appears that I am not the first person to bear this name.

On February 26, 1678, Guillaume van der Hout was christened in Leiden, the Netherlands. The parents were  Pierre van der Hout and Caterine Pierre. The witnesses were Elizabeth van Danne and Gregoire Cresson. This event was recorded by the “RK Kerk de Zon” in Leiden; the document can be found here (the relevant entry is numbered “9005”).

Typical intersection in Delft, the Netherlands
Typical intersection in Delft, the Netherlands

This was only the beginning of an unusual story.  I couldn’t find any other genealogical information on these names:  there was nothing on the direct descendants of Guillaume van der Hout nor on the direct ancestors of this other Pierre van der Hout.   All I had to go on was the name of the church.  “Kerk” means “church” in Dutch, while “de Zon” means “the sun”.   I didn’t pay much attention to the “RK”;  I had assumed it was a reference to the Reformed Church (a Protestant church that is quite prominent in the Netherlands).

However, some further research revealed an unusual twist.  “RK” was actually a short form for “Rooms Katholiek”, the Dutch words for “Roman Catholic”.   So, the “Sun Church” in Leiden was actually a Catholic church.  That was a surprise, as the genealogy suggested that the first few centuries of van der Houts were all Protestant.

"De Spaansche Vloot" (The Spanish Fleet), a nearly 400-year-old restaurant in 's-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
“De Spaansche Vloot” (The Spanish Fleet), a nearly 400-year-old restaurant in ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands

When we were in the Netherlands last summer, we visited some churches that dated back 800 years.  I decided to find out if the “Sun Church” was still around, as it would be interesting on a future visit to see where this other Pierre van der Hout had once been.  This led to another surprise:  the Kerk de Zon was a secret church!

While the Netherlands was a tolerant country even in the 17th century (attracting persecuted religious groups from all over Europe), tolerance was a relative concept.  Non-Protestants were free to practice their own religion as long as they did not draw too much attention to themselves.  This meant that their places of worship could not be outwardly identifiable as such; they also could not enter and leave en masse.

Nearly deserted beach near 's-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
Nearly deserted beach near ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands

So, was the 17th-century Pierre van der Hout somehow written out of the family tree because of religion?  The multiple French names in the records of the Kerk de Zon provide a more likely answer.

Pierre van der Hout (or his ancestors) probably came from a French-speaking part of Europe and had a different surname.    However, as they continued living in the Netherlands, it was common to adopt a Dutch surname to help assimilate into Dutch society.

Pierre’s family may have picked “van der Hout” simply because it was a common surname in that part of the Netherlands.  However, picking a new name was often very literal.   As “van der Hout” means “from the forest”, Pierre’s original French surname may well have been something like  Desbois or LaForest.

Distant view of Grote Kerk in Maassluis, the Netherlands. This is the church where my ancestor Isaack Adriaensz van der Hout (born in 1580) placed the keystone
Distant view of Grote Kerk in Maassluis, the Netherlands. This is the church where my ancestor Isaack Adriaensz van der Hout (born in 1580) placed the keystone

While I could not find any other references to the 17th-century Pierre or Guillaume van der Hout, I suspect that the family’s descendants were around for a long time.   Why?  I managed to find a person named “Guillaume Pierre Johann van der Hout” – he was born in 1874 in Delft, the Netherlands (see photo at the top of this post) and is the only other “Guillaume van der Hout” I could locate.

Here, finally, is the travel angle…the only record I could find for Guillaume Pierre Johann van der Hout was an immigration record kept by the police of Antwerp, Belgium.  For reasons unknown, he left Delft to live in another country.  On this page, at number 97.416, you can see how this unusual story continued into at least the late 19th-century.   I hope to investigate this further; in the meantime, it seems that anybody with my name is destined to move around!

[The photos in today’s post are all close to where my namesakes lived in the Netherlands.]