2001
This was a stormy year.
2000 was a complicated year, this one almost tops the previous year!
In April, Laura came to visit me for the first time, to meet my parents, the dog Kai, and to see what it was like over here. I arranged a trip for us to Paris with a bus, which I thought was a nice idea! It sure was cheap, so no complaints there. We had a bus that brought us to a city north from us (Paris is south from us) , to have us transferred to a different bus with people from all over the Netherlands. We sat, and sadly we had some old guy sitting behind us who’s only motivation for going to Paris seemed to be the bus, and the trip to Paris in general. It seems that he was hitting on the woman next to him and he just WOULDNT shut up! He kept talking and talking and talking. It was already heavily annoying for yours truly, but for Laura it was worse. She didn’t speak the language, so she had no idea what he was talking about, and I can imagine how it must be to sit close to someone from China for 4+ hours. So she wasn’t a happy camper! I arranged two MP3 players for us, but sadly the batteries ran out really quick, and we had no way of recharging them in the bus, so she just HAD to listen to the guy. I even turned around at some point and asked him politely to calm down a bit, that I was with someone that didn’t speak the language and that was about to explode. I think it was a little bit better after that.
When we arrived at our hotel, it seemed nice, but we noticed a police car in front of some gate at the back of the hotel. That seemed odd to us, but it turned out that it was near the crash site of the Concorde airplane. Police were still guarding the gate. I think we just dropped off our stuff, and then went for dinner. I didn’t have any French money yet, figured that I would use my credit card in a bank somewhere. But no such luck, so we just stopped at a restaurant and had dinner. I figured that we could pay with credit card there, but the RUDE French Garcon told us that they didn’t except (our) visa. The sign was on the freaking door, so he was just lying to us. We had to borrow money from the people sitting opposite to us. That didn’t feel good of course! As soon as we were able, we asked them to stop at a bank so I could pay them back! I dunno what happened else that day, I figure that they just drove us around in Paris to see some sites. Of course it was Laura’s first time, so I am sure she enjoyed that all! The next day we went to Disney Land Paris. That was fun, but it didn’t take us long to find annoying people. Spanish people were majorly cutting in line at some ride, and of course we said something about it. ‘Family’ was waiting for the guy far in the distance, and the Spanish guy displayed some major attitude when we complained about them line cutting. He spoke Spanish to me, so he probably told me that I was a SCHWEIN or something , so I yelled back in Dutch to him. What an idiot. I hate people who cut in line. It’s no fun to wait like 1 hour in line for a ride that takes 3 minutes. So our first experience with Spanish people wasn’t a good one! We had some fun in the park after that! That morning was also quite interesting! The bus line that we took the trip with charges you little money, but during breakfast we discovered why.. Every person had like one bun, 2 butters and a predestined amount of food per person. So if one person was extra hungry and decided to have 2 buns, someone else didn’t HAVE a bun.. The next day we went to Disney Land again, and later we went to town. I remember being on Place de Pigalle, which is always fun, and later we drove to a place where you could take a tour on the seine which we did. We also had them drop us off at the eiffel tower, and we walked all the way to the Champs Elysees, at that place the bus was going to pick us up, but we didn’t see them for the longest time! I think they said that WE weren’t there at the time they told us to be there, so they drove around a little. I don’t remember being late, but I remember the bus driver having attitude about it , lol! Anyways, on the way back we asked them to drop us off at Maastricht, where we ate at Applebees , and my brother picked us up there! Maastricht is near us, and there was no reason to take a big detour and then drive south again to end up at our place!
In all Laura didn’t really have a good feeling about the Netherlands. Compared to living in Iowa, people over here are rude, careless, egoistic , etc etc. I agree with it mostly, having been in the US quite a few times! She thought that Maastricht was a really filthy city, and that’s true, there was just papers on the floor everywhere!
Next vacation it was my turn again : If I remember correctly, mid August 2001 . We had some marriage counseling to go through. The minister was only going to marry us if we shared their christian views on marriage and relations! It was quite fun to go through, even if I am an atheist myself. We did learn a couple of things about each other I guess. Laura was also required to attend some church Sundays when I was gone again. Since I was at home, I couldn’t, my loss.
I attended their church happenings one or two times. It’s nothing for me. It seemed to me that some of these people were a little “insane in the membrane” LOL!
To each his own I guess?
I remember that I was supposed to fly back on the 9th of Sept. But when we arrived in Cedar Rapids airport, fate was going to keep me there a bit more. I was on the runway, waiting. Someone overflowed the bathroom (poop everywhere) and there was the usual airport congestion, and that made them decide to go back to the gate and had everyone exit the plane. By then it was impossible for me to get reach my connecting flight, so I was stuck there! I Called Laura’s mom, Laura wasn’t even home yet, and asked her if Laura could come back once she had reached home to pick me up! I asked at the desk when my next flight was possible. She said they were totally booked for the 10th already, so I was going to be flying back on the 11th of Sept. I bet you know what happened!
We enjoyed an extra day there. Saying goodbye to each other was never much fun anymore, so having extra days was a plus! Laura’s mom called us in the morning of the 11th to turn the TV on, and we knew after a couple of minutes that it wasn’t possible for me to fly back anymore. Thinking back of that day gives me the chills. So many things were said on live TV that day that indicated that much more was going on than just those planes hitting the WTC. People constantly were talking about explosions, explosions that we now know had nothing to do with jet fuel exploding, but more with other things 
I was in the US for an extra 5 days that time, before I was able to fly back! Once I got home on Monday, I had till Friday until I had to take the plane again, this time with my parents to attend the wedding with me. Work was not happy with me that year, I think I used like 10 vacation days extra in total that I didn’t have, I felt the tremors from that event for a couple of years after
I remember that Laura’s mom picked us up with the old car from Cedar Rapids airport, and almost in Waterloo, the car stopped running. The gas gauge was apparently broken without her knowing, and she ran out of gas. Uncle Scott came with a jerrycan of gas and we were on our way again! My parents were dropped off at Laura’s grandparents and I went with Laura to her home in Cedar Falls. Laura became a bit stressed the closer it got to the wedding! We had a wedding reception after the wedding with no alcohol, that was pretty special ! The wedding was beautiful, but quite a few things went wrong according to Laura. Things that are outside of her control always bother her greatly. For me it’s not so much a problem! Marleen and Kelly were also at the wedding! That was cool! Marleen stayed with Kelly in Madison for a week or so. Sadly they got stomach flue and we didn’t really hung around together, that was a pity! My cousin Ruud was my best man, so he was in the wedding too! It was cool that he came. I am sure he had a great time in Iowa, after all there’s lots to see there! I totally forgot where he stayed though? He only stayed a couple of days before he had to fly back again! The wedding ceremony was like you know from movies, exactly. We had the wedding pictures taken at Laura’s grandmother’s house as well. The pics were nice, but it seems that she had to do a lot of effort to get those images made, I mean, time to move on to the digital era, instead of walking around with black and white plates that you shove into a camera and expose them to light.. That’s like from the beginning of the 20th century .After the wedding we spent the night in a really cool hotel suite at “Country Inns and suites” in Waterloo. That hotel room was sooo spacey, and not at all expensive. IT had a bubble bath for us and all, and we sure used it Ruud came by the next day to say goodbye cos he had to fly back to the Netherlands. We had to take a trip to Des Moines again together to get a special stamp on our marriage paper. It had to be done, because that made the wedding official in our country too. I don’t exactly remember how long my parents and I still stayed there! I am sure it wasn’t long since I was already very short on vacation days! Laura stayed behind and finally head to the Netherlands in Nov. I think we had troubles finding a one way ticket! I am sure that we didn’t think about the impact it was going to make, her being here?
So mid October came, and Laura flew to Dusseldorf, and I picked her up there. Of course one bag was missing, so she was very worried about that. It happens a lot that one bag or ALL bags are missing, so I wasn’t worried. I think the bag probably came the day after with a courier. At my old house, we had decorated our attic to some extend so that we could live there. It wasn’t easy for us there, especially not for Laura. She couldn’t do laundry because mom was really difficult about that and in the winter it was cold in the attic of course. There was more to come, which I never realized. She had to go to town hall with me to announce that we were living together and that we were officially married. The woman said then that since she was English speaking, that she didn’t have to go to school. Now, there’s a really stupid rule here in Europe, if you are from a European country, like England, Germany, Ireland, and you come to the Netherlands, you don’t have to go to school and learn the language. If you are from the UK or Ireland, and you come here, you have NO clue what Dutch people are saying, but you don’t have to go to school.. It’s the rules. So the woman at town hall figured that this would apply to Laura too, since she does speak (a slightly different yet certainly less snotty version) English. But a couple of weeks later we got a letter from some organization that we didn’t know about,and after we went there, the woman basically said that since she’s from USA, she HAD to go to school here to learn Dutch. This came as a shock to us. So people from UK or Ireland are OK, but people from Canada, Australia, USA have to go to school here! Laura was unhappy about the school situation.
In Nov, we also managed to get pregnant, which was really cool, but the first time, we weren’t successful. There’s a 30% chance that something goes wrong in the first stage of your first pregnancy, so it’s not uncommon. What sucked was that we got to see the nasty side of our home physician. Laura and I had to come in because she was bleeding, and the DR just sat in his chair and concluded that she had a miscarriage. He never even LOOKED at anything, and was just going to send us home! Laura’s jaw dropped on the floor and she was like I want to see a gynecologist!! So reluctantly our DR called a befriended ob and he could see us that day. He gave her an internal echo and even though there was bleeding involved we SAW that the foetus was still there, so no miscarriage, but just pregnant. Our happiness was nothing to enjoy for a long time though, because in the evening she had the miscarriage. It was horrible. She went to the bathroom and came back with the foetus in her hand. I shall never forget how that felt for me, and how it must have felt for her! We could see eyes and everything. We gave it a name and a proper burial in our garden. Later the OB said that we should have brought it to the hospital when we saw him months after..Yeah like hell we have some student cut into it and then being unable to say why it died? This is getting lengthy, so I will leave it at this. Next post will be 2002