How many times do you suppose this woman has posed with tourists? Dressed in a traditional manner that has endured for centuries, she was, I remember, "a character." Robert and I had taken a bus-and-boat day trip from Amsterdam, the last stop on our summer-long vacation. Short on cash and eager to return home, he and I had different approaches to these last days of travel. I took free tours (diamond processors, Rijksmuseum, etc.) and went to see What's Up, Doc? (imagine Barbra Streisand with Dutch subtitles.) He took to his bed at the Hotel Seven Bridges -- selected for us by the local tourist booking service; only later we did we learn it catered to a gay clientele. I went looking for this photo not long ago when, at my last job, the possibility arose of relocating to Amsterdam to train our European-based writers in various corporate mysteries and ways. There was a lot of talk, the project was slow to materialize and then was subsequently dropped after a management shift, but I had fun imagining living there and thinking about how I’d travel all around Europe from this base. I even started to learn a little Dutch. Very little. The useless "I don't speak English" and the wholly practical "Enjoy your meal." This affable woman looks as if she might be comfortable saying both.
If she looked like that then, what must she look like now? Bless her heart!
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