08 MAY 1999 - Across two frontiers
I actually got a good start on the day today. I was going to take breakfast at the hotel, but decided to have a coke and a smoke in the room instead and organize maps and stuff to figure out what was left. I'm really wishing I had more time so I could get out and explore each village a little bit on foot.

I had some time to make it to the General Maczek museum, but I wasn't quite sure where I was going so I set out early. After some driving and some driving in circles and some more driving I thought I had found the right place. A small Dutch military garrison. I told the guardhouse that I was here for the museum, and he waved me through and pointed me to the right building.

The museum is very much in infancy, but has a great collection of artifacts and photos about General Maczek. It tells a great story about a man who escaped the Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland. He fought against the Germans in France, then escaped again to England where he began to organize the 1st Polish Armored.

Though the museum is small, my guide Frank took me through all the exhibits and translated the dutch and polish for me. The museum focuses exclusively on the Polish 1st Armored, the liberation of Breda, and General Maczek. While I didn't really find anything relating to my journey, it was still a very interesting place. There is also a growing library of material about the war, and Frank is hoping expand the scope of the museum to be broader and more regional.

Frank, too, was an interesting person. His father had come to Holland from Riga, escaping the purges of Stalin that sent the rest of his family to Siberia. Being of Polish descent, he joined Macezk's soldiers and was wounded in the Normandy at Falais. Frank provided a great personal perspective on the museum, and how the war has continued to affect people today.
Frank, my guide at the Maczek museum
It's almost noon now and time to hit the road. I think about getting some lunch but decide to make it through a few towns first. I drive south now, and stop at a little cafe outside a forested park. Toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and beer fill me up, and I continue on. There is a little more circling around today as I try to find all the towns I've missed. I eventually make it to all of them except a tiny village called Kreek. I've been enjoying driving along through the countryside. Small farms, the broad fields smelling of spread manure, an occasional windmill or church. This is an enjoyable place.

The afternoon is winding down, and I need to return the car before the rental agency closes. I make it back to the hotel around five, and decided to nap for a little bit. I get up around eight and go to the front desk for a restaurant recomendation. They say that for a great meal I should go to De Baron, a good steak house. Directions in hand, I wander back to the Groote Markat. Once again I make a few circle trying to find the right side street. I actually walked past the restaurant several times and didn't see it, it doesn't have any big signs or tables out on the walk. I guess this is a good sign that this is a local place with good food. But then again, this doesn't seem to be a huge tourist destination. I have a reservation, and go straight to my table.
I'm writing in my journal, and the waiter actually turns the lights up a bit for me to see better. Talk about great service. I have a jerk chicken starter that was fabulous. I think this is the best chicken I've ever had - it was tremendously moist. Follow that with a good pepper steak, and a surprise dessert of ice cream and fruits. Not too bad for my last meal here. While the steak wasn't the greatest, I've come to find how spoiled we are with good beef in America. All in all, it was a good meal in a neat restaurant. The pepper mill was the size of a small child, and the mural was rather inriguing as well.

In my mind i am still trying to find an insight on grandpa, the war, on our family from my journeys here. It may be some time in coming to me. The time that has passed since the war is great - 55 years; but the magnitude of the sacrifices and effort and achievments of the liberation have not passed the people young and old of Holland. Maybe that's the biggest thing I'll take away from here.
And I suppose that it is because of the magnitude of all these events and experiences of people like my grandfather, that I can never hope to understand the greatness and omnificence of the experiences of people my age and younger, trudging through broken fields of manure and mines and shells. To understand this fully I would have to transcend time into that place of blood and bodies, gunpowder and mud and shit and snow; of terrible cries and resonant explosions, of the whistles of shells, the droning of planes overhead, the mechanical report of modern infantries moving through the fields and plains in postlogue to Market Garden.

I've been here and now, and seen the flowers of the villages and farms and people that have come to flourish 55 years later. But can I ever see them through the eyes of a young man here in November of 1944?