We stayed an extra day, because Barbara wanted time to work on a talk she was to give in Leiden, so I bicycled off to see two "palaces" I had seen on a map. We would call these "Manor Houses," and one of them (Schloss Hünnefeld) has been in existence since the fourteenth century, though the present house dates from the seventeenth.

The second country house was built in the nineteenth century, in what we in the U.S. might call "Collegiate Gothic" style, by another branch of the same family. It is also very private, but has extensive gardens that one could get glimpses of. The current lady of the house is said to be an avid gardener, and I can well believe it.

One evening we were surprised to see fire trucks on the canal path, with men in full turnout kit getting out hoses and pumps. The younger men (they were all men) dashed about, efficiently unrolling hoses and hooking them up, while a couple of older men with clipboards watched. A little inquiry disclosed that it was a training night for the newer members of the department, and one of the officers was happy to chat while the younger men rolled up their hoses and put everything away. It all reminded us very much of home.

Bad Essen looked to us like a thriving little city, with enough surrounding farmland and local industry that there is work for everyone, and enough money for some of the little extras that make life more pleasant. From the canal, we could see several sawmills ("Max Wagner," "Uppermann Holz u. Baustoffe"), and we kept seeing shiploads of woodchips heading east.

In the early nineteenth century, with Napoleon's troops occupying much of Germany, the battle became important again. The major poet Heinrich von Kleist wrote the play Die Hermannschlacht in 1808, and many other lesser authors followed suit.

Interestingly, and much to its credit as far as we are concerned, the museum spends as much space on these questions of reception as it does on the actual battle itself.

We found a berth in the Old Harbor, an arm off the canal with several live-aboard boats and some small craft in not-very-good shape.

After a short time we dropped through the locks in Varloh and Meppen. At the next lock, Hüntel, we had a stroke of luck. Signs informed us that on Sundays the lock stopped operations at 14:00, and it was just 14:00 when we arrived! We might have had to stay the night at the quay where one waits for the lock, with nothing around, but the keeper had pity and locked us through.

It rained all the Sunday afternoon, and we decided to stay over a night and explore Haren a little. We knew there was a ship chandlery in Haren, and we needed one, because our boathook had blown over the side one windy day. We went to the place, but it had moved from the river-side to an industrial park. We persevered and found it anyway, and bought not only a new boathook but

When we left Haren, we found we had a strong current with us, which meant we had to be a little careful. In fact, the Dortmund-Ems Canal had simply become

Soon after passing Papenburg, we turned left into the cut for the lock that guards Weener Harbor. This lock is only 25 meters long,

The ebb in the river was running at about 3 knots, so we needed to be pretty careful about staying in the channel, but it is well buoyed, so we managed all right, and then the current slowed as we came into the wider Ems Estuary.

Once in the harbor, we had to negotiate a railroad drawbridge, but could then proceed up into the very heart of the city, where we spurned the new pontoons

Across from us we had museum ships, and just ahead of us Heurika, a charter ship whose owners invited us aboard for drinks as we were returning from dinner at the Stadtgarten, a restaurant just up the street.

Emden was once one of the principal German ports. In the late nineteenth century, the Dortmund-Ems Canal was built to link the Ruhr Valley with the ocean; coal from the Ruhr was shipped from Emden, and imported iron ore was carried back down to the steel mills of the Ruhr.

It is still a major industrial center and port, where Volkswagen builds Passats and the Nordzeewerke shipyard builds submarines and other specialized ships like icebreakers and dredges.

We saw several car-carrier ships berthed outside the harbor in the river, and we discovered that Emden is one of the main European ports for car shipping. The harbor is a busy place, and once out of our little corner of it there was a lot of traffic and we had to pay close attention.

We liked Emden, but we were also on a schedule; Barbara was due to lecture in Leiden on the 11th of September, and we had agreed that we would stay in Leiden for two weeks, starting on September 1st.

The estuary west of Emden is very wide, but the width is deceptive; the whole southern side is one big sandbank, and as we left on the dropping tide, carefully staying in the buoyed channel, we saw a crane barge and tug trying to refloat a power cruiser, maybe 40 feet long, that had gone aground on the edge of the bank.

We passed the Farmsum Harbor, full of commercial ships, and turned right into the Old Ems Canal, now a dead end, and by noon we were waiting for "Bridge

We stayed three nights in Delfzijl, eating at a favorite restaurant, restocking the larder, and reconnecting with old friends. We visited the huge flea market in the neighboring village of Farmsum, but had the restraint not to buy anything. We took advantage of the ship chandlery across the canal from us to buy some new rope for dock lines, as some of ours were the worse for wear after a year of canals and locks. Since they, like the chandlery in Haren, primarily supply commercial

From Delfzijl, we retraced our steps through Groningen to Grou, and then to Stavoren, with the weather still rainy and squally. On August 26th, we went through the guard-lock at Stavoren out into the Ijsselmeer. We were headed for Den Helder, where we wanted to spend a little time, but the wind was kicking up a good-sized chop and would be right on our beam if we took a direct course, so we made a dog-leg, angling southwest until we came in under the land, then turning to go northwest for the lock at Den Oever.

The roadstead just outside Den Helder was full of traditional ships heading home from "Sail Amsterdam," along with the naval ships of the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1, but we threaded our way among them into the harbor. This time, we did not stay at the Royal Naval Yacht Club, but went through the guard lock into Willemsord, the former Naval Shipyard and dry docks. The shipyard is still active, working mainly on traditional vessels, but there is also a Naval Museum, and our berth was just in front of the Royal Navy OCS Barracks. I, of course, enjoyed poking around the yard and museum, while Barbara mainly worked on her lecture. The idea of the boat, of course, was that it should allow professionals to live and work anywhere one can get to by water.

In Willemsord, we were again in the canal system, so there were no more locks to contend with, and after a couple of days we headed south to the Noordhollandskanaal and by 14:30 we were moored in Alkmaar. The town was crowded, so we were told to moor outside the tjalk Ambulant, a sailing charter ship built in 1904 and hailing from Harlingen.

I also went to the grand old company "Datema," a nautical book and chart shop, to buy charts for the remainder of our trip, the Belgian canals, and the English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts, as well as the Canary Islands. I was a little early, so had a nice time wandering around the east side of the old Amsterdam harbor. I unfortunately could not take pictures because of not being allowed to take electronic equipment into the Consulate, so left my camera at home.

We had one more party the Saturday before we left, as a way to say good-bye to our friends.

The next day, we found that the Meelfabriek, the huge flour mill across the canal from our berth, was to be open for visitors, so of course we went and wandered about, marveling at the huge spaces once filled with grain hoppers and the great size of the buildings.

The canal is small, compared to the big German canals, or even to the newer canals of the northern Netherlands, and the commercial ships are correspondingly smaller, but that does not stop them from acting like huge oil tankers, steaming up the middle and reluctant to concede any more than the minimum operating room.

The narrow old canals are lined not only with parked cars, as in every Dutch city, but also with cafes,bubbling with youthful life.

Delft is also the city of Vermeer. The center of the city has not changed much since his time, and as we walked around the city, Vermeer paintings kept appearing in front of us.