What also mattered was that a generation before I set off and two generations before my girl took flight, my parents, each with a sibling, had made the same journey in reverse. They built families in New Zealand held tight by blood and isolation. My and my cousins\u2019 homes were filled with blue and white Delftware, with tablecloths like carpets, windmill knick-knacks and wooden clogs; our dinner plates were filled with hutspot (creamy mash) and hachee (beef and onion stew), we sucked on salty drop and our New Year\u2019s always featured olliebollen (traditional Dutch fried dough pastries). Every Sunday, we attended the Reformed Church and our childhoods were filled with constantly having to spell our surnames and defending our parents and their thick accents. <\/p>\n
Young Caucasian woman walking near canal in Amsterdam at sunset A mother follows her daughter\u2019s Dutch journey. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
I was in my 20s when I \u201cwent back\u201d and in cobbled streets and the crow-stepped roofs of canal houses I found my turangawaewae. Wherever I went \u2013 Rotterdam, Groningen, Maasluis, Deventer, Utrecht, Vianen, Amstelveen \u2013 my soul was singing. This was home. <\/p>\n
My NZ-born and raised girl is in her 20s and when she landed in Amsterdam, she too found her turangawaewae. Her maternal ancestors were calling to her and she listened. I want them to shut up. <\/p>\n
I arrived a week before Christmas and my cousins \u2013 those unsung heroes of our immigrant lives \u2013 were there to drive us to her flat. I\u2019ve hosted cousins travelling Downunder over the years: those cousins then hosted my girl in her first few months, guiding her through the intricacies of finding work, signing up to a doctor, paying the right taxes, recommending a good gym, finding a flat. Mitochondrial DNA flows thick. <\/p>\n
I was visiting her for a month, to be there with her for her first Christmas. And of course, to experience the white northern Christmas promised by seasonal cards. <\/p>\n
Amsterdam’s Christmas Market is behind the Rijksmuseum.<\/p>\n
My daughter\u2019s Amsterdam home was accessed via steep, narrow stairs that show why a Dutch staircase is called a \u201ctrap\u201d. Outside, a bicycle rack held dozens of bikes \u2013 including hers – and across the street was an Albert Heijn supermarket where she bought her groceries. Up the road, a market sold fresh vegetables and meats. This is how my daughter lives now. <\/p>\n
Amsterdam has an excellent tram system that on our first night took us into the central city for the Christmas market in a square near the Rijksmuseum. The streets were a twinkling fairyland of Christmas lights, crowded with shoppers snugged up against the winter chill and carrying shopping bags of last-minute purchases. Our first stop was for a cup of gluhwein (hot spiced wine), ubiquitous at this time of year. We carried the cup of spiced, hot red wine as we wandered the stalls of the market and watched the ice skaters on the rink in the centre. <\/p>\n
She guided us through the market, to the shopping mall where she was looking for a pair of jeans, and on to her Christmas gift to me: the annual Amsterdam Light Festival Canal Cruise. It\u2019s a 90-minute journey through about 20 light installations in the theme of Legacy. We sup yet more gluhwein (included with the right ticket) as we slide past light sculptures, such as the antenna just above the water, that make the point screen-dominated lives are contributing to global warming. <\/p>\n
Christmas time at the Spiegelgracht in the old town of Amsterdam. On the horizon the towers the rijksmuseum. December Christmas in Amsterdam. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The canals are edged with the iconic tall, narrow Dutch merchant homes and we glide under arched bridges that give us glimpses of more canals and more bridges. Our guide gives us the history of these canals, streets that reflect the Netherlands\u2019 golden age. That I am showing my girl her heritage while she is showing me her present is a paradox that is not lost on me. <\/p>\n
Zaanse Schans is her next gift. The historic living village of working windmills is only a 20-minute bus trip from Amsterdam. The great sails of the windmills creak and circle above us as a bitter north wind sweeps in. Inside the mills, cheeses are for sale and visitors huddle over hot chocolate, and we revel in warmth while the wind whistles outside. Craft shops with uneven wooden floors offer traditional Dutch craft and Nijntje (better known in NZ as Miffy) merchandise. <\/p>\n
We later visit the Nijntje Museum in Utrecht. A massive snowstorm basically shut down northern Europe and stranded us in Utrecht, the third-biggest city in the Netherlands. We had travelled onwards to Germany, Switzerland and France and returned to the Netherlands, via Maastricht, the southernmost city and highest point in the Netherlands. <\/p>\n
Directly across the street from the stunning neo-Renaissance style Maastricht railway station is the Kaboom Hotel. The station is all typical crow-stepped roofline and stained glass windows; the Kaboom Hotel encapsulates the modern, quirky, independent Netherlands that my daughter is discovering. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the place to sleep for the alert traveler; someone who needs the comfort of a hotel, without paying for unnecessary extras that you don\u2019t use anyway,\u201d says its website. This is a hotel where you can hire a stick insect to come to your room with you. Yes, you read that right, your very own insect to keep you company throughout your stay. We did not take up the option. <\/p>\n
We wandered the ancient streets of Maastricht, crossing the 13th-century Sint Servaasbrug foot bridge on our way to the highest point in the Netherlands. We climbed the grand 400m above sea level to see the 300-year-old pentagon-shaped Fort St Pieter. <\/p>\n
Built in 1701, the fort has underground tunnels and soaring overground walls pierced by archer windows. <\/p>\n
Maastricht was to have been our final stop before Amsterdam, but a snowstorm the likes of which had not been seen in the Netherlands for more than 20 years stranded us in Utrecht. <\/p>\n
And we discovered Bunk. Just a short tramp through still-falling snow from the railway station, Bunk is a reimagined 100-year-old Reformed Church. Old wooden pews of the type that much of the Dutch diaspora could recognise have been raised vertically to panel the bar that now fills what once would have been the church\u2019s nave. Our room is tucked into the extreme slope of the church roof, a narrow window giving a glimpse into the snow-flecked darkness outside. The pipes of the original organ \u2013 still operational \u2013 dominate the Bunk\u2019s far wall. <\/p>\n
Bunk is a hotel in a renovated church in Utrecht. Photo \/ Helen van Berkel<\/p>\n
That my Auckland North Shore-raised girl feels her ancestral home is where she truly belongs fills my heart with joy. That my Auckland North Shore-raised girl feels this is where she truly belongs breaks my heart. <\/p>\n
Checklist<\/p>\n
GETTING THERE<\/p>\n
Air New Zealand and its Star Alliance partners head to Schiphol several times a day with stopovers in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Shanghai or Singapore. <\/p>\n
DETAILS<\/p>\n