Verdompt ! Have a care in those islands - those people are BIG! The folks in the individual islands that belong to The Netherlands can of course speak Dutch, and the ones on the islands that belong to Germany can speak German, but both have their own common language, called Frisian, as well. It is said that our language, English, began as Frisian - the oldest English story on record, the Tale of Beowulf, is written in that language, and the original manuscript can be seen at the Museum, where it is catalogued as Cotton Vitelius A 15 - this description tells you the collection, the cabinet, the draw, and the manuscript number in that draw, for it.

It is all handwritten in faded writing using a quill pen, and it is almost impossible to read. It is more strange to us who speak modern English (or American), than the original stories from Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, which is in Middle English, but one can still sort of tell that it is similar to our language of today.

Hope you and Nina enjoy your travels there. Come back safely,