February 18

February 18

Hotel van Blommestein

We woke up at about 7 (I was up at my usual 5am)
We mandied and went down to the free breakfast in the hotel.
We were offered nasi goreng, bahmi goreng, fresh fruit, eggs any style, toast, jam, tang orange drink, coffee, tea, kerupuk udang and as much as we wanted.

After breakfast we contracted a driver and a new car to drive us to Salatiga, where mama and papa started their lives, as a couple. The driver charged us 500.000 ( $50,--) for the day....., that was a great deal and he drove a brand-new Toyota Kijang (something like the Toyota SUV).
We arrived in Salatiga, and passed several colonial buildings, one of them being a sugar factory, of which I suspect that Oom Henk van Orden, tante Troel's husband, may have worked at, as an engineer at one time, because of it's proximity to Salatiga....

Opa, Oma Henk, Troel, Pop & Lex

 Suddenly we we there....Hotel van Blommestein, on our right, with a huge field in front of it, we turned into the, by now, traffic police station, and parked the car, the driver was very nervous, perhaps he had some outstanding issues with the local traffic constabulary??

...with some apprehension and sense of wonder, did I walk towards the front doors.... 4 meters high, but no longer containing any doors, marble steps, leading up to a very large  marble tiled "lobby" where I imagined, once was large reception/check-in desk, made from the finest of Java teak (djatti) rattan furniture, and jongos running back and forth, helping guests with suitcases, while others served a complimentary whiskey-soda to the men and a cooling " kopie-es" to the ladies.
The building still felt grand and we walked all around it not a single "no trespassing" sign to be found, taking pictures and discussing where we thought the many rooms would have been. Clearly, they would have been between the wall with the arches and the tiled walkway we were standing on. We looked down towards the weed-over grown grounds and noticed a type of gudang, so we explored that as well, and thought that this may have been the guests quarters..... Do you think that Oma Jaan, who was hired as a wash lady, would have lived here for a while, until Opa Jo spotted her, perhaps enjoying a mandi?? 

We looked through the entire basement area, because Menno, once read, on the internet, while doing some research, that Hotel van Blommestein had a long tunnel, that started at the hotel, in the basement, and ran underground, the length of the soccer field and ended at the road in some way. At that point we never saw any evidence of such a tunnel.
Not to be discouraged, we decided to quiz the police men, at the desk to see if they had any information about this lovely Colonial building. At first they were a bit apprehensive about answering any questions and probably wondered who these two totoks were and why we were asking questions about their head quarters. I offered to take some pictures of one of the friendliest, but lowest ranked officers (the one with only 1 stripe) and he eagerly accepted.

Balinese Haris and superior officer

the whole brigade

No sooner did my flash  light up the "Kantor Polisi", or a whole brigade of officers came out of the woodwork. A young officer, a Balinese, explained to his fellow officers what we were looking for, and what we were investigating. We were, after all, representing the History Department of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, looking at buildings of the Colonial times remaining in Indonesia.......
Several pictures later, some with the highest ranking officers, and the ice was broken....and yes....they knew of a tunnel that runs under the football field towards the road. We asked if we could see the tunnel and perhaps take some pix for the university, but we were told that the tunnel had been cemented shut because of Banyak oeler.....many snakes.....and the officer in charge said: Saya takut...."I am scared"
We exchanged some email addresses, and we could not leave until he (the officer general) suggested that a small donation for the restoration of the building and perhaps a building in the back for "kumpulans" would be a good token of our friendship .
Smiling we told them that we would be happy to take it up with the university of Utrecht, Department of History and Colonialism and that he would hear from us. 

Surely he is not expecting money from us....or is he??? Shoot, he would not even open the door to the tunnel.
I left the property with some mixed emotions, there are still so many unanswered questions, when was the hotel built, when did it close, and why? Was it the Japs or was it the Indonesians that "annexed" it and made it their own....where were papa and mama when all this took place.....
It seems like we have still so many things to know...one thing for sure, what we figured was hotel Van Blommestein, really was.....the existence of the tunnel proofed it for me !!  And that in and of itself is a great...I think.

Borobudur

Back into the car and onward to the Borobudur..... this great temple of the Hindu religion was wrestled back from the jungle a mere 80 or 90 years ago, led by a team of Dutch archeologists. It is huge, like a pyramid, totally decorated with all the Hindu deities and carvings depicting Gods in various poses, some of them quite naughty....I suppose the Gods, back then, were more human more than some of the priests wish to admit to  now.. The Borobudur is an awesome sight to behold, it is absolutely splendid, and we were lucky to get to see it, on this trip, because it was only in October of last year that the Merapi volcano exploded and spewed lava and boulders, the size of houses, miles into the air. It covered the entire area with over 20 inches of volcanic ash, and the Borobudur was buried.

Just erupted Gunung Merapi

It was only with money from UNESCO that the clean-up got started and was finished, a few weeks before we came for our visit.
We saw a lot of evidence of the eruption that killed hundreds of people, just a couple of months ago, it is incomprehensible how boulders and rocks that are that big can be flung as If they were mere flakes of corn...

Ayam Gulay

We arrived home, tired but satisfied and we had a great day.

We decided to eat next door at the Via-Via restaurant, a chain of 50+ internationally located restaurants that promote, among other things, local talent and local foods.

Menno had a dish of sauteed tofu and tempeh with vegetables and I had a dish called Ajam Gulai, a dish of curry braised chicken thighs......eat your heart out, Christina....anyway, it was good and nicely presented. I still don't like chicken thighs...

We turned in early, after making our plane reservations to Lombok for  Monday......





Glossary
kerupuk udang is a large prawn cracker
Salatiga is a city on the other side of the volcano Bromo and the birth city of my father
Kopie-es is iced coffee
Jongos is a male servant
Gudang is a storage facilty, could also be a shed
Gunung is a mountain