A Trip to
Holland
I recently had
an opportunity for a short visit to what I think is the most
livable country on this planet, the Netherlands… flying on
my wife’s employee passes, we flew from Minneapolis to
Detroit on Friday, and after a long day in the Detroit
airport… got on a flight to Schipol airport which is just
outside of Amsterdam – about six miles from the center of
town… in previous trips to Amsterdam, I had opportunities to
visit some of the magnificent museums where the vast
artistic wealth of that nation is on display and of course,
I have seen and studied the famous Dutch artists in museums
all over the world…
So, this time we decided to go away from Amsterdam a bit and
see what some of the rest of the area is like… we had only
three nights, and our usual limited budget so trips far
a-field were simply not possible… the first two nights, we
stayed in a hotel by the airport which had a free shuttle to
the airport and was only $60 per night… so, Saturday
morning, about 8 a.m., we were able to check into the hotel
and drop our bags… then a shuttle back to the train station
which is at the airport and we caught a train for Utrecht…
Mary heard that there was a market at Utrecht that she was
interested in seeing… strangely, at the train station in
Utrecht, nobody had heard of the open air market we were
looking for… but finally we got directions and it turned out
the market was just outside the upscale American style
shopping mall next to the train station…
The streets going away from the market were full of
restaurants and shops in very old narrow brick buildings of
two or three stories… Mary was mostly delighted with the
amazing varieties of cheese in the market and bought several
parcels… then after a lunch of Vietnamese spring rolls and a
paper cone of French fries with globs of mayo and ketchup
splattered on the top, we found a sidewalk café outside of a
fast food place where for the price of a soda, we sat for a
couple hours and watched the people walk by… I made a few
sketches… the vast majority of the people we saw were
speaking Dutch, not many tourists in this area at this time…
but of course as soon as we opened our mouths, they spoke to
us in perfect English…
By mid
afternoon, we were pretty well knocked out from having been
on the plane all night and from jet lag, so we went back to
the hotel and slept for about 14 hours… with only a short
break in the evening for supper at the fast food place in
the parking lot…
Sunday morning we again made it to the Schipol train station
and from there to The Hague which they call Den Haag… the
train fares were less than ten euros each way for these
trips and the trains were fast, efficient and ran every few
minutes… we found information in the train station on how to
get to the Peace Palace and so got the #24 bus for a short
ride through the city… there were sidewalk café’s everywhere
in the center of town… so we decided to go back there after
seeing the Peace Palace… I was very impressed with the Peace
Palace… it was really great to see that almost 100 years
ago, people were trying to oppose militarism… and ever
since, even through the terrible wars of the 20th Century,
here was a place where a voice was raised opposing the
horrors and idiocy of war… it was very sobering to tour this
place dedicated to finding a peaceful way for nations to
settle their differences and to think about the
glorification of war that is still part and parcel of the
American way of life… we still, even when the horrors of war
should have taught us better, glorify war and those who wage
it… in America, today the soldier is glorified and praised
and it is considered highly unpatriotic to think that the
best way to keep soldiers alive is to not let them become
soldiers in the first place… ironic to be touring this place
devoted to nonviolent solutions to international conflict
while the USA is spending vast vast sums on waging wars and
stockpiling armaments… and doing almost nothing to promote
world peace… I was embarrassed to be American…
Well, these were my own thoughts… the tour guide talked only
about the architecture of the building and the
technicalities about how the world courts worked… which was
all very interesting… after the tour when we were standing
on the corner confused, the tour guide showed us how to take
the streetcar back to the city center… we stopped at a fast
food place and had a soda and watched the people… again
mostly Dutch going by walking, biking and in cars and trams…
here and everywhere we went there were scores of bicycles
everywhere… they seemed to outnumber the cars by three or a
dozen to one… and along the street there were hundreds and
hundreds of bicycles parked everywhere… by the train
stations there were large parking lots full of bicycles and
everywhere you looked there were bike lanes and special
paths for bikes… we noticed that the people were remarkably
fit and trim looking and that the bicyclists ranged from
families with babies to grandpas and grandmas with white
hair flying in the wind…
The only fat people we saw anywhere in fact, were American
tourists… must be all the biking and lots of fresh cheese…
hmmm
Later we had some very nice baguette sandwichs… we ate
sitting on a park bench that overlooked a duck pond and
beyond that a deer park with many deer including a male with
a magnificent rack of antlers… here we did see someone
sleeping on a bench but he was well dressed and in fact, we
saw no winos or homeless people anywhere… I don’t know
anything about the Dutch social system, but if there are
poor people in the Netherlands, or mentally ill people we
did not see them… which was a surprise to us because in
American cities, the downtown or central area is often an
open air asylum for the homeless, indigent and mentally
distressed… we were told by people that we talked to that,
while there is the occasional pickpocket and drug addict
bicycle thief, crime is pretty rare and violent crime
virtually nonexistent… again, far different from in American
cities…
Monday morning, we took the train to Amsterdam and after
dropping our bags at a more expensive ($97) hotel by the
central train station, took another train to Zaanse Schans…
this is a historical preservation site at which several of
the old traditional Dutch windmills have been restored and
actually operate on the shore of the Zaans river to
demonstrate how people lived two and three hundred years ago
and how the windmills were used to do things like make paint
and run a sawmill… there was a gorgeous breeze and it was a
bright sunny day, so the windmills were spinning and we
walked around and enjoyed seeing all of the old Dutch houses
that had been lovingly restored into the semblance of a 17th
Century village… the grass in the meadows was bright green
and there were fat sheep spread across the field… the old
houses were painted green with white trim and were very
pretty with the river and the old windmills turning in the
background… we stopped at a nice little restaurant called
The Crow and to the accompaniment of many cawing crows, ate
a delicious Dutch pancake on a wooden patio overlooking a
small canal with a view of the village and the stately
turning windmills… it was really lovely… then we walked
along the path by the river to look more closely at the
windmills… and while we were sitting there watching the
Dutch folks pump by on their bicycles, an old white haired
guy, must have been 90, introduced himself to us in Dutch
and when we said we did not understand, began a conversation
in English about the windmills and how this area was
important to understanding the history of Netherlands…
That evening, we caught the train back to Amsterdam and had
a light dinner at a very nice patio restaurant overlooking
the Dam square and the central train station… we later had a
more substantial dinner at a cheaper place back from the
square… most of the people we saw here, at least the ones
who were not working or on bicycles were obviously tourists
like us… many from USA… here we saw the infamous tourist
coffee shops where delighted Americans with hemp leaf tee
shirts were puffing away on their more or less legal spliffs
(outside) and bongs (inside)… since we do not drink or smoke
the tourist night life holds little attraction for us… we
walked around… had a laugh at the huge dildoes in the sex
shop windows and just enjoyed the lively tourist scene… we
were glad to be in Amsterdam but also glad we had only spent
the one night in the city…
The weather for our stay had been perfect… bright and sunny
everyday with a cool breeze and periods of heavy fluffy
clouds that did not rain… Tuesday morning when we left to
catch the train to the airport, it was drizzling rain… which
turned to a downpour while we were on the train… the city
veiled in the haze of rain was very beautiful and full of
that marvelous silver light that you see in certain
paintings by Frans Halls or Albert Cyup or somebody… we did
not eat because this airline (bless their soul) lets us have
first class seats and in first class, they feed you so much
that we did not want to impair our appetite for the smoked
salmon or the beef tenderloin… so by the time we were over a
cloudy Scotland and lunch began, we were starving and did
more justice to all that food than most of the paying
passengers… I spent a long day in the air watching movies
(an interesting documentary about Pearl Jam and a couple of
action flicks) then a few hours in the DTW airport and home
over the hazy shoreline of lake Michigan and the Mondrian
landscape of central Wisconsin… on the freeway home to
Maplewood, it felt like we had been gone a month and not
just five days…
Impression
of Holland
the
green of
the Dutch fields was the
green of my childhood… I recognized
it instantly…
Wisconsin
without the madness… without
the nightmares… a place
at least, where
war does not seem
so glorious…
and where a bicycle makes
sense…
going to
Holland instead of helping my mother move
the
burden is on someone else… I
almost do not care who…
but I cannot
look into those wells of
sadness… cannot look into
that lake of a life
being ground in the
horrible wind driven grist mill
of time…
ground to screaming powder…
ground to dust…
my fingers now are as chilly as
the wind that blows across the river
Zaane
and houses full of
furniture
spin in the hurricane of my
wretched brain… there is a mystery
in this generation
and regeneration of human
beings that I do not even
begin to understand…
