J and I love the Netherlands: the people are friendly and always seem to have a smile at the ready. Being from the South, this is not such an unusual thing but having lived in Germany for three years, a smiling face is hard to come by and rarely seen unless there is a degree of acquaintanceship. Smiles put me at ease. Other things we love about the Netherlands are de Ruijter (if you don't know what this is then google it, order it, and thank me later), tulips, lots of BBC TV, and cheese. Oh the cheese.
On this particular trip, we stayed in Leiden and visited Haarlem. And we ate cheese and de Ruijter on toast.
View of church from garrison on a hill in Leiden
Inside of a windmill. We had to climb myriad sets of rickety and uneven steps to reach the top. Bop had a bit of a panic attack and never reached the top. J and I came to the conclusion that owning and running a windmill would have been laborious (though I suppose something is to be said for always being able to eat bread as a result of being a windmill owner).
Log in the living quarters of the windmill; he thought the stove burners were fascinating!
I thought it was funny to see how the kids signed the guestbook: Log's "L" became a windmill, and Littlest included an "I heart" while Bop drew a big-lipped girl!
There was something very comforting in seeing a familiar face, talking about home in ENGLISH, and visiting with a friend who can empathize with the notion of being a foreigner.
A bit voyeuristic of me, but I loved this rooftop apartment (also seen from the garrison in Leiden).
Log peeping inside of the hiding space in the Ten Boom house in Haarlem. Four adults hid in this crawlspace for several days before being given the all clear. A wash basin used as a chamber pot was stowed in the corner and was stepped on and spilled during the first day of the hiding. The space was quite small, and J and I could not fathom how the refugees, if you will, were able to execute their 'hiding' drill in under 70 seconds. Littlest and Log took nearly 20 seconds to crawl through the cupboard (not shown) into the narrow space and they were in the room and pea-sized, too! Bop has a fear of confined spaces and declined to crawl inside of it.
Detail of organ inside of St. Bavo's in Haarlem. Handel, Mozart and Mendelssohn all tickled this organ's ivories. Herman Melville described the inside of Moby Dick's mouth thusly: "Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes?" I would have loved to have heard it played.
St Bavo's reverted to the House of Orange after the Spanish occupation and became protestant, though it was was originally consecrated as a catholic cathedral. Protestants simply call it Bavo Church, which is a rather humble name for a noble work of Gothic architecture.
The church features beautiful pieces of woodworking...
sloping stone floors, and is the final resting place of Frans Hals.
This is the facade of the one time Ten-Boom watch and clock shop. The shop still sells watches and features the Ten Boom brand.
When asking for directions to the Ten Boom museum, I was surprised to learn that many locals had no idea who Corrie Ten Boom was let alone where she had lived!
I was so happy to see pineapple for sale at a winter market!
Kiddos in front of the entrance to the Ten Boom home. It's always a bit difficult to explain the hardships of the war dealt to others by the hands of Nazi-Germany. Our kiddos identify with Germany on a great many levels and cannot comprehend that it was necessary for people to hide from the German (read: Nazi) forces, and their estimation of modern-day Germany suffers a bit each time they learn of new atrocities. I sometimes worry that J and I are too frank with our children when talking of the past, the Second World War in particular, but we find that they process all of the information presented to them with grace and a certain kind of wisdom. After all, the kiddos have watched their father go to war, known of the losses suffered by their friends, and talk openly of war at school. All of the kiddos came away struck by the bravery of the Ten Boom family with Log saying, "I don't know if I could have done what they did." I remember thinking the same thing as I read "The Hiding Place."
Gratuitous windmill shot
No comments:
Post a Comment