Around the World in Fifty-Two Weeks Week Six: The Netherlands
Yay! I finally have this post ready for y'all. This was a special post to write, because it's the first time in this series that "Annie" visited a country that I've visited in real life. Going to The Netherlands was a life long dream of mine, and spending several days there in May of 2014 was utterly amazing. Everyone should visit, but make sure you read dozens of books by Dutch authors first. (Special Note: All of these pictures were from my stay in The Netherlands.)
And now, please enjoy the continuing fictional series on my blog, Around the World in Fifty-Two Weeks :
Around the World in Fifty-Two Weeks Week Six: The Netherlands
“We’ve got to take you to Kinderdijk.” Demi’s Dutch accent was as thick as I had remembered. “And feed you some of our national dish,” Lisa added. “Too bad you got in so late last night, cause I was really craving the herring yesterday.” “We also have to give you a tour of at least one of our hundreds of Museums.” Demi glanced over at me when we pulled up at a stop sign. “Are you sure we really only have you for a week? Because we literally have enough to keep you busy for a month.” “I wish I could take you up on the offer.” I shook my head in amazement. “Thank you so much for changing your schedule on such short notice, it’s so good to be around familiar faces again.” Demi, Lisa and I had been college roommates for our junior and senior years. We’d become such good friends that we’d made it a point to stay in touch with each other when we graduated even though we lived on different continents. With social media and modern technology it hadn’t been hard to do. “Did Demi mention that both of us have meetings all day long on Thursday?” Lisa leaned up from the backseat. “No worries though. We took the liberty of setting up interviews for you with the newspaper as well as a radio station. We also sent out some info to some travel bloggers here in The Netherlands in case they want to interview you.” My mouth dropped open, I knew the girls were go-getters, but this was Tuesday morning, I’d only told them I was coming to The Netherlands less than twenty-four hours before. “Plus we’ve made a list of things we think you should do here.” Demi shrugged, “It’s not every day we get to have our beautiful country showcased for an Exploration Airlines employee.” I laughed. “You girls. Wow, I am honored that you’ve taken so much time to help me. So, what’s on the list besides eating fish with raw onions, visiting windmills at Kinderdijk, and well, what are we doing now?” The girls had dragged me out to the car before I was fully awake. “We’re going to Vaalserberg.” Lisa sounded excited. “Nice.” I scrunched up my face, “And where or what is Vaalserberg?” I tried to repeat the word with the same Dutch accent Lisa had used, but failed miserably. “It’s the highest point in The Netherlands and also where Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands meet together.” Demi pulled into a grocery store parking lot. “But first lets get some food to snack on; you are hungry, right?” “Um, yeah.” I grinned. I must have been going through a late growth spurt while in college (that’s my excuse anyway), cause I was always hungry. It had become a joke between us three girls after several late night donut runs while studying for tests. “Oh wow, it’s Aldi.” I gestured at the store in front of us. “Now you can see what a real Aldi looks like.” Lisa nudged my arm as we walked toward the entrance. I’d been shopping at our Aldis in the states ever since the girls introduced me to the store that originated in Germany and was popular in The Netherlands, so this would be cool. “It looks pretty much the same.” I looked around the brightly lit building. “Ah, but you’ve never seen one of these.” Demi lead me over to the wall with what looked like a large vending machine for… “Bread! Are you for real?” Reaching up I pushed the button and thunk, down dropped a cute, cheese covered roll into the chute. I reached down and picked it up, it was delightfully warm and smelled like how I had always imagined the word home to smell like. “Bag up what you want and then we pay at the front.” Lisa gestured at the machine, “They also have soft pretzels.”
Ten minutes later we climbed back in the car with bread, delicious looking raspberry jelly, and stroopwafels (which I soon found out are the best cookies in the world). The stroopwafels looked like a mini flat waffle and were filled with a thin layer of carmel and are incredibly scrumptious. While they’re not the healthiest of breakfasts, I definitely recommend everyone jump out of the norm and travel to The Netherlands and eat them early in the morning at least once in their life time. Legend has it that the first stroopwafel was made in the city of Gouda around the turn of the 18th century by a baker using leftovers from his bakery, which he then sweetened with syrup. Who knew leftovers could be so good? The drive to Vaalserberg wasn’t much further, and even though there wasn’t a spatular view, it was still really cool and weird to be looking at three different countries at once. We sat on a blanket on the hillside with the wind whipping around us and munched on our bread and jelly. “It’s really windy today.” I pulled my coat tighter around me. Lisa laughed, “You haven’t seen windy yet. This is the highest point in Netherlands, and it’s only 323 meters above sea level. The rest of our land is as flat as a pancake. That means we have tons of wind.” “So much,” Demi broke in, “that despite the rainy weather, we Dutch use raincoats and rain "suits" instead of umbrellas because the windy is too strong and it’s pretty much an acrobatic feat to hold an umbrella and cycle at the same time.” “Woah.” I couldn’t imagine wanting to be out if it were more windy than it was at that moment, but I didn’t say that, I didn’t want to sound like a wimp. “I remember you two liked to ride your bikes everywhere. So, I guess that’s a Dutch thing?” “Pretty much,” Demi mumbled the words around a bite of soft pretzel. “We’re actually the bicycle capital of the world. We have more than 18 million in the country, which is more than one bicycle per person. On average, we Dutch cycles 2.5 km per day, which is…” Lisa looked up for a moment, calculating, over a mile and a half.” Demi put her finger up and we waited while she finished the food that was in her mouth. “There are even specially-designated "fietspaden" or bike paths all over the country that are just for cycling, people aren’t allowed to walk on them.” “Woah. You Dutch do take bike riding seriously, don’t you?”
* * *
Wednesday we went and explored a windmill, a serious dream come true for me. It was cold, rainy, and very gray that day and the first glimpse I had of a windmill actually startled me. It was big, dark, scary, and imposing. Almost like a monster staking it’s claim on the landscape. Thankfully, it was less intimidating and actually pretty cool once we got close to it. “We’re going to tour it, you know,” Lisa told me after I had stared at it for several minutes, snapping away with my camera. “We’re allowed to go inside it?” Cool! “Of course, it’s kinda like a mini museum.” Demi was at work, so it was just Lisa and I hanging out. Together we went paid the entrance fee then stepped through the doorway and seemingly entered another world. I hadn't realized that whole families used to live in windmills. A family with thirteen children lived in that particular one about a hundred years ago. I could only imagine how cramped and busy that must have been. I read all of the plaques in the windmill and snapped even more pictures. At one point I stood on the top level with my eyes closed, listening to the whining and scraping of the huge blade as it turned outside. There were fishing nets hanging around the room and the smell of fish was pungent as it swirled around my senses. It wasn’t hard to imagine that I had been transported back into time.
* * *
Thursday I caught up on blogging, vlogging, and interviews, and then on Friday Demi and I headed to Harlem to the Beje while Lisa was at work.
Growing up I had read many books by Corrie ten Boom, who was taken to concentration camps during WW2 because of hiding Jews. The Beje, as the house she lived in was called, was a narrow, tall building; it was only about one or two rooms deep, one or two rooms wide, and maybe three stories high. During the Ten Boom's early years there they had a lot of people living in a small space so they bought the building behind it, (which was about the same size), and connected the two buildings with a spiral staircase that had a ship's mast as the main support. That meant the rooms weren't all on the same level and we had to go up a couple of steps to get into one room, and down several to get in the next.
During the war this worked out perfectly when it came time to build a secret room to hide the Jews in, because the house was so confusing no one would be able to tell if several feet of a room was missing. Corrie's bedroom was at the very top of the house, and therefore picked to be the place where the hidden room was built. That way, the Jews would have the most time to reach it in case of a raid. In her books Corrie said that when the room was done, she couldn't even tell it was there. The Beje was very crowded when we were there, I was amazed at how many people came to see it. When I saw Corrie's bedroom, I gasped in amazement. My first thought was about how small the hiding place was. The people who turned the house into a museum had knocked out a portion of the wall so visitors could see the hiding place more clearly. I waited to go in until everyone else was done so I could savor the moment longer. It was so small! It was about two feet wide and six or seven feet long. There had been six people at the Beje when it was raided and they escaped to the hiding place. They were there for several days before being rescued. Standing in the tight space I could not imagine how horrible and scary and cramped it must have been.
After the Beje we drove to Amsterdam where we parked the car and then succeeded in getting extremely lost and separated and I was quite freaked out (Amsterdam didn’t feel like the best place to get lost...). We finally met up near the Anne Frank Museum which was our destination. The wind was the strongest I’d ever felt outside of major storms and we stood outside, clutching our coats to us for over an hour while waiting so we could tour the building where Anne Frank and seven other people hid during WW2. Touring the Anne Frank building was very sobering and made me wish everyone studied history and learned from it.
* * * Saturday and Sunday we spent cycling around the neighborhood Demi and Lisa live in, mimicking each other (them my American accent, me their Dutch one), drinking coffee with cute little stirring spoons, going to second-hand stores, petting their dog (I loved having an animal around again), playing games, reminiscing about our college days, discussing our current lives, and going to church. I was sad to see Monday arrive, yet excited to see where my next adventure would take me. I let Demi have the honor of spinning the globe and Lisa the honor of picking the country with her eyes closed.
And now, please enjoy the continuing fictional series on my blog, Around the World in Fifty-Two Weeks :
Around the World in Fifty-Two Weeks Week Six: The Netherlands
“We’ve got to take you to Kinderdijk.” Demi’s Dutch accent was as thick as I had remembered. “And feed you some of our national dish,” Lisa added. “Too bad you got in so late last night, cause I was really craving the herring yesterday.” “We also have to give you a tour of at least one of our hundreds of Museums.” Demi glanced over at me when we pulled up at a stop sign. “Are you sure we really only have you for a week? Because we literally have enough to keep you busy for a month.” “I wish I could take you up on the offer.” I shook my head in amazement. “Thank you so much for changing your schedule on such short notice, it’s so good to be around familiar faces again.” Demi, Lisa and I had been college roommates for our junior and senior years. We’d become such good friends that we’d made it a point to stay in touch with each other when we graduated even though we lived on different continents. With social media and modern technology it hadn’t been hard to do. “Did Demi mention that both of us have meetings all day long on Thursday?” Lisa leaned up from the backseat. “No worries though. We took the liberty of setting up interviews for you with the newspaper as well as a radio station. We also sent out some info to some travel bloggers here in The Netherlands in case they want to interview you.” My mouth dropped open, I knew the girls were go-getters, but this was Tuesday morning, I’d only told them I was coming to The Netherlands less than twenty-four hours before. “Plus we’ve made a list of things we think you should do here.” Demi shrugged, “It’s not every day we get to have our beautiful country showcased for an Exploration Airlines employee.” I laughed. “You girls. Wow, I am honored that you’ve taken so much time to help me. So, what’s on the list besides eating fish with raw onions, visiting windmills at Kinderdijk, and well, what are we doing now?” The girls had dragged me out to the car before I was fully awake. “We’re going to Vaalserberg.” Lisa sounded excited. “Nice.” I scrunched up my face, “And where or what is Vaalserberg?” I tried to repeat the word with the same Dutch accent Lisa had used, but failed miserably. “It’s the highest point in The Netherlands and also where Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands meet together.” Demi pulled into a grocery store parking lot. “But first lets get some food to snack on; you are hungry, right?” “Um, yeah.” I grinned. I must have been going through a late growth spurt while in college (that’s my excuse anyway), cause I was always hungry. It had become a joke between us three girls after several late night donut runs while studying for tests. “Oh wow, it’s Aldi.” I gestured at the store in front of us. “Now you can see what a real Aldi looks like.” Lisa nudged my arm as we walked toward the entrance. I’d been shopping at our Aldis in the states ever since the girls introduced me to the store that originated in Germany and was popular in The Netherlands, so this would be cool. “It looks pretty much the same.” I looked around the brightly lit building. “Ah, but you’ve never seen one of these.” Demi lead me over to the wall with what looked like a large vending machine for… “Bread! Are you for real?” Reaching up I pushed the button and thunk, down dropped a cute, cheese covered roll into the chute. I reached down and picked it up, it was delightfully warm and smelled like how I had always imagined the word home to smell like. “Bag up what you want and then we pay at the front.” Lisa gestured at the machine, “They also have soft pretzels.”
Ten minutes later we climbed back in the car with bread, delicious looking raspberry jelly, and stroopwafels (which I soon found out are the best cookies in the world). The stroopwafels looked like a mini flat waffle and were filled with a thin layer of carmel and are incredibly scrumptious. While they’re not the healthiest of breakfasts, I definitely recommend everyone jump out of the norm and travel to The Netherlands and eat them early in the morning at least once in their life time. Legend has it that the first stroopwafel was made in the city of Gouda around the turn of the 18th century by a baker using leftovers from his bakery, which he then sweetened with syrup. Who knew leftovers could be so good? The drive to Vaalserberg wasn’t much further, and even though there wasn’t a spatular view, it was still really cool and weird to be looking at three different countries at once. We sat on a blanket on the hillside with the wind whipping around us and munched on our bread and jelly. “It’s really windy today.” I pulled my coat tighter around me. Lisa laughed, “You haven’t seen windy yet. This is the highest point in Netherlands, and it’s only 323 meters above sea level. The rest of our land is as flat as a pancake. That means we have tons of wind.” “So much,” Demi broke in, “that despite the rainy weather, we Dutch use raincoats and rain "suits" instead of umbrellas because the windy is too strong and it’s pretty much an acrobatic feat to hold an umbrella and cycle at the same time.” “Woah.” I couldn’t imagine wanting to be out if it were more windy than it was at that moment, but I didn’t say that, I didn’t want to sound like a wimp. “I remember you two liked to ride your bikes everywhere. So, I guess that’s a Dutch thing?” “Pretty much,” Demi mumbled the words around a bite of soft pretzel. “We’re actually the bicycle capital of the world. We have more than 18 million in the country, which is more than one bicycle per person. On average, we Dutch cycles 2.5 km per day, which is…” Lisa looked up for a moment, calculating, over a mile and a half.” Demi put her finger up and we waited while she finished the food that was in her mouth. “There are even specially-designated "fietspaden" or bike paths all over the country that are just for cycling, people aren’t allowed to walk on them.” “Woah. You Dutch do take bike riding seriously, don’t you?”
* * *
Wednesday we went and explored a windmill, a serious dream come true for me. It was cold, rainy, and very gray that day and the first glimpse I had of a windmill actually startled me. It was big, dark, scary, and imposing. Almost like a monster staking it’s claim on the landscape. Thankfully, it was less intimidating and actually pretty cool once we got close to it. “We’re going to tour it, you know,” Lisa told me after I had stared at it for several minutes, snapping away with my camera. “We’re allowed to go inside it?” Cool! “Of course, it’s kinda like a mini museum.” Demi was at work, so it was just Lisa and I hanging out. Together we went paid the entrance fee then stepped through the doorway and seemingly entered another world. I hadn't realized that whole families used to live in windmills. A family with thirteen children lived in that particular one about a hundred years ago. I could only imagine how cramped and busy that must have been. I read all of the plaques in the windmill and snapped even more pictures. At one point I stood on the top level with my eyes closed, listening to the whining and scraping of the huge blade as it turned outside. There were fishing nets hanging around the room and the smell of fish was pungent as it swirled around my senses. It wasn’t hard to imagine that I had been transported back into time.
* * *
Thursday I caught up on blogging, vlogging, and interviews, and then on Friday Demi and I headed to Harlem to the Beje while Lisa was at work.
Growing up I had read many books by Corrie ten Boom, who was taken to concentration camps during WW2 because of hiding Jews. The Beje, as the house she lived in was called, was a narrow, tall building; it was only about one or two rooms deep, one or two rooms wide, and maybe three stories high. During the Ten Boom's early years there they had a lot of people living in a small space so they bought the building behind it, (which was about the same size), and connected the two buildings with a spiral staircase that had a ship's mast as the main support. That meant the rooms weren't all on the same level and we had to go up a couple of steps to get into one room, and down several to get in the next.
During the war this worked out perfectly when it came time to build a secret room to hide the Jews in, because the house was so confusing no one would be able to tell if several feet of a room was missing. Corrie's bedroom was at the very top of the house, and therefore picked to be the place where the hidden room was built. That way, the Jews would have the most time to reach it in case of a raid. In her books Corrie said that when the room was done, she couldn't even tell it was there. The Beje was very crowded when we were there, I was amazed at how many people came to see it. When I saw Corrie's bedroom, I gasped in amazement. My first thought was about how small the hiding place was. The people who turned the house into a museum had knocked out a portion of the wall so visitors could see the hiding place more clearly. I waited to go in until everyone else was done so I could savor the moment longer. It was so small! It was about two feet wide and six or seven feet long. There had been six people at the Beje when it was raided and they escaped to the hiding place. They were there for several days before being rescued. Standing in the tight space I could not imagine how horrible and scary and cramped it must have been.
After the Beje we drove to Amsterdam where we parked the car and then succeeded in getting extremely lost and separated and I was quite freaked out (Amsterdam didn’t feel like the best place to get lost...). We finally met up near the Anne Frank Museum which was our destination. The wind was the strongest I’d ever felt outside of major storms and we stood outside, clutching our coats to us for over an hour while waiting so we could tour the building where Anne Frank and seven other people hid during WW2. Touring the Anne Frank building was very sobering and made me wish everyone studied history and learned from it.
* * * Saturday and Sunday we spent cycling around the neighborhood Demi and Lisa live in, mimicking each other (them my American accent, me their Dutch one), drinking coffee with cute little stirring spoons, going to second-hand stores, petting their dog (I loved having an animal around again), playing games, reminiscing about our college days, discussing our current lives, and going to church. I was sad to see Monday arrive, yet excited to see where my next adventure would take me. I let Demi have the honor of spinning the globe and Lisa the honor of picking the country with her eyes closed.
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