A Dutch Treat

A Dutch Treat
Part 1

Back in those long-gone days when I was still young, I read a wonderful book called Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. It had all kinds of exciting descriptions of what it was like to live in Holland, but for me the climactic height of the whole book was when some young boy saved the entire nation by using just his finger to plug a hole in a dike. Apparently, if this unnamed boy had not taken this courageous action, the entire country would have been flooded and everyone would have drowned. Remember that the boy who plugged the dike in the book was not Hans Brinker himself, the story’s main character, but was someone else.

So anyway, this heroic boy averted a disastrous fate for his nation and refused to let it become another Atlantis. We all know that Atlantis is way below the water now, while Holland is not. This boy bravely held off disaster until the befuddled adults could figure out how to repair the hole permanently, so he was certainly worthy of my admiration.

Despite all my experiences in the Navy, which allowed me to visit many places I never would have seen otherwise, I had never been to Holland. So I decided that when I reached retirement age and didn’t have to report to work every day, I would travel to Holland and see for myself the hole in the dike that the young unknown boy had plugged up with his finger.

And besides the hole in the dike, I had always been very interested in many of the daring exploits from hundreds of years ago that began in Holland. By daring exploits I mean such adventures as those experienced first by the men of the Dutch East India Company with their territorial holdings in the Indonesian Archipelago and in South Africa. After those pioneers blazed the first trails, then came the brave men and women who settled these lands so far from their familiar homes back in Europe. I hoped that a visit to Holland would add to my very limited knowledge of the adventures of those pioneers, because I figured that the whole story must be a fascinating one. Expanding our horizons is important for ourselves as individuals, unless we are content to limit our interests to shopping at Wal-Mart, watching television gems like Desperate Housewives, telling our Facebook and Twitter friends what we had for lunch, and getting lots of "like totally awesome" tattoos all over our arms and legs and necks.

So in 2007, I huddled again with my trusty travel agent who had set up my 2006 trip to Paris, and we arranged a visit to Holland. Now, even after returning from my trip, I’m still a little confused on what’s the difference between Holland and the Netherlands, but I don’t think I’m the only one. I’ll just continue calling the place Holland to describe all of my adventures.

By the way, if you’d care to check out my trip to Paris, it is written up at the following site, because that story is all finished, while I’m still in the process of writing up my Dutch adventures:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=45227

My travel agent went so far as to pinpoint on my map the exact location of the monument to the boy who put his finger in the dike, so I wouldn’t risk missing it. By now he knows me well enough to understand that I don’t catch everything on the first attempt, so he makes allowances for my numerous shortcomings. He now knows just how far he has to go to make sure that I see all that I’m supposed to see.

My travel agent suggested that I start out with the better-known cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. He said that if I wasn’t totally confused by the time I finished my visits to these more prominent cities, he thought I might like to see Haarlem, Leiden, Delft, Edam, and a few other places as well. My only concern was whether or not I would be able to tell if I was totally confused after hitting all the bigger cities. He didn’t offer any suggestions on how I could test myself to see if I was up to the ordeal of seeing the lesser places on the list.

My travel agent set up my transportation and lodgings so that I would go to Amsterdam first. At first I thought maybe he was just arranging my visits alphabetically, but he said there was a good reason for seeing Amsterdam first and it didn’t really have anything to do with the alphabet. The city not only has a name beginning with the letter A, but it is also the capital of its nation and the largest city in the land. The metropolitan area of Amsterdam and its immediate surroundings was home to more than six million people during my 2007 visit.

Additionally, it was one of the most important ports in the world during what was called the Dutch Golden Age, which was back during the 17th century. During this Golden Age, Amsterdam was the center of activity, serving as the headquarters for those who planned all of the country’s global adventures. And besides all those ships leaving the port and heading for exciting far-off lands to return with all kinds of treasures, the Dutch were making major scientific discoveries and developing a worldwide reputation for art – especially painting – that remains in place today.

Well before I left home for my trip, I began studying the place I would be visiting. I learned that Amsterdam had been first settled way back in the 12th century, when it was just a fishing village. Having to be selective in what I would learn because my small brain has a very limited capacity, I decided to skip over everything that came before the year 1600 AD, since that was about when Dutch Golden Age began, and that era was the most interesting and exciting aspect of the trip for me. The Golden Age came to a halt around 1700 AD, but we'll still look at some things that came along after that chapter in the book closed.

Thinking maybe we could tackle this history along with some pictures of what I could see on the ground in Amsterdam, and with what information I could collect from various sources, I began to put together this little diary of my visit. I tried to get some pictures also, just so you could see what I’m talking about, but since I’m not much of a photographer, I have gotten them all from the internet.

When Amsterdam became the focal point of the nation’s commerce back during the Golden Age, it set the scene for much of what we see today. For example, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange is the oldest stock exchange in the entire world, opening up in 1602, and it’s right smack in the center of the city.

On my trip I learned that flourishing commerce enabled the Dutch to set up this stock exchange - commerce resulting from innovative financiers at home and from courageous seafarers on their merchant ships and naval men-of-war. While Spain and Portugal preceded Holland in importing spices from the Far East, the Dutch had their East India Company in operation by 1602, and it was this company that established that first stock exchange. At first, Dutch vessels plied the seas on three distinct routes from the Mother Country - routes to the southern tip of Africa, the southern tip of South America, and the Asian islands of Indonesia, Java, and Sumatra.

Here was the symbol of the Dutch East India Company way back then, and you can see the importance of ships to this venture:

http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/go...oc-heading.jpg

Back then they weren’t lucky enough to have cameras in their cellphones like we have now, so they couldn’t take pictures of anything. In fact, I don’t think they even had cellphones, so I don’t know how they ever got anything accomplished. Well, I certainly don’t want to get started on cellphones any more than I want to get started on all those charming tattoos that so many young folks are getting these days - we were talking about pictures of what things looked like back in the Dutch Golden Age. Any pictures we have to represent what things looked like back then are those old-fashioned paintings that people used to make a long time ago. For example, here is a painting called The Dock of the Dutch East India Company at Amsterdam, by Ludolf Bakhuizen:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Amsterdam.jpg

Here is a very nice picture of Amsterdam’s Town Hall painted by Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde.

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/berckheyde_damsquar.jpg

Jan van Der Heyden painted what is called View of the Westerkerk, showing what is still a major church in Amsterdam today:

http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/0...der-heyden.jpg

Rembrandt van Rijn is buried at this church. In a later episode we’ll talk a little about some of the things he did before they buried him.

Also, the church is just a few blocks from what is now called the Anne Frank House, where little Anne and her family hid in an attic for two horrific years before being taken off to a concentration camp by the Nazis. The church is mentioned frequently in her diary, as the clock tower could be seen from the attic. She always considered the chiming of the clock to be a source of comfort. We'll examine this house more thoroughly in the next epidsode.

A memorial statue to Anne stands right outside the church:

http://stuartgustafson.com/blog/wp-c...ank-statue.jpg

We will continue with some more about Amsterdam in the next episode, focusing on the modern city.

Here’s a suggestion for getting the maximum effect from the pictures – none of which I took – they’re all on the internet. You have to read the entire suggestion before you start doing anything, or you’ll get yourself stuck and won’t know how to get out of it. The F11 key at the top of your keyboard is a toggle switch that will bounce you back and forth between full screen and normal view. If you hit it once, while viewing a picture, it will give you a full screen display, which makes the pictures much better. But you have to hit F11 a second time to return to a normal display, so you can then close the current picture and return to the story. Don’t hit F11 until you understand that you will have to hit F11 a second time to get out of the full screen display mode. Try that approach – again, hit F11 once for full screen, and then hit F11 a second time to return to normal display.

Or even better, but it might depend on your computer’s operating system and your browser, so keep the above method in mind, just in case this doesn’t work on your computer. After hitting F11 the first time and going to full screen, when you’re ready to close the full screen picture, move your cursor to the top right corner of your screen. The top toolbar should re-appear – at least it does on my machine – and you can close the picture by clicking on the X in the top right corner. In this way, you don’t even have to bother with hitting F11 every time – at least until you’re finished with the part of the story you’ve been reading. You keep getting full screen displays, which you can close by positioning your cursor to the top of your screen and making the toolbar re-appear.

Sometimes it takes a few seconds for the toolbar to re-appear, so don't give up too quickly. But if you wait a while and the toolbar doesn't re-appear, just hit F11 again.

A Dutch Treat
Part 2

The Damrak is a canal that cuts through the center of the city, running north-south, which is the same exact direction that the Suez Canal runs, but that is nothing more than an amazing coincidence, so you really shouldn’t draw any particular conclusions from it.

http://cards.geneanet.org/pics/carte...toffels406.jpg

There is also a street called the Damrak, which I found to be somewhat confusing since you can either ride a boat up and down the Damrak, or you can ride a trolley car up and down the Damrak, but you aren’t actually on the same Damrak for both of those experiences. Here’s a view down the other Damrak, the one without water in it:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../f5/Damrak.jpg

Adding even more to the confusion, Damrak is also synonymous with the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, just like Wall Street is synonymous with the New York Stock Exchange. That’s because a former Dutch stock exchange building (one dating from 1903 and not the 1602 original version that was mentioned in the first episode) was located here. But this building is now used for conferences and also serves as the home of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Since this area is the site of the stock exchange, in the minds of some, Damrak is just another one of those places full of scheming cheats who are doing everything they can to rip off the poor innocent regular people out there, just like they do it on Wall Street. And in the minds of others, it’s a place where lots of people are working to make things happen that improve all of our lives in so many ways.

Here is what the 1903 version of the stock exchange looks like - it’s called the Beurs van Berlage, and was designed by the architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/9471832.jpg

A view from the Beurs van Berlage, this one across the Damrak Canal to the Centraal Station - and since I’m showing the name as it is spelled in Amsterdam, don’t mistakenly think I accidentally inserted a typo, even though I occasionally do exactly that.

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/8138761.jpg

In addition to being used for conferences and as the home of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, weddings are held here at the Beurs van Berlage - but I suspect you have to be pretty high up on someone’s list to be able to have your wedding here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...k_Huwelijk.jpg

I hate to admit this in a public forum, but when I ran across the beautiful building called Centraal Station, I couldn’t figure out what it was because I didn’t speak the language well enough to ask a native for a translation. But after I walked through most of the structure, I eventually determined that it was a train depot located right smack in the middle of the city. Here’s what it looks like:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...al_station.JPG

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/8655215.jpg

I found out that the station had opened to the public back in 1889. This building provides all kinds of transportation, and is actually much more than a train depot, which were the words I used above to describe it. It handles trains, busses, trolleys, ferryboats, tourist boats, subways, and taxicabs. There is even a mammoth parking area for bicycles. I searched for an hour to see if there were any facilities for handling airplanes but I couldn’t find any, so I guess this place doesn't cover every mode of transportation available to mankind. But it still handles more of them any other single building I’ve ever seen before.

Anybody who has read The Diary of Anne Frank would be enthralled by seeing the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. This is the home that had the attic in which eight people of two families hid from the Nazis during World War II and where Anne started writing her now-famous diary. The diary, among other original objects, is on display. You can actually feel the terror that those hiding must have felt every day, dreading the likelihood that they would be found by the Nazis. Here is the exterior of the house:

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p253...rank_House.jpg

http://theyaelchronicles.files.wordp...rank-house.jpg

Here is the website of the Anne Frank Museum, which has more information and a walkthrough of the house:

http://www.annefrank.org/

Amsterdam has many beautiful canals, and while they don’t really rival the canals in Venice, the Dutch city is nonetheless known as the Venice of the North, and its canals are quite nice:

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/amsterdam_canals.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...sterdam_nl.jpg

http://ryanhellyer.net/wp-content/up...1-1024x797.jpg

There are three main canals which date back to the Dutch Golden Age, and they form three concentric belts around the city. And each of the main canals has numerous small branches. There are more than 60 miles of canals in the city, and over 1,500 bridges for crossing them.

There are quite a few museums, not only in Amsterdam, but throughout the entire nation, and because of Holland’s great heritage in painting, these museums are quite fascinating. But before we get into individual museums, it might be worthwhile to first get a cursory overview of Dutch painting. Now one could easily make a full career of studying Dutch painting, and no doubt many have done just that, but we certainly aren’t going to get that deeply involved in painting here. Later, as we proceed through various specific museums, we will look more closely at various aspects of the overall work, but remember that this isn’t an in-depth treatise on art. When we do look at artworks, we will focus on the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, as I mentioned earlier, due to the limitations of my brainpower in attacking too much at one time.

A lot of Dutch painting is centered on the water, because as we discussed in the first episode, the country first made its world presence felt by exploring faraway lands across the seas, by finding products attractive to Europeans and transporting them back, and by eventually settling the faraway lands with people coming from the motherland.

We saw an example of a painting involving ships in the first episode of this story when we mentioned the Dutch East India Company and its early pioneering exploits. That example was The Dock of the Dutch East India Company at Amsterdam, by Ludolf Bakhuizen.

Here are some additional examples of paintings with a maritime motif. A painting by Aelbert Cuyp, which is called The Maas at Dordrecht because Dordrecht was another busy Dutch port, and the Maas was a river that ran right through that town to the sea:

http://www.sandstead.com/images/nati...sandstead_.jpg

And Aelbert Cuyp’s View of Dordrecht:

http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cuyp/aelbert/1/view_dor.jpg

And a beautiful landscape and seascape of Jan van Goyen:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Goyen_002.jpg

Another Dutch specialty is the depiction of windmills. As a transition from the maritime scenes to windmill scenes, here is a van Goyen painting, which shows both.

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb...0-8149BF9C.jpg

I think the windmill is the unofficial symbol of Holland. It is thought that at one time there were over nine thousand of these, but now they number less than a thousand.

Here is a windmill painted by Rembrandt van Rijn, followed immediately by an etching of a windmill by the same artist. Later we’ll delve more deeply into Rembrandt and his work:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...t_van_Rijn.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Windmill.jpg

Rembrandt’s Landscape with a Stone Bridge, which shows some very intriguing lighting:

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/rembran/pain...r/landscap.jpg

Jacob van Ruisdael specialized in landscapes. Here is an example of his painting - this one is called The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede:

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/ruysdael/jacob/3/windmill.jpg

His View of Haarlem and the Bleaching Fields:

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/ruysdael/jacob/2/view_haa.jpg

Johannes Vermeer was a landscape and portait painter, who never left his hometown of Delft. Here is his View of Delft:

http://www.thedialecticalplaya.com/w...eer-Resize.jpg

Again, we’ll explore these artists more fully later on in the story.

We’ll continue with more places in Amsterdam in the next episode.

A Dutch Treat
Part 3

The Royal Palace (or Paleis op de Dam or Koninklijk Paleis Amsterdam) is one of four palaces belonging to the reigning monarch, who is now Queen Beatrix. The palace was originally built as Amsterdam’s Town Hall back in the fifteenth century, a painting of which by Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde we viewed in the first episode. Here is that painting again, so you can compare it to the modern Royal Palace, which we’ll show immediately after (and don't forget the F11 feature mentioned at the end of Part 1 so you can see larger versions of the images):

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/berckheyde_damsquar.jpg

And here is what the exterior looks like now, which isn’t that different from what it was more than 400 years ago:

http://en.wikivisual.com/images/7/76...s_DSCN2407.jpg

Notice the large domed cupola on the top of the palace, and see how the cupola sits under a weather vane in the form of a ship. This ship is a symbol of Amsterdam. Just underneath the dome there are windows from which one could see the ships of the Dutch East India Company enter and leave the harbor.

The palace has a magnificent Central Hall that is still used for important ceremonies; it looks like this:

http://a.imageshack.us/img508/7353/c...sterdamroy.jpg

http://www.jlgrealestate.com/images/...dam-palace.jpg

On the marble floor there are two maps of the world, showing the Western and Eastern hemispheres, highlighting the far-flung Dutch colonial holdings of days long past. These maps were made in the mid-18th century, replacing an earlier pair made in the late 1650s which showed the regions explored by the Dutch East India Company in the first half of the 17th century. You can see the general shapes of these hemispheres on the floor in the first picture of the Central Hall above, but no details. I can’t find a closeup of the maps on the internet.

The Rijksmuseum was built in 1885, when two previously separate art collections were consolidated in this brand new building. It concentrates on the history of Amsterdam. Here’s the exterior:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...am_ca_1895.jpg

A nice wide-angle view which looks best on a wide-screen monitor, but still looks pretty impressive even on a normal monitor:

http://kenniscafe.files.wordpress.co..._amsterdam.jpg

It is amazing to me that way back then, the architects had enough foresight to add all those spikes on the roof to make it impossible for this building to be taken by paratroopers landing from above, because there weren’t even any paratroopers at that time, and they wouldn’t come along for many more years. You might remember that upward-pointing spikes are also featured on the roof of the Centraal Station, which we looked at in Part 2.

The museum has a wide variety of paintings, including an excellent core of Dutch Golden Age works. We will examine a few typical works of Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer.

Rembrandt van Rijn is known to most of us simply as Rembrandt, and is probably the most famous of all the Dutch painters, and certainly the most famous from the Dutch Golden Age. He was fairly unique among great painters in that he achieved quite a bit of acclaim while he was still living. His life spanned the years 1606 to 1669 so his entire existence was within the Dutch Golden Age. He was known mainly as a portrait painter and did many scenes from the Bible, but also did many landscapes and a few seascapes.

He was born and educated in Leiden, and opened a studio there before he reached the age of 20. He moved to Amsterdam after turning 25, because he saw a greater potential in the thriving capital city. While it was once thought that he had made over 600 paintings, that number has been severely reduced to more like 300, although there is considerable controversy in how that lower number was reached. We won’t go through all of these here - neither the austere count of 300 or the generous count of 600 - but with the power of the internet, anyone who wants to dive into such depth has everything at his or her disposal to do so.

He did lots of self-portraits, which we will skip right over, because with my limited knowledge of painting, there are lots of other subjects that are much better.

We will look at just a few of his Biblical paintings as representative of many other similar ones. Despite being a total novice with regard to painting, I am still able to notice that the lighting effects are quite stunning in many of Rembrandt’s works, whether Biblical or not. There is even an Italian name for this technique - chiaroscuro - or combination of light and shadow.

David and Jonathan - who rivalled Damon and Pythias in their degree of friendship:

http://www.backtoclassics.com/images...ical_scene.jpg

The Banquet of Esther and Ahashuerus - the folks who, along with Haman, invented Purim:

http://www.wga.hu/art/v/victors/esther_a.jpg

And, lest someone complain about my Jewish leanings from the two paintings above, The Crucifixion:

http://www.calvin.edu/worship/storie...rucifixion.jpg

One of Rembrandt’s more famous paintings, and one that is on display at the Rijksmuseum - The Night Watch, or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, which shows a company of musketeers proceeding from a dark enclosure towards the sunlight:

http://moderato.files.wordpress.com/...ch-webgall.jpg

Here’s one that I first thought the museum had copied from a box of Dutch Masters cigars:

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/rembran/pain...roup/guild.jpg

Actually, that one is entitled Sampling Officials of the Drapers’ Guild, by Rembrandt, but I am now starting to think that maybe the cigar people copied it from Rembrandt instead of the other way around. When I was in Amsterdam I learned that this painting came along many years before Dutch Masters cigars.

Frans Hals was another well-known Dutch Golden Age painter, and even if you’re not an art afficionado, you might frequently run across his last name in crossword puzzles. He is particularly noted for his portraits. He was born in Antwerp but his family had to flee to Haarlem when he was three years old, and he stayed in Haarlem for the rest of his life. He started earning a living as an art restorer for the city council, but later decided to move on to producing his own works instead of just fixing up those done by others.

He made a major breakthrough with a painting that looks great on wide-screen monitors, despite the fact that they didn’t even have wide-screen monitors during the Dutch Golden Age. Here is his Banquet of the Officers of the Saint George Militia Company:

http://a.imageshack.us/img844/3927/s...ersbanquet.jpg

And another “wide-screen” painting that may look familiar to you, called De Magere Compagnie:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._compagnie.jpg

I guess there’s a running controversy over his most well-known portrait. Some say it’s René Descartes, the man who was famous for inventing the Latin phrase “Cogito ergo sum,” whatever that means, as well as for various mathematical matters that we won’t go into here. Here is Descartes as viewed by Hals:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Descartes.jpg

And others say his most famous piece is The Laughing Cavalier:

http://fr.academic.ru/pictures/frwik...Hals-1624x.jpg

Johannes Vermeer is the third and final Dutch Golden Age painter we’ll discuss in this episode, because he also has many works on display at Rijksmuseum. He grew up in Delft and remained there for his entire life. He never accumulated much wealth, probably because he didn’t produce as many paintings as some of the more financially-successful artists. In fact, most of his acclaim came after he died, which happens a lot with artists, and he was called The Sphinx of Delft because so little was known about him while he was still living.

You may remember his View of Delft, which we looked at earlier:

http://www.thedialecticalplaya.com/w...eer-Resize.jpg

Here is his painting entitled The Astronomer. It is important to note that some folks seem to believe that the man depicted in the painting is none other than Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who was famous for inventing the microscope and who lived in Delft around the same time as Vermeer. Nobody really knows for sure that Leeuwenhoek was the model for this painting.

http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikiped...omer(1668).jpg

His Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of his more recognizable portraits, and is considered to be a masterpiece. Vermeer was known for his blue coloring, sometimes called ultramarine or lapis lazuli, so it is interesting to see how many variations of blue come up when you look at several of the images available online for this painting. Several show a purple hairband instead of blue, and some even show it as green:

http://www.wga.hu/art/v/vermeer/03b/22pearl.jpg

As for myself, I think the girl’s mouth is much more interesting than her pearl earring, but I guess it would be hard to work that into a painting’s title.

Here’s the English language portion of the Rijksmuseum’s website, where you can explore the artworks more deeply if you want to:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/index.jsp?...FRofswodHFHZqg

And here is a new section of the website which concentrates on just the so-called masterpieces, where you can select individual works from very tiny thumbnails. The thumbnails are so small that it’s hard to do this effectively, but you might give it a try. Note that if you place your cursor over a thumbnail, you can see a somewhat enlarged version of the painting:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/formats/container_en.html

In the museum itself, the masterpiece paintings are kept in a separate wing all to themselves, and since they are full-size, they are a lot easier to see than those little thumbnails.

Here’s another website, for those who might want to explore Dutch art even further. It’s from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and gives a pretty extensive look at the Dutch Golden Age:

http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/dutch/

Well, we got so wrapped up in painting that we didn’t make it through many of Amsterdam’s landmarks, so we will continue exploring Amsterdam’s lovely sights in the next episode.

A Dutch Treat
Part 4

Vondelpark is a beautiful city park - the largest in Amsterdam. You can’t have the place to yourself, though, because it’s estimated that ten million visitors go through the park every year. If you want privacy, you had better find someplace else to go. The park dates back to 1864, right when the American Civil War was raging, but that probably doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with setting up the park. It’s named for a writer and playwright named Joost van den Vondel. Here are a few views of the park:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Sunny_Day.jpg

http://www.hdforindies.com/uploaded_...ark-716093.JPG

An interesting hostel that’s right in the middle of the park, the Stayokay:

http://www.vu.nl/en/Images/stayokay%...cm12-94148.jpg

Madame Tussauds seems to be spreading around the whole world, so that you can see wax versions of famous celebrities without having to visit the original in London. Amsterdam has its very own wax museum. Here’s what the building looks like, sharing space with the Peek and Cloppenburg department store:

http://aibek2.nomadlife.org/uploaded...163-781231.JPG

Here is the English website of the Amsterdam museum, where you can see for yourself what wax versions of Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, or David Beckham look like, but I don’t think you can buy life-size replicas of any of these to take home. You can, however, work on your abs by doing situps with David Beckham through some kind of video, although I can’t imagine who might want to do that. There are machines now available for working on your abs that are much more effective than old-fashioned situps, even though you would have to use these machines without the assistance of David Beckham:

http://www.madametussauds.com/Amsterdam/en/Default.aspx

The Amsterdam Dungeon isn’t my cup of tea, but younger folks might enjoy it. There is a chain of similar dungeons now slowly expanding throughout Europe. The Amsterdam version naturally has features that are unique to Holland, although some of the more general displays are shared with the other dungeons in England and Germany.

An example of a unique feature of Amsterdam’s is the Dutch East India Company setup. Tourists sit casually in a dockside bar that looks like something out of the 18th century, and are then captured and forced aboard a Dutch man-of-war. They aren’t allowed to leave until they have fought a sea battle or two. During their stay aboard, they have to be treated by the ship’s doctor, who uses techniques available way back in the 1700s rather than the modern medical amenities we have come to love, like soft rubber gloves.

Here’s what happens to you if you really mess up during your time in the dungeon:

http://andrewslife.net/dungeon%202.JPG

Here is the executioner who gets you if you don’t do well during your torture period above:

http://ronniekerswell.com/USERIMAGES/Executioner02.jpg

Amsterdam's Artis Zoo dates back to 1838, and has more than 700 animal species, as well as more than 200 kinds of trees. They have many animals on display in natural habitats rather than cages:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Artis_Zoo.jpg

http://www.letsgodigital.org/html/re...sterdam_B5.jpg

http://www.zoochat.com/gallery/data/711/Artis36.JPG

The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam dates all the way back to 1675, and was said to be inspired by Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. In the time period when the synagogue was built, their entrances were required to be somewhat secluded and subdued, so they did not stand out. Here’s what it looked like in its earlier days, in an oil painting of 1680. The painting is on display at the Rijksmuseum:

http://www.wga.hu/art/w/witte/portusyn.jpg

And some contemporary views of this classic Sephardic synagogue:

http://a.imageshack.us/img291/9210/p...synagogue2.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/85...d3b9d5f2_o.jpg

The Magna Plaza is both a beautiful landmark, which I like, and a mammoth shopping center, which I don’t care for because I am usually very opposed to shopping. However, even I can make an exception to that rule in the case of the Magna Plaza. The 19th century building was designed in the Neo-Gothic style, and was originally a post office. It’s nice to know that many of the older buildings are being preserved, rather than being replaced by hideous modern buildings that look like shoeboxes or tin cans.

Here are some views of the building’s exterior, the first of which also shows an adjacent modern building which was constructed in the creative shoebox style of architecture:

http://www.settemuse.it/viaggi_europ...agna_plaza.jpg

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/3556560.jpg

And the interior is quite attractive too, as some of the older features were retained during the modernization process that allowed all of the new stores to fit perfectly into the old post office structure, and for all of the shoppers to move easily from one store to another:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3069/...c24b7e26_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3533/...7e7581e3_o.jpg

As a respite for shoppers whose tongues start to drag after their marathon shopping sprees, the HH Petrus and Paulus Church offers a place to relax and think about other things. While it’s situated among lots of retail places, this building dates back to 1700, and features a sign that says “Fifteen minutes for God” so the serious shoppers - the ones who carry around little leather portfolios holding all of their coupons - can think about things other than the 20% discount they got on all those tschotschkes that they need like a luchenkup.

I probably shouldn’t be using Yiddish words here because this church is a Roman Catholic one. Well, whatever denomination it is, I couldn’t find any good pictures of the church on the internet.

The Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam almost sounds like something you’d discuss in your Latin class, but it’s one of the oldest botanic gardens in the world. I don’t remember if anything happened there in that old classic by Dumas called The Black Tulip because I read that book so long ago. Maybe I’ll have to re-read it to find out. The gardens almost closed in 1987 because the University of Amsterdam couldn’t afford to continue subsidizing the operation, but some private citizens stepped forward to take over. Here are a few views of the gardens, which contain over 6,000 varieties of plants, but don’t worry as we won’t look at all 6,000:

http://img1.eyefetch.com/p/3h/508515...7216b8adel.jpg

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/2626246.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3265/...2ae46fcc_o.jpg

And speaking of black tulips, here are some tulips of other colors, but these are not at the Hortus Botanicus:

http://sudhindrak.files.wordpress.co...7/img_0502.jpg

http://thedude.com/images/red_orange_tulips.jpg

http://iowa.com/wp-content/uploads/2...ion-tulip3.jpg

The Hollandsche Schouwburg was a theater from 1892 until 1942, when the Nazis decided it would serve better as a deportation center for sending Jews to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her family passed through this place en route to Buchenwald, and other Jewish families went to other camps. It is a beautiful building and has now been converted to serve as a memorial to the Dutch Jews who had to encounter it when the Nazis arrived.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Schouwburg.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...urg_relief.jpg

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com...msterdam-1.jpg

While I’ve said a couple of times that when discussing Dutch painting in this story, we will confine our attention to the Dutch Golden Age. However, we will make a single exception to this rule and visit the Van Gogh Museum, and we’ll even briefly discuss the artist for whom the museum is named. The two buildings making up the museum are new, one being built in 1973 and the other in 1999. These two buildings collectively cover both the shoebox and the tin can styles of the extremely creative modern architecture, so they look frighteningly similar to this, differing only in the color scheme:

http://therepublik.net/images/work/n...es_shoebox.jpg

http://winemaiden.com/wp-content/upl...2009-01-19.jpg

Rather than wasting any more time on the museum exterior than we already have, we will confine our attention to the artist Vincent Van Gogh and a few of his works. He was very high-strung in temperament, which is probably a common trait of artists.

He was born in 1853 in a small town in Holland, but at an early age moved to Belgium to study art, where he painted The Potato Eaters, along with other lesser-known works. Here’s The Potato Eaters, which is on display at the Rijksmuseum. You will note that this early work was quite subdued in color, in stark contrast to the bright colors he used later in his short life:

http://www.art-wallpaper.com/9509/Va...4x768-9509.jpg

In his early 30s, he moved to Paris, where he met other aspiring painters such as Pisarro, Monet, and Gauguin. After associating with these, he began sprucing up his colors. But he seemed to wear himself out, spending inordinate amounts of time arguing and then painting. In an effort to calm himself down, he moved to Arles, probably to give crossword puzzle editors something to put into their puzzles in the early part of the 21st century. Gauguin joined him in Arles, but their encounters led to the famous incident in which van Gogh was chasing Gauguin with a straight razor for some unexplained reason, but wound up cutting off part of his own ear in the process of trying to inflict some harm on his fellow painter. He wound up in an asylum after that, in what was just a temporary stop along the way.

Here are a few of his works:

Starry Night - which is, as far as I know, the only painting ever named for a Don McLean song:

http://christineparkdesign.com/blog/..._ballance1.jpg

Bedroom in Arles, which is presumably meant to be the bedroom in which van Gogh himself slept, but notice that he couldn’t even keep his wall paintings straight when he showed them in his own painting:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...room_Arles.jpg

The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night:

http://www.allartpainting.com/images...at%20Night.jpg

In 1890, when all van Gogh’s friends thought he was rounding the corner on improving his mental health, he proved just how wrong they were by shooting himself dead. He had only sold one painting during his days alive, something I often point out to my sister who sells many watercolors now - just not as many as she would like to.

In Amsterdam, there is a Van Loon Museum, named for the wealthy family who used the buildings as a residence before later converting it to a museum. This building’s exterior is quite breathtaking, as are the gardens that surround it. While the interiors don’t quite match the opulence of those in the Palace of Versailles, they are still pretty impressive.

The main attraction of this building to me was the fact that one of my favorite books when I was a teenager was called The Story of Mankind, written by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, but I doubt very seriously that he was in any way connected to the family that lived in this mansion. I must have read the book twenty times back then as a child because we didn’t have video games to distract us all day, nor did we even have television. One thing that really stood out in my mind was the book’s introduction, which reads as follows:

"High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is one hundred miles high and one hundred wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by."

The mansion-turned-museum’s exterior is worth a quick peek, but we won’t go through the interior, which just shows the lavish way in which the family lived:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Loon_tuin.JPG

http://www.historizon.nl/images/Amst...van%20Loon.jpg

We will continue with a few more sights of Amsterdam in the next episode, and then move on to Rotterdam.

A Dutch Treat
Part 5

The Trippenhuis (which means Trip family house) was completed in 1662, and belonged to two brothers, Louys and Hendrick Trip, who had earned their fortunes in producing arms needed for all the overseas adventures during the Dutch Golden Age. They picked a scenic point right on a canal to build a double house for their two families, which would also serve as the headquarters of their business.

Here’s what it looks like today, but remember that it would have looked pretty much the same when it was built, except that it most likely would not have had all those modern automobiles parked out front:

http://a.imageshack.us/img90/7695/trippenhuis.jpg

A significant point always made when discussing the Trippenhuis is that from the outside, you can’t even tell it’s a two-family house - it looks like just one unit. Well, maybe that’s so, but it’s a pretty large unit, so it’s not like the two families were mercilessly squeezed into a tiny single-family house. The two houses use the same floor plan, and are mirror images of each other. The house is now the home of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

We can see a couple of the nice interiors of the Trippenhuis, but be forewarned that there aren’t any large pictures available on the internet – at least not that I could find.

Here is the Rembrandt Room, which is now used for meetings and conferences of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now remember that Rembrandt didn’t actually live in this room, but in the 19th century, this building was used to house an art collection, including some Rembrandt works, that eventually moved to the Rijksmuseum:

http://www.knaw.nl/organisatie/images/rembrandtzaal.jpg

The Bilderdijk Room is located on the first floor and looks out on the garden, or away from the canal. The Bilderdijk Room was originally an antechamber and has a 17th-century mantelpiece and ceiling paintings. The room is named after the 18th-century author Willem Bilderdijk.

http://www.knaw.nl/organisatie/images/bilderdijk.jpg

The Stadsschouwburg is the major theater of Amsterdam, but it’s been plagued by bad luck. The current building dates back to 1894, but several predecessor structures were burned to the ground. Here’s what the latest version looks like, and I sure hope it stays around for at least another hundred years because I’m afraid of what would replace it if something disastrous happened to the building:

http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/experie.../luchtfoto.jpg

Plays are the most frequent events at the theater, but occasionally you can see opera and ballet performances here. Fortunately, they don’t admit anybody who has to check his iPhone for messages every 15 seconds, so if you need a respite from these annoying folks who seem to be multiplying like the plague, this is a good place to go. I met some people who hated opera but went in anyway because they were so anxious to have a few hours without seeing dorks who are unable to take their eyes off their cellphones. And the Stadsschouwburg never hosts events that involve heavily-tattooed performers, who have to go elsewhere to do whatever it is that they do.

The Hermitage Amsterdam is an offshoot of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, with the latter being one of the most famous museums in the world. If you’re interested, my story called A Grand Tour includes a stop at the Russian parent museum. That story is located at the following LitNet address, and it even includes a virtual tour of the Hermitage Saint Petersburg:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=32270

The Amsterdam version is quite nice, even though it doesn’t match the Russian one in magnificence - but very few museums in the entire world do that. Here’s a fabulous wide-screen shot of the museum, which is housed in the former Amstelhof which dates back to 1681:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...m_panorama.jpg

We’ll take a quick peek at a church called Zuiderkerktoren, mainly because it’s a glorious structure dating back to 1614, and it’s in a beautiful setting along a canal:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/5458704.jpg

While there are about fifty museums in Amsterdam, it would quickly become tedious if we started talking about all of them, or even ten of them, so we’re going to stop right here. Amsterdam also has a notorious Red Light District, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty disgusting, so you’re on your own if you want to check it out.

At this point, we’ll move on to Rotterdam, the next city in our exploration of this wonderful country. Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, and for many years was the largest port in the entire world. Shanghai took over the latter distinction in 2004 – three years before my visit. Rotterdam came into prominence during the Dutch Golden Age, and housed one of the six chambers of the Dutch East India Company during that period. Here is the harbor during the autumn, long after the Dutch East India Company ceased to exist:

http://a.imageshack.us/img90/7697/holland134.jpg

Rotterdam’s City Hall was completed in 1920 and is quite a grand and stately building:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...otterdam_2.jpg

The Witte Huis, or White House, is a skyscraper built in 1898 in the French Chateau style of architecture. Back in 1898 it was the tallest office building in Europe, being almost 150 feet in height.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-Huis-1900.jpg

During World War II, the center of Rotterdam was almost completely leveled by the Luftwaffe, virtually destroying almost every beautiful building that had previously stood in that glorious city. City Hall and the Witte Huis, which we just looked at, are two of the very few exceptions which survived. The city was gradually rebuilt from the 1950s through the 70s, but in a style that differed enormously from the irreplaceable architecture that was destroyed.

For example, the replacement to the station destroyed by the Nazis was built in the 1950s and lasted until 2008, but is no longer in use. Here is Rotterdam’s Centraal Station of today - it is labelled as ‘temporary’ and presumably someone besides me is counting the days until it is replaced by something less pathetic:

http://rotterdamholland.ca/images/rotterdamcentraal.jpg

A far cry from the Centraal Station in Amsterdam.

And here’s the Rotterdam Architecture Institute, where young and aspiring architects of the city learn to ply their trade:

http://www.mimoa.nl/images/1281_l.jpg

If that’s the building where Rotterdam architects acquire their capabilities, I guess there’s not much hope for any major aesthetic upswings in the near future. Hence we won’t be exploring any more architecture in Rotterdam. What the Nazis destroyed will never be replaced.

We will move on to The Hague in our next episode.

A Dutch Treat
Part 6

In The Hague, you often see sports fans in the stands chanting in unison “We’re number three!! - We’re number three!!” I always wondered what that meant, until someone told me that The Hague is the nation’s third largest city, behind Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

While Amsterdam remains the capital, which is what the Dutch Constitution says it is, lots of important functions take place in The Hague. It’s actually considered the seat of government, and the country’s legislative body is located here, as are all the foreign embassies. Government ministers are here, and the Queen spends more time here than she does in that beautiful palace in Amsterdam - the one that used to be the Town Hall.

And there’s some institution in The Hague called the World Court that is going to make sure that the next thousand years in this crazy world of ours will go a lot more smoothly than the previous thousand did. We just don’t know exactly when they’re going to start doing this.

The Hofvijver is a small body of water in the center of The Hague. Adjacent to this scenic lake, one can see the Binnenhof, which is the group of buildings where the States-General, or Parliament, carries on its work. I found out that States-General is the English equivalent of the Dutch Staten-Generaal, and thought that maybe they had stolen the word Staten from our very own Staten Island Ferry in New York, but the Dutch insist that actually it is just the reverse. The Binnenhof is quite scenic from all directions - first from the water at either dawn or dusk:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...er29042007.jpg

And from the water at night:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...f_at_night.JPG

And from the courtyard - the side away from the water:

http://www.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~nivelle/o.../binnenhof.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...enhof-1900.jpg

The Hague has been the focal point of international efforts to bring peace and harmony to all the beastly warring factions who sully the planet with their barbaric deeds - ever since about 1899 or so. Despite all the good intentions of these peacemaking agencies, they don’t seem to ever make much headway. But at least they occupy some beautiful buildings and have some nice friendly meetings with grandiose speeches and sumptuous banquets.

The Peace Palace houses the International Court of Justice and a few other agencies with equally noble intentions. You can see just how peaceful this grand old building looks:

http://02varvara.files.wordpress.com...of_justice.jpg

Noordeinde Palace is one of the official palaces that the Dutch royal family has in various parts of the country. Queen Beatrix spends more time here than she does in Amsterdam. It’s hard to believe that this palace began its life as a farmhouse almost 500 years ago. Here’s what it looks like now that it is no longer a farmhouse. I couldn’t find any pictures of what it looked like before it was a palace:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nde_Palace.jpg

Madurodam is a world-famous miniature city right outside of The Hague where you can get an amazing overview of many of the major sights in the whole country. You can see lots of the places we’ve already discussed, and others that we haven’t even mentioned. Here are some typical views that you can see in Madurodam. See if you can identify the leftmost building in the first picture, because if you can’t, maybe you should go back and re-read the earlier parts of this story:

http://www.cedcc.psu.edu/khanjan/eur...etherlands.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...m_pays_bas.JPG

http://www.amsterdamcitytours.com/Image/madurodam2.jpg

The Mauritshuis is called a Royal Picture Gallery and it shows paintings by Dutch masters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Jan Steen. We’ve already discussed Vermeer and Rembrandt in previous episodes and we’ve seen some of their works, so we’ll focus on Steen in this one.

Jan Steen was another Dutch Golden Age painter, and he was known for insight, sense of humor, and abundance of color. He was born and grew up in Leiden, which we’ll explore later in this story. He also spent several years in The Hague, which we’re discussing right now, as well as in Delft and in Haarlem, which we’ll also touch on briefly later.

My favorite Steen painting is called Children Teaching a Cat to Dance, because I can only imagine what would happen if someone tried to teach my cat Eleanor to dance.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...deru_Katze.jpg

Here you can see what is meant about his penchant for humor, since all of us cat lovers know that cats don’t take kindly to dancing. And his use of colors – especially in the blue dress of the girl providing the music for the cat.

Here’s his The Merry Family, which includes a brown and white dog quite similar to the one who was getting a big kick out of watching the cat’s dancing lesson above. While most of the painting is shrouded in darkness, this fact accentuates the few portions that are bathed in light:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/assetimage.jsp?id=SK-C-229

When he was in Delft, he painted The Burgomaster of Delft and His Daughter, which shows what the experts call his facility with colors:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Delft_1655.jpg

Here is the Mauritshuis website – if you care to check out the museum on your own. I hope you will remember the painting that greets you when you first enter the site, because this is the museum where the original of this Vermeer masterpiece is on display. Also, Vermeer’s View of Delft is in this museum:

http://www.mauritshuis.nl/index.aspx?siteid=54

The Lange Voorhout is a very wide avenue containing many splendid houses, several of which are now serving as embassies. Along with all these houses and embassies is the Escher Museum, which displays lots of art by M.C. Escher. Now my kids are really into Escher’s art and they’ve been that way for a long time, and it intrigues lots of other people in addition to my children. Before we get wrapped up with all the things on display inside the building, here is what the museum looks like from the outside:

http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewik...e_voorhout.jpg

Escher produced some really intriguing images - mathematically-based figures, most of which were actually impossible to construct in a physical sense and are better termed optical illusions. Here are some typical examples:

http://www.cord.edu/faculty/andersod/escher_convex.jpg

http://reich-chemistry.wikispaces.co...cut-medium.jpg

http://www.wallpapergate.com/data/me...m_c_escher.jpg

There is an official Escher website for those of you who just can’t get enough of this man’s work, and there are many in this group:

http://www.mcescher.com/

The Museum Bredius has on display most of the collection of a Dutch art historian by the name of Abraham Bredius. One wouldn’t normally think that art history is such a lucrative profession that it can allow a person to amass such a marvelous collection as you see here, so he must have had some supplementary income from somewhere else.

While I have some antique silver pieces such as a 1945-vintage syrup pitcher from the Saint Anthony Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, and a 1927-vintage coffee pot from the Lombardy Hotel in New York City, none of my collection comes close to the silver pieces on display at the Bredius. Here is the museum’s website, where you can marvel at some exquisite silverware and porcelain:

http://www.museumbredius.nl/

Back in the late 19th century, the Netherlands saw its first covered shopping mall - similar to others popping up in places like Naples. It is called Le Passage, and here’s what it looked like when I was a youngster:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3664/...01e6a0d0_o.jpg

And here’s what it looks like now, so you can see that the mall’s owners have brightened it up considerably in the intervening years:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...assage_001.JPG

Next up: Haarlem.

A Dutch Treat
Part 7

The Dutch town of Haarlem has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with an American basketball team called the Globetrotters, but it has a lot to do with how the “hometown” of the Globetrotters - a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City - was named. To my delight, there are lots of fantastic old buildings still standing in Haarlem, and we’ll run through some of them. And as an added attraction, there are a few Golden Age paintings that center on this town, and we’ll go over some of them as well.

The Town Hall of Haarlem was completed in 1620, and it is quite stunning:

http://www.simonho.org/images/photog...m_Stadhuis.jpg

Here is an earlier version of the same Town Hall, in the form of a painting from Jan ten Compe during the Golden Age, and while some modifications have been made in the years since, the general theme of the building remains now as it was four centuries ago:

http://www.wga.hu/art/c/compe/townhall.jpg

Every Saturday and Monday there is a big market where vendors sell their goods right in front of the beautiful Town Hall. The Dutch call this the Grote Markt, what we English-speaking folks call the Great Market. Here is what it looks like today, and you can see the Town Hall as a backdrop:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rk-Haarlem.jpg

And the same place in a painting by Gerrit Berckheyde way back in 1669, which looks pretty much the same as it does today. It’s almost as if Berckheyde realized that 340 years later, a photographer would record the identical scene from the identical direction. In fact, the major difference between the photograph and the painting is the clothing on the people:

http://www.strabrecht.nl/sectie/ckv/..._lijnpersp.jpg

Haarlem has its own canals - not quite as extensive as those in Amsterdam, but equally scenic. This is the River Spaarne:

http://www.orangesmile.com/common/im...ightseeing.jpg

http://www.jochenhertweck.com/pics/n...e/Img_4553.jpg

The ornate building on the right in both of these pictures is the Teylers Museum, which is the oldest museum in the nation. It was completed in 1784, long before the disgusting techniques of modern architecture were devised. It has displays which cover art, science, and natural history. The museum even has some Michelangelo etchings.

The classical exterior:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/10309182.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...m_Spaarne.jpeg

The Oval Room in the museum was designed specifically as an art gallery for public access, but it is now closed to the public. That’s a shame, because now the visitors can’t tell that it looks like this, as shown in a painting by Wybrand Hendricks:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../Oval-room.JPG

A painting entitled Winter Landscape, by Andreas Schelfhout, shows some fantastic colors:

http://www.teylersmuseum.eu/afbeeldi...hap_ks_098.jpg

A display of early scientific instruments:

http://www.oceansofkansas.com/1stMosaMtg/teylers2.jpg

Here is the museum’s website for anyone who might wish to explore the collections and exhibits:

http://www.teylersmuseum.eu/index.php?item=20&lang=en

Saint Bavo Cathedral has dominated the Haarlem landscape for centuries. It was built in the fourteenth century using the Gothic style of architecture, and it is considered to be the ‘main’ church of the city. Here is the outside of the cathedral as it stands today, from different angles:

http://www.orangesmile.com/common/im...lem_places.jpg

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/n...bavos/0081.jpg

The interior has been immortalized in two oil paintings by Job Adriaensz Berckheyde, both with identical titles Interior of the Saint Bavo in Haarlem:

Painted in 1665 (oil on canvas):
http://pds11.egloos.com/pds/200901/2...809844602f.jpg

Painted in 1668 (oil on oak):
http://www.agisoftware.it/arte/4/p/bg/p4n80200.jpg

The cathedral has a massive pipe organ, and it’s been said that those who hear it for the first time find it deafeningly loud. You can see why - note the pipes on the far wall in this photo:

http://www.hesston.edu/academics/mus...3-100_1109.jpg

If you remember from your history lessons way back when, medieval towns often had walls around them to keep all the undesirable folks at bay. Well, so did Haarlem, and here’s the Amsterdamse Poort, which is the gateway to enter Haarlem from the direction of Amsterdam. The rest of the wall surrounding this gate has long been gone, but the gate still stands proudly:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/23167449.jpg

Back during the Dutch Golden Age, when Amsterdam and Rotterdam were flourishing because of the overseas imports that were then sold throughout Europe, Haarlem was also flourishing because of its homegrown linen manufacture and trading. One of my favorite paintings is Jacob Isaackszon van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem and the Bleaching Fields:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...5_Ruisdael.jpg

Bleaching fields were familiar sights during this time because the linen was bleached prior to exporting. This classical masterpiece has the bright Dutch sky taking up more than half the canvas.

And before we leave Haarlem, we should note that a windmill in this town looks pretty much like a windmill in any other part of Holland, but this is a particularly nice photo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._(Holland).JPG

Next up: Leiden and Delft.

A Dutch Treat
Part 8

Leiden is situated on the Rhine River, just 20 kilometers from The Hague, and is best known as the home of a major university and as the birthplace of a famous jar. The University of Leiden has been in existence since 1575 – meaning that it started out even before the Dutch Golden Age began about 25 years later. The city has a very lengthy history, but remember that we are confining most of our discussions here to the Dutch Golden Age – from 1600 to 1700.

Besides the University of Leiden, the town is also famous for the Leiden jar, sometimes spelled as Leyden jar. This jar was the first form of what later became known as a capacitor, which stores static electricity between two electrodes – one on the inside of the jar and one on the outside. Using the Leiden jar, the science of electricity was significantly advanced in its early days to the point that it can now power our television sets, computers, video games, cellphones, and air conditioning units. So this is just a reminder as to how important the Leiden jar was, because maybe we wouldn’t have all these wonderful devices if the jar had never been discovered.

Back during the Golden Age, Leiden flourished just as the other cities we’ve already visited, and was second only to Amsterdam during that era. Just like Haarlem, its most lucrative industry was textiles. The city was also important in printing and publishing, but just like the American publishers centuries later, they wouldn’t take any of my work seriously enough to do anything with it. And to this day, I still don’t know exactly why.

Shortly before the Golden Age kicked off in about 1600, there was a major war between Holland and Spain. During this war, Leiden was held under siege until someone thought to pierce the dikes which isolated the city from the sea, and even though this action flooded the town, it also allowed provisions to be brought in from the sea. And we all know it’s more important to eat than to stay dry. The seamen of the Dutch Navy who relieved Leiden were known as the Sea Beggars. I have never been able to figure out why they were called that rather undignified name.

It was during this same siege that the first idea of using paper money in Europe came to fruition – but the use of credit cards didn’t come until centuries later, and then it was somewhere else.

Here’s a painting by Otto van Veen to commemorate the way the city was saved by the Sea Beggars – it’s called Relief of Leiden:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../d6/Veen01.jpg

All of the major Dutch cities have glorious headquarters of local government, and Leiden is no exception – here is its sixteenth century vintage Town Hall, but only the façade is original - the rest of the building burned down in 1929 and was subsequently rebuilt:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/4128515.jpg

There are a few canals here, with views that are just as beautiful as any you could find anywhere:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...8-12_10.11.JPG

The University of Leiden has many exquisite buildings, including the Academy Building, which is the oldest on the campus. It dates back to 1516, but was originally a chapel. It was taken over by the University in 1581.

http://www.nederfun.com/wordpress/wp...ybuildinga.jpg

Formerly a fortress for protection, and later a prison, the Gravensteen is now used by the university, probably for holding disruptive students who talk on their cellphones during class, or who text each other about some inane topic like their tattoos while the professor is lecturing away:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/2050629.jpg

And remembering again that medieval towns were protected by walls, here is Morspoort, Leiden’s western gate in its wall system:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ort-Leiden.jpg

And to maintain symmetry, Leiden's eastern gate, the Zijlpoort:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/1880556.jpg

Leiden has many churches but most of us would prefer to limit the number we visit, so we’ll hold it to just one. Churches are probably the most magnificent examples of architecture out there, but if you see too many of them one after another, your eyes just start glazing over. The magnificent Hooglandse Kerk was built in the fifteenth century and is still in use today.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3129/...ec2ba50e_o.jpg

Leiden is also home to the windmill De Valk, which stands out in this fabulous setting:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2365/...cb0d376b_o.jpg

We will now move on to Delft, which is probably best known for its distinctive pottery, but don’t forget that the great painter Johannes Vermeer lived his entire life in this great seaport, which was one of the bases of the Dutch East India Company during the Golden Age. We’ve already discussed Vermeer and his works in previous episodes, so we won’t repeat that here. But if you’ve already forgotten him, you should go back and re-read the discussion and see some of his typical paintings so you can ace the quiz at the end of this story.

Here’s what Delft’s Town Hall looked like during the Dutch Golden Age, as shown in a painting by Jan ten Comte:

http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/1...-ten-compe.jpg

And here’s what it looks like today - not much different at all:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/22113381.jpg

There is a particularly nice town center near the Town Hall - here are some typical sights from there:

http://www.delftnetherlands.info/images/Delft_6648.JPG

http://familiesago.com/wordpress/wp-...s-2009-091.jpg

And some canals:

http://static.realbuzz.com/images/articles/Delft(0).jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/12790402.jpg

And you can see from this bird’s-eye view that the inevitable march of modernity in Delft has begun, but fortunately has not yet swallowed up the entire city:

http://www.lynn-rick.com/images/Jand...t/IMG_2273.JPG

And the city is still served by its vintage railroad station:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ft_Station.jpg

But as far as I’m concerned, Delftware is the main attraction of this city. It was started out during the Golden Age, and was actually based on Chinese porcelain that the Dutch East India Company brought back to the motherland. Delftware became an instant hit throughout Europe, and even in China where the initial piece came from that kicked off the whole Delftware venture in the first place.

For anyone who has never seen Delft pottery, here are some typical pieces - luxury liners like the original Queen Mary back in the 1930s used the distinctive blue-and-white dinnerware in their dining rooms, just so you have an idea of its prestige and widespread usage:

http://www.wga.hu/art/zzdeco/5cerami...t/1d_04dis.jpg

http://s0.artquid.fr/art/0/67/17328....o648815235.jpg

http://images.artimin.com/img-1500/images/400.jpg

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/...5cm_d-Edit.jpg

Next up: Utrecht, Edam, and Gouda.

A Dutch Treat
Part 9

Until my visit to Holland, the only thing I knew about Utrecht was that there was a famous treaty signed there a long time ago. The Treaty of Utrecht was written at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession back in 1713, but we certainly won’t dive too deeply into this treaty, nor will we spend any time going over the war itself, because you can do that in your history class just like I had to do when I was still in school. And if you’re not in school anymore, you can go to your local library and check out some books on it.

When I arrived, I learned that the center of town still has some buildings dating all the way back to the Middle Ages, because the city has been the religious center of Holland since the eighth century. Here are a couple of examples of the medieval churches not only still standing in Utrecht, but still in use as well.

The Dom Church is magnificent in itself, from the twelfth century:

http://www.orangesmile.com/common/im...ightseeing.jpg

But it’s even more famous for its adjoining Dom Tower, from the fourteenth century, which has become the iconic symbol of the town:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...er_Utrecht.jpg

The tower as seen from the town’s major canal, called the Old Canal or Oude Gracht, which runs right through the center of town:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/...ae87f356_o.jpg

The canal is quite beautiful at night:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2200/...af192138_o.jpg

And a wonderful Town Hall, as seen from the Oude Gracht:

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/2...httownhall.jpg

Utrecht University has been in operation since 1636 and is considered by some to be the best university in Holland. I don’t know who those ‘some’ are - maybe they are faculty members of good ol’ Utrecht U itself.

There are some beautiful buildings on the campus, such as this one:

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/1532/utrechtu.jpg

Unfortunately, they also have lots of buildings of the so-called modern style of architecture, of which we’ll just look at one disgusting example:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._De_Uithof.JPG

Edam is a relatively small town as it has less than 30,000 residents, and that’s counting the outlying neighbors as well. But it’s so well known for its cheese that I had to go there to see it for myself and to sample the goods. At one time, Edam was one of the larger towns in Holland, and was a major shipbuilding center and a significant port, but serious flooding problems were encountered and the corrective measures that were put in place resulted in the harbor silting up. After that, without modern dredging techniques that would come along centuries later, the town lost its importance.

Here is the grand Town Hall, dating back to 1737. It’s somewhat more grandiose than the current size of the town would call for, but remember that Edam was a lot larger during the Golden Age:

http://www.weesp.dk/Edam_Town-Hall_May_2008.jpg

St. Nicholas Church, or St. Nicholaaskerk was built in the early fifteenth century. It has been devestated by two major fires in the seventeenth century, but it was restored.

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/26029192.jpg

A very nice interior:

http://www.oud-edam.nl/cms_c01/Uploa...kerk_orgel.jpg

The church has several stained glass windows that were donated by nearby towns or by the prosperous Edam guilds during the Golden Age:

http://www.oud-edam.nl/cms_c01/Uploa.../Raam_Gr_K.jpg

The Edam Museum is situated opposite the Town Hall, and it is the town’s oldest brick house as it was constructed in 1530. It was originally the residence of a very wealthy merchant, and was converted to a museum in 1895. It is the building on the far right in this picture:

http://richardtulloch.files.wordpres...dam-square.jpg

The Cheese Market began even before the Golden Age, and you can see here that you have to buy pretty substantial blocks of cheese at this market. It used to be open once a week year-round, but now it is only during July and August:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...markt_Edam.jpg

Edam cheese is sealed inside a shell of red wax, and in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front about the Great War, the German soldier Paul Bäumer thought this red covering was a sign of impending death. You will have to read the book to see if his premonition was valid.

As long as we’re talking about Edam, we also have to mention Gouda, which is just as famous for cheese. But before we get to the cheese, we’ll check out a few other features of the town.

Here is the Old City Hall, which was completed in 1450, which could be mistaken for a church:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/11633105.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/3...f865a5c4_o.jpg

And across the street from the City Hall, is the Waag Building, with waag meaning scale, as this is where goods were weighed for the purposes of assessing taxes. It is now used as a museum related to the cheese industry which is so important to the town:

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8686/waaggouda.jpg

Here is a closeup of the figure you see above the main entry on the building’s façade to emphasize the purpose of the structure:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Waag_Gouda.jpg

The Grote of St. Jans Kerk is the largest cross-shaped church in Holland:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...kerk_Gouda.PNG

A photo of a concert shows some of the lovely interior:

http://www.rtvbodegraven.nl/userfile...2029-12-09.jpg

And here you can see some of the stained glass window collection for which it is famous:

http://www.groenehart.nl/uploads/sou...n%20binnen.JPG

And one particular stained glass window:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...erk-Glas08.jpg

The city is best known for its cheese, and they still operate a weekly Cheese Market for those who want to buy large quantities in the form of their golden wheels. I hope you still remember that the building in the background is the former Waag Building and now serves as the Gouda Cheese Museum, because it hasn’t been all that long since we last mentioned them:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/5378923.jpg

Next up: Groningen, Veere, and the boy who plugged the hole in the dike with his finger.

A Dutch Treat
Part 10

Groningen is home to the University of Groningen which was established in 1614, during the Dutch Golden Age. Here is a view of its beautiful Academy Square:

http://dheeney.files.wordpress.com/2..._groningen.jpg

The city had a central market just as most of the other Dutch cities have, but the Grote Markt was leveled during World War II. However, many of the major historical sites in this city escaped damage.

The 500-year old Martini Tower remains standing, although two other predecessors in the same place collapsed due to storms in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries even without help of the Nazis, so I guess the architects have learned something from the earlier disasters.

http://bamstroker.files.wordpress.co...7/img_3890.jpg

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....al/3073659.jpg

Here is a great bird’s-eye view of City Hall (this photo might have been taken from the top of the Martini Tower, but I’m not sure):

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3656/...d3be261c_o.jpg

And a view of the same City Hall if that same bird is on the ground:

http://www.etoile.co.uk/Travel/Groningen/DCP00345.jpg

The lovely Goudkantoor dates back to 1635. It was originally an office for tax collectors, and it even has the saying Date Caesari quae sunt Caesaris (render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s) prominently displayed on the building. Various other institutions have occupied the building since then, and it is now serving as a restaurant:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...etherlands.JPG

Hoofdstation is the city’s magnificent railroad station:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...oningen_NL.jpg

And it also has a fantastic interior, including a grand waiting room:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis....l/18190837.jpg

http://members.home.nl/dubbelspoor/station/haljo.jpg

Groningen has its own city theater, called Stadsschouwburg, which is quite nice:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Groningen.jpg

Sometimes it snows in Groningen:

http://www.scss.tcd.ie/Anarta.Ghosh/...therlands5.jpg

And the ultra-modern Groninger Museum, which introduces a daring variation on the tin can style of architecture - namely the exceptionally innovative and creative tunafish tin can style - to complement the very imaginative standard windowless shoebox style:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3343/...26c24dcf_o.jpg

The town of Veere is small, but very scenic, and it’s the last stop on our tour of Holland. The population is about 22,000 but the natives are gladly overwhelmed by more than four million tourists every year. The major attractions are the beaches and marinas, which we will check out in a minute.

The lovely Town Hall of Veere is more appropriate to its former status than its current one:

http://ardmarina.nl/veere.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...re_Rathaus.JPG

The Church in Veere is a noted painting by Jan van der Heyden from the Dutch Golden Age:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Heyden_001.jpg

And van der Heyden’s Approach to Veere is also wonderful:

http://www.wga.hu/art/h/heyden/veere.jpg

And here are some of the sights that bring the tourists in droves:

http://www.plaats.nl/var/12/full/12707.jpg

http://www.esys.org/rev_info/veersem...n-veere-hq.jpg

http://www.sailcnce.eu/images/veere1.jpg

http://www.stichtingveere.nl/Thema_f...olen%20job.jpg

http://www.degulliver.nl/foto%27s/oud/veere%20(2).jpg

If you have a good memory, you will recall that the main purpose of my trip to Holland in the first place was to see the memorial to the boy who plugged the dike. I found out about all these other things to see from my travel agent only after I asked him to set up my visit so I could find the boy with his finger in the dike. Well, it turns out that there are actually several memorials to this young hero. Here is the one at Madurodam, the miniature city near The Hague, and all the others look much like this one:

http://stacysees.rosedove.net/wp-con...090406_127.jpg

It turns out that the Dutch are not all that familiar with the character since he appears in an American book, but they graciously accommodate the Americans by displaying this memorial.

Well, that wraps up my tour of Holland, and if you were stalwart enough to reach this point, I’ll say THANK YOU for taking the time to read it all.

THE END