I Heart Yellow Trains

As with the lovably rag-tag feel of Boston's T, or the cleanliness and efficiency of the DC Metro, I have come to feel warmly towards the yellow Dutch trains, with their 80s-style interior and (typically) friendly conductors. I commute every day through Den Haag's central station, where the yellow trains line up patiently for commuters and travelers alike. I like how the trains are both mundane components of the national public transit system (who doesn't love commuting by train?) and the promise of new adventures, the link to the greater European rail network. Bucharest, here I come! Few things thrill me more these days than hearing the shrill whistle of a conductor as the train doors close and we pull out of a station.

Reasons why I heart yellow trains:

• The voordeelurenabonnement, aka Jeff's NS card: 40% off (40% off!) all travel on trains throughout the Netherlands - and not just for cardholder Jeff, but for three other people, too. This is an even better deal than the museumkaart, though only available to people with a Dutch bank account. In fact, the NS card was one of our primary motivations for getting a Dutch bank account. And boy was it worth it.

• Instant gratification, aka the joy of jumping on a train as the whistle blows and the doors close: We have shown up to the train station without tickets literally two minutes before a train is supposed to leave. No problem! And while a thirty-minute layover in an airport is a recipe for craziness, a five minute layover by train is perfect - it still leaves time to grab a coffee and a snack. Anything longer than half an hour, and you have time to see half the town. Trains involve no security lines, no long terminal halls, no check in or ticket collecting at a gate. No lines, period. This makes for efficient, fun, and spontaneous travel.
• The information people at the stations appear to have memorized the train schedules and platforms for the entire country. Going from Maastricht to Den Haag? Take the 13:23 from platform 3, transfer at Eindhoven to platform 15. Next!
• Many of the Dutch train stations are beautiful relics of the golden era of train travel (notable exception: Rotterdam), and all of them are centrally located. Thus we continue our 100% avoidance of taxis in the Netherlands.
• Trains are cool.

Reasons why I sometimes threaten to break up with yellow trains:

• Lack of information: There are some stations in the Netherlands (erhem, Leiden) that do not have any central sign announcing the next trains. Instead you must decipher the complex yellow train time tables (in Dutch) which of course cannot provide updated information about delayed trains. Which brings us to...
• Track works: two more dreaded words were never known to Dutch train travelers. The Dutch train system is fairly orderly and efficient - it's no Germany, but trains usually run on time, and delays typically do not exceed 10 minutes. But boy howdy, throw in some "track works" and all bets are off. Going north? Today you will have to go east then south, then loop around via Germany. Trying to get to the airport for an early morning flight? Oops, we forgot to tell you this train isn't going to the airport today - you will have to get off at the next station, detour to Amsterdam, then backtrack to Schiphol. And if you can understand this Dutch announcement, I should also warn you the next train to Amsterdam is delayed.* Have a great flight!

* True story.

36 Hours in Maastricht

Saturday, 9:30 a.m. 10:30 a.m.: Introducing Maastricht

Arrive an hour late to Maastricht, the southernmost city in the Netherlands, thanks to track works that required a detour through Utrecht. Located in an isthmus of Dutch land that stretches narrowly between Germany and Belgium (like Maryland west of Cumberland), Maastricht is almost more Bavarian than Dutch, more cobblestone streets than cute canals. And most un-Dutch-like of all, it has hills. The central city, however, is flat, and your walk from the station over the St. Servaas bridge and into the heart of the old city is brief, if wet.

11:30 a.m.: St. Pietersberg Caves

The tourist activity in Maastricht is to visit the caves of St. Pietersberg, where stone marl has been mined since Roman times and more than 100 miles of tunnels stretch all the way to Belgium. The most "fun" way to reach the caves would be by boat, but in January little is discernible out of the rain-streaked and steamed-up windows. And after a 20-minute boat ride and a hike up St. Pietersberg hill, you find you have to wait for another 30 minutes in the cold drizzle for the tour to begin. You curse the marketing person who decided this gap in timing would force people to buy overpriced drinks and snacks at the adjacent cafe.

Close to 1, the friendly tour guide shows up with kerosene lanterns he hands out to the men in the group most likely to have been scouts as children. You follow him through muddy fields until he descends into a rocky crevice where there is a padlocked iron grill over a cave entrance. You huddle with the others in the dark tunnel as he padlocks the gate behind you, and as you follow him down into a labyrinth of dark and dank tunnels, your mind starts racing through horror movie plots: the satanic tour guide leads naive tourists to human sacrificial rites like lambs to the slaughter; a sudden rock slide maims the leader and leads to a cross between Alive and Lord of the Flies, culminating in blood-streaked walls and savage sacrifices; the community of rabid bat creatures that has evolved in the bowels of the caves slowly picks the tour group off one by one, turning their victims into blood sucking zombies. You are not amused when the tour guide pauses to show you a sleeping bat above your head.

But the reality of a Dutch-only tour full of eager academic types quickly stifles your cinematographic inspirations. You shift uncomfortably from foot to foot as the rest of the tour group discusses the intricacies of sawing the soft marl into blocks in olden times. As the all-Dutch discussion stretches past 15 minutes, you try to imagine what a first-rate travel writer would be noting for a future article. You decide a first-rate travel writer would not have gone on a Dutch-only tour. Your shifting increases as you try to keep the feeling in your toes.

Eventually the tour guide moves on, pausing periodically to provide more arcane details to his highly appreciative Dutch audience. You pass rows of long dark tunnels and cavernous side rooms; your attention is drawn to intricate charcoal drawings on the walls, from the fantastical to a full series of the stations of the cross leading up to a little chapel, complete with altar (perfect, you think, for dark satanic rites). You understand vaguely that locals sheltered in the caves during WWII and try to imagine entire communities bedded down in the darkness. You curse your travelling in the off-season for its lack of English-language tours. Finally you re-emerge above ground to find that it is still raining.

Tales of Haarlem

Some notes from our day trip to Haarlem on Sunday, January 16.

Haarlem's Red Light "district" is not much more than a corner. Still, Jeff was eager to walk through it, based on Rick Steves' description of it being as "cute as a Barbie doll." But at 11 on a Sunday morning, there was nothing to see: the whole town was deserted - even the prostitutes were at church - and only a few lonely red lanterns shone over dark and empty windows.

After one block, we were out of the "district" and at yet another canal. As we stood on a bridge taking the requisite Dutch canal photos, a soft "ooooOoo, ooooOoo" emanated from the street we had just left.

"Jeff, can you hear the birds?"

Jeff gave me a "you poor naive child look" and patiently explained, "I think that's someone having sex."

But then the calls shifted to "trrrrroooOoo, trrrrrooooOoo." "No, Jeff," I patiently explained, "those are pigeons. But that's OK, I'm sure there are some people who sound like pigeons when they're having sex."

***

Haarlem's museum of science is a time capsule from the 1780s. Fossils and rocks are lined up with handwritten labels in glass cases; an entire room is dedicated to technical equipment that was cutting-edge in the 1800s. (The largest electrostatic generator ever built (1791) looks like part of the set design for the Tesla scenes in The Prestige.)

In the 1930s, a curator added a dark room to demonstrate such exotic attributes as fluorescence and phosphorescence and to show off some Geissler tubes (which look like early precursors to neon signs). It's not magic: it's science.

The museum also houses, somewhat randomly, hundreds of drawings by Michaelangelo and Rembradt, a collection of brilliantly illustrated rare books about wildlife, and "one of the most important collections of coins and medals in the Netherlands" (snore).

And best of all, it was covered by our museumkaart.

***

Haarlem loves Frans Hal, a Dutch portrait painter from the country's Golden Age. But my favorite part of the museum dedicated to his large group portraits was the small room that houses the museum's greatest non-Frans treasures: a set of embroidered bed curtains from the 17th century, a giant doll house from the 18th century, and a couple cheeky paintings by two painters with confusingly similar names.

The painting by Jan Breughel the Younger satirizes the tulip bulb craze in Holland in the 1600s, with monkeys buying, trading and "watering" the overvalued plants (see lower right corner). Four hundred years later, not much has changed.

The second, much larger painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger depicts 72 common Dutch sayings, from "pies grow on their roof" (they are well-off) to "grabbing an eel by the tail" (undertaking something bound to fail). This time the scatological humor is located on the far left, with the depiction of that famous Dutch saying, "to shit on the world" (not to give a damn).

It's an eternal truth: bathroom humor sells.

Amazing Museum Race, Part II: Rrrrroterdam! and a Man Named Thorn-Prikker

As I have previously explained, I really like Rotterdam and have been looking for an excuse to go back (plus Jeff and I enjoy taking the train to or through Rotterdam because the conductors always announce it with a chipper trill: "Rrrrrrotterdam Centraal!!"). Rotterdam thus seemed the perfect candidate for finishing our Amazing Museum Race.

I initially mapped out a plan of attack covering 10 museums, including a school museum and a museum of taxes and customs, and culminating with Rotterdam's renowned photography museum on the other side of the Maas. Clearly, this plan did not come to fruition.

Hampered by my lingering cold (and diminishing interest), we made it to only three museums last Saturday. We did accomplish our original museumkaart mission, but the details are not excessively interesting. Instead, I wish to introduce you to a man named Thorn-Prikker.

By way of context, Rotterdam's main art museum was in the midst of a special exhibit of a Dutch painter named Kees van Dongen (1877-1968). I was not impressed. First, the museum used his exhibit as an excuse to charge us an extra fee. Lame. Second, his exhibit was very crowded with Dutch people. I can't really complain about that, but I do like a quiet museum experience in which I don't have to throw elbows to see the artwork. Third, his art objectifies women, black men, and Arabs in garish and disturbing ways (but that's just my humble opinion). Plus it's been suggested that he was a Nazi sympathizer.

So imagine my gratitude when I moved on to the next exhibit hall and discovered Johan Thorn-Prikker (1868-1932). Another Dutch artist, Thorn-Prikker was of the art nouveau, pro-craftsman variety, and his view of the world is soothing, elegant, and spiritually naturalistic. The exhibit included wall-sized paintings, textiles, tapestries, stained glass windows, and furniture, and there wasn't a single piece I wouldn't want to look at every day.

For more examples of his work, please see my little Thorn-Prikker album.

Also fun: the museum's exhibit on Hella Jongerius, a modern designer of whimsical every day objects. There's a small sample of her work here. Again, I would kill to own any of these pieces. And I especially appreciate that she designs for Ikea.

So two new favorite artists - not too shabby for an afternoon's work!

Bagels Worth Bragging About...

I've got to hand it to Jeff. After his highly successful lemon roll experiment over New Year's, he faced down the left over cream cheese in our fridge last weekend and came to the only logical conclusion: He would have to make some bagels.

There was some yeasting, some kneading, some boiling, some baking - and some damn delicious bagels. That's my boy!

It's like riding a bike...

The last bike I owned was purple, and it had streamers coming out the handle bars and blue stars on the seat. Needless to say, my biking skills are a little rusty.

But Jeff has a fantasy of us riding Dutch bicycles together while holding hands. Given that it's against the (unspoken) law here to wear helmets, such dare devil antics will take practice. We started on Monday with a gentle ride in one of Den Haag's many parks: Haagse Bos.

I forget how nice it is to be in a wooded park, where you can't hear cars or city life. We biked along muddy paths and streams until we reached the Queen's residential palace, Huis ten Bosch. It was refreshing to realize that, even though we have been here three months already, there is plenty more of the Hague to explore. I am designating January as our "Explore Holland" month.

A Very Dutch New Year's

Based on our sample set of 1, there appear to be three grand traditions for ringing in the New Year, Dutch-style:

1. Fireworks

We are not talking here about the piddling American-style firecrackers you can buy on the local Indian reservation. No, in the Netherlands, you can buy full-scale fireworks -- and set them off anywhere, anytime, without adult supervision. Over the course of New Year's Eve day, it sounded like the heavy artillery had breached the outer defenses of the city; walking home from work, I realized it was on me to avoid stumbling through other people's firing grounds (also known as the sidewalk).

(This unbridled enthusiasm for fireworks, combined with the lack of bicycle helmets and ambivalence about icy sidewalks, has convinced me that the Dutch have no tort consciousness.)

When midnight struck, we had only to step outside to see fireworks in all directions -- of the type traditionally sponsored by municipalities back home, but here "donated" by the citizenry of Den Haag.

Two major side effects: (1) Setting off real fireworks in the middle of a city is LOUD -- aptly compared by a colleague to WWIII. (2) By 12:15 a.m., the air was acrid and dense with gunpowder (see picture - that is not fog). Despite these palpable externalities, the fireworks continued unabated through the wee hours.


2. Polar Bear Swim

As in many cold climes, the hardier members of the Dutch citizenry traditionally run into the local frigid body of water (here the North Sea) on New Year's Day. What I was unprepared for was the scale of spectation for this event. Granted, we showed up at 11:58 for a noon event, but the crowd was six deep along the length of the boardwalk and pier, and people were climbing trees and flagpoles and the last of the snow mounds to try to catch a glimpse of their more gullible compatriots. So we have no pictures, but here's what happened:

An indistinguishable but sizable mass of people topped with orange skull caps swarmed around the beach to some live Dutch oompa-loompa music. At noon, egged on by an undecipherable loud speaker and a wave of cheers from the fully dressed, the orange mass surged to the sea, but it was impossible to tell who was coming and who was going. At 12:04, it was over, and the spectators quickly dispersed.

But at least it got us to the sea on New Year's, which (as my grandfather used to say) blew the stink off us.

3. Olliebollen

Around the time of Sinterklas's arrival, olliebollen stands popped up overnight. The fried mounds of dough, however, are primarily a new year's tradition -- attested to by the gigantic lines at the stands on New Year's Eve.

Olliebollen comes plain or with raisins, or filled with other good things like apple pie filling. As I love doughnuts and apple pies, these were clearly my favorite. 
That said, fried dough is fried dough, and the olliebollen were surpassed (imho) by the amazing lemon rolls Jeff made as our own new year's tradition.

Zoeks, Scooby! That snert is lekker!

This is a blog entry that is long overdue. It was clear to us within a couple weeks of our Holland adventure that Dutch is a fun language. Useful? Debatable. But its amusement factor is high.

Perhaps English speakers find Dutch pleasantly quirky because many words sound like they could be English, if English were whimsical. Like there's just enough foreignness to Dutch to make it exotic, but not enough to make it impenetrable. Plus it has a lot of cool vowel sounds.

Sometimes we walk around saying our favorite Dutch words to ourselves. It's endless hours of entertainment.

Our Top 3:

Alstublieft: an all-purpose word that means "please" but also (in a customer service situation) here you go, thank you, happy to help, and would you take your change already.

Lekker!: Another all-purpose word, always followed by an exclamation point (or else a question mark). This one word sentence means, essentially, that you really really like something (it literally translates to "Delicious!", but is much easier for little kids to pronounce). Jeff has taken to lekker! like a kid to a candy cane. It also shows up in one out of every four ads, and can often be overheard in exchanges between parents and their children ("Lekker?" "Lekker!").

Let op!: Another phrase that must always be followed by an exclamation point, "let op!" means "look out!" but it sounds friendlier and can also be used as a general warning: "let op!" can mean don't forget, pay attention, watch it buster, the tram is coming, or don't touch the third rail.

These three words alone enable nearly unlimited Dutch conversation. But other fun words include:

• Zoek: Meaning "search" and often appearing on websites. Every time I see it, I think "Zoeks, Scooby! It's Dutch!"
• Knoflook: "Garlic." To fully appreciate "knoflook", know that the "k" is pronounced.
• Snert: For some reason, this is the Dutch nickname for split-pea soup. I really don't understand why anyone would want to call anything they eat (and like) "snert".
• Winkel: "Store". Is it cuter as spelled, or as pronounced ("vinkel")?
• Doei: "Ta ta", and like "ta ta", apparently only used by middle aged women. It is pronounced at a high pitch and is often drawn out ("dooooeeeii!"); at first I thought people were calling their children/cats/cows home.
• Potlood: "Pencil". As in, "Jeff, pass me another potlood."
• Kool: "Cabbage". Which is not nearly as "kool" as it sounds.
• Dragon: "Tarragon". As in, "Gee, Jeff, the eggs are really good, but next time I think they could use a bit more dragon."