Memorial Day: In Memoriam

Today is Memorial Day. This is not an obvious statement from my perspective, as there are no reminders here of the holiday back home. It is a challenge when abroad to observe holidays particular to the U.S. (like Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and MLK Day) that honor values intrinsic to my identity as an American. But the extra effort required to mark these days, with other expats or in solitary reflection, can make them all the more meaningful.

I am especially moved this Memorial Day, stuck on the other side of the world from my family, because my most beloved veteran - my grandmother Pearl - passed away last Friday. She was 97 years old.

I am and always have been greatly inspired by my grandmother and her life story. I hope my family will not mind if I share some of the reasons why.

Postcard: The Dunes of Wassenaar

Around Easter, Jeff and I rode our bicycles north out of town, through the dunes bordering the North Sea. The bike path winds around and up and down hills of sand, much more tiring than our everyday flat city biking. At the tops of the tallest dunes, we would pause to look around, but all we could see was sand, pale brush, tall buildings in the hazy distance, and perhaps a thin blue slit where we knew the sea should be. Pausing early on, we saw these sand-colored ponies - perhaps wild? - grazing among the reeds of an inland dune lake.

Ostia Antica

While in Morocco last March, we visited the extensive ruins of Volubilis, the far southwestern frontier of Rome's over-extended empire. It is stunningly located at the base of a mountain overlooking a fertile plain, but now grass and wildflowers crowd the gray stones, and storks build giant nests on top of the remaining columns. Alone among the ruins, one feels very far from Rome in both space and time. The site is a poetic reminder of greatness and its inevitable demise.

Storks on columns

Two weeks later, we were at the heart of the Roman Empire, surrounded by the grandest Roman monuments: the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Forum and Palantine Hill. More greatness, more demise, but less poetic.

But then we day-tripped from Rome to Rome's very first colony, Ostia Antica. Back in the day, this was where the Tiber River widened out into the sea, making Ostia both Rome's de facto port and its first line of defense. I thought Volubilus was impressive in size and state of general intactness. But Ostia is bigger (we only saw a fraction of it) and even better preserved (from the temples down to the tenements).

The amphitheater is still there, unsurprisingly, but so are the public latrines (next to the public baths), mosaics advertising shops, mill stones, a tavern with a honest-to-goodness bar, a small synagogue, and multi-story apartment buildings. Perhaps it was all the reminders of the normalcy of life, a theme echoed even in the surrounding countryside's pleasant but undifferentiated scenery - but Ostia was the closest I've come yet to imagining what it was like to live in a Roman city.

This was not a feeling I felt while touring Rome's Forum or Coliseum, with cars and buildings all around and crowds of tourists in the hot afternoon sun. Or in Volubilus, where Rome felt so distant and nature had a stronger narrative than the stones. But out in the Roman countryside, with the wind in the trees of neighboring orchards and the walls of everyday houses still standing, timelessness set in, and the ancient felt that much closer.

Paris recycles

Saturday morning in St. Germain-de-Pres.

Touring the Netherlands: The Golden Oldies

We've hit peak tourist season in the Netherlands (late spring is an excellent time to travel here), and Jeff and I are just racking up the Dutch Golden Oldies. Keeping in mind that I live a G-rated life, what do you think of when I say "Holland"? Yup, we've pretty much done it.

Exhibit 1: Tulips

For about three weeks at the end of April, the fields from Leiden to Amsterdam were strips of bright color, so fragrant you could smell them through train windows (especially the hyacinths). Along the roadsides, impotent field owners' signs pleaded unsuccessfully with the hordes of tourists, "PLEASE Do Not Walk in the Flower Beds."

Sixty years ago, the mayor of a small town and the major bulb exporters in the region had the brilliant idea of distilling the beauty of the bulb fields into a major garden exposition: draw tourists, market products, spread a little flower love. Thus the Keukenhof was born.

On the Roman Basilica

I have to admit: I was under-impressed by the Coliseum. After a couple hours, most of the ruins of the Forum and Palantine Hill were indistinguishable to me. An imaginative person, I nevertheless am unable to imagine what a Roman city would have looked like in its heyday.

But the Basilica of Constantine - that stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it's because I had never heard of it, and thus did not know what to expect. And it would be pretty hard to describe it in any way that would make anyone want to go see it (unlike, say, the Coliseum).

A Top 5 List of Roman Food Moments

What I love: Food, lists, Rome.  Hence, a Top 5 list of the little food moments that made our Rome weekend so perfect:

Some Thoughts on Liberation Day...

I just happened to be reading a law review article today about Heinrich Boere, a Dutch Nazi sympathizer who carried out retaliation killings on behalf of the occupation forces -- that is, he covertly assassinated innocent Dutch civilians in retaliation for attacks by the resistance movement.

The idea is haunting (though I understand from the article it was not that unusual during WWII): After an attack by the resistance, the word would come down that a certain number of reprisal killings were required. But the local authority would have to decide who, and usually did so randomly. From the article:

For every victim of the resistance movement up to three Dutch citizens were to be shot.... Assassinations were performed either in the early morning or late in the evening. SD officers would usually accompany the assassins. These were disguised in civilian clothes, equipped with false identity cards and drove cars with false number plates. They called on their victims at home. If they did not encounter the victim, the assassination was abandoned and the killers proceeded to the next address on the list. If they encountered the victim, they would verify the victims' identity, shoot at point blank range and disappear.

Queen Beatrix kicks Kate Middleton's a**: Queen's Day 2011

Jeff and I knew we would like it here when we learned that the Dutch celebrate both of our birthdays with national holidays. But while I get stuck with St. Discrimination-klaus, Jeff gets street parties, music festivals, fun fairs, public drinking, party boats, and an entrepreneurial free-for-all.

One of the great mysteries of life is why no one seems to know about Queen's Day outside of the Netherlands: This should rank up there with Munich's Oktoberfest or St. Patrick's Day in Dublin.

First, you have to love a Queen who sacrificed a celebration of her actual birthday -- which inconveniently occurs on January 31 -- to continue the annual celebration of her mother's birthday, a much more pleasant April 30.