I got in around dinner time, which in Europe is convenient code for "nothing is open." My hostel was also located next to a highway, so I couldn't find any nearby restaurants. I sure as hell refused to pay 15 euros for the weird-looking vegetables and yogurt cups they served for dinner. However, I found out that breakfast was included in the price. I made the decision at that point to forgo dinner entirely, and instead subsist on the chosen nourishment of law students: a bottle of beer. Specifically, I tried the local variety Jopen which was quite good. Unfortunately, in order to get it, I had to interrupt a private party taking place in the hostel's bar. 1) Who throws a party in the bar of a hostel? It actually looked like a kid's birthday party. They had cake and light effects, and the 10-year old kids set up a PS3 to play Call of Duty in the hostel's restaurant (where I had to sit to drink the beer) while the adults had their fill at the bar. 2) My hair is too long, my beard looks scruffy, and I was sitting alone with a bottle of beer in a room full of kids...something was wrong with that picture.
When I got back to my room, I met my bunkmates, who have the honor of being the first Americans (aside from Marta and my roommate) I have encountered during my time here. They were extremely nice and outgoing...but also had a very stereotypical reason to be in the Netherlands. Translation: two college-aged stoners from Los Angeles who came all the way to the Netherlands to participate in the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam and went to smoke a joint about once every hour.
The next morning, I had a pretty typical Dutch breakfast courtesy of the hostel: hagelslag (bread with butter and sprinkles), bread with coldcuts and cheese, muesli with yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and some OJ.
After being numbed by post-apocalyptic visions of globalized consumer culture, I thought I'd get a reprieve by going to visit the Ten Boom Museum, a house that the Ten Boom family used to hide Jews during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. I did not anticipate that it would be one of the more awkward experiences of my life. The first hint of something not quite right was that in the museum you can take pictures in general but not of any photographs that line the wall. This made kind-of sense for family privacy reasons, but the "tour guide" claimed that it had to do with the photos being used for commercial purposes. I don't understand why someone would be inclined to use the family photos for commercial purposes rather than the main attraction (the fake wall that hid people). Okay, I can live with that policy, whatever the justification.
But then the real fun started. My "tour guide" revealed she actually volunteers to give tours of the house. I quickly understood why - the lady is an extreme Christian fundamentalist to the nth degree. Apparently, I had missed a key point when reading about this place: Corrie ten Boom, the lady who wrote the book The Hiding Place about her family's activities hiding Jews during the Holocaust, was super Christian and went on to "spread His word" around the globe. This didn't exactly gel with what I thought was more Holocaust-related story than missionary extravaganza. I appreciate the selfless act of the Ten Boom family, who should be commended for risking their lives (some of them actually giving their lives) to protect Jews from the Germans and Dutch collaborators. But wow, I have never been so heavily evangelized in my life. The lady kept rhetorically asking me variants of "You believe Jesus Christ is your lord and savior, right?" "You know He died on the cross for our sins, right?" "You know there's a Third World War coming because of Muslims and secularists, right?" Wait, what? Yes, this lady was convinced that we are a stone's throw away from all-out religious war that will result in the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation.
The most awkward part was that the other guy on this tour with me also happened to be a mega-fundamentalist and was privy to the Christian overtones of the story, and all of the things I just described happened over a half-hour "conversation" where me and this other guy were sitting directly across from the "tour guide" in the living room of the house that once housed clandestine Jews during the Holocaust. At one point, she wouldn't accept my polite nodding to her rhetorical questions and outright asked me if I praise Jesus. I couldn't hide my Jewishness anymore (ironic - and she couldn't even guess from my Jew fro??), and said that I'm Jewish. She gave me the stock Christian retort ("You know, Jesus was Jewish and the Old Testament laid the foundation for Christianity."), but every time I hear that, I can hear the implicit follow-up ("...but you know non-Christians are going to hell, right?"). She ended up giving me a book in Hebrew which she made clear discusses why Jews should become Christians to be saved from the End-Times. Again, people can proselytize if they want (pretty wasted effort on me), but I feel like it's inappropriate to do so in the context of a museum tour, especially in a house that protected Jews during the Holocaust (you know, the attempt to eradicate Judaism). Ironically, I've never felt more proud to be Jewish than after the "tour."
After what seemed like a never-ending half-hour, the "tour guide" finally took us around the house. By that point, the cat was already out of the bag, so she tailored her overt Christian fundamentalism to the slightly more nuanced Judeo-Christian v. everyone else message. This resulted in many interesting contrasts. For example, when we got to the actual hiding place, she made sure to mention that the Ten Booms were imprisoned by the Dutch collaborators for protecting Jews (eventually leading to Corrie's father's death from illness) and Corrie's sister died in Ravensbruck. Unspoken narrative: Christians died for your people. How very Jesus-like. At another point, when she pointed out the yellow "Jood" patch worn in the concentration camps, the "tour guide" told us the story of how Corrie somehow procured and hid a New Testament, which she read aloud to Jews late at night to give them some sort of spiritual uplifting. Unspoken narrative #2: she was proselytizing Jews in concentration camp.
Once the tour of the house was over, the "tour guide" gave me a bookmark which reads "We have an Almighty Father in heaven. Trust Him and He will do great things in your life." Then, the other guy on the tour bought me the DVD of The Hiding Place "to learn more about Corrie's message of hope and forgiveness." I forgive you, crazy tour guide lady.
I guess a Higher Force was at work, because immediately after that transcendental experience I ended up at Cathedral of St. Bavo. As I've said in the past, I belong to the "seen one, seen 'em all" category of church visitors in Europe. Admittedly, St. Bavo is an impressive church as far as churches go. It had an extremely-oversized organ (compensating for something??), intricate stain-glass windows, ornate ceilings, and...user-submitted artwork?
Maybe this is supposed to be the new, hip side of the church? I don't really see the connection between Christianity and Family Guy, except all of the times Jesus does non-Jesus things on the show, or in relation to the use of giggity vis-a-vis my organ joke. I feel like these pictures also deserve a caption contest. Send me your best, Internet!
After the church, I made my way to the Teylers Museum, which combines an odd mix of natural history, art, science, and coin collections. One neat collection they had there consisted of Rembrandt etchings. My favorite, however, was definitely their exhibit on luminescence, i.e. round 2 of Electric Ladyland:
I also discovered that I have an unhealthy fascination with uranium (timely yet unintended Iran nuclear deal reference!), seen below in the greenish glass forms and the bright green cube:
From the Teylers Museum, I headed to the Molen de Adriaan, an unusual windmill built on top of a fortification.
You can see the innerworkings of the windmill as part of a guided tour. I learned a lot of neat stuff about windmills from the tour, including how millers position the sails to send a certain message to other millers (such as signaling malfunctions, weddings, deaths, etc.) and the various uses for windmills (water regulation, milling, oil manufacturing, and sawing wood, among others). I also learned that once upon a time there were over 15,000 windmills, now reduced to approximately 1,100 - according to the tour guide, the biggest cause of the windmill's decline was the growing influence of power utilities in the 19th century. The best part was seeing not only the windmill in operation (unlike the ones in Kinderdijk) but also the sails up close when the miller decided to change them.
Afterwards, I wandered a bit around the city. I eventually found my way to Jopenkerk, a former church that now houses the Jopen brewery. I can think of no better contrast/poetic justice to the Ten Boom Museum experience than ending my day in Haarlem drinking a beer (Jopen's Mashing Pumpkins, a delicious pumpkin beer) in a former church. To top it off, I grabbed some Oliebollen (large puffy donuts covered in powdered sugar) nearby. To doubly top everything off, a parade of Zwarte Piets marched right by me playing Zwarte Piet tunes. What a send-off!
Today's Dutch word: kerk (church).
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