Holland

Sabbatical 2002-2003

Holland

Marijke and I arrived at Schiphol on Monday 16th December. We were immediately confronted with evidence of the Netherlands’ famed tolerance, as there are beggars in the airport. We are staying with Marijke’s mother in Amstelveen, a couple of kilometres south east of Amsterdam, for most of our two weeks here. She has lived in this house for almost 50 years. I can hardly grasp what that must be like, having never lived in one place for more than 6 years since I was a child. It’s a friendly sort of area – neighbours talk to each other, people drop by to say ‘Hoi’ and see if they can do anything, there is none of the sense of violence just under the surface that we found in Cambridge, although the centre of Amstelveen is not the most attractive of Amsterdam’s suburbs – a glass and concrete throwback to the 1970s.

Eating out in Amsterdam is a great experience – there is so much choice. Similarly with pubs and coffee bars. If all you want is a cup of coffee though, it can be difficult to tell from the outside whether you are going into a regular coffee bar or one of those that legally sells marijuana and cannabis. If the chocolate cake leaves you light-headed, you were probably in one of the latter. We went to Antonio’s café at the flower market (fresh, cut tulips in December!) near Leidse Plein a couple of times – good food and a pleasant atmosphere.

At the time of writing I have been in the Netherlands for a week and I have still not felt completely warm. While this is December, I think those coming here who have lived most of their lives in a warm country would find the pervasive cold difficult to get used to.


Marijke iceskating	Typical winter landscape

We travelled north for a few days with more of Marijke’s family in the village of Peize, not far from Groningen. This is a rural, agricultural area and much more monocultural than the urban areas in the south and west of the Netherlands. However, it’s a big change from the south and west where one town merges into the next in one big urban sprawl. Around Groningen, you have the northern alternative – lots of little fields with barbed wire around them and comfortable little villages with more florists and real estate agents than grocers.

The cinemas that we checked out in the Netherlands were much less attractive and much more expensive than the main cinema in Suva. However, many of them show the kind of ‘arty’ movies that never come to Fiji. We saw Lord of the Rings 2 at the Pathé de Munt (we thought it too long and rather dull, despite the impressive battle scenes – 5/10 in the www.imdb.com rating system).

One night we went to the Camera Cinema in Groningen (‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ – a fun movie unless you are a Greek male, in which case you should avoid it because it portrays you as stupid or obnoxious – 7/10). About an hour into the movie it stopped, the lights came up and everyone left the theatre. It took me a while to figure out that they still have a 15-minute break half way through movies here. No-one seemed to mind. Also, The Pianist – a powerful movie mainly set in the Warsaw Ghetto during WW2. Polanski’s best, I think.


Harry and Clark lighting fireworks	New years eve in Amsterdam

In Holland they go crazy with fireworks at new year. Marijke and I were with her family at her sister's place in the middle of the city. They have a roof garden and we watched it all, as well as setting off fireworks ourselves - it was an awesome sight. I had the job of taking the video (it was the first big get together for Marijke's family in years) and I left the miniDV tape in Holland for them to turn into a regular VHS tape. My aim is to put part of the firework display onto the web, but that will be months from now, after I have got the tape back.

Notes for travellers: