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| | Our first journey into Haarlem, The Netherlands' smaller, but still unforgettable city. | |
Note: One last entry from memory! Which is one reason why this post has been so delayed, for which I apologize. But I hope you enjoy hearing of our jaunt into Haarlem, one of the pleasantest cities I've yet to visit!
Never have I been so pleasantly surprised by any city on our travels as I was with Haarlem. To be honest, I was a little nervous about visiting a country where we knew absolutely nothing of the language, nor had done hours of research to understand the culture. But all of our fears were needless, for The Netherlands seems to be home to the nicest people, who all want to practice their English on you. :)
We left the Gare du Nord on a Thalys train quite early in the morning. It was quite pleasant to arrive at the station in time and without rushing like maniacs on our way there, huffing and puffing with all of our baggage. We got to walk down the platform in a leisurely fashion and take our seats like normal people. We had breakfast from the dining car while watching the French countryside go by. We went through Brussells, Antwerp and Rotterdam, craning our necks to see what we could of those unfamiliar places, before arriving in Amsterdam to take the train into Haarlem.
We had a little trouble finding our way around the station. One would think that finding a ticket window would be simple. Oh, and finding a working ATM was even worse! I think we asked about three people before locating one that worked.
Our train had two levels, and we took seats on the top to have a better view of this fascinating and unknown country, lying under a dreary grey sky, though it was. Now, if you ever visit a completely unknown city, always get directions to you accommodations, or you will wander around said city for ages trying to figure out where in the world you are even going.
As you might guess, we did not follow the aforementioned advice. A very helpful security man in the train station tried to direct us to our AirBNB based on its address, as did a bus driver and a nice lady on the street. But to no avail. The street was nowhere to be found.
Finally an older lady who had once lived on that street was able to give us definite directions – thank the Lord! However, we were running out of time to visit the Ten Boom museum, so we decided to find it before we walked across town to our AirBNB.
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| Any excuse for some Dutch coffee and cake! |
We needed wifi in order to contact our host, since we were already rather later that we had told him we would be, so we found a sort of cafe in a clothing shop to rest our feet and have an energizing cup of coffee while we got online. We couldn't resist the idea of some apple cake, too...
Our host was very kind, getting back to us right away to tell us we could arrive whenever we were done touring the museum. So we popped into the Ten Boom house to inquire after tour times, and happily there was an English tour coming up. We bought our tickets, then, with an hour to spare we decided to check out the local shops. There was a sort of miniature Ikea/Tuesday Morning sort of shop with all sorts of fun knick knacks and home stuff that we enjoyed perusing, and we bought a a few little odd things like a Union Jack luggage tag (of all things), chocolate and a tea bag holder with pretty little blue wooden shoes painted on it. We found something practical, too: plastic rain ponchos to cover our luggage. It sort of worked... They did keep our luggage from being
soaked by the rain, at least.
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| The Ten Boom family museum. |
What an amazing experience – absolutely unforgettable. Our tour guide around the Ten Boom museum was a little elderly Dutch lady who had lived in Haarlem during the Nazi occupation of WWII. What a woman she was! Not only did she have a strong spirit and great compassion as she shared Christ and the gospel more than once, but she was such a character, often making us laugh with her humorous little comments. On the tour with us there were a couple other Americans, an English couple, a family from Romania (I think) and a couple of German ladies. We all sat in the parlor where the Ten Boom family would have gathered to conduct church services or play games with the Jews they were hiding. It was small, but cozy, and had a clock or two that were actually made by Mr. Ten Boom himself.
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| The door to the Ten Boom museum. |
The upstairs bedroom, which was Corrie's, was the most chilling and at the same time the most thrilling. It was where the Jews who were waiting to be smuggled out of the country were hidden whenever the Nazi soldiers came to search the house. They would all climb in through the linen closet...
... And then hide out in the narrow space behind the wall. The wall itself was fascinating because it was specially constructed out of brick – and this was because if someone knocks on the wall it doesn't sound hollow like wood does. And the Nazi soldiers
would go around knocking on peoples' walls to check for hiding places.
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| Mom behind the Ten Boom wall. |
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And me... It felt a little small. I couldn't imagine
being stuck in there for days! And sometimes
they were. |
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| From the rooftop of the Ten Boom museum. |
The next stop was the rooftop. It was an important place during the war years because it was where the hiding Jews would come to get some much-needed fresh air once in a while. There are walls up there, which hides them while allowing them an opportunity to get outside.
It was an inspiring and humbling experience to see this house in person, to be in the places where there had been so much fear and yet so much kindness and bravery – the Ten Booms had faith in God's promises to Israel, that those who blessed Israel would be blessed by God, and hundreds of people escaped through that families ministry as a result.
After our tour we took some time to walk around the city. It seems like a sort of northern European version of Venice, with it's unique architecture and lovely canals. Even on such a gloomy day the red brick and pointed rooftops gave this city so much charm!
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| The canals of Haarlem. |
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| St. Bavo Square, Haarlem |
We finished our day in St. Bavo Square, dominated by the gargantuan, yet somehow not overpowering, Cathedral of St. Bavo.
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| Cathedral of St. Bavo |
We chose to eat dinner at a restaurant in the square, because we couldn't resist having a view like this! The restaurant was Brinkmann and got good ratings on TripAdvisor. But we had a bit to learn about ordering in Dutch restaurants, and about Dutch servers in particular, which I will now share for everyone's future reference. It's quite simple, once you know. But if you don't know then you will have to learn the slow way like we did, and I literally mean slow. We had been sitting at our table for maybe fifteen minutes without even a glance from a server, when a couple at the table next to us took pity on our confused looks and asked us if they could help. It was then that we told them our dilemma and they explained that in the Netherlands diners must always physically wave down their server before they will come to your table.
The fact that we Americans don't usually do this in our restaurants gave this couple a mild moment of panic since they, being Dutch and having visited America, were waiving down their servers during their time in the States. But we reassured them that American servers wouldn't mind – we do have a reputation for being friendly and informal, after all. :)
Our food came after we flagged down our server, and we had a fun time chatting with our helpful neighbors while we ate. They were as friendly as every other Dutch person we'd met, and enjoyed telling us about their travels in the US and the UK, which we were happy to hear. They were also the ones who informed us that Dutch children learn English from an elementary school age, and that whenever a Dutch person meets an native English speaker they want to practice their English with you. :) So it's hard for English speakers to practice their Dutch!
I have not yet mentioned our accommodations and the pleasant surprise we discovered there, which I shall now do. We did eventually find the place, and it was down a quiet street across a canal, with vines growing up over it's front. The rooms were not large, but clean and cheerful, and our host welcomed us by making us a nice warm cup of homemade cocoa, which the chilly weather outside made even more lovely. After talking to him a bit about our adventures of the day and what it was like for him growing up and living in the Netherlands, we discovered that his entire family was Christian! And not only that, but we shared the common struggle of finding a church committed to preaching Biblical truth.
There is nothing like meeting a fellow brother or sister in Christ who lives halfway around the world... They are family, and you can tell that bond is there just by talking with them for a few minutes. It's amazing!
He carried our suitcases up the narrowest, steepest little staircase I have ever climbed, and to our room. It was pink! The bedding, decor, chair cushions, and even a bit of wall paper and paint (which of course I loved, as it is my favorite color). It was as warm and cheerful as the Dutch people themselves.
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| Our pink room in Haarlem. |
We returned from our dinner well after dark, and dragged ourselves out of bed at six the next morning so we could get to the airport on the city bus. Our host had promised us breakfast, which in itself was an exciting prospect, but we were not prepared for the bounty that appeared on those trays!
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| Our breakfast in Haarlem. |
Yes, we each got our own. We had coffee, tea, cocoa, milk, orange juice, an egg, a huge slice of homemade bread, yogurt, a tangerine, a banana, ham, cheese and cereal. We knew a minor catastrophe had occurred when we heard quite a crash on the stairs, which turned out to be one of our trays on its way up. But another one was quick to appear. :) It was delicious! The bread was especially a treat, and it was sad to have to leave any of it. But no matter how much I wanted to finish it, there was no way that I could.
We made it out in good time, and happily we had a crisp sunny morning while we walked to the bus stop. It went straight to the airport from the center of the city and dropped us off right in front of the Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport about 45 minutes later.
That is one nice airport! I loved it. It's new, clean and pleasant; although these aspects were certainly enhanced by the fact that we were there in plenty of time and didn't have to rush around.
Our destination was the Leeds-Bradford airport in Yorkshire on a Jet2 flight, but I shall defer my account of our arrival there to my next post.
Thanks for reading! It's good to be back. :)
© 2016 Anna Morton
