DUTCH, the magazine

DUTCH The Netherlands and its people the magazine about at home and abroad

Feature: Every move you make...

How the Dutch welcomed Big Brother into their streets, hospitals and living rooms

History: The Dutch press in North America From ‘The People’s Friend’ to Hollandring.com Successive waves of immigrants report their news

PLUS Getting started in Dutch genealogy Brian Bramson is back... and hating it!

An angel peed on my tongue... say whaaat?

Pannekoeken: hearty plate-sized pancakes Arriving in the Indies, a 1920s adventure

$7.95 September/October 2011

Issue 1 September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 1

2 - DUTCH, the magazine

September/October 2011

The Map

Terschelling Vlieland

Texel

Wadden Sea

Oosterend

Groningen

Leeuwarden Wharf cellars (page 43) Makkum

FRYSLAN

Assen

Stick in the mud (page 36)

Den Helder

Saxon Language (page 26)

Den Oever

Size 12 (page 46)

Stavoren

Hippolytushoef

DRENTHE

IJssel Lake

Enkhuizen

North Sea

GRONINGEN

NORTHHOLLAND

Emmen Soccer debut (page 42)

Lelystad

Zwolle

FLEVOLAND

Haarlem

OVERIJSSEL

Floating bus (page 10)

Amsterdam

Noordwijk

Parkade (page 12)

Hillegom

Katwijk

Speeding ticket (page 14)

Spanish left-overs (page 31)

Leiden

The Hague

GELDERLAND

UTRECHT

Boat chase (page 10)

SOUTH-HOLLAND

Utrecht

Bicycle pump (page 35)

Arnhem

Neerlangbroek

Rotterdam

Randwijk

Nijmegen Theme park (page 30)

ZEELAND

Kaatsheuvel

BRABANT Middelburg Vlissingen

Den Bosch Little angels (page 40)

Rhine

Germany

Mutually incomprehensible, dialects (page 26)

Eindhoven

UEFA cup (page 42)

Statue (page 46)

Zeeuws-Vlaanderen Twenty mile circuit (page 34)

LIMBURG

Scheldt

Belgium

Major Waterway

Wharf cellars (page 43)

PROVINCIAL BOUNDARY National Capital Provincial Capital Larger city or town mentioned in the text Smaller town or village mentioned in the text

September/October 2011

Maastricht

Maas 70 Kilometers 43.5 Miles

DUTCH, the magazine - 3

Maria’s

Bed & Breakfast

Email: mdouwes@inter.nl.net

Ina’s Story

a new book by Anne van Arragon Hutten

(author of Uprooted: Dutch immigrant children in Canada 1947-1959)

the magazine

Answers to quizzes on page 46: Reflections: B from Blaak (page 10), O (left photo page 43), W (top photo page 38), S from Studios (right photo page 43) spells bows (bottom photo page 35). Match the Words: baai-bay, zee-sea, zout-salt, zeehond-seal, vuurtoren-lighthouse, strand-beach, golf-wave or gulf, zeerot-sea dog, boei-buoy, golf-wave or gulf. Who: Michiel de Ruyter. What: M.S. Johan de Witt. Where: Wadden Sea

Top location in Amsterdam.

KNSM-Eiland, beautiful view over IJ-harbor.

Single bedroom: €50 Double bedroom: €75

DUTCH

On the cover: The maitre d’ of a restaurant in a Utrecht ‘wharf cellar’ (see page 43) Issue 1 - September/October 2011 sends a quick text message Published by: Mokeham Publishing Inc. before the 457 Ellis Street evening rush Penticton, BC V2A 4M1 begins.

Canada (Photo: Janet Bonekamp) Mailing addresses:

Box 20203 Penticton, BC V2A 8M1 Canada PO Box 2090 Oroville, WA 98844 USA

Contact:

info@dutchthemag.com (250) 492-3002 fax: (866) 864-7510 www.dutchthemag.com

Editor

Tom Bijvoet editor@dutchthemag.com

Sales and Administration Mohrea Halingten info@dutchthemag.com

Contributors

Anne van Arragon Hutten, Brian Bramson, Nicole Holten, Dirk Hoogeveen, Tim O’Callaghan, Jesse van Muylwijck, Martin Visser

ISSN: 1927-1492 Canada Post Corporation Publications Mail Agreement No. 40017090.

Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Box 20203, Penticton, BC V2A 8M1 POSTMASTER US MAIL OFFICES DUTCH (USPS 003-365) is published bi-monthly. Periodicals postage paid at US Mail, Oroville, WA 98844 Address changes in the USA please forward to: DUTCH, P.O. Box 2090, Oroville, WA 98844

A true story about growing up on a Dutch freight ship on the Rhine during the Great Depression and WW II.

To obtain your copy, send a cheque for $20 to: North Mountain Press 181 Thorpe Rd, Kentville, NS B4N 3V7, Canada (includes shipping and handling)

4 - DUTCH, the magazine

All rights reserved. The views expressed in DUTCH are those of the respective contributors and not necessarily those of the publisher or staff. Although all reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, the publishers do not assume any liability for errors or omissions anywhere in the publication, or on the website.

DUTCH considers unsolicited manuscripts and mail for the Correspondence pages. All editorial material sent to DUTCH will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and may be subject to editing. We reserve the right to reject submissions. We prefer to receive submissions via email, but cannot guarantee that we will acknowledge receipt. We will not return submissions received in hardcopy format, please send copies only.

Printed in Canada.

September/October 2011

Tom Bijvoet - Editor’s Brief

What to do with

a quarter of a million dollars

W

hen I first discussed my plans to launch a new magazine with some publishing professionals at the annual Simon Fraser University publishing workshops in Vancouver a year ago I got some useful, but mildly disconcerting advice. “Borrow a quarter of a million dollars and flush them down the toilet,” the editor of a successful Calgary magazine told me, “that’s quicker”. When I shared that piece of advice with an experienced magazine publisher from Edmonton, she said: “make that half a million dollars.”

“But you did it…” I said. “Yes and I mortgaged our house to the max, lived in penury for years and had to sell all my jewellery… But you know what? It was worth it. It has not made me rich, but it sure has been fun! And if you believe in what you are doing, you can be successful at it.”

Another conversation I had was with my former High School French teacher. After she left her career in teaching she became a successful author and literary critic and was the director of the Netherlands Cultural Institute in Paris. Last year she came to Canada to give a series of lectures for the various chapters of CAANS (the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies) and I had the privilege and pleasure of spending a day with her in Vancouver. Over lunch we discussed my at that time still very sketchy plans for the magazine. “Well, what kind of magazine would it be?” she asked me. “A magazine that I would enjoy reading,” was my spontaneous unrehearsed answer. She nodded her head and glanced out over Coal Harbor and the North Shore mountains while sipping on her white wine. “Yes, she said, that is the best starting point.”

But then she asked me to be more specific. And I outlined for her and for the first time for myself the types of articles I would like to include: a somewhat longer feature article on an aspect of life either in Holland, or among the Dutch overseas. History, architecture, cooking, maybe a short story in translation or by a DutchAmerican or Dutch-Canadian author. “News?” she asked. “Well, not hard news. As a magazine that at least initially will appear bi-monthly we can hardly presume to bring real news. That’s what the Internet is for. Besides, I do not really care about the intricacies of day to day Dutch politics. But news items that exemplify what it means to be Dutch, yes, possibly.”

As I sat there brainstorming with someone I had not

spoken to in several decades the magazine started to take shape in front of my eyes. And I began to like what I saw. It would combine ‘Dutch-Dutch’ with ‘NorthAmerican-Dutch’ topics. It would be aimed at people of Dutch heritage. But also at people who are interested in The Netherlands, because they have visited it and liked it (or hated it) and people who are planning to go, possibly for a longer stay for employment or family reasons, who wish to prepare. Basically a magazine for people interested in Dutch people and culture in the broadest sense. So not in The Netherlands as a country only, but also in what it means to be Dutch away from the homeland, into the second, third and subsequent generations.

S

o here we are. I have not flushed the money down the toilet, but put it to better use – and thankfully it is not a quarter of a million dollars quite yet.

Would I like to read the magazine that you are holding at the moment? Well, actually, if I hadn’t edited and written parts of it myself, I probably would – I suppose I would say that, wouldn’t I? But that really is not important anymore. It was a fine premise to go on while we were planning, but what is much more important now is whether this is a magazine that you will enjoy reading.

We believe that with this first issue we have laid out our thoughts, given you an idea of what we were thinking about the direction of the magazine. Are we on the right track?

For those of you who became founding subscribers (you know who you are, thank you for your support and trust, we will not forget) is this what you expected? Are you pleasantly surprised or are you disappointed? What sections are good, what could be improved? We would like to hear from you, we would like to receive suggestions about what you would like to read. We would also welcome submissions, both of text and photography.

This first issue will hopefully be followed by many more and you have a welcome role to play in the direction of the magazine. I am looking forward to your responses.

Finally I have one additional request. If you would like to see this magazine continue appearing for many issues to come, tell your friends and relatives about us and show the magazine to them. We need subscribers and advertisers to make this a long term success. I believe that with your help we can do it! Thank you for your support.

“Flush them down the toilet”

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 5

Contents

Poetry

27 Memory of Holland Hendrik Marsman’s famous poem, reinterpreted in English: Thinking of Holland I see broad slowly flowing...

Cooking

30 Savory and Sweet Hearty fare for the fall-vacation.

Plate-sized pancakes for dinner and a traditional ‘hotchpotch’ with ‘slap piece’.

Travel

34 The Islands and the Sea

Regulars Epitaph

42 Jan van Beveren The best soccer goalkeeper never to play in the World Cup finals settled in Texas to do what he loved best.

Place

43 Utrecht’s Wharf Cellars A unique inner city space, developed over the centuries, reinvented for the modern world.

A bike-boat trip around the Wadden Sea with a mixed international crowd of unstable cyclists.

Comic Strip

Language

What’s with all the harsh language in parliament? The Dutch Judge explains.

40 Tasting good...

So what did the little angel do? Well, opinions differ, but whatever it did, it sure tasted good!

46 The Dutch Judge Savory and sweet (p.30)

Columns 26 Perspectives

Anne van Arragon Hutten

Dutch immigrants and their legacy.

28 Digging for Dutch Roots Dirk Hoogeveen

Getting started in Dutch genealogy.

44 An Englishman Abroad Brian Bramson

From Brian in Holland.

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September/October 2011

Contents

Departments 3 The Map Your visual guide to the articles. Where did he get that speeding ticket and where was that statue again...?

5 Editor’s Brief A vandalized ‘flashpole’ soon to be replaced by an ever vigilant digital version... (p.14)

Features

14 Every move you make...

C/W: HEILOO ONLINE - FLOATINGDUTCHMAN.COM - NICOLE HOLTEN

From cameras on the side of the road connected to sophisticated recognition software to the wholesale linking of computer systems, the people of The Netherlands are increasingly being monitored and watched.

Don’t they mind?

20 The Dutch press in North-America

The editor receives and seeks advice about the launch of DUTCH, the magazine.

8 Correspondence Letters received before our first ever issue even appeared! About the slim chances of this magazine succeeding and about the crucial difference between Holland and The Netherlands.

10 The Courant A new way to tour the canals of Amsterdam, praise for the architect of Rotterdam’s famed cube houses, luxury brothel Yab Yum re-opens, a Prince of Orange marries and a revolutionary new solution to keeping the sea at bay.

46 Fun and games Reflecting on reflections, deciding who, what and where and testing your Dutch word recognition skills. Plus a limerick.

Floating Dutchman (p.10)

In the heyday of the second big immigration wave from Holland dozens of Dutch language newspapers flourished. Now there are only four. When will the Internet have replaced them all?

24 Arriving in the Indies Arriving in the Dutch East Indies in 1927 was an adventure and a huge step into the unknown. In the first of a four part series about life in the Indies we join Tim O’Callaghan in Bandung.

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 7

Correspondence No great future for the magazine

I noticed your announcement and your editorial in De Krant about your plans to publish a magazine that would specifically cover the Netherlands and Dutch culture worldwide. Although I sympathize with this endeavor I am sorry to say that I don't see much future for such a publication.

Dutch people are immigrants ‘par excellence’, whether they moved to the USA, Canada, Australia or other countries. They assimilated in their new country much faster than other nationalities. Many of them don't speak their native language anymore (or pretend to have forgotten it) and they are no different from their colleagues, friends and neighbors.

Their children seldom show any interest in the home country of the parents. They don't read ‘De Krant’ [our Dutch language sister publication ed.] because they don't know how to read Dutch. But even if the magazine were in English, they simply don't care for Dutch culture.

This in contrast to other immigrants (and I don't mean the Mexicans in the United States who not only keep speaking Spanish, but who express their heritage in other ways as well).

No, I notice that for example the Basques or the Croats still have strong organizations and in many cities their own buildings. Also to a lesser extent the Germans, although they also have been absorbed into the melting pot.

I myself am a member of several German organizations in my area (a lodge and a mixed choir amongst others) , but here too there is little ‘Nachwuchs’ [members of the younger generation to take our places ed.]. We are a bunch of older people, who like to speak the old language, but we have given up hope to attract the younger generations. They sometimes like to come to the Oktoberfest, but that's all.

Anyway, we have to face the facts and they are not promising.

I do wish you success however.

Rudolf Stueck Cotati, California Mr. Stueck’s letter cries out to be proven wrong by the very people he is referring to. We would not be surprised if he was deliberately laying down the gauntlet! We thank him for his personal enthusiasm and sincerely hope that his challenge is met. We do not agree with him, if we did we would not be embarking on this journey.

We welcome your letters to the editor, but we cannot guarantee placement We reserve the right to edit letters for accuracy, brevity, clarity and good taste.

Submissions by email to: editor@dutchthemag.com preferred.

You may also mail your letter, to: USA: The Editor - Dutch, The Magazine PO Box 2090 Oroville, WA 98844 Canada: The Editor - Dutch, The Magazine Box 20203 Penticton, BC V2A 8M1

8 - DUTCH, the magazine

The Netherlands and Holland are not the same

Congratulations on launching DUTCH, the magazine. I hope it will live long and successfully.

However, it will have one subscriber who will grumble and protest if you persist in calling the country of my birth ‘Holland’. I admit, there was a ‘Holland’ a few centuries ago - mighty and glorious even, but it is a ‘Holland’ that often overran our fair land of Brabant. Even in my youth the South was discriminated against: most of our mayors, judges, doctors, government leaders and such, were from north of the rivers - mainly I think, because Brabant and Limburg were Catholic and hence, although unofficially, their people were not in the running. On every job application we had to note our religion.

We were strangers, unknown and looked down upon by the West. But, we loved our Brabant, the gentle people, the humor everywhere, the large families in which you were never alone.

Poor as many of us were, we were happy, we loved parties, festivities, processions and parades. We laughed, we sang. We were a different breed, somewhat darker and shorter than in the North, from different stock, and often intermingled with Spaniards and French or other foreign troops on their way to their wars with Holland. But of course in the last few decades North and South mixed a lot, people from Friesland, Brabant, Limburg, all in the same pot, and at the moment Nederland can truly name itself by its official, real name: The Netherlands.

So let’s. Den Helder would not be happy if it were named, ‘Den Helder, Brabant’; Bossche bollen would certainly escape the stomach of every Bosschenaar who is told that his city lies in Holland! Even the many countries that at the moment split and merge are proud of the name that they have adopted.

All the best with DUTCH. But, don’t forget De Krant!

Toni Benjaminsen London, Ontario We are glad that Mrs. Benjaminsen raises the issue, as does another reader, Mr. F. Antonides from Central Point in Oregon. We will have this discussion anyway, so we may as well start it right here in the very first issue of DUTCH, the magazine.

Historically only two of the twelve provinces of the current Kingdom of the Netherlands should be referred to as Holland, the provinces of North and South Holland (see map on page 3), which occupy by and large the same area as the former county of Holland, the most powerful of the lands that formed the Low Countries of yore. Over the years in general parlance the name denoting the old powerful county of Holland has come to be applied to the entire territory of the Kingdom of The Netherlands.

This is often resented by people from the other provinces, especially the eastern, southern and northern provinces. In consideration of these sensitivities our publishers changed the name of our Dutch language sister-publication from ‘De Hollandse Krant’ to ‘Maandblad de Krant’ when they purchased it four years ago.

It is editorial policy of De Krant to use the term ‘Nederland’ exclusively and consistently, except when the text clearly and explicitly refers to Holland and Holland alone. But De Krant is written in Dutch and DUTCH is written in English and it is there that we

September/October 2011

believe an important distinction lies. We are of the opinion that in English ‘Holland’ is a legitimate term for the country that is known officially as The Kingdom of the Netherlands. If one says in English to someone from any country other than The Netherlands that one hails from Holland, the conclusion is not that one comes from one of the western two provinces. Even people who know The Netherlands well, will not blink an eyelid if the response to the follow-up question ‘what part of Holland?’ is ‘Groningen’, ‘Brabant’ or ‘Limburg’. This usage stems in our opinion not from the arrogance of the true Hollanders, but more from the grammatical awkwardness of the ‘correct’ term. Should ‘The Netherlands’ take a singular or a plural verb form, for instance? Well, plural one would say, but on the other hand, is ‘The Netherlands’ not simply an abbreviation of ‘The Kingdom of The Netherlands’, which would take the singular. Besides, very few countries take a definite article, which adds to the awkwardness.

A similar, but reverse process – where not as in the case of Holland a part has given its name to the whole, but where the whole has given its name to a part – has taken place with ‘The United States of America’, another accurate name which is unwieldy in a text that has to flow easily and is often substituted with ‘America’.

Most Canadians (who if we wish to be precise are Americans too) have no issue referring to citizens of the United States of America as Americans, but many Latin-Americans resent that usage.

In addition, The Netherlands is also a historically incorrect term when referring to the current Kingdom. Taken the true historical interpretation, The Netherlands encompass Belgium and even parts of Northern Germany. So by outlawing ‘Holland’ and substituting it exclusively with ‘The Netherlands’ we would be replacing one incorrect term with another.

Even the ‘Kingdom of The Netherlands’ as a descriptor presents issues. From 1813 until 1831 the Kingdom included Belgium and Luxemburg, and after World War II in constellations that varied over the years Dutch possessions in the West-Indies. Currently the Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of four countries ‘Sint Maarten’, ‘Curaçao’ and ‘Aruba’ in the Caribbean and ‘Nederland’ which comprises the European portion of the Kingdom and three islands in the Caribbean (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba), which are considered ‘public bodies’ (a special type of municipalities) of ‘Nederland’. (You’re still with us... we’re impressed!)

So the next time we write Holland and mean what most people would associate with the term, please forgive us. We should have written ‘The post 1839 European territories of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ (the status of Limburg was disputed until 1839).

Having taken all of the above into careful consideration, our current policy is to use ‘The Netherlands’ and ‘Holland’ interchangeably and as synonyms. We intend no disrespect to people from the other provinces, but simply wish to follow established usage.

But we would be happy to change that policy, should it become clear that more than a handful of our readers oppose it.

We will follow Mrs. Benjaminsen’s lead in referring to her home province as Brabant at times, even though the correct and official term is North (or Noord) Brabant, since the southern part of the former Duchy lies in Belgium, which like Holland (in its inclusive sense of course) has a province called ‘Brabant’. But that is another story.

September/October 2011

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The Courant

The Floating Dutchman in front of the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam

Fly, Ride, Float: board your canal tour at Schiphol

S

tuck at Schiphol airport with nothing to do? About four hours to spare? Rederij Lovers of canal tour boat fame has launched an innovative new attraction christened the ‘Floating Dutchman’. The Floating Dutchman is a bus and boat in one, developed by Rederij Lovers especially for tourists, day trippers and passengers arriving or transferring at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This bus boat is a spectacular and unique way of introducing visitors to Amsterdam. The contraption is powered by 198 batteries and is therefore a silent and CO2-neutral way of sailing through Amsterdam's canals.

The Floating Dutchman has a capacity of 48 and collects passengers from Schiphol Plaza. It then continues to Amsterdam

along the freeway and enters the water near the Nemo Science Centre to continue its journey as a water launch through the canals of Amsterdam, along such landmarks as the Maritime Museum, the Skinny Bridge, Carré Theater and Amsterdam’s combined City Hall and Opera building. After the trip, the bus emerges from the water and returns to Schiphol. Bookings can be made via www.floatingdutchman.nl and at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

The Floating Dutchman can only be boarded at Schiphol and there are no stops in Amsterdam itself. The tour takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes, www.floatingdutchman.nl suggests not to take the tour if a passenger’s transfer time at Schiphol is less than four hours. The trip costs €39.00.

Cube house owners honor architect Piet Blom

O

Cube houses near the Old Harbor in Rotterdam 10 - DUTCH, the magazine

wners of the world-renowned ‘cube houses’ near the Old Harbor in Rotterdam want to honor the architect of their unique dwellings, Piet Blom. The 38 tilted cube shaped houses are placed on poles. In Blom’s vision each house represents a tree and the whole neighborhood a forest.

Blom’s ideas have remained controversial within the world of architecture, but the locals love their ‘urban village’.

The houses have drawn much attention and are a popular tourist destination. The owners got so tired of people knocking on their doors that one of the cubes was turned into a museum. To honor the architect a bust of Blom, who died in 1999, was unveiled outside the museum-cube. The neighborhood now wants to place informational signs and commemorative tiles with quotes by Blom throughout the area. The houses were completed in 1984 and were designated a ‘municipal monument’ by the City of Rotterdam in 2009.

September/October 2011

The Courant

Yab Yum to re-open

A

C/W: FLOATINGDUTCHMAN.COM - RVD - OSCAR TELLGMANN - CHANA DE WOLF

fter almost four years of inactivity the most famous bordello in The Netherlands, Yab Yum, is set to re-open. Located in a monumental 17th century mansion on The Singel, the most central of Amsterdam’s canals, Yab Yum was known as one of the most exclusive clubs in the city. It was also known for corruption and criminal activity. In 2008 it was closed by order of the mayor of Amsterdam for alleged links with organized crime.

The club was sold to its new owners for four million euros. The municipal ‘sex license’ which allows the property to be operated as a brothel is still current and the new owners plan to open for business early in 2012. They will also be launching a line of lingerie, men’s underwear and sex toys under the trademarked name, while champagne, the establishment’s signature tipple, will be available under the Yab Yum label too.

In a separate development aficionados can look forward to the premiere of Yab Yum, the musical, which should also take place in 2012 on the stage of the Royal Carré Theater, also in Amsterdam.

Yab Yum September/October 2011

Prince Willem-Alexander, with his wife Princess Máxima and their three daughters

The Prince of Orange marries

A

few months ago, somewhere, we read the official announcement that on August 27th, 2011 the Prince of Orange was scheduled to get married to Princess Sophie Johanna Maria of Isenburg. Wait a minute, we thought, did the Prince of Orange not get married to Miss Máxima Zorreguieta on March 30, 2001? And is Princess Máxima not one of the most popular figures in The Netherlands and don’t they have three lovely children together, the princesses Amalia, Alexia and Ariane? What’s going on?

This is what’s going on: a long long time ago there was a bit of a family feud over who owned the rights to the principality of Orange in the South of France and its associated princely title.

In 1702 Willem III of Nassau, the Prince of Orange died. He had no children. But he did have a few cousins. Citing a variety of wills that were left by a variety of parties, Stadtholder Johan William Friso of Friesland and King Frederick the First of Prussia both claimed the lands and title. The dispute lingered until in 1732 King Louis XIV of France annexed the principality after both aspiring princes had relinquished their claims to the soil.

They both hung on to the title, now devoid of any real meaning. For good

measure King Louis decided that since he owned the land, he may as well reward one of his loyal supporters with the title, which in the absence of male heirs was, in his eyes, available. He gave the honor to one Louis de Mailly.

Wilhelm II

Johan William Friso, Frederick of Prussia and Louis de Mailly all passed the title down to their heirs. So to this day, there are three Princes of Orange. The current incumbents are Guy Marquess of Mailly-Nesle, happy groom George Frederick Ferdinand Prince of Prussia, who is the great-great grandson of another Prince of Orange, Kaiser Wilhelm II and last, but definitely not least, the heir to throne of The Kingdom of The Netherlands, Prince Willem-Alexander Claus George Ferdinand of Orange-Nassau.

DUTCH, the magazine - 11

The Courant

Vulnerable houses just behind the dunes in Katwijk

T

he last time that the low lying Netherlands suffered a major flood was in 1953. It is still referred to as ‘The Disaster’ (De Ramp) in Holland. On the night of January 31st a huge storm combined with a spring tide raised the pounding ocean waves 18 feet above their normal average.

Dikes in Zeeland, southern South Holland and western North Brabant could not withstand the onslaught of the raging sea and succumbed. More than 1800 people died as a result of the ensuing floods. The Delta Works, a huge national project to ensure future safety was started. During the construction project dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees, and storm surge barriers were built or strengthened.

Officially the project was declared complete in 1997. But a minor improvement project to a dike far from the focal area in the southwest, which was

12 - DUTCH, the magazine

not completed until August 24, 2010, meant that it took almost 58 years after the disaster for the construction project to be truly completed. In those 58 years new insights, especially related to climate change and the projected rise in the sea level have resulted in the identification of 10 new ‘weak spots’ in the protection against the sea.

Along much of the coast of the provinces of North and South Holland the land is not protected by dikes, but by sand dunes, a natural coastal barrier.

One of the areas at risk is the small seaside resort and fishing town of Katwijk, about 15 miles north of The Hague. The town has a secondary barrier behind the dunes, but 3000 people live between the two and because the dunes are deemed to be too weak to withstand the worst case scenarios those 3000 people are in particular danger. One way of dealing with this issue would be

to effectively throw a whole pile of extra sand at the dunes and make them both higher and wider. But the engineers have come up with a different solution, one that was successfully implemented in the nearby village of Noordwijk. The plan is to build a dike inside the dunes.

By doing that the natural sand dune barrier will become stronger and the dunes will require less heightening and widening, thereby minimizing the impact on the surrounding area.

Holland would not be Holland if there wasn’t another innovative twist. The municipality of Katwijk wants to build a parkade inside the dike. Engineering studies have proved the concept to be entirely feasible. And thus the next improvement in the struggle against the sea will have a dual purpose. It will help Holland deal with an abundance of water on one side of the barrier and an abundance of vehicles on the other.

September/October 2011

OLGA KHOMITSEVICH

Katwijk: a new approach to water... and parking

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 13

Feature

Every move you make...

How the Dutch welcomed Big Brother into their streets, hospitals and living rooms

I

by Tom

n the middle of February my Canadian mailman delivered a form letter from the Central Judicial Collections Bureau (Centraal Justitieel Incassobureau – CJIB), a Dutch government bureaucracy of some 1100 employees, dedicated solely to collecting fines on behalf of a number of Dutch government institutions.

They had tracked me down into the interior of British Columbia, almost 5000 miles from their offices in Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Fryslân. Apparently on the third day of October 2010 at exactly 9.35 a.m. I had driven my rental car down a 50 kilometer zone on Leiden Street in the tulip town of Hillegom at the reckless speed of 57 kilometers per hour. I did not remember this, but they did.

There was nothing particularly exciting or surprising about the letter. Yes, we had stayed in a cottage in Noordwijkerhout, near the coast and driven through Hillegom every day on our way to or from whatever we were doing in Holland on that particular day. And the Dutch police has been using automatically triggered 14 - DUTCH, the magazine

Bijvoet cameras, ‘flashpoles’ in local parlance, to nab motorists violating traffic regulations since 1965. And driving at fifty kilometers (31 miles) in a fifty kilometer zone in Holland is like, well like sticking to the speed limit in a school zone at seven o’ clock on a Sunday morning: slow. If I was surprised at anything, it was that I had been clocked at 57 and not at 77 kilometers. Maybe I had just circumnavigated one of those strange looking obstacles that they seemingly haphazardly drop in the middle of Dutch highways to slow down traffic.

As I read the letter with its payment instructions I remembered how driving in Holland during my most recent trip had been a totally different experience from what I had been used to before. For various reasons I had not been in The Netherlands for seven years and however familiar almost everything else seemed, I just could not get used to the traffic. It was definitely not what I knew about driving in Holland, which in my recollection was more like a high speed motorized survival game – of the type sometimes portrayed in science ficSeptember/October 2011

tion movies of a post-apocalyptic bent, where driving aggressively gets you killed and driving defensively gets you nowhere - than a means of getting from A to B. Everyone seemed so well-behaved, so willing to adhere to the rules of the road. Drivers observed the speed limit, did not pass in the right hand lane. Even, what a novel concept, stopped at red traffic lights. That was not the Holland I remembered. When I first moved to British Columbia I almost killed myself on several occasions by misinterpreting the intention of a flashing amber light that indicates that the traffic lights a few hundred feet ahead are about to change from green to red. I thought it meant ‘put your foot down on the gas pedal and make sure you get through’ rather than ‘slow down and stop’. Twice I had to slam on the brakes to come to a screeching rubberburning halt, because a wellmeaning Canadian in front of me chose to slow down, despite the fact that the light was still green. I thought it a peculiar custom, but got used to it quickly enough and even started to appreciate the orderliness of NorthAmerican traffic.

So I was a bit surprised, to say the least, to discover that driving in Holland had taken on an almost American aspect. Actions by drivers were predictable, based on the simple two-dimensional expectations of the layout of the road and the locally applicable traffic ordinances.

No longer did my brain have to compute at lightning speed the expected behavior of fellow road users based on a large number of variables such as their sex, age, hairstyle and cut of sunglasses, the make, age and color of their vehicles, the type of objects dangling from their rear view mirrors, the distance they kept to the car in front of them and of course the way they used the width of the lane, or lanes their car occupied.

Needless to say that when the collective behavior of a nation changes so drastically, there has to be an explanation. And in this case it appears to be a fairly simple one. When we were back in Holland, we felt like we were being watched, all the time. There seemed to be cameras everywhere, at stoplights, with one or two mile intervals along the freeways and even along the provincial two-lane highways. If your chances of getting nailed for a traffic infraction are that good, it will affect behavior.

In the good old days, I remember them well, the locations of these devices were well known. They were few and far between and the cameras were regularly vandalized – their lenses sprayed with black paint, or smashed with a hammer - and when they were not, they ran out of film all the time. But now that these old fashioned radar- and film-based devices are being phased out and replaced by digital permanently web-connected modern flashpoles v2.0 the game is up. The CJIB reports an in-

crease in traffic fines immediately after a modern digital pole replaces an old fashioned analog one, sometimes up to fourfold, until a few months later when behavior seems to have settled into a more leisurely pattern and traffic violations are down, way down.

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f course we instinctively feel and know from ample precedent that being watched influences behavior. The fictional inhabitants of George Orwell’s England of 1984 modified their behavior under the ever present gaze of Big Brother and the very real East-Germans modified their behavior under the watchful eye of the Stasi. So now it is the turn of the Dutch. Despite their often expressed desire to be individualists, free in their ways, the Dutch have always accepted a large degree of state control over their personal lives. They have long needed permits to do many things.

Moving into a particular house in a particular neighborhood requires a ‘living permit’ which ensures that you are entitled to live, based on a whole set of intricate local bylaws and regulations, in a particular house in a particular part of town. Sales contracts for houses are usually not only subject to ensuring appropriate financing, but also to receiving the coveted ‘living permit’. Until 2000 you could not start a retail business without first having to go to night school and acquiring a certificate, a ‘shopkeepers diploma’, to ensure that you understood the basic tenets of bookkeeping and the overarching ‘law of wares’ that regulates a large section of commerce in the Netherlands. Although the general requirement of a ‘shopkeepers diploma’ has been relaxed, many businesses sectors still require specialized diplomas.

Probably the most far reaching and most efficiently run of these state controls is the ‘civil registry’. Ever since in 1812 Napoleon introduced the legal requirement that all births, marriages and deaths are to be recorded at the municipal level, it has been an obligation to inform the authorities of a change of abode. In effect the Dutch government knows about the residence of every single citizen or legal immigrant in the country. The extensive protests against the last census held in the Netherlands citing the invasion of privacy seemed like a rather futile gesture, with the detail available anyway in the civil registry. After protests and widespread boycotts effectively voided the results of that final physical census in 1971 the Dutch government has dispensed with a process in which they ask citizens to fill out forms. They simply run a ‘virtual census’ of the Municipal Basis Administration (Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie - GBA) the computerized version of the civil registry in which the details of every legal inhabitant of The Netherlands are recorded. Each inhabitant of the country is instantly

In 2005 the Dutch parliament instituted a law requiring everyone to carry with them at all times a legally recognized means of identification.

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identifiable in the system by a Citizens Service Number (Burgerservicenummer - BSN), a unique number, similar to a social security number, but much more widely used because of its adoption by various government departments.

To take one example, a recent innovation based on the BSN was the introduction of the Electronic Patients Dossier (Electronisch Patientendossier - EPD), an aggregate of several systems in which health regions, insurance companies, hospitals and other health care providers sought to link together all their data about individual patients. With the EPD any health care provider could have simply pulled up all medical information about the person in front of them through a standardized web interface. Of course this might provide clear benefits to the patient because of the detail of information the treating doctors would have at their fingertips. The system used the BSN as the patient identifier. Preparations for the implementation of the EPD went ahead presuming widespread political support. The system was effectively ready to go, when in March the Upper House of the Dutch Parliament nixed it, to the great chagrin of the Lower House and of bureaucrats throughout the civil service, who are following the time honored objective of Dutch bureaucracy to record and combine as many pieces of data about the citizenry in one central place as politically possible. It lasted only three months after the crucial vote in the upper house or politicians and bureaucrats were already talking about how the EPD could be revived and implemented on the basis of existing legal structures. It is not inconceivable that the system, which to date has cost 300 million euros, will be implemented in one form or another over the next few years.

Another example: the Dutch government in its ongoing attempts to make life easier for its ‘clients’, has introduced a unique sign-on for every Dutch citizen wishing to partake of on-line government services. And of course there is little choice, because many of these services will soon to all intents and purposes only be available on-line. From paying your taxes, to renewing your drivers’ license to getting, indeed, a ‘living permit’, you just need this one digital sign-on, the so-called DigiD (pronounced digeedee). Obtain a DigiD and you can sign on to the systems of (at the time of writing) all 418 Dutch municipalities, 8 out of 12 provinces, 12 health insurance providers, 2 regional police forces, 8 hospitals, a hitherto limited number of general practitioners and pharmacies and many of the most important national government bureaucracies, such as the revenue service, the vehicle licensing service, the land registry, the welfare and employment insurance service, the na-

tional pension fund, the national register of organ donors and a national service that tracks students’ exam results in secondary and tertiary education. And how does the DigiD connect you to your personal records in these systems? You guessed it, through the unique Citizens Service Number, the BSN.

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n 2005 the Dutch parliament instituted a law requiring every person within the country to carry with them at all times a legally recognized means of identification. These id-cards are of course adorned with the BSN. The police does not need a warrant to demand identification, but may do so if there is good reason to. Good reason to be stopped, according to the guidelines, is behaving suspiciously, like driving through a deserted industrial area at night, or being in the vicinity of a location where a crime may possibly have been committed.

For many years compulsory identification had been a taboo subject. A committee of bureaucrats, including the chief bureaucrat in charge of the civil registry, a Mr. Jacob Lentz, proposed the introduction of compulsory identification prior to World War II. The government of the time dismissed the proposal in March of 1940, two months before the Nazi-German invasion, as not being in keeping with Dutch traditions. But Mr. Lentz did not have to wait very long. In 1941 the Germans introduced an id-card and compulsory identification. The card had been designed by Lentz and the Germans were most impressed. It was almost impossible to forge and was much better than its German equivalent. It was based on the civil registry, which in the four years prior to the war had been thoroughly reorganized and improved by Lentz himself. Jewish inhabitants of the Netherlands received an id-card with a large ‘J’ imprinted on it .

In 1940 about 140,000 Jews lived in The Netherlands.

Of those about 101,000 (72%) perished during the Holocaust. In neighboring countries, including even Germany itself, this percentage was much lower, around 25%. Only in several East-European countries with a long history of virulent anti-Semitism, where the Nazis could and did operate even more brutally than in the west, that percentage is higher than in Holland. Since the end of the war in 1945 a debate has raged over why it went so horribly wrong in The Netherlands. Various reasons have been proposed: few secure hiding places in a densely populated flat country devoid of forests; an assimilated Jewish population that had not experienced a pogrom for generations and was therefore unprepared; class differences and limited solidarity within the Jewish community itself. But Dr. Loe de Jong, the official historian of the Netherlands during World War II, has indi-

There seemed to be cameras everywhere, at stoplights, with one or two mile intervals along the freeways and even along the provincial two-lane highways.

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September/October 2011

cated that the compulsory, complete and accurate registration of every Dutch citizen in the civil registry made life very easy for the Germans. This vast but very well organized bureaucratic collection of data, undoubtedly instituted with the best intentions, was easily and gratefully adopted in the support of the vilest of activities that mankind has ever seen. But, should the Netherlands have remained neutral during World War II, as it had during World War I, the civil registry would undoubtedly have been a very useful institution.

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orry about that little detour to World War II, not an uncommon step, when discussing public policy in The Netherlands.

The traumatic events of five years of Nazi occupation have defined public discourse for a good portion of the post war years and parallels are often drawn. But back to the cameras along the roads, dinging speeding drivers and compulsory identification. These digital cameras record your license plate number and a software module instantly translates the image of your license plate to a database ready format. The police computers that record the image transmit the converted plate number to the computers of the Vehicle Licensing Authority (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer, RDW), where your plate number is linked to your BSN, which immediately supplies the police with your current address from the Municipal Basis Administration and will most likely also spew out any outstanding fines and should you happen to be on a list of wanted criminals, tell the police of your most recent whereabouts (speeding past digital camera number 7033, at 57 kilometers per hour on Leiden Street in Hillegom, thirty seconds ago in a green Opel Zafira, id him, but be gentle when you stop him, he has a serious heart condition!).

What works on the highway must also work on city streets, the authorities must have thought. For at least two decades incidents of ‘senseless violence’ as the Dutch termed it – so I suppose there must be such a thing in Holland as sensible violence – plagued city centers, especially at night on weekends as the bars and nightclubs closed. At least fifty people have lost their lives in brawl-like incidents since the mid-1980s and countless others have been hurt, often seriously. So the authorities started to mount cameras in city centers and areas where these types of incidents were likely to occur. This helped in three ways, it served as a deterrent just like Big Brother’s watchful eye in 1984, the police could monitor the goings-on in high-risk areas without having to be physically present and finally, should something happen, the video could be used to identify culprits. The September/October 2011

software that does that automatically on the basis of facial recognition has not been perfected yet, but with the advances in technology we presume that should not be too far off. These cameras are ubiquitous in city centers and being digital operate continuously, without running out of film. Computer storage is cheap, so next time you are in the Netherlands, make sure to smile as you walk through downtown Amsterdam, you’ll be on candid camera!

Where else can you be expected to become an unintentional Dutch movie star? On public transit and in or near taxis. Being a taxi driver has long been a high-risk occupation, not just in Holland, I would like to add. So taxi-companies started to mount cameras in their vehicles, not an unusual measure and one that we have seen here too.

Of course that resulted in drivers being lured outside of their cabs by their rides and being assaulted out of reach of the on-board camera.

Now Rotterdam has started to put cameras on the roofs of their taxis, in cooperation with the police, who will monitor the video streams. The police love the idea. No longer will they be limited to a view of a number of predetermined fixed downtown locations, they will have a roaming fleet of eyes throughout the city and one daresay that if the camera on a taxi spies something untoward, or if a squad car may not be as close to the location of a reported crime as a cab, an unsuspecting passenger may be taken on a little police-directed detour.

The Dutch police must be commended on their grasp of the unlimited possibilities of new technology. In a recent covert operation they monitored the website of an escort agency that was suspected of human trafficking.

About 1300 men who had contacted the agency through the website were sent a so called ‘sms-bomb’ by the police: an uninterrupted stream of text messages to a cell phone that renders any normal use of the device impossible. The message stream directed the owners of the phones to contact the police, which many of them did.

Many unsuspecting wives and girlfriends with access to their husbands’ or boyfriends’ phones did too. One can only suspect what painful conversations took place after that little incident, which the police described as an experiment to investigate the legal boundaries of police investigations. And yes, cell phone numbers are linked to the BSN, although we suspect that in this particular case the police simply scraped the number from the online form the unsuspecting and rather naïve philanderers filled out. Although one must admit that there can be little sympathy for these men – one can presume that an escort agency that extensively uses trafficked womDUTCH, the magazine - 17

en caters to, let’s put it mildly, unorthodox tastes – one must remember that prostitution is not illegal in The Netherlands and that these men, whatever one’s moral view of their activities may be, were not doing anything illegal if they were not aware of the status of the women involved.

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s DUTCH, the magazine, we consider ourselves neutral observers, reporters of what happens in The Netherlands.

Where an issue does not immediately involve us in North America, we see no particular need to take a stance and in the case of the increased accessibility by the government to private and personal information about the activities of its citizens, that is no different. We see the benefits as well as the pitfalls.

Undoubtedly the night-time streets of downtown Amsterdam are safer with security cameras and a single sign-on for all government services must be very handy. As the Dutch are so fond of saying: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. The reasons this particular subject interests us are twofold. In the first place Holland is an advanced first world country that because of its progressive nature on the one hand and compact easily governed geography on the other is a successful laboratory for all manner of social experiments. The Netherlands often functions as the old canary in the coalmine. From the side-effects of actively endorsing the establishment of a multicultural society with a large Muslim minority to very liberal regulations regarding soft-drugs, foreign jurisdictions can look to Holland to answer their ‘what if…’ questions. Secondly, as a publication interested in the Dutch psyche, this subject is typical of the often split personality that we have to ascribe to the Dutch as a nation. On the one hand easy-go lucky freedom loving and individualist, more like their Anglo-Saxon neighbors across the sea or ocean than like their German neighbors to the east. On the other hand the Dutch do display the ruthless efficiency and desire for order that the world is more likely to ascribe to their Germanic kinfolk east of Arnhem.

Simply by walking down any Dutch street and observing your surroundings, this internal struggle to be free on the one hand and orderly on the other becomes apparent. The monotony of the neatly scrubbed stoops and immaculately maintained yards in front of uniformly painted row-houses is broken by small gestures of individualism: The poster in the big picture window that exclaims the support for any of a number of ‘good causes’; the brightly colored street number next to a home-made earthenware sign that proclaims that ‘Dennis, Chantal, 18 - DUTCH, the magazine

Mirage and Pucky the Puss live here’.

It is surprising that there has been very little opposition to the extent in which government agencies are combining systems and linking information. The people of the Netherlands seem resigned to the fact that this is the new way of the world and there is little if any sense in trying to halt the inevitable flow of information available to the authorities. And if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them, they appear to say. Uptake of social media in The Netherlands is one of the highest in the developed world. More than 90% of Dutch Teenagers have active Facebook or Hyves (a locally popular Facebook-type network) accounts. If you willingly share your holiday snaps, your cinematic, literary or indeed sexual preferences with the world, why would it worry you that the government stores your address and fingerprints with, say, your dna-profile. The authorities are thankful. Whenever it comes to a serious investigation the information on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube or Flickr can be used to supplement the wealth of information drawn from government systems. In a recent case involving vandalism the police of the southern city of Bergen op Zoom did not have to look further than Youtube, where the youthful protagonists had proudly posted videos of their exploits.

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o far so good. The police are more successful at solving crimes, the authorities are more efficient in serving their citizens and everybody can enjoy the spoils of a better organized and documented society. Of course it is not fair to draw parallels with East Germany and Orwell and in the current climate of democracy and openness the Dutch people are probably right to trust the good intentions of their government.

But what about the European bureaucracy in Brussels?

Or that first municipal council, that will undoubtedly surface over the next few years, in which Islamic fundamentalist parties command a majority? And what about the girl next door who works in the doctor’s office, the relative at the revenue agency, the basketball buddy at the bank?

A seasoned old department chief at the data center of a huge bank in The Netherlands for which I worked a long time ago told me that although it was of course strictly prohibited, the first two days after someone started there were lost to productivity, because all new employees did was look up the bank balances, mortgages and recent debits and credits of all their relatives, neighbors, new bosses and a few national celebrities. “It’s human nature,” he shrugged, “if I penalized the perpetrators I September/October 2011

would have no staff left”. And even if you have nothing to hide, information represents power and that relative or neighbor may be the one who disputes a will or a rezoning request or is your competitor in an employment application.

But even if we dismiss the danger of our neighbors getting a hold of our information as remote or largely irrelevant, security is man-made and once something is recorded digitally, whatever the regulations concerning destruction of data after a certain time period has lapsed, it is highly likely to remain available in one form or another. In a number of recent cases the security safeguards of the Dutch Revenue Service’s computers have been proven to be particularly porous. Last year an organized criminal gang managed to cash tax rebates to the value of millions of euros by purchasing BSNs and DigiDs from fraudulent employees of the Revenue Service. Before the taxpayers involved even knew something was wrong their money and their identities had been stolen. In several other highly publicized cases government employees simply left computers with unencrypt-

ed hard-drives on the curb for pickup by the garbage collector.

The Dutch have always had a fascination with publicly showcasing what good and upstanding citizens they are.

Many a foreigner has commented on the strange Dutch habit of leaving the drapes and blinds open at all times, so that any passer-by should get an unobstructed view of their living rooms, day and night. We have nothing to hide and do not care that everyone can see what we have for dinner, what television shows we watch and what newspapers we read. So next time you’re in Holland and walk down the street, uncomfortably aware that a bureaucrat in a concrete bunker somewhere may be following your every move, peer into those large uncovered picture windows and look at the little webcams on top of the computer screens, running all the time. They may be connected through the IP-address of the permanently web-connected computer to the head of household’s BSN, the citizens service number. Not that the householder has anything to hide of course. But still, just saying…

The Dutch have always had a fascination with publicly showcasing what good and upstanding citizens they are. Many a foreigner has commented on the habit of leaving the drapes open.

September/October 2011

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Old News

From The People’s Friend to Hollandring.com

The Dutch press in North America

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he Dutch language was first heard regularly on this continent almost four hundred years ago with the settlement of New Netherland. It laid down deep roots and survived in spoken form for over two centuries. After the War of Independence the use of Dutch started declining but Dutch was still widely spoken and understood in the Hudson Valley well into the nineteenth century. An offshoot, the Jersey Dutch creole spoken by the Ramapough Indians of Bergen and Passaic Counties in New Jersey even survived into the twentieth century.

About the same time that Henry Hudson was exploring the NorthEastern part of North America on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, back in Europe the very first newspapers started appearing. One of them was the weekly ‘Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c.’ (‘News from Italy, Germany etc.’) which started its run in 1618 in Amsterdam, five years after the first permanent settlement of New Netherland was established. Many historians consider the Courante the very first newspaper, because it was the first broadsheet and the first to use typographic conventions that are still common in newspapers today, such as separated columns and articles with datelines. Despite the parallel development 20 - DUTCH, the magazine

of newsprint and New Netherland, the colony never did get its own newspaper. We must remember of course that the Dutch communities were frontier communities, where the challenge of daily survival took precedence over the latest news from Europe, that education was limited and literacy low.

The first printing press arrived in the area from Europe in 1685, but it was used largely to produce books and pamphlets. After a false start with ‘Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick’ which was intended as a monthly, but was shut down by the British authorities after the first issue, the first regularly published newspaper in the Americas was The Boston News-Letter, which started its weekly appearance in 1704. People wanting to read the news in Dutch, were limited to whatever was brought across the ocean from the home country. Note, however, that this did not necessarily mean that the news was much more stale than that in the locally produced English language newspapers. Initially the latter relied heavily upon their counterparts in London as a source for their news.

It required the advent of the next

significant wave of Dutch immigration for the first Dutch language newspapers to appear in the Americas. Anywhere where major Dutch settlement took place newspapers were started. The ‘Sheboygan Nieuws­ bode’ in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in 1849 was the first of a long list. More than two dozen, sometimes fanciful names (see box on page 21) remind us of a time when every city and town in the USA and every significant ethnic group within those, supported one or several newspapers. But not many had a lifespan that extended beyond a few years. A few successful newspapers, however, did survive well into the twentieth century. These included ‘De Telegraaf ’ in Paterson, New Jersey, ‘Het Oosten’ also in New Jersey, ‘De Volksvriend’ in Orange City, Iowa, ‘Onze Toekomst’ in Chicago, ‘De Grondwet’ in Holland, Michigan, ‘Pella’s Weekblad’ in Pella, Iowa and ‘De Utah Nederlander’.

In contrast with the early new Netherland colonists, in this era most Dutch immigrants could read and wanted to stay in touch with what was happening back in the homeland. Church news and religious backgrounders were important subject matter for these predominantly

September/October 2011

Christian Reformed publications at a time when theological disputes were commonplace and secessions not unheard of. The longest surviving periodical from this era was not a newspaper, but a religious journal called ‘De Wachter’ (‘The Guardian’), which was published in Dutch from 1868 until 1985.

Dutch language newspapers also played a significant role in helping the new immigrants get involved in the civic and political life of their new country, often educating readers in the ways of the new land and usually affiliated to a political party.

One of the most interesting functions that these newspapers performed was to keep inhabitants of the various Dutch settlements in touch with what was happening elsewhere. A lot of people moved from one Dutch settlement to another and family and friendship ties between the various communities were strong. So a report on the harvest in a small Dutch colony in Alberta might be read with interest in Pella. The ‘correspondents’ who wrote those reports often inserted a bit of propaganda for their ‘colonie’ in their articles, to attract new settlers to their areas. Sometimes the tendency to promote one’s own colony become so blatant that the newspaper’s editor felt he had to intervene. Such was the case when a settler in Alberta bragged about the wonderful climate and claimed that neighboring British Columbia even had a tropical climate, a claim that the editor of ‘De Volksvriend’ gently refuted, saving face by suggesting that the author meant this figuratively.

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t is almost ironic that the last of these nineteenth century Dutch papers, De Volksvriend and Onze Toekomst, disappeared in 1951, just as the third big wave of Dutch immigration was gathering steam. One wonders whether a few more years might have given them a new lease of life. But rather than seeing a continuation of some of the older titles, the new wave of September/October 2011

DUTCH LANGUAGE NEWSPAPERS IN THE USA 1849 - 1951 NEW YORK De Nederlander in Noord-Amerika (The Dutchman in North America) 1849 - 1849 De Nederlander (The Dutchman) late 1860s.

De Nederlandsche Heraut (The Dutch Herald) late 1860s NEW JERSEY De Nederlander (The Dutchman) 1872 -1873 De Telegraaf (The Telegraph) 1880 - 1921 Het Oosten (The East) 1898 - 1940 MICHIGAN De Volksvriend (The People’s Friend) 1849 - 1849 De Hollander (The Hollander) 1850 - 1895 De Amerikaansche Stoompost (The American Steampost) 1859 -1869 De Grondwet (The Constitution) 1860 - 1938 De Vrijheidsbanier (The Banner of Freedom) 1868 -1904 De Standaard (The Standard) 1875 - 1918 De Hollandsche Amerikaan (The Dutch American) 1890 -1945 De Vrije Hollander (The Free Hollander) 1892 - after 1911 ILLINOIS De Batavier in America (The Batavian in America) 1863 - 1864 De Nederlander (The Dutchman) 1870s Onze Toekomst (Our Future) 1894 - 1951 WISCONSIN De Sheboygan Nieuwsbode (Sheboygan News) 1849 - 1861 De Ware Burger (The True Citizen) 1859 - 1859 De Alto Democraat (The Alto Democrat) 1860s De Pere Standaard (De Pere Standard) 1878 - 1907 IOWA Pella’s Weekblad (Pella’s Weekly) 1861 - 1942 De Pella Gazette (The Pella Gazette) 1867 - 1869 De Volksvriend (The People’s Friend) 1874 - 1951 Sioux Center Nieuwsblad (Sioux Center News) 1892 - 1929 Pella’s Nieuwsblad (Pella News) 1899 - 1901 DAKOTAS De Nederlandsche Dakotiaan (The Dutch Dakotan) (1884 - 1886) Harrison/Springfield Bode (Harrison/Springfield Messenger) (1887 - 1901) UTAH De Utah Nederlander (The Utah Dutchman) (1914 - 1935)

immigrants, which numbered more than 250,000 had to start afresh.

This happened soon, mainly in Canada, where the largest number (about 80%) of the new Dutch immigrants settled. De Nederlandse Courant started in 1953 and still appears bi-weekly. It was followed by

Hollandia News in 1954 and Good News in 1958, the latter two eventually merged into the Windmill Herald, which is also still with us. The last of the currently still appearing Dutch language newspapers was started in Vancouver in 1969 as De Hollandse Krant, now MaandDUTCH, the magazine - 21

blad de Krant, or simply ‘De Krant’ (The Newspaper), which is a sister publication to DUTCH. These three papers, although they look similar in their tabloid newsprint formats have very different editorial policies and are clearly complementary.

The Windmill Herald is strongly ensconced within the Dutch Reformed Pillar of old, bringing a full page of church news. Apart from that it limits itself almost exclusively to brief news items from The Netherlands. De Nederlandse Courant is more of a community paper for the aging Dutch-Canadian population in Ontario, reporting on events such as card tournaments, Dutch club meets and consulate receptions. It also prints a limited amount of news from The Netherlands. Under the 32-year tenure of Gerard Bonekamp, De Krant transformed itself from a newspaper to something that more resembles a monthly magazine. Its essays and columns by North-American correspondents complement news items, short stories, poetry and verse from The Netherlands. De Krant has recently undergone an ownership change and rejuvenation and is poised to be around for some time.

With the advent of the Internet and the easy availability of news from the Netherlands to anyone who wants it, the reporting function of Dutch language news-oriented publications has fast become obsolete. In addition there are demographic issues. As with the earlier Dutch language newspapers, when the immigration wave that originally created them ebbs away, so its newspapers will probably follow. Their counterparts in other countries with a large postwar Dutch immigration have already: De Nederlandse Post in South Africa folded in 2007 and the Dutch Weekly in Australia in 2004, where monthly The Dutch Courier still seems to be going strong. If the three remaining Dutch newspapers in North America could consolidate and pool their resources, they might well, going on the experience of past immigration waves, survive 22 - DUTCH, the magazine

for another decade or two, maybe even longer, but without the unlikely start of a new large immigration wave, these publications are destined to eventually disappear.

As the entire media landscape is undergoing rapid change, so Dutch media in North America change too. Although Dutch news sources from across the ocean are in abundant supply, it seems that the Dutch and their descendants on this side of the ocean have a common bond, something that ties them together and makes them distinct from the former compatriots that stayed behind. And so the desire for separate news outlets geared especially towards the Dutch in North-America keeps drawing readers to media to fulfill those needs. Specialized websites and blogs have sprung up on the Internet and like the newspapers in the nineteenth century often disappeared again soon. Many of these sites cater to special interest groups: expats, aspiring immigrants, second generation Dutch descendants interested in their background, Dutch cooking and so forth. Very popular for almost a decade was now defunct ‘The Holland Ring’, which had a wealth of information and links and was the most popular Dutch-American portal. A new website that draws the attention is

dutchinamerica.com, which also gives a wealth of links and includes occasional shorter news items of interest to the Dutch North-American community. At DUTCH, the magazine, we believe that with one million Canadians and more than four million Americans of Dutch descent there is a continued interest in a ‘Dutch’ publication, even if it does appear in English.

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urpisingly, however, the longest lived Dutch language print publication does not stem from any of the three big Dutch immigration waves. ‘The Gazette van Detroit’, started in 1914 and still publishes an issue, half in English, half in Dutch every two weeks. It served the large Flemish population of the Detroit area and is now distributed throughout North America. Like other ethnic media it is struggling to survive as its main reader base has declined in numbers, but we all hope that on August 13, 2014, only three short years from now it will celebrate its 100th birthday.

When we look at the Gazette, we realize there is hope for the Dutch press in North America, despite the demographic challenges. It most definitely gives us something to aspire to.

September/October 2011

Visit the Netherlands Bazaar in Thornhill, Ontario!

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September/October 2011

Bandung calling

Horse riding in Bandung, 1920s

Arriving in the Indies

Part 1 in a series of 4 about life in the Dutch East Indies (1927 -1950)

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rom all accounts the arrival in Batavia during the latter part of the 1920s must have been one full of incredible anguish coupled with limitless possibilities for a richer life. Stories must have run rampant during the ocean crossing about what to expect upon arrival in the Indies and many of these would have been either highly exaggerated or completely fabricated.

Nevertheless, those passengers on board, for all the tales, whether tall or not, were none the wiser during this stage of their journey east.

It has become clear through written accounts of the time that for a lot of people making this voyage, assimilation to the East and its way of life was simply never to become 24 - DUTCH, the magazine

By Tim O’Callaghan normal. For others, the exact opposite would hold true. For them, making the journey provided an immediate ascent in social standing that could never have been achieved had they remained in the Netherlands. By virtue of being European they were, without any requirement for further credentials, deemed superior.

The depression era struck the world hard and the Indies did not escape unscathed. This period of economic gloom also coincided with a considerably ramped up influx of immigrants from the Netherlands. Prior to the early part of the twentieth century very few women made the journey east. The reasons were simple: poor health condi-

tions, poor cultural activities, poor social life, poor marriage prospects, and little to no female company. The boredom that would ensue upon arrival in the Indies, for a woman, was written about time and again and sent many of the more naïve homeward bound within a year, either leaving their husbands behind to continue the work or offering up an ultimatum of departure or else…

By 1915, this situation began to change dramatically. The catalyst was the Dutch Administration back in The Hague. At the turn of the century Holland’s policies regarding the Indies underwent an overhaul and entered an era of moral judgment rather than colonial oppression. The call to make changes September/October 2011

in the way the Indies were governed men and women had been arriving were brought on by many citizens in droves throughout the previous of Holland who by this time were twelve years. This had placed severe already looking to free the Indies strains on the resources of the Infrom Dutch rule and oppression dies administration and their staff. and at the very least wished to give A call to duty back in the Netherthe native people a voice of their lands would be necessary if these own. stresses were to be overcome. DurIn so doing, many areas of Indies life changed. Education became a major issue as did basic health care and civil rights. The main areas that received attention were those that directly benefited the societies of the major metropolitan areas, Batavia (Jakarta) and Bandung. In these areas not only were the above three Bandung, Braga Road prerequisites for a pleasant life improved but so were the social, ing the 1920s the Dutch governcultural and entertainment features ment requested volunteers from the of the predominantly European socivil service to start a new life in the ciety.

Indies. The call to duty must have By 1927 these new measures had profoundly affected my grandfafully taken root. Batavia and Bandther, a police detective in the Royal ung were the tropical sister cities Dutch Police Force. to Amsterdam and Paris. DutchAt age 29 with a wife, two daugh-

ters under the age of two years and a good career underway, Stephanus Hendricus Gerichhausen chose to uproot his family and head to the other side of the world.

Stepping from the gangplank of the Johan de Witt as it lay moored in Tandjung Priok must have prompted a wondrous sense of discovery and unmasked the spirit of pioneering in many who gazed wide-eyed at the legendary ‘jewel of the east’. This moniker which had for a dozen or more decades caused the imagination of countless Europeans to swirl with fantastic exotic delight and intrigue now became a reality. The city of Batavia had long ago lost any real claim to that prestigious title, but for those arriving for the first time, seeking a better life, a healthier climate, and a more enriched style of living, it was undoubtedly the looking glass through which their sights were cast.

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DUTCH, the magazine - 25

Anne van Arragon Hutten - Perspectives

Dutch immigrants

and their legacy

I

sist, since I can boast of neither.

But it is true that some of the immigrants hailed from the higher strata of Dutch society, a few had even been educated alongside the children of the Dutch royal family prior to emigration. One expected a level of sophistication and good manners from such families, as well as an excellent command of the ‘General Civilized Dutch’ language (‘Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands ABN), the dialect of the upper middle classes who dominated postwar society. This variant of Dutch, a command of which was essential in The Netherlands for social progress, was not spoken by the vast majority of those postwar immigrants.

A large contingent hailed from farm country, particularly that of the northern provinces: Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. Frisians brought their own language along, while those from Groningen and Drenthe are now beginning to be recognized as speakers of the Saxon language, which like Frisian is quite distinct from Dutch. Immigrants from the South, including Noord-Brabant and Zeeland also spoke widely varying, often mutually incomprehensible, dialects.

Many of the new arrivals came from a society that was divided into social groups known as pillars (zuilen). My family was rooted firmly in the ‘Gereformeerd’ (Orthodox Reformed) pillar. My mother’s part-time maid, who A 1950s immigrant ship leaves Rotterdam helped bathe all nine

t has been over sixty years since the postwar wave of Dutch immigrants began arriving in Canada. I came here with my family in 1950, at the age of nine. I sometimes wonder about the qualities we brought along, and how those have influenced Canadian society. As a group, we had certain ideas, characteristics, and opinions. Especially opinions, which older immigrants can still be heard voicing with loud conviction at times. We brought along certain manners and ways of interacting with other people, and these have not always fit in well with the rest of Canadian society.

Knowing the danger of generalizing about a group that is estimated to have numbered around 200,000, I would nevertheless say that we had a lot in common. Yes, there were exceptions, especially the few who came from ‘good breeding’ and ‘good education’. I have always found those two Dutch concepts to be both fascinating and clas-

26 - DUTCH, the magazine

of us on Saturday afternoons, was Gereformeerd, my father would take his grain to a Gereformeerd miller, and so on. It is well established that these pillars had begun to break down somewhat during World War II, but the concept still held enough power within immigrant circles after arrival in Canada that most Catholics socialized primarily with other Catholics, and most Reformed folk sought their friends within their church. Each group established their own credit unions, for example, and the Reformed started their own Christian schools.

The idea of class also took time to break down. I remember well how during our first years in Canada we looked up to anyone in authority, including not only pastors and teachers, but even our landlords, who were after all just ordinary working farmers. It took me personally several decades to start calling people by their first names, and I still think of my doctor, who is younger than my sons, as ‘Dr. Todd’ rather than ‘Crystal’. All that education… you have to respect that, right?

Then there are the opinions. During two decades as a farm journalist and even more decades of active church involvement, I found out that in a group of one hundred Dutch people, there will be one hundred opinions on any given matter - at least. During meetings of the Federation of Agriculture or the Provincial Chicken Producers Association which I reported about, it was often the Dutch who dominated the discussions. A story I have told before in my book ‘Uprooted’, is of the time I asked the secretary of the Nova Scotia Chicken Marketing Board what percentage of chickSeptember/October 2011

NATIONAAL ARCHIEF

Poetry en producers were Dutch. “Oh, half of them anyway!” he said. I asked for an exact number, and when he checked, it turned out that fewer than a quarter were Dutch. “They sure sound like a lot more,” he said.

Now this is not all bad and many of the immigrants have played useful leadership roles in these organizations, but a few of them lacked the sense to finally shut up when their viewpoints were clearly in the minority.

As for good manners, I have just recently received a couple of nasty responses to something I had written. This is not unusual for a writer; people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But when I wrote a monthly column for the Atlantic Provinces’ farm paper, the responses were usually respectful, thoughtful, and interesting. When the response comes from Dutch readers it is more likely to include actual insults and snide comments that suggest serious deficiencies on the part of the author. Fortunately, most immigrants have adapted over the years and have become kinder and gentler in their manners and many are now capable of honest compliments. An interesting discussion is fun, a shooting match is not.

I am happy to see that the second and third generation of the Dutch immigrant body is becoming more Canadian in ways that improve the overall tone of interpersonal discourse. I am not so happy to see that some of the younger generation lack the focused drive and ambition that characterized their immediate ancestors. But I watch with interest as my ‘townie’ grandchildren choose to work on their uncle’s farm, with a 14-year-old who put in over forty hours last week.

The Dutch work ethic is a good thing, where it doesn’t veer into workaholism. It will be interesting to keep watching such a large demographic, now exceeding one million people, as it continually adapts and adjusts to the changing world around it.

September/October 2011

Memory of Holland Thinking of Holland I see broad slowly flowing rivers traversing endless low lands; on the horizon unthinkably slender poplars like feathers in tall narrow strands; submerged by the awesome and splendid expanse farmhouses strewn on the fields down below, tree clusters, villages, trimmed-back steeples, churches and elm trees in one grand tableau.

The sky there is low, by gray many-hued mists the sun there gets slowly smothered and smeared, and in every district the voice of the water with its eternal disasters is heard and is feared.

- Hendrik Marsman (1899 - 1940) DUTCH, the magazine - 27

Dirk Hoogeveen - Digging for Dutch Roots

Getting started

in Dutch genealogy

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utch people have been immigrating to North America for 400 years. Currently about 4.5 million US citizens and about 1 million Canadians claim Dutch descent. Probably many more have a Dutch ancestor somewhere in their bloodline without being aware of it. The largest numbers of Dutch immigrants came to the USA in the last 200 years and to Canada in the last 125 years. The immigrants to the USA often came in groups and settled in an area together. This type of immigration was not generally - there are some exceptions - permitted in Canada.

Each person’s family history is unique. There is no one else like you on earth and the only people that share your exact family tree are, if you have them, your brothers and sisters. There are many resources to trace your family history, which is a fascinating pastime. This is the first in a series of articles on genealogy. which are meant to help you if somewhere in your research, early or late, a Dutch ancestor appears.

I have been an active genealogist for more than 40 years and I have done research in North America, The Netherlands and South Africa and also taught genealogy classes for the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society (SGS). I started with my own genealogy around 1968. A niece asked me to tell her about the life of my grandfather Dirk Hoogeveen (born in 1854) for a school project.

I knew the area where he was born quite well and wrote a story for her.

Then I questioned myself about the accuracy of the narrative and started researching. My research proved the story about my grandfather to be about 90% correct.

My wife and I immigrated to Can28 - DUTCH, the magazine

ada from the Netherlands in 1953.

Since both our parents were Dutch my research started in Holland. I started by writing to my immediate family and all my uncles and aunts and asked for information about their parents and siblings. I entered all this information on family unit sheets of my own design, in two languages, Dutch and English.

I did the same thing for my wife’s family. In each previous generation more and more ancestors appear on a pedigree, so one gets to contend with many different last names in a few generations.

I also started collecting information on other Hoogeveen families that are not related to me. As can be imagined this meant organizing a lot of family units and charts to keep track of all the information. Then in the late 1990s I bought a computer and a Dutch genealogical computer program, Haza-Data, which I selected because while the input is in Dutch, the basic information can be printed out in eight languages.

I entered all the information I had collected over the years into that program. That process uncovered many errors and duplicates, because each person only exists once in the database of a genealogical computer program but in handwritten records each person appears more than once and not always in the same fashion. A genealogical computer program is an excellent tool for sorting and producing genealogies, pedigrees and all sorts of other reports. Stories and photos can be uploaded to produce fascinating illustrated family histories.

When I first started all information had to be obtained by correspondence and visits to archives and the library of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague, on the occasional trip to Holland.

Another useful resource was the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which has microfilms of many Dutch records. I made a lot of use of their records, which can be

The National Archives in The Hague September/October 2011

23 ARCHIEFDINGEN

viewed in the local branches of the LDS church, which will order the required films for you.

In The Netherlands itself the records begin around 1400 with only Judicial Records and Court - or Notarial records. In the next century so called Burgher Rolls and Citizenship Books are added. Then in 1600 Parish Record are created and from 1812 a leap forward is made in accuracy and consistency with the introduction of the Civil Registry to replace the Parish registers.

During the last five or six years many archives in the Netherlands have put the BMD records (births, marriages and deaths) on the Internet. In the course of this series we will examine a number of digitized archives.

On the whole Dutch records are excellent and with the ease of obtaining that information from the Internet life for the amateur genealogist has become much easier than before. The freely available information is in most cases sufficient for a genealogy, but it is usually possible to purchase a copy of the original document for absolute proof or additional detail. Acquiring copies of records in the Netherlands often requires a Dutch bank account, which can be an obstacle.

The civil registration records (BMD) from 1812 to approximately 1950 are the most common source of information on the Internet. On some sites parish records can also be searched and on others some judicial records are available. The early judicial records and parish records to approximately 1700 are written in old handwriting, which is difficult to read for most Dutch speaking people and probably impossible if you don’t know Dutch.

If you get that far in your research you may need to invest in some professional support. The most recent civil registry BMD records in the Netherlands are protected by privacy legislation. Birth certificates become public after 100 years, marriage certificates after 75 years and death certificates after 50 years.

September/October 2011

The first place to start if you know the name and some other pertinent details about a relative who lived in The Netherlands after 1812 and before the privacy black-out period mentioned above, is www.genlias. nl. A straightforward search form gives access to the records from the civil registry that have been digitized. Note that this resource is not complete yet and records are being added continuously, so what you may not find now, may be there a few months from now. I will discuss Genlias in more detail in a subsequent article.

Genealogical computer programs have moved the hobby to a different level and made it possible to put the results of one’s research on the Internet. Some of my research into the Hoogeveen branches can be found on the website of Jan Arie van Hengel (www.vanhengel.net). Websites that publish family histories should therefore not be overlooked in your research. There is unfortunately no one website that lists the numerous

family genealogy websites that have sprung up over the last decade, but a portal that has a large number of links to Dutch websites with family trees is a Belgian site, stambomennederland.startpagina.be.

I hope to receive your feedback, suggestions and questions that can help me highlight some of the avenues of research that can be followed. These may lead to an article if the question is of a general nature, else I will strive to answer personally within a reasonable time period.

Time does not permit me, however, to do genealogical research on your behalf, but I will be more than happy to point the way.

But before we get to that I will start the series with some general topics of importance in Dutch ancestry research that everyone should be aware of. In the next issue I will look at Dutch family names, since that is your starting point for any search for an ancestor. With this our adventure in Dutch genealogy begins‌

DUTCH, the magazine - 29

Cooking

Savory and sweet...

plate-sized pancakes for the fall-vacation (and something to remember the Spaniards by)

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all is a significant time if you’re Dutch, especially if you’re at the age where you are still going to school. Holland’s summer vacation is fairly short (if you get to have any summer at all) and before you know it, you’re back in the classroom, agonizing over homework and teachers and hoping your bike wasn’t stolen while you were in class.

Thankfully Fall brings a welldeserved break, in the shape of a highly coveted one-week vacation 30 - DUTCH, the magazine

Text and Photographs by Nicole Holten called herfstvakantie, or fall vacation. School is out during that time and families undertake one last fun activity before the winter weather kicks in and reduces outside life to a minimum.

Herfstvakanties are usually spent outside the home, weather permitting, on a day trip to a theme park such as the Efteling in Kaatsheuvel, a week long visit to grandma and grandpa, or a trip to the Frisian Islands. But regardless of where you go or with whom, you know that at

least once during that week you are going to get treated to that typical Dutch kids favorite: pannekoeken!

Thin, flavorful and as-big-as-yourplate pancakes are a special treat, especially for kids and are often the food of choice for children’s birthday parties or special occasions.

Whole restaurants, called pannekoekenhuisjes (pancake houses) are dedicated to just that: offering a large variety of pancakes and toppings to please everybody’s tastebuds. The decor of these restaurants September/October 2011

is usually ‘rural Dutch’: lots of white and red checkered tablecloths, big wooden tables and chairs and with an overall farm-feel to it.

But pancakes are not just for kids.

For adults, pannekoeken also are a traditional Dutch meal: studded with chunks of apple, pieces of bacon or covered with a layer of melted aged Gouda cheese, these large thick crepes are a quick and affordable substitute for an evening meal. Unlike in the United States and Canada, pancakes are not part of the breakfast tradition in Holland and are more suited for dinner.

Whereas kids usually prefer the batter made with white flour, recipes for grown-up pancakes will often mention buckwheat, whole wheat or a mixture of both.

The most traditional choice is pannekoek met appelstroop, pancake with apple syrup, a tangy dark sugary spread made out of apple juice.

The dark stroop is spread over the whole surface of the pannekoek, after which it is rolled up and either eaten as a wrap, or cut into bite size pieces and consumed with knife and fork. Other popular toppings are peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, jam, powdered sugar or the pancake is simply served plain. As the batter does not contain any sugar, the pancake can be eaten either as a savory option or as a sweet one.

Pannekoeken Ingredients 3 cups of self-rising flour 2 teaspoons of salt 2 eggs 6 cups of milk 1 stick of butter Stir the flour and salt together, and then add three cups of milk and the eggs. Beat until the batter is smooth and thin with the remaining milk. Melt six tablespoons of butter and stir this into the pancake batter. You are looking for a pourable batter.

Heat a 12 inch skillet, add in ½ tablespoon of butter. As soon as the butter is melted (but not browned), take the skillet off the stove, pour in half a cup of batter and swirl the skillet so that the whole bottom surface is covered with a thin layer. Put the skillet back on the stove, and carefully bake the pancake until the surface is dry. Then flip or turn the pancake over and cook the other side.

Stack the pancakes as you go and cover them with a clean kitchen tea towel while you bake the rest. Serve with a variety of toppings, both sweet and savory, such as peanut butter, cheese, jam, fruit jams, bacon or sugar. Makes about ten large pancakes.

In the Dutch tradition, most people will usually eat a savory pancake first, followed by one with a sweet topping. Often, slices of apple or bacon will be fried and then incorporated into a pancake, or chopped preserved ginger or fresh fruit is stirred right into the batter.

B

ut Fall is not just about being away from school, eating pancakes and having a grand

Appelstroop Ingredients 3 cups of apple juice or apple cider 1 cup of sugar 2 tablespoons of dark molasses

Stir the sugar into the apple juice and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for the next twenty minutes. When the liquid has been reduced to about half, start monitoring the temperature with a candy thermometer. As soon as the syrup has reached 235F, retire the pan from the stove. Let it cool, stir in the molasses and serve with the pancakes. This appelstroop is not as thick as the commercial product, but the flavor is very close to the original. Makes about one cup.

September/October 2011

ole time with the family. In other parts of the country, and in different times, more pressing matters were at hand. The Spanish invaded the city of Leiden in 1573 during the Eighty Years’ War, which lasted from 1568 until 1648, demanding the city declare its loyalty to the Spanish king.

Refusing to budge, the city was surrounded and cut off from any food deliveries as supplies dwindled fast. Over six thousand people died from hunger, until on the night of October 3rd, 1574 rebels perforated the dikes and flooded the city of Leiden. The water rose with such force that the Spanish troops fled.

Since then, on October 3rd, the city of Leiden celebrates the victory over the Spanish invaders. It’s an annual celebration during which the Leideners consume large amounts of white bread with herring and even larger amounts of something called hutspot, a colorful mashed potato, onion and carrot stew. Why? The story goes that a young orphan by the name of Cornelis Joppenszoon went through one of the Spanish camps the night they fled and found a copper pot, still sitting on the fire, DUTCH, the magazine - 31

Hutspot Ingredients 6 large potatoes, peeled and quartered 8 large carrots, peeled and diced 4 large onions, peeled and sliced 2 cups of water Pinch of salt Place the peeled and quartered potatoes on the bottom of a Dutch oven. Pour in the water so the potatoes are just covered. Add the pinch of salt. Put the carrots on top, and finish with the onions.

Cover and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and boil for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked. Pour off the cooking water, but save it. Mash the potatoes, carrots and onions until you achieve a mashed potato consistency or leave larger lumps, that's a personal preference. If you need more liquid to make it smoother, add a tablespoon of cooking liquid at a time. Taste, adjust with salt and pepper, and serve hot.

32 - DUTCH, the magazine

September/October 2011

with a stew in it and shared the contents with the hungry citizens. The next day, the rebels showed up with barrels of herring and loads of white bread to feed the rest of the starving Leideners. Both the fish, the bread and the hearty stew saved the city from starvation.

It is said that the original stew contained parsnips and white beans and that the meat in the stew was mutton.

How it came to be carrots with potatoes… only history knows. The carrot appeared in Holland for the first time in the 17th century, out of Iran, and was cross-pollinated until it had a bright orange color, to honor the royal family, the House of Orange. At that point, the carrot was introduced to the rest of Europe and it has been orange ever since.

But hutspot is not only eaten on the third of October. Traditionally served with klapstuk, a piece of braised beef, hutspot is a traditional winter dish that has become a staple on the Dutch table. The best carrots to use for this dish are winterpenen, winter carrots such as ‘Flakkee’ or ‘Autumn King’, a larger and thicker variety of the orange carrot, that is harvested shortly after the first frost.

The sugars in the carrot add a hint of sweetness to this dish that will ap-

peal to almost any diner, young or old, although the name of this dish does not sound very appetizing, not even in Dutch. Loosely translated it means ‘hotchpotch with slap piece’.

Well, there you go, see what I mean?

Who wants to eat that?

But, as is often the case, appearance deceives. In this particular example, the name is not very flattering and quite honestly, neither is the picture. But the taste will convince anyone that there is more to this dish than a silly name. As for the ‘slap piece’: klapstuk is the meat that is cut from the rib. I used thick slices of beef chuck rib roast and it worked beautifully. The meat is

marbled and during its 90 minute braising time will release all kinds of wonderful flavors and most of the fat. You’ll love it!

And what better dish than the patriotic hutspot with klapstuk to watch the Queen’s speech from the throne on Prinsjesdag, Prince’s Day, on September 20th? Place a large scoop of hutspot on a warm plate. With the rounded side of a spoon make a hollow on top of the hutspot, like a pothole. This is the famous kuiltje. Put a slice of beef on the side, pour a tablespoon or two of gravy into the kuiltje, wear your favorite wooden shoes and you are set!

Klapstuk Ingredients 1 lb of beef chuck rib roast 1 tablespoon of butter 2 cups of water, hot 1/2 beef bouillon cube 1 bay leaf 8 black pepper corns, whole 1 tablespoon of flour, dissolved in 1/2 cup of water Slice the beef in thick (1/2 inch) steaks. Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or braising pan, and quickly sear the meat on both sides. Dissolve the bouillon cube in the hot water and add to the meat. Put the bay leaf and pepper corns in the broth, cover the pan and braise on low heat for approximately 90 minutes or until the beef is tender.

Remove the meat to a serving dish, discard the bay leaf and peppercorns and stir the dissolved flour into the pan juices.

Stir scraping the bottom of the pan, loosening any meat particles that may be stuck. Bring the heat slowly up until the gravy starts to thicken. Pour the gravy over the meat and set aside, keeping it warm.

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 33

Travel Sailboats and seabirds make the most of the wind over IJssel Lake

The islands and the sea

a bike and boat tour

A trip through Texel, Terschelling and Fryslân with a mixed troupe of slightly unstable cyclists Text and Photographs by Martin Visser

I

t did not start too promising. The weatherman had forecast 60% rain the day before flying over. It still puzzles me what that exactly means.

Does it mean a 60% chance of getting soaked? But then a five minute shower could take care of that, leaving more than 23 hours and 55 minutes of beautiful dry biking weather in late August at the latitude of the Lowlands. But we did not interpret it optimistically like that and arranged for a friend to pick us up in Brussels. Shame! Even the five minute shower did not materialize until late in the evening of our first day. We did get

34 - DUTCH, the magazine

a chance to do a twenty mile circuit of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, just inside Holland across the border from Belgium, in the afternoon to try out the bikes and the legs and fight off the jet-lag, while getting used to the flat dike-enclosed landscape and the view of the sea beyond.

The next day we were transferred by car to a more central location in the old country, a place of few pretensions near Nijmegen in the province of Gelderland called Randwijk. There we had a reunion with some guys and girls of the old university-days. We were eager to get on our bikes after that first day of fly-

ing across the land along the freeways, which were lined in many spots by high ‘sound barriers’ obscuring the view of the countryside and after an evening of animated reminiscing by aging folks, consuming enough solids and liquids to last for several days of pedaling.

The following day we left Randwijk to its peaceful setting between Rhine and Waal rivers and set out for Amsterdam.

After some fifteen miles we feared we would disappear into a pitch-black sky pregnant with thunder and lightning.

We sought refuge in a fruit stall in front of a farm and had our fill of delicious

September/October 2011

juicy plums, while conducting a merry conversation with the owner of the land. A brief interlude of sunshine followed and we made a little progress.

Alas, we were allowed no more than fifteen miles until the heavens opened up again and we had to seek shelter once more. This time we found it in a grocery store in Neerlangbroek (the name indeed translates into a senseless: ‘down-long-pants’), allowing us some diversity in our diet: a few almond cakes and yoghurt to fill stomachs and time.

At last the sun made a comeback and we hopped on the saddle of our twowheelers. But what a miserable bumpy feeling and a rumbling noise came from below: “Oh no, a flat!” I cried. After taking off, retubing and putting back on an unwilling tire I had to confront an equally uncooperative pump, which did not succeed in bringing sufficient pressure to the rubber tube. “Do you know a bike mechanic in this town?” I asked a passing person. “That’s me,” the man answered. He even happened to have a

Traditional flat bottom boats in Stavoren Harbor ready for the next trip September/October 2011

Cycling through the high dune grasses of Terschelling tiny bicycle pump in his pocket for the baby carriage he was pushing. After about 100 strokes we had an inflated tire and an exhausted bike fixer.

In the meantime we had fallen seriously behind schedule and the sky overhead could not be trusted, so we cheated and traveled the remaining distance to Amsterdam enjoying the

fast and comfortably dry service of the Dutch Railways.

‘We are never going to make it,’ I thought pessimistically during a jetlag induced sleep-intermission in the middle of the night. We had to do forty miles traversing Amsterdam and then up north to Enkhuizen, where the ferry would leave with or without us at 12.30 pm. However, an early and swift arousal and a delightful and nourishing breakfast, promptly prepared by my cousin, put us in shape and in the saddle even before the planned departure time of 8 a.m.

It was quite an experience to glide rapidly through the empty, tranquil Saturday morning streets of Holland’s capital city. The only obstacles to avoid were the merchants putting up their stands for the market. A helpful south-westerly breeze set us even more ahead of schedule, permitting detours through some scenic towns and along the dikes of the old Zuider Sea. We thoroughly enjoyed being tourists in the land of our birth. We had time to consume our daily dose of salted raw herring (by-the-tailwith-onions) just before boarding the ferry to cross to the city of Stavoren on the west coast of Friesland. IJssel Lake, as the Zuider Sea is called since the big dike closed it off from the North Sea in 1932, was full with sailing boats of all sizes and colors.

The 20 kilometer stretch that we were traversing was frozen over for the last time in 1963. Even cars drove across the ice then. I was in the army at the time and stationed in Germany during that

DUTCH, the magazine - 35

frigid winter. Back on leave for a week I got my skates out one day and did the distance there and back. Yes, for me another pleasure of visiting Holland is indulging in many memories of when I still lived there.

W

e had reserved a boat-andbike trip on IJssel Lake and the Wadden Sea, that stretch of shallow water and sand banks between the northern coast of The Netherlands and the Frisian Islands, which form a barrier between The Netherlands and the North Sea. Our ‘cruise-ship’ was waiting for us and 23 other passengers in the harbor of the old fishing town of Stavoren. Our week boating and biking, visiting the islands of Texel, Vlieland and Terschelling and the east coast of Friesland was ready to start.

Old house in the picturesque town of Oosterend on the island of Texel 36 - DUTCH, the magazine

In the early morning of the following day we crossed back across IJssel Lake, northeast to the small port of Den Oever by the sluices of the Afsluitdijk, the barrier dam separating the lake from the Wadden Sea. A misunderstanding between our captain and the harbormaster caused us to prematurely take a left turn and to get solidly sucked into some notorious Dutch shallow quagmire. Vigorous wresting and rooting with engines at full force caused black clouds to swirl up in the water around us, but was to no avail or progress. As a last resort a friendly competitor was called in and he pulled us out. Our adventure could continue…

Our company consisted of twelve Spaniards (eight joyful adults and four well-behaved adolescents), two Italians (padre e figlio), two homey folks from

Holland’s southerly province of Brabant equipped with electrically powered hybrid bicycles. “You still have to pedal, but you always have the wind in your back,” they said. Two Français of a mild embonpoint, four gray-haired Scottish grannies, conversing in an incomprehensibly desecrated derivative of the noble Shakespearian tongue and Peter, an excessively tranquil Austrian. Peter had been married to a Dutch girl who had left him, probably out of boredom or because of the stench of his pipe.

Furthermore our crew consisted of Jan, ‘the captain with a sense of humor’ hailing from Groningen, the other northern Dutch province, next to Friesland, Ellen, the cook, who would be every man’s desire in the kitchen, Brechtje ‘for all and whatever’, who studied History and Frisian and finally Sietse, the guide, a sensitive Frisian teacher who no longer derived any satisfaction from teaching the unruly youth of today and at times also showed some impatience guiding the multilingual group that greatly varied in age and biking skills.

The foursome from Scotland occasionally had trouble staying on their bikes, besides, Maureen was puffing away cigarettes by the pack, which obviously subverted her endurance and sense of balance. We started our first tour more or less in solid file, running a little late because of the muddy hold-up in the port of Den Oever. Holland is flat as everybody knows, except for the dikes surrounding the vulnerable lowlands.

Our ‘smoke-stack’ threatened to lose her momentum while ascending dike number one. A solid push in her frail back prevented a fatal crash from happening. However the girl was out of reach at dike number two and she succeeded to remain in the saddle for only so long, until she lay flat on the asphalt.

A slightly bludgeoned knee caused a minor hullabaloo amongst the travel companions and a considerable delay, which made my wife and I decide to break ranks, trusting our knowledge of land, language and traditions to find our path, which extended far beyond the aspirations and abilities of the rest of our group. Thus we visited Den Helder, a town we had never seen before.

We were fortunate to arrive at Den Hel-

September/October 2011

der’s harbor-side just half an hour before the start of a tall ship race to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of one of Holland’s greatest heroes, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, a man who helped make tiny Holland in its Golden Age a power to be reckoned with.

Another event we had the luck of running into was a competition of horse drawn carriages in a pasture near the village of Hippolytushoef. An exciting obstacle course had been set up with a bridge and a lake into which some horses were not too keen to enter, which resulted in some spectacular leaps and bounds. Most horses were of the mighty Frisian breed, tall and shiny black with long flowing tails. Every time we visit Holland we are surprised by the increasing number of horses and ponies one sees in white fenced pastures - and this time also by the number of large flat-bottomed sailing boats cruising the waters. At the end of the equestrian competition a young blond girl was allowed to let her Shetland pony take the course. She held it on a long leash.

Sometimes the girl stumbled, or the small horse refused to follow directions, at one point coming to a total stop to munch the grass. It was all appreciated by the large crowd.

The next morning we started our visit to the islands. It was a real delight to bike along the countless miles of bicycle paths crossing woodlands and dunescapes. Part of the route took us

Crossing the Wadden Sea

along paths that ran on top of dikes with views over farmlands dotted with sheep, with some windmills thrown in for good measure and on the other side the shallow Wadden Sea that transforms into dry mudflats at low tide.

Other parts of the tour took us through narrow streets lined with quaint houses, flower-laden gardens and rows of trees.

We were never alone on these bikeways. Hundreds of Dutchies on their tall straight bikes were out in the fine weather, carrying their offspring up

front on the handlebars, behind them on the luggage carrier, or both. The beaches appeared mostly deserted. A little too fresh and windy maybe, but then, they were huge and could easily absorb thousands without getting crowded.

Most of the islands belong to the province of Fryslân (the official name in the Frisian language that replaced the former Dutch name of Friesland in 1997).

The Frisians are known as a proud and stubborn lot, very hospitable but bet-

Terschelling: the whole bike crew assembled on the beach September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 37

Fishermen’s houses on the dike in the Mainland Frisian town of Makkum ter not enter an argument with them, you have little chance of coming out the other end victorious. There is a good-humored rivalry between them and their neighbors, the Groningers.

Captain Jan asked how one would know that one has arrived in Friesland.

“It is when you notice that the cows are more beautiful than the girls.” Brechtje protested loudly and I could not agree either, my mother being a native of Friesland. Lysette, my spouse, although her mother was born in Groningen, also did not agree, but then she preferred the horses anyway.

“We are celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary with this trip,” Lysette had announced upon boarding in Stavoren at the start of the trip. “When will that be?” we were asked. “The 21st” she answered, conveniently omitting to mention the month: September. And so on the 21st of August we found the dining room decorated with multicolored flags and garlands and a big cake with candles waited for us after supper while the crowd sung ‘Happy Birthday’ in five different languages, while firing us on to perform whatever the celebrated

38 - DUTCH, the magazine

couple is supposed to do under such circumstances.

A

fter debarking back in Stavoren at the end of the trip we went friend-and-cousin-hopping in our fatherland, practicing our mother tongue, establishing new records along the way, like an incredible 100 miles on one windless day, so we always had a good appetite and were very appreciative of food and drink offered to us.

Our bicycle adventure in the Lowlands ended where it started: in Brussels after 750 miles of pedaling enjoyment.

Belgium is not as well equipped with road signs for modest bike traveling as Holland and were it not for the resemblance of Flemish and Dutch and the helpfulness of many a Flemish countryman, we would still be there, trying to get to Zaventem, Brussels’ airport. Jan Struyf, a passing cyclist, should be mentioned here. He was curious to know where those travelers were heading.

“Oh, but you are going the wrong way,” he said when we explained. “Here follow me,” and we were guided along a scenic route to the airport, on our way home to Canada.

Bike rental in Terschelling September/October 2011

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September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 39

Language

Tasting good... very good!

by Tom

“Tall funny Dutch girl with the cute blonde braids say whaaat?”

It’s fun living in a bilingual household where two languages get so freely interspersed that it often seems like a new hybrid has developed. Especially when some of that intermingling of grammar, vocabulary and idiom spills over into the public domain.

My thirteen your old daughter’s classmates looked at her with a mixture of surprise and disgust as she took another bite of the aniseed-sprinkle sandwich that she had brought to school for lunch.

“Like an angel peeing on my tongue,” she repeated with her mouth still half full and once more, just in case it wasn’t clear: “the sandwich tastes so good, it’s like a little angel peeing on my tongue.”

Her school friends pensively parsed the beautiful and evocative idiom, that apparently is not known widely in the English speaking world. I remember vividly when I first heard the expression myself, because in the version I heard, it sounded almost more absurd than it must have done to my daughter’s teenage girlfriends. We were in the process of having a copi-

40 - DUTCH, the magazine

Bijvoet

ous family lunch, probably after mass on a Sunday. We hark back to the days of a few decades ago, when The Netherlands was still a very religious country and the population segregated willingly and neatly into the so-called denominational pillars. That my mother who was born into a Protestant family, she the granddaughter of a ‘dominee’ (pastor) in the Dutch Reformed Church no less, married a Catholic boy from staunchly papist Brabant caused the family some significant heartache, but that’s another story that still may be told one day. As was the Holy Father’s directive in those days, interdenominational marriages were sanctioned, as long as the kids were raised within the bosom of the Holy Mother Church. So needless to say, little angels played a major role in our young lives.

A very popular night time prayer of the day was about fourteen little angels - in some versions there were sixteen - who guarded over you at night. It was a loose translation of a song from the nineteenth century German opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck (the original one, a composer from the Rhineland, not the much better known Anglo-Indian crooner from Tamil Nadu and Leicestershire), which itself was

September/October 2011

based on Germanic folklore. But we did not know that as we faithfully proclaimed: When at night I go to sleep Fourteen angels me do keep Two at my head Two at my feet Two at my right Two at my left Two to cover me Two to wake me Two to whom it’s given To show my way to heaven In my young mind these little angels were nothing like the magnificent archangels Michael and Gabriel, awe inspiring messengers of God. These were more like pixies, tiny fairylike creatures, of which it took fourteen just to guard you in your already quite comfortably safe bed at night. It was definitely nice to know they were there, but I was not personally convinced that they could do much good should it come to a serious confrontation with the forces of evil, which probably made them all the sweeter. And that is also why I could quite easily see them traversing my tongue on a little bicycle, which is what I heard my father say: “It tastes so good, like a little angel cycling on my tongue.” I looked at my mother with raised eyebrows and she corrected him “pees… as if an angel pees on your tongue.” My dad held his tongue.

You need to know Dutch to understand the confusion, ‘fietst’ (cycles) is very close phonetically to ‘piest’ (pees). So in Dutch the saying becomes: alsof er een engeltje over mijn tong fietst/ piest.

I presumed I had misunderstood my father. With the image of the fourteen little pixie-like creatures in my head I could well imagine that they excreted the sweetest of liquids when they had the urge and the tire tracks of the tiny bike just did not do it for me. In retrospect I realize that my father was euphemizing and that my mother would have nothing of it. Several people on the Internet, an American Evangelical missionary to The Netherlands among them, claim that the bicycling image is the original one and that it was vulgarized into urination.

Unfortunately for those who adhere to this more comfortably clean concept of how angels might tickle our tastebuds, there is ample evidence in the literature that little angels were peeing on tongues well before the first bicycles were invented.

Flemish poet Prudens van Duyse cites the saying in an article in a Belgian literary journal published in 1841 and adds the comment: “gourmands applied this comment to good wine, which does not attest to refined manners among our forefathers”. The first contraptions that looked like bicycles appeared in the low countries about twenty years later and the first instance of the word ‘fiets’ is recorded around 1875. So if you eat or drink something really good and you wish to use this old Dutch idiom, rest assured that you are historically correct if the angel pees, but should you be inclined to soften the blow for your unsuspecting North-American table companions, you would be quite alright to be more refined than your forefathers and still be genuinely Dutch if you have the little angel ride a bike. Maybe I should tell my daughter.

September/October 2011

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warns his nephew about the strange habits of the people of the Lowlands.

$11.50 plus s/h

Order from: White-Boucke Publishing Inc. 1-800-382-7922 www.white-boucke.com DUTCH, the magazine - 41

Epitaph Jan van Beveren (1948 - 2011) Born: Amsterdam, March 5, 1948 Died: Houston, June 26, 2011 Teams: • VV Emmen • Sparta Rotterdam • PSV Eindhoven • Fort Lauderdale Strikers • Dallas Sidekicks

Jan van Beveren

Career honors: • 32 appearances Dutch national team • 3 Dutch League championships • 2 Dutch FA cups • 1 UEFA cup

Jan van Beveren, the best goalkeeper never to play in the World Cup, died June 26, aged 63

D

utch immigrants have come across the ocean for many reasons over the past few centuries, but being bullied by Dutch Soccer legend Johan Cruyff must class as one of the more peculiar ones. Still that is what people say brought Jan van Beveren first to Florida to play for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers and then on to Texas to play for the Dallas Sidekicks.

Jan van Beveren was the best Dutch goalkeeper ever to guard the 192 square foot plane of thin air that opposing players need to put the ball through to score a goal in soccer. There was not a spot in that area that Jan could not reach with his athletic jump. Jan’s place was in the goal. His job was to make sure the ball did not penetrate that two-dimensional plane and the best way to do that was to rely on his unrivalled reactions. To defend it he did not often need to leave the goal like some other keepers do. That would have exposed him and his team to danger from lobs and combinations. He moved along the goal line and followed the ball with his eyes until it was his time to reach, jump or dive and grab it.

Despite his unsurpassed qualities as a keeper Jan only played for the national team 32 times. He missed both 1970s World Cup series in which the Dutch team reached the final, in 1974 in Germany and in 1978 in Argentina.

Jan played for PSV Eindhoven from 1970 until 1980, but the national side was dominated by players from Ajax Amsterdam, including legends Cruyff, Neeskens and Krol. Cruyff was not only the lynchpin in the Dutch national squad - which dazzled soccer fans across the world with their particular style of soccer, dubbed ‘total football’ by coach Rinus Michels - but with his father-in-law, diamond salesman and sports broker Cor Coster, dominated the business side of soccer in The Netherlands. This control on the field and in the boardroom resulted

42 - DUTCH, the magazine

in an influence over the strategy and tactics of the squad that left little leeway for other players to follow their own instincts.

When Jan van Beveren and his PSV-teammates decided that they did not want Coster to represent them and when they questioned the different standards that successive coaches applied to Cruyff and his cronies in and around the field the fight was on. An unequal fight that effectively barred the best goalkeeper Holland ever had from playing in two World Cup finals.

Several players in the squad, including former super star René van de Kerkhoff claim that with Van Beveren in goal Holland would have been world champions twice in the 1970s. We will never know that for sure of course, but in 1980 Van Beveren had had enough. A gentle, friendly man who knew that his participation in the Dutch game was at the mercy of a power beyond his control went into soccer exile. He never played for the Dutch national squad again.

After three years in Fort Lauderdale, he moved to Texas in 1983, where he stayed after his stint with the Dallas Sidekicks.

He started a business in collectible postage stamps and lived happily, away from the limelight, with his wife Toosje and sons Raymond and Roger. He remained active on the field. He is remembered fondly by many local soccer players for his coaching and support. The last four and a half years of his life he was with Spindletop Select Soccer Club in Beaumont, Texas. There he did, in the words of a representative of the club “what he loved most: teaching soccer to youth in its most basic, purest form. Jan brought his love, knowledge and passion of the game to Beaumont, Texas, where he taught kids the most fundamental things about life... and about soccer.”

Jan was found slumped over his computer on June 26, 2011.

He was only 63 years old.

September/October 2011

Place

The wharf cellars of Utrecht a unique inner city space

T

C/W: TAMMY MCKINLEY - MAARTEN DANIAL - MARKUS TACKER

he Wharf Cellars (werfkelders) are a defining feature of Utrecht’s canals. Three other Dutch cities – Leiden, Leeuwarden and Maastricht – have a few of them, but nowhere are there as many and are they so prominent as in Utrecht. Wharf Cellars are spaces in the area beneath the houses and quays alongside a canal that were used for storage. The wharf in front of the cellar, just a foot or so above water level, gave easy access to the boats that would deliver or pick up goods.

Utrecht has 732 of these wharf cellars, which together occupy about three and a half miles of canal. In the Middle Ages Utrecht was a busy market town that lay on the Rhine and its tributary the Vecht, both important commercial waterways. A dike on the Rhine and a sluice in the Vecht, built in the 12th and 13th centuries respectively helped stabilize the water level within the economically successful city. It was also low in relation to the houses that were built on soil that had come out of the newly dug canals leaving space for dry cellars, a luxury in the soggy low lying land on the wrong side of the long sandy hilly ridge east of the city.

In effect the wharf cellars formed one big inner city harbor and they were used in that capacity for hundreds of years.

Cellars were built until space along the canals in the inner city ran out around 1500. After that until about 1700 existing cellars were extended into hitherto unused spaces beneath streets and bridges and their ceilings were raised.

When in the 19th century commercial transportation

st by Breakfa

al the can

September/October 2011

started to take place increasingly across land, many of the cellars fell into disrepair, until the city of Utrecht initiated a large scale restoration program in 1948.

These days many of the cellars are used as restaurants and bars. Others are used as artists’ studios or once again for storage, now by some of the many shops up above on street level. The first pioneering Dutch Hash Coffee Shop was opened in a wharf cellar in 1968. It was recently closed by the authorities, after almost forty years in business, for selling a large quantity of drugs to a German, which contravened the rules laid out for the decriminalized trade in marijuana.

The allure of the cellars proved too much for the director of late-1980s horror movie Amsterdamned which features a high speed power boat chase through Amsterdam’s canals.

Not entirely geographically correct the racing boats turn the corner of an Amsterdam Canal to soak an entire crowd of people sipping drinks on the wharf of a Utrecht cellar, some 25 miles to the south. Search for the Amsterdamned Boat Chase on YouTube and have a look at the boats careening by and across the wharf.

Now that the restoration project has been completed and the cellars are in full profitable public use again, the city of Utrecht has announced that it is planning to nominate the cellars as a UNESCO world heritage site. A fitting designation for a unique inner city space.

Artists’ studios

DUTCH, the magazine - 43

n Brian Bramso

______

____________

____________ From: To: Sent: Subject:

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n@abs. n” brian.bramso so m ra B n ria “B co.uk nnie.win@abs. je ” in W e ni en “J 21:28 31 August 2011 land ol H From Brian in

ents. That was travel arrangem y m e in the ak m to ient secretary sterday fic ye ef e t fic Hi Jennie, os of m e e th th t ing late at I reckon I’ve go Thanks for stay orked out fine. w y ne ur jo he appreciated. T thing client’s site first e th at company. be d ul co d when I said I clearly please as ase. w fc ie or br ct y ire m D ssport in pa y m The Managing ep ke I much of ning. Lucky I couldn’t see so tomorrow mor ed nd la e nels hen w no English chan getting dark w e ar as e w er It . th t nd bu la strucs ok back in Hol e evacuation in u booked seem fir yo l e te So here I am, th d ho ea he -r T re the cab.

So rather than Amsterdam from t of my mind. ou d re turning in. bo I’m u a line before yo on the TV and op dr I’d t boarde, I though es who do the dg ba tions a third tim y rit cu se ncing and with spiky hair d me up. Annou in ps w er to tw g tle in lit nn us gi call is e be ose officio last and final” at the gate wer rd hi ts “t en At Stansted, th a m g ce in ak un M s. ks and anno and tautologou ing pass chec th pretentious bo is ll ca . ” le al for these peop a “last and fin , not a ging’s too good an H . al ic og on a real airline ill e m just ok bo se it’s only e plea e days. I know ght but next tim es fli th ir e na nc ya rie R e pe e ex ly spent time for th not an enjoyabl ecking I actual is ch g d I was in good in an ly F g . in ny ch als compa queuing, sear glorified remov but with all the m da er st m A to I did in the air. a short flight e airport than th taxied at t ou ab untry and then co longer faffing ng ro w e th ly drew ed in rever we final the plane land he r w ea or , sw I 83 .

H st e Gat hen you irport is va ain terminal. W gium. And from el m B Amsterdam A e th in to re s he or ip ribbed somew s corrid ps with non-sl m emingly endles ra to Schiphol from se of h ts ug lo ro e th ere ar noises as ile hike iphol ‘Plaza’ th assing farting rr ch up, it’s a five m S ba ll em ca te ey ra th w come e gene h what to be so flat, ho heeled luggag w ed eventually reac os ur pp yo su es ’s ak nd This m ow is: if Holla rubber flooring. hat I want to kn W n. w do or you drag it up at all? ffy oiks all costed by scru there are ramps ac as w I nk b ra buy their ore Euros” to trol and the ca m on e C fiv t y or nl sp “o as P I offered needed tween lice even when ts stolen and le po Three times be al e w th r ei of th ce d sistan ainly beg they’d ha wanted the as ges. They cert em ua of whom said th ng of la at ne no od , go trangely the Dutch are ticket home. S half. They say be r ei th on to call them well in English.

44 - DUTCH, the magazine

September/October 2011

Brian Bramson - An Englishman abroad

I had wanted to bu y some cigarettes be fore I left the airport ious staff in the Plaz but I failed. The sn a shops must be sp ooty, supercilecially trained in ign time to wait while th or ing customers. I did ey finished their ph n’t have the one calls, did their m boxes on shelves. ake-up and unnece ssarily shuffled At least this Sarrum a hotel at Overamste l seems alright. I’ve to a “Privilege”, or got quite a nice room “Premier”, or “Posh” . I upgraded , or whatever they internet. I hope the ca ll it, room which giv bean-counters in Ac es me free counts aren’t going expenses. The food to give us a hard tim in the Sarruma’s re e over my staurant is actually You wouldn’t believe very good. But oh, how long it took th the service! eir creepy, cross-ey two-course meal. I’d ed waiter to serve have liked a desser a very simple t, but wanted to finish my dinner the sam e day.

Now, tomorrow mor ning I must be at th e client’s office by 10 Amsterdam Bijlmer am. They’re at som . I just called down e place called to the desk to get supposed to have a cab booked. Isn’t th 24-hour Reception e Sarruma ? Maybe the staff ar they’re not answering e receiving somew the phones. here else, ‘cos Anyway, that’s it for today. I’m shattered.

If anything urgent cr ops up, you’ve got my numbers.

I’ll mail again in a co uple of days.

Cheers for now, Brian.

Brian Bramson Senior Consultant Acme Business Sy stem

s Ltd

brian.bramson@ab

s.co.uk

Disclaimer This message (inclu ding any attachmen ts) is confidential an recipient, you shou d may be legally pri ld not disclose, copy vileged. If you are or use any part of it. If not the intended email and any attac you have received hments immediatel this email in error, ple y and notify the Acme ase delete the Business Systems Ltd helpdesk at supp ort@abs.co.uk.

Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmi to ensure that the op ssion of viruses, it ening or other use is your responsibility of thi s message and any as recipient Acme Business Sy attachments will no stems accepts no t adversely affect yo res po ns ibility for damage ca ur systems. out such virus and used by viruses an other checks as yo d you should, theref u consider appropri ore, carry ate.

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 45

Fun and Games

Reflections Reflections In Holland the creative photgrapher can make beautiful compositions using the reflections of his subject matter in the abundant water. As is almost inevitable, this issue has plenty of examples. A little quiz based on pictures in this issue that show reflections: the first letter of the name above the big yellow W, followed by the letter formed by the bridge and its reflection, followed by the letter formed by the three roofs on the right, followed by the first letter of the space below (or is it above?) the orange house, forms the word denoting the twin objects reflected in black and in white.

A girl with size twelve from Den Helder Could easily upstage Imelda.

The navy said: “Neat!

We will purchase your fleet!”

But not wanting to pay her, they shelled her.

Send us a limerick with a Dutch placename at the end of the first line. We will publish the most original ones.

Match the words

Match the Dutch word on the left with its English translation on the right (or vice versa if you prefer).

Baai Zee Zout Zeehond Vuurtoren Strand Golf Zeerot Boei Golf

Beach Lighthouse Gulf Buoy Sea Sea Dog Bay Salt Wave Seal

Answers to all quizzes on page 4

Who?

What?

Where?

• I was born in 1607 in the province of Zeeland.

• My father was called Adriaan.

• There are statues of me in Vlissingen and in Debrecen (Hungary).

• I humiliated the English Royal Navy in the Battle of Chatham when I detroyed their fleet.

• I was built in 1920 and named after an important seventeenth century politician.

• I ran a regular route between Amsterdam and Batavia in the 1920s and 1930s.

• After WWII I transported Dutch soldiers.

• I stretch out along the coasts of three countries: The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

• Harbor seals and grey seals call me home, as do many seabirds, including gulls, spoonbills, various waders and ducks and geese.

• At low tide people walk across me.

Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Theme for this issue: the sea.

The Dutch Judge

46 - DUTCH, the magazine

Jesse van Muylwijck

September/October 2011

September/October 2011

DUTCH, the magazine - 47

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September/October 2011