Keukenhof, Lisse. Tulips - Keukenhof Gardens

 Keukenhof:  Kitchen Gardens

Lisse

Tulips arrived in the Netherlands in the 1600's, courtesy of the Ottoman Empire. The flower had been wild, cultivated by the Turks as early as 1000 AD.  The name recalls the shape of a turban, see http://www.holland.nl/uk/holland/sights/tulips-history.html.

Update 2015:  a video on mechanized tulip bulb harvesting in The Netherlands, see http://www.youtube.com/embed/wZ5MAr7d-5Y?rel=0

Dan Widing at Keukenhof Gardens, Lisse, The Netherlands.  Hip-high tulips. Not a raised bed.

If possible, time your visit to the Netherlands for tulip time, in May.  These fabulous and vast gardens close in July for maintenance and tidying up.  Most everything is tulips there, and tulips have a limited bloomsday.  See slide show at http://www.keukenhof.nl/. Keukenhof is a public garden -- there since 1949, and now nurtures some 6 million bulbs, says our guidebook. Another book says that some 7 million bulbs bloom each year. Area:  32 hectares.  What is that? A hectare is about 2.47 acres, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare,  So:  somewhat less in area than 92 acres?

Keukenhof Gardens, tulips, Lisse, the Netherlands

Even in the rain, the colors are spectacular. Winding, wide walkways, and varieties unimagined.






Arrival in the mist or light rain is fine.  A downfall of rain, however, would probably cause the petals to drop. We came almost directly from the airport, in case of heavier rains to come.


Keukenhof. Tulip fields, Lisse, the Netherlands








The choice is to head in another direction, and hope for better weather when you return.  Seize the day.

Some tulips are past knee-high, and even reach hip-height. Some were up to Dan's waist in some areas.  Long, long stems. See http://www/europeforvisitors.com/europe/articles/keukenhof_gardens.

There are well-spaced and spacious rest areas in the gardens, with food, facilities, but note where you came in. It is easy to get lost. This is a really big place.  It was once the hunting grounds of the Teylingen Estate, see 15th Century Countess Jacqueline of Wittelsbach at  http://www.keukenhof.nl/images/fck/File/KKH,%20sixty%20years%20as%20the%20paragon%20of%20beauty.pdf

The Hague - Madurodam Miniature Village, Scheveningen

We were interested in recreation and walking, so went first to Madurodam in the town of Scheveningen, that wonder-filled miniature Netherlands world that opened in 1952, a tiny Holland. Full photo tour here: www-pnp.physics.ox.ac.uk/~miyagawa/photo/travel/madurodam/

Madurodam Miniature Village, Scheveningen, near the Hague, NL


The village shows scenes from all over the Netherlands.











Scale of miniature village, Madurodam, NL

Then on to the Hague - arts, politics, courts, diplomacy. See www.denhaag.com/default.asp?id=DOORWAYNEWS-uk.

Our first picture - a sample scene that looks ordinary. Second picture - same town, but with giants.

Details:  Little boats glide around, trains and buses go, all of historically significant Holland (looks like) represented in some way here. It is outside The Hague. The towns are recognizable - Schiphol Airport, flat polder land reclaimed from the sea. All to scale.

History:  This site is a memorial.  JML Maduro built it in memory of his son who died in the concentration camp at Dachau in 1945. It is a large website, so look for The Hague and then Madurodam. See www.rozylowicz.com/retirement/holland2005/holland4. Profits to children's charities. Opened in 1952 by Queen Juliana.  For some cultural reference, see the 1920 passenger list of the T.S.S. Rotterdam to New York.  There are the Maduros.  See ://www.gjenvick.com/PassengerLists/Holland-AmericaLine/Westbound/1920-10-19-PassengerList-Rotterdam.html

Amazing humans. Out of Dachau, a dream at Madurodam.

Middelburg's Bomb and Domburg's Commandos - WWII

Domburg, Allied Commando memorial, beach landing site, the Netherlands, WWII 
 
Domburg:  in the southwest Netherlands area known as Zeeland, a peninsula. It is a seaside resort, and here is someone's fine big beach house. Commandos landed here in secret, coming in on the waves.

Imagine the people inside sometime in 1945, probably suitably dressed for the evening dinner, with no idea that - just outside, at the beach, allied commandos are landing and creeping-dash-leaping from the shadows to some meeting place (blades in teeth?) and by now just outside the door. The memorial plaque says just that: allied commandos landed here.

A midget submarine, a WWII German Seehund, was found abandoned at Domburg. See www.one35th.com/seehund/sh_operation.

Trips and memory-triggers. For us, we think of the beaches at Highlands, New Jersey. The Twin Lights. Bay Head. In WWII, drunken soldiers coming up Portland Road, interrupting our hide-and-seek around the single street light, parents hustling us in until they passed, on their way to the Twin Lights and to the pillboxes and submarine spotting stations up further, way further if they could stagger that far, up the hill.  That area along the Shrewsbury River with the ocean beyond, used to be for bootleggers, and the docks with hidden ways. Then it was war.

Middelburg-  Nearby is Middelburg, little city, big history. Quiet, traditional.  It dates from the 8th or 9th centuries, and had been a major port for the Dutch East India Company. The town is far off the regular routes.  We came to it just for the drive in remote sections, after all the urban, on our way back, after Belgium and Antwerp.  In 1940, the city was bombed by the Luftwaffe to force surrender of Dutch forces. The city is rebuilt, but archives were lost.

In the square is a model of a big bomb, on its end, as a reminder and memorial. This site shows "A Boy's Memories:"www.combinedops.com/Walcheren%20WW2_Memories.  Read about the Battle of the Netherlands and here is a fair use thumbnail of where Middelburg is, at ://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/d/du/dutch_defense_lines_-_ln-en.jpg


Down there, 'way lower right, above the white of Belgium to the south.  Germany is at the other border, east. A lovely country ride. Bridges.
Etty Hillesum:  The young woman in her 20's who wrote a diary in Amsterdam during the War, and died in Auschwitz, was born in Middelburg. See the Virtual Museum at Middelburg at archimon.bravepages.com/zeeland/middelburg.

Amersfoort - Wall House and Amsterdam Tiny Town House

Amersfoort, city walls, the Netherlands

Amersfoort is near Utrecht, and the old defenses are still there, with houses built into the city walls. This old fortress section has the narrow windows needed for defense, with just enough room for bows and arrows. See fine photos and history at home.planet.nl/%7Emuije000/Amersfoort/index.

There is a large pedestrianized mall in the old town, as is often found, and a large hurdy-gurdy playing.










Houses squeezed in places:  In Amsterdam, see post,  a canal boat tour narrator claimed that this is the world's narrowest house, squeezed between larger neighboring town houses - and we were told it is narrow for tax reasons. Citizens were taxed based on frontage, not depth. I understand the owner makes many euro on tours. Location, location.

Hurdy-gurdy, Amersfoort, the Netherlands

Haarlem - Grote Kerke, Corrie ten Boom, Frans Hals

Corrie ten Boom House, Interior, hiding place, Haarlem, the Netherlands

The Corrie ten Boom house, on the left, is another home where people hid during WWII, this time in the walls, but for a vastly shorter period of time than The Anne Frank family in Amsterdam (a week, if even that?). Details about CTB's life and the house are at www.corrietenboom.com/.

Some 800 Jews were saved in this way, see New York Times article by Beth Greenfield, Classic Dutch City With A Village Feel, at ://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/travel/19dayout.html?partner=rss&emc=rss/

 There is the space within the walls for hiding.

Finally, when word got out, the Nazis were in and out, searching for them, and during that week, the stakes for the ten Boom family were just as immediate and dire as for the Franks, hidden in Amsterdam.

Corrie and the others did escape, over the roofs. Here is a conflict of information:  We were told that the family escaped, but the NYT article says they were caught, sent to concentration camps, and Corrie survived.  We are checking now.  Perhaps the museum information was only for a particular search week.
Plan much time for this stop, if you have it - the tour (you cannot go through on your own) is lengthy. There are compulsory sectarian promotions for up to an hour before you can get in the rest of the house. You cannot go through on your own, to speed things up if you are not interested in the motivational speakers.

Also, to accommodate the lectures, the doors only open at certain times.

Be there on the spot. Doors close. The article expressed surprise that people were already milling about the door at 2PM.  That is because people are only allowed in on the dot of the hour, and nobody during lunch.

I did read some of Corrie Ten Boom's writings, and they are pensive, human and insightful. The house presentation, however, tends to defeat that. Too forced and evangelical, for me. They want to proseletyze.


The Bavo Church, the Grote Kerke;  St. Bavo Kerke - Kerke=Church.

The Grote Kerk. It is named after Saint Bavo, who turns out to have been an abuser --  of his wife and family and servants in the 6th Century.  He converted, but that means, at that time, that he gave up the worldly life and entered a monastery, not that he became Christian.  Doctrines were in flux. Apparently he heard a particularly moving sermon by missionary and cleric St. Amand, see Amand at ://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=333. 

Bavo ended up a hermit in a forest near Ghent, Belgium. See ://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/bavo.html/  Saint Bavo the Abuser.

In the church is a large Foucault Pendulum setup, after the experiment in 1851 by Foucault to show the earth's rotation. It does, has, is ongoing, for your peace of mind on that issue. See ://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/yearoftheshorts/1/1268469287/tpod.html/.  And three ship-model chandeliers, and a painted carving of a little fellow gnawing on a pew. 

See him to the left, head tilted for a better bite. And there is a fierce snarling thing beside. Love religion. Woodworkers' revenge.  The choir was built in about 1400, see ://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gerrit-berckheyde-the-interior-of-the-grote-kerk-haarlem/.
 
.
St. Bavo, Grote Kerke, Haarlem, the Netherlands, figure gnawing on pew, interior carving
.
Vestries always have difficulties?

There also is another carving of a little fellow beneath the seats in the choir reserved for the wealthy - everyone else had to stand in the lower area. Is he really showing his disdain for the bottoms of his betters seated above him, by showing his below? Where is that picture? Am sure I got it.

Frans Hals is buried at the Grote Kerk. For the interior, see ://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/largeImage?workNumber=NG1451&collectionPublisherSection=work/.

Haarlem's service for you ladies' District is low-key, clean, neat and tidy, and professional. It is near the main square, where the Grote Kerke is located. If you stroll by in the morning, the windows may well be empty and you can look at the chairs and props better. Tableaux. See before you buy.

The Frans Hals Museum is also there, but a longer walk away. Take time for the stroll.  Haarlem was Frans Hals' home, at least for a substantial time. For his paintings, see ://www.abcgallery.com/H/hals/hals.html, Olga's Gallery.