When my sister Abbie told me they'd most likely be coming back to the US after living in the Netherlands for 18 months, I knew I had to go visit her before she came home. But the trip loomed large in my mind. It was going to take a lot of energy and planning to get ready to go and to actually go. There were times when I wondered if all of the effort was really going to be worth it.
It was totally, completely worth it! I had so much fun. It is so wonderful to see a new place and experience a different culture, to see all the different ways there are to live and think and be in the world. I'm so glad I went.
I left from Austin and flew to Atlanta, had a really short layover, and then went straight to Amsterdam. I did not sleep on the plane. Does anyone sleep on the plane? Yes, I'm pretty sure the lady next to me slept on the plane. She was snoring a little. I did watch a movie and read Persuasion. What a brilliant book!
It was an overnight flight, so I felt good and tired by the time I arrived. Abbie and James and Emily were there to meet me, and we all went straight to the Anne Frank House. We took a train then walked the rest of the way. Everything looked so quaint and European, and it just felt so magical to be there. The Anne Frank House was really well done and interesting. We all had a little headset with an audio tour. It took us through the whole house, and everyone was really quiet and respectful. It was so crazy to think of families living inside for two years. To think of not being able to flush the toilet during the day and to have to tiptoe around. It would just be so stressful.
We drove back to Abbie's house in Rotterdam. We had a nice chat in the car, and then I took a nap, which was glorious.
The next day we went to Haarlem to see another World War II sight, the Corrie ten Boom house. The Nazis bombed Rotterdam to smithereens then threatened to bomb another city. The Dutch surrendered. The ten Booms were Christians who acted as a kind of way point for Jews and others to get to a place of safety. The tour guide here was a woman in her 60s, and she testified of Jesus Christ all throughout the tour. It was cool!
Jesus is the Victor
Right around the corner from the ten Boom house was the Grote Kerk (Great Church). It is famous for having a pipe organ with 5000+ pipes which Mozart once performed on.
Aaron needs a new suit, and I thought he would appreciate this one that looks to be made of spandex and is the skinniest of skinny fit. It's like a legging in suit form.
We ate some delicious croissants and almond cakes from a bakery nearby as well. They had a door that split in half, you know so you could have the top open and the bottom closed. And everything looked beautiful. Yum!
Before going home, we ran over to Leiden, home of lots of Pilgrims/Separatists before they came to America. They actually planned to stay in Holland. But they wouldn't be able to own land easily there, and their jobs were dependent on the whims of the textile market, so they decided to come on over to America instead.
We went to the American Pilgrim museum. It was privately owned, and we just made it before closing. We didn't see any signs or anything, but we caught the tour just as the guide and two Dutch guys came out of one side of the museum and were heading to the other. So we joined up. The museum consisted of this house, one side was in its original condition from the 1500s. The other side was in its original condition from the 1600s, the time period that the Pilgrims were there. So the owner just has a passion for that time period, so he filled up the house with artifacts from that period (which the tour guide told us we could feel free to handle) and called it the American Pilgrim Museum. Our tour guide was a French girl studying at the university in Leiden. She was getting a PhD in art history. She told us to look around and ask questions about anything we saw. And she had thorough, nuanced, complete answers to all of our questions. It was one of the most interesting museums I've ever been to!
And the Dutch guys on the tour were super friendly. We asked them our burning question: Why do the Dutch leave their windows totally uncovered all day and even at night, no blinds or curtains or anything. They said they hadn't really thought about it, but why have windows if you're just going to cover them. And they thought it was creepy to cover your windows. What are you trying to hide? An interesting perspective!
This book was from 1620. It had slabs of wood for a cover.
This was parked outside of the museum. The pickup bike.
On Friday the weather was perfect for our trip to see the Kinderdijk windmills. It was gorgeous! I wished I was a photographer. The Dutch like to say, "God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland." They take a lot of pride in finding ways to live in a place that would be uninhabitable without some serious feats of engineering. Once again, we met with hardly any crowds and got some great info from tour guides.
See the skates?
Here's a bed. The picture on the wall is of the family who had thirteen children and lived in the windmill. The windmill had two doors on the bottom. You had to remember which one to go out at which time so that the windmill didn't hit you. One little girl forgot. The mother pushed her out of the way and died instantly. Windmilling is not for the faint of heart.
"Phone eats first." --Emily Dunning
So people still live in these windmills. These windmills don't actually pump water anymore, but the mills still need to make so many rotations every year to be preserved and kept in working condition. So they rent out the windmills houses, and people live there. Apparently "milling" is very addictive. People love it. And I think they said that descendants of the family in the picture still live there today.
Stay tuned for Part II!
And if you've ever been confused about Netherlands vs Holland, here's what it says on the internet. I thought it was a good explanation.
"Do the words Dutch, Holland, and the Netherlands confuse you? You're not alone. Some Dutch people say they come from Holland, while others declare they're from the Netherlands, but what does it all mean, and where does this confusion of terms come from?
The Difference Between the Netherlands and Holland
The difference between the Netherlands and Holland is the Netherlands is the term for the country as a whole, while Holland refers to just the two provinces of North and South Holland. The fact that these are two of the most densely populated provinces where most of the country's major cities are concentrated makes the term "Holland" a convenient short-hand for the more cumbersome "the Netherlands".
The word Netherlands, or Dutch Nederland, both come from the expression for "lower land"; the prefix nether- (Dutch neder-), which means "lower" or "under", is also seen in such words as netherworld ("underworld"), nethermost ("lowest") and netherward ("downward"). This reference to the country's low-altitude is also reflected in expressions like the "Low Countries", which, on the other hand, refers to a much broader territory than the Netherlands alone. This term opens up even more confusion, as it has been used to refer to various parts of anywhere from two to five countries, but primarily used as a descriptor of the Netherlands and Belgium.
As for "Holland", the Oxford English Dictionary states that this name can be traced to Middle Dutch holtland, or woodland in English. This is the same holt that can be seen in town and city names across the United States, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere. The Middle Dutch word holt is transformed into hout in modern Dutch, and still bears a close resemblance to the German word Holz (pronounced hohltz); both variants abound in toponymy. The dictionary also reports the popular misconception that the name derives from hol land, or "hollow land", another reference to the country's altitude below sea level.
How to Refer to the Inhabitants of the Netherlands and Holland
If you are speaking about the inhabitants of the two provinces of North and South Holland, the Dutch language has the adjective hollands, which means "of or from Holland". Since the English language does not have a modern word to express the same notion, the phrase "of or from Holland" is the default expression. The term Hollandic exists but is chiefly restricted to specialized academic use, and the word Hollandish is sadly obsolete.
Unlike the normal structure of Germans are from Germany for example, the term Dutch is used to express "of or from the Netherlands", and is quite unusual. People often question why the terms Netherlandish and/or Netherlanders are not used, and why Dutch sound so similar to German deutsch?
The Dutch themselves use the terms Nederlands as the adjective for "Dutch", and Nederlanders specifically to refer to the people of the Netherlands, but these terms are not used in English. More confusingly, in the United States, there is a presence of the Pennsylvania Dutch, which perplexes most people, as they are of Germanic descent.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Dutch is a relic of the common Germanic period, a time before the Germans, Dutch and other Northern Europeans split into different tribes. At first, the word Dutch simply meant "popular", as in "of the people", as opposed to the learned elite, which used Latin instead of the Germanic vernacular.
In the 15th and 16 centuries, the word "Dutch" simultaneously meant both German and Dutch, or "Low German". This is why the word still survives in the community known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, who first set foot on U.S. soil in the late 17th century. In Germany and the Netherlands, the term "Dutch" - in the form of Dutch duits and German deutsch - later became particularized to the Germans, while the English continued to use "Dutch" to refer to the Germanic people they encountered most frequently, the Dutch of the Netherlands.
Hence, the demonym Dutch is used for the people of the Netherlands, which, despite popular misconception, is not coextensive with Holland, and there is no demonym for the people of Holland.
In short, use the term Dutch to describe the people of the Netherlands, Holland when referring to the provinces of North and South Holland (it is correct and appropriate to say that you are traveling to Holland if you are visiting Amsterdam, for example), and the Netherlands when speaking about the country as a whole.
If you find yourself confused you shouldn't worry because, fortunately, most Dutch people will pardon visitors who mix up these terms. Just don't confuse them with the Danish."
https://www.tripsavvy.com/dutch-the-netherlands-and-holland-1456293
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