round 10: Haarlem.

Ugh...it's September. Which I love and hate, all at the same time. Fall = nicer temperatures and getting to wear long pants, but also, it means that WINTER IS COMING. (Thanks for the heads-up, Game of Thrones.) I figured this out when the temperatures here went abruptly from 30-plus degrees, super sunny, and mercilessly humid, to about 17 degrees, cloudy, and still super humid, roughly overnight.* Summer, GONE. Fall, UPON US. Sigh. At least I have a giant batch of delicious-sounding casserole recipes that the cooler weather will allow me to try out. Which I will need, when winter arrives and makes me sad.

But anyway. Back to the never-ending travelog from July! Ok, I'm almost done, I promise...just Haarlem, and then Amsterdam, and then bam. Finished.

So, Haarlem...what a delightful little surprise. We went 'cause Mom and Dad wanted to visit the Corrie ten Boom museum, and then I made a total rookie mistake: I failed to check when the museum would be open. We hauled our cookies from Amsterdam to Haarlem on a Monday, then discovered the museum was not, in fact, open until Tuesday. Bah, humbug. Having no other pressing items to attend to back in Amsterdam, we elected to stay in Haarlem and explore it for a few hours...which was fantastic. It's such a clean, quiet, super picturesque place, with a giant and interesting cathedral next to a couple of canals and a bustling market square. Very charming.

St. Bavo's cathedral (built between 1370 and 1538) and the market square. 

Ahhh...flowers.

BUTTONS. I have no need of any, but this makes me want to buy some. Have I mentioned that I love markets...?

Tiny, colorful Converse in the market. Too adorable.

Crazy building in the market square.

Seriously, look at the foofy details on the roof. Crazy.

More market square buildings.

Little shops built against the side (and between the buttresses) of the church. It's just such a ridiculously quaint and picturesque practice. It makes me think of hobbits, for some reason.

From the back side of the church, looking back towards market square. Hobbit-y, right?

Inside St. Bavo's: the famous Müller organ, constructed from 1735 to 1738, mentioned in Moby Dick, and played by Mozart when he was 10 (in 1766). 

Giant painted columns. Fairly unique, at least among the giant church columns I've seen recently.

Wide-angle of the interior. Note super interesting wooden roof.

First church we'd visited featuring an all-gravestone floor. Fascinating and creepy, all at the same time. 

There are roughly 1500 gravestones in this floor, and the oldest ones date back to the 15th century. I may have taken a photo or twenty of them.

Because I'm a wee bit superstitious, and I try not to walk over gravestones in the floors of churches where that's possible, this floor weirded me out a little bit. I'm sure it's only natural for the good folks at St. Bavo, but I find it very strange that they treat it like any other floor, as in, "Let's put the bench here. On top of this supremely fancy gravestone." 

Or how about on top of this one?

Or this one?

It's weird, is all I'm saying.

Another day, another medieval masterpiece...the choir screen from 1517.

The gorgeously carved Holy Spirit Bench, where church masters used to hand out bread to the poor (this thing dates to 1470!).

Cannonball left embedded in the wall from the brutal Spanish siege beginning in 1572. (The Spanish were victorious in 1573,  but departed peacefully in 1577.)

Back outside, we sort of accidentally followed this tiny dog around for a while. (Really, it was not on purpose. He just kept popping up wherever we happened to be walking.) I wanted to put him in my purse and bring him home with us, he was just so wee and goofy and happy. I'm sure he would have been the best of friends with the cats.

How can you not love Dutch architecture? It's just so wonky. I find it positively delightful.

Lunch in Haarlem: we stopped at De Overkant, this little place down a little alley, for three reasons. One, it was down a little alley; two, as we walked by, I saw people eating things topped with fried eggs, which I cannot resist; and three, as we walked in to read the menu on the open door, a kitteh shot past us and flopped down on one of the booths like he owned the place. SOLD. We ate outdoors, in the alley. Mom had a toasted sandwich with Parma ham, mozzarella, chives, tomatoes, and pesto; I had one with chives, cream cheese, lettuce, red onions, a fried egg, chopped cashews, and avocado; and Dad had the big winner, pictured above...a masterpiece of slice smoked chicken, honey mustard, avocado, lettuce, some serious bacon, and cashews. The bread on each one was terrifically fresh and good, and all of our sandwiches were FANTASTIC. (Not enough superlatives in the English language to describe how awesome of a meal this was. Go there. Now.)

Haarlem, day 2: St. Bavo, sans market.

Roaming the city streets, waiting for the Corrie ten Boom tour in English, and we just happened to catch this rather tall sailboat going through one of the bridges.

And speaking of canals...how insanely cute is this place??

Another bridge, just down from the drawbridge: this one pivots, off-center, to let boats through. 

Haarlem is full of these adorable little streets. I wanted to live on every single one.

On our return, on day 2, we finally caught the Corrie ten Boom tour. Somehow, I managed not to get a photo of the outside of the building, although, frankly, it is not all that impressive. What makes it interesting, however, is that there's still a watch and jewelry shop in the front of the building, and it's still called Ten Boom Jewelers. It no longer belongs to the family, but the rent paid by the shop owners maintains the museum and allows for entrance to the museum to be free of charge. It's a brilliant system, really. At any rate, I did manage to get a few photos inside, but they're neither numerous nor very good. 

So. The ten Boom house is actually two apartments cobbled together, so it has all sorts of wonky rooms and angles and level changes. (Too bad you can't see any of this in my photos.) At any given time in the ten Boom's history, there were probably from 10 to 20 people living here, legally or in hiding, between numerous family members and various types of refugees from the Nazi regime.

The sitting room at the front of the house.

It was Corrie's grandfather Willem who converted the two apartments into one, and he used a ship's mast for the staircase running up the center. Not terribly roomy, but effective!

The Hiding Place itself. 

In a nutshell, due to a long-standing ten Boom family tradition of giving aid to anyone who needed it, the ten Boom house became a refuge for fugitives during World War II. When the family was betrayed to the Nazis in 1944, everyone in the house was arrested except for the two Jewish men, two Jewish women, and two members of the Dutch underground who were hidden away in this wall (access was through the bottom of the shelves on the left; four of the six survived the war). After the arrest, Corrie's entire immediate family died in prison or concentration camps; she survived, due to a clerical error (!) and spent the rest of her life spreading the gospel and speaking about forgiveness, literally around the world. It is estimated that the ten Boom family saved the lives of approximately 800 Jews and Dutch underground rebels. The story is much more complex and fascinating than my little synopsis here would have you believe. Our visit was brief, but extremely moving and well worthwhile.

And that, my friends, was Haarlem. A fantastic, interesting place, and well worth the short train ride from Amsterdam. You know, next time you're in the neighborhood.

Next up: Amsterdam, in all of its weird, crowded glory.




*These are in Celsius, people. Look how European I am.

round 9: Witmarsum and Pingjum, and a bit o' the North Sea, Holland.

Question: who has two thumbs and comes home from a walk beet-red, swollen, and covered in hives? Answer: THIS GAL. Got in a quick walk Wednesday afternoon before the rain set in, and saw the youngest lamb I've ever seen, about three minutes from my front door. Went home to get the camera to document the occasion, and by the time I was in my apartment, the aforementioned condition had set in. NO. IDEA. WHY. And who doesn't love a good, spontaneous, allergic reaction with an unknown cause?? Not to worry, it mostly went away within 12 hours. Although my face is still a little swollen, what a delight.

Anyway. This post may be a short one, kids: these towns were tiny. And why did we go there, you might ask? We went to Witmarsum and Pingjum because of Menno Simons, an Anabaptist preacher in the Friesland (far north) territory of what is now Holland. Simons was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1515 or 1516, then moved to Pingjum in order to be the chaplain there. In the course of studying the Bible, in order to resolve his questions concerning transsubstantiation, he came to the conclusion that infant Baptism was not a Biblical concept; after a transfer to neighboring Witmarsum, he came into contact with his first Anabaptists, some of whom were Münsterites. The tragedy in Münster, and its Anabaptist connections, moved Simons in two distinct ways: he rejected the fanaticism and violence of the leaders there, and believed the Münster Anabaptists were extremely misled, but he also admired their conviction and zeal. Reflections on the event, and on his Biblical discoveries, led Simons to a spiritual decision: he left the Catholic church in 1536 and began preaching the Anabaptist doctrine in Holland. His scripture-centric writings, emphasis on nonviolence, and baptism as an adult brought him notoriety, and he was forced to take his beliefs and his ministry on the run. During the course of his travels, he met with Anabaptist and Reform leaders in Holland and Germany, gaining influence and rejuvenating the movement as he went.  His prominence as an Anabaptist teacher during this time is reflected in the name of the Dutch Anabaptists who followed him--the Mennonites. The modern variety of which, as we've learned, are the descendants of the Anabaptists whose trail we've been following north. Naturally, then, we had to go see his home town and the monuments dedicated to him there.

Entering Witmarsum: some houses here have thatched roofs. Seriously.

These little towns are neat, quiet, and postcard-adorable, with their tiny brick houses with colorful shutters, and their canals with bridges and whatnot.

Needed a bathroom and directions to the Menno Simons monument, so we strolled into the Otterbar...the only open place we could find in Witmarsum.

Looks and sounds unappetizing, but don't kid yourselves: double-fried french fries + peanut sauce = crazy delicious. 

The current Mennonite church in Witmarsum, built in the 1960s.

Across the street was this family loading these noisy little goats into trailers.

And then there was this kitteh, whom we first saw rolling in the seashell "gravel" next to the little church in the city. He followed us over to the church for copious pettings.

The "meetinghouse" sculpture was built here in 2008 to honor the founding of the Mennonite community. The variety of shapes and colors represents the varied, but still united, nature of the contemporary Mennonite church.

The Menno Simons monument, built on the site of the hidden church where Simons preached the Anabaptist message (according to tradition). 

And then, to Pingjum! Lovely tree-lined drive.

TOO. CUTE.

YET MORE CHARM.

Wee church in Pingjum.

Another of Menno's hidden churches.

View of Pingjum's main church, from Menno's hidden church.

These guys were watching us quietly until I got a little closer to take a picture...and then they went nuts.

Delicious cappuccino from the kind folks at the Pizzeria Pingjum. The only place open, and the owners were extremely friendly and spoke fluent English.

Mostly flourless chocolate cake at Pizzeria Pingjum. So tasty.

These guys were all over the place, quite literally: Friesian horses. 

Seeing as our tours of Witmarsum and Pingjum combined took under two hours, we decided to go see the North Sea and headed to Zürich. Zürich, Holland, that is. 

Signs in Dutch and in a Frisian dialect (of which, naturally, there are many).

It's the Zürich Bank. 

Climbin' to the North Sea.

Aaaand the North Sea itself.

This being Holland, there are, of course, sheep grazing at the North Sea.

Wee little brick church in Zürich.

The drive to Amsterdam, across this crazy long and straight dike (it's called "Afsluitdijk," if you must know.)

Actual windmills! Four of them! We kept an eye out for these bad boys the whole time we were in the Netherlands, and saw probably no more than 10. (It's all wind turbines now.) (And I apologize for the from-the-car shooting.)

What I'm reading: finished The Sweet Life in Paris, by David Lebovitz, vignettes from his experience moving to Paris and learning about the culture...and since he's a pastry chef, the book includes recipes. Sigh. Every book should be this delightfully written and include some seriously delicious-sounding recipes. (I've only tried one, but it was fantastic: a plum and raspberry custard, super easy to make and quite, quite tasty.) Loved this book. Next up: The Rape of Europa: the Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, by Lynn H. Nicholas. I've read a similar book within the last year or so, but having recently been in Berlin and having gone to some serious art museums in the last month has rekindled my interest in the subject. It's a pretty interesting topic and one I'm looking forward to reading about, again.

Next up: Amsterdam. Such an interesting city.