Grote Markt - Haarlem

Our next stop in Haarlem was the Grote Markt (Great Market), the main square in Haarlem.



Haarlem's Town Hall.




Stores and cafes in the square.





The Grote Kerk (Great Church)







We enjoyed the beautiful weather at an outdoor cafe in the square. Jagger had some Dutch pancakes (poffertjies) with powdered sugar. When he was finished he enjoyed feeding his left-overs to the pigeons!


While we realaxed in the square and enjoyed our day, we couldn't help thinking about where we were sitting. The square was a round-up point for the Jews being carted off to the "work camps" (the Germans originally took the Dutch Jews off to a camp in northern Holland called "Westerbok". Here the Jews were required to make military uniforms and equiptment to aid the Germans in exterminating Jews. Later, the Jews were taken directly to concentration camps in Germany.) The trucks would sit there in the square while the German guards went house to house to round up the Jews and bring them back to this central point. It's impossible to imagine what was going through the minds of these helpless people as they sat there waiting for their truck to fill...

Corrie Ten Boom

Yesterday we made another train trip to the sleepy little town of Haarlem, the Netherlands. We enjoyed our visit the last time we were there, and decided to go back to take another look at the Grote Kerk (the "Great Church"). I had just finished a book called "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom, so I was excited to see the house where the events in the book took place.




Corrie (Cornelia) ten Boom lived with her father and sister in this little house near the main square in Haarlem. Their father owned a small watch repair shop located on the first floor of their home. Mr ten Boom thoroughly enjoyed his work, so much so that he regularly forgot to send his cutomers their bills! When Corrie was in her early 20's she took over the business end of her father's work and was able to make the business a profitable venture for the family.

The ten Boom family were devout Christians. They regularly took orpans into their home, gave hot meals to beggars, and housed pregnant young women who had no where to go. When World War II broke out, Corrie and her spinster sister Betsy were in their mid-50s. The family was horrified by what was happening to their fellow Dutchmen - the Jews.

Corrie's brother Willem owned a nursing home in the rural area of Silversum, the Netherlands. When the Dutch Jews were being deported for work camps, he began housing Jews in the nursing home, saving them from the yet unknown.

One day there was a knock at the side door of Corrie's house. It was a young pregnant Jewish woman. Her husband had been taken to a work camp and she had no where to go. The towns-people had told her to get help at the ten Boom house - they always helped people in need!






After this, the side doorbell rang more often. Corrie and her family began helping Jews who were threatened with deployment to the work camps. Because the ten Boom house was close to the center of town, it was not a good hiding place for those trying to flee the Nazi reign, but it did serve well as a transitional home for those awaiting a permanent safe hiding place. Soon Corrie became a sort of "ringleader" for the Dutch efforts to protect the Jews. Not only did she open her home to those in need, but she coordinated theft and falsification of ration book coupons.


One passage of Corrie's book tells of her surprise when visiting her brother Willem's nursing home. She couldn't understand why he had so many young nurses working there. Surely he couldn't afford hiring all of these young women! But then she suddenly understood....these "young women" were actually young Dutch men! The Germans had begun recruiting young Dutch boys to serve the German army. It was now time for the Dutch to protect their own young men!

Corrie also tells the story of "The Bulldog". Corrie and her father took reglular morning strolls. Each morning as they walked, they passed a man who was walking with his two bulldogs. She thought it uncanny that the man himself had the face of a bulldog! It was interesting that he chose bulldogs as his pets! One morning as she and her father were taking their walk, they passed "The Bulldog", but he was walking alone, with his eyes toward the ground. Where were his beloved pets? Corrie and her father followed the man to his home, where he ran a bookstore. They asked the man if his pets were ill. He told them that he was a Jew. He knew that the Germans would be coming for him soon. What would happen to his dogs? He didn't want to abandon them. He didn't want them to be starved or worse.....so he used all of his ration coupons to buy meat. And he give his bulldogs the best meal of their lives...along with a dose of poison for each. He sat and held his dogs as they fell asleep, then buried them and said goodbye. One week later the ten Booms walked past the man's book store and found it boarded up. "The Bulldog" was never to be seen again.

Corrie also had a sister named Nollie, who was married and had children. They lived in hte outskirts of Haarlem. Nollie's son was a piano prodigy. He learned to play piano at a young age and played well. When the family got their first radio they witnessed a miracle. The young boy listened to a song on the radio and then went to the piano and played the exact same song, after never having heard it before! When Corrie's nephew was 14 years old, he entered an organ competition. The event would take place at the Grote Kerk - a beautiful old church in the center of Haarlem. When the day of the competition came, the whole family gathered at the church, prepared to hear their nephew play the massive old pipe organ, and ready to celebrate afterwards. Imagine their shock, when it was the nephew's turn to play, and instead of playing the piece he had practiced for weeks, he broke the German law and played the Dutch national anthem! This was strictly forbidden, but was a welcome relief for the Dutch congregation, who began weeping and singing with all their strength. The family was terribly worried that the authorities would find out, but breathed a sigh of relief when there were no repurcussions. Two weeks later, the 14 year old nephew was taken off to jail. He served in the federal jail in Amsterdam for 8 months before there was talk of taking him off to a work camp to free jail space. At this point Corrie was able to convince the Haarlem authorities to take him back to the Haarlem jail, which was not overcrowded. The Dutch police captain in Haarlem was able to authorize the transfer and "lose" important papers, so long as he would never see the nephew again.

The ten Booms used the watch and clock display in the store window to communicate with Jews and other Dutch sympathizers. A small triangular shaped sign that said "We now sell Appel watches" was displayed in the window when the "coast was clear". The understanding was that if the sign was not there, then it was not safe to come to the house. Corrie would remove the sign if things went bad....or so she thought. One day a man came into the shop and told her that he needed help. He explained his dreadful situation and Corrie promised to help. He was to come back to the store later....and he did, along with the German police force. It was a trap and Corrie fell for it. She should have realized that he didn't come to the side door. She should have noticed that his eyes would not meet hers.

When the German police came to arrest the ten Booms, the family was in the middle of their weekly prayer meeting. Corrie, her sister Betsy, her father, sister Nolly, Nolly's husband and son, her brother Willem, and Willem's wife and son were all arrested. But instead of carting them off to jail, the German police held them prisioners in their own home...and waited. They waited for more and more people to show up at the side door. In all, 35 people came to the door that night - some of them Jews looking for help, some of them part of the Dutch underground, some just delivering messages about the underground operation. All 35 of those people were taken to jail and later concentration camps.

Corrie and her sister Betsy were taken to prison and later to a concentration camp. While in the camp they held nightly bible reading sessions and helped the people there cope with the horror that they were living.

Mr ten Boom died soon after being released from prison. Betsy died while in the concentration camp. Corrie survived and went on to travel to 64 different countries, giving lecures about her experiences during the war and in the concentration camps.

More random photos

The Westerkerk (West Church) on Prisengracht (Prince's Canal). This beautiful church is a few houses away from the AnneFrankHuis (Anne Frank House).



The line that wraps around this building is to get into the Anne Frank House. It was exactly 9am, the time that they open. The house that Anne and her famiy stayed in (which was actually an industrial warehouse) is the second from the corner - you can see the beginning of the line starts at the left. The tree is covering the house on the corner, which was purchased by the Anne Frank Foundation as their headquarters. It also houses the store museum. The headquarters was completley remodeled, but the Anne Frank house itself has only had a few renovations. The outside front (bottom half) was redone to make it more secure and the ticket window was added. In side everything remains very much the same - the first two floors show details of the business warehouse and the upstairs show the living quarters. One of the inside staircases was closed because it was a VERY steep wooden staircase that was too dangerous for visitors to trapse up and down (esp those with kids!). They put glass panels over it so that you can look up and see what it was like, and built an additional, safer staircase for museum visitors.

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A view up the Singel canal - the height of the church is phenomenal - it makes the 5 story townhouses look like typical houses!

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Jagger enjoyed playing at a little playground on NassauKade.

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Dinner at a neat Irish Pub. We ate fish and chips in a cozy little room with old leather furniture. Jagger enjoyed playing with the coasters on the table!

Historisch Museum

The Amsterdam Historisch museum tells the long tale of the city of Amsterdam. As you walk through the different exhibits on the many floors of the building, it is as if you are walking through time. The journey begins with the founding of a little town along the Amstel river and how it grew into an important trade community. It is fascinating to read (and see diagrams) of how the canal systems and dikes were built. And there is an interatvie demonstration that shows the growth in population, trade, and modes of transportation through the years.







Suits of armor worn by the Dutch Royal Army.



Jewelry that has been handed down through the royal family.



A "horn of plenty" made from an animal horn and laced with silver embellishments. This horn was actually used by the royal families of long ago for entertaining puposes.





A little-known Rembrant painting, this was created when Rembrant was asked to make illustrations for medical research. Many books of illustrations were found, along with a number of full size paintings. This one shows a physician dissecting a brain.




Jagger took one look at this painting and said "Mommy, take my picture with this one!" And then he promptly ran over and stood in front of the painting and said "Cheese"! Given Jagger's Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia birth defect and subsequent abdominal surgery, it is ironic that he chose to stand in from of a painting that depicts a physician dissecting an infant's intestines.




This is an actual yellow star that the Jews were required to wear during the Nazi occupation of Holland. I am currently reading a book entitled "The Frank Family that Survived". It is about a family of wealthy Jews who lived in Berlin. They fled Germany during Hilter's regin, heading toward the "neutral" country of Holland. After living near the Hague for a few years, they were forced to relocate to Amsterdam, as Jews were no longer permitted to live near the coast, for fear they would aid a British invasion. Myrtle Frank and his family then went into hiding in an apartment in the Hague, only a few doors away from a Nazi command center. Mother, Father, and two teenage daughters hid in the apartment for three years before they were allowed to again walk freely in the streets. There are many similarities between this Frank family, and the Otto Frank family (of which Anne Frank was a part) - the one major difference is that this family was able to survive the horror.


Amsteram history wouldn't be complete without information about the liberal Dutch policies on drugs and prostution. The museum has an interesting display, along with photos and video footage, of the Hippie Movement of the 60's and 70's, of which Amsterdam was at the center.




Jagger stands in front of a marijuana "coffee shop" of the 70's.




Here, Jagger stands in front of an advertisement for a "Smart Shop". The Smart Shops carry herbal energy drinks, herbal supplements, and hallicunagenic mushrooms.

Unique and Interesting....

Some random toughts on interesting things we have seen lately...

Amsterdammers (or is it Amsterdamites?) will do anything they can to grow grass (no pun intended!)....



This lovely houseboat is painted in a unique peeled paint green color. It offers a spacious living area, canal view, and roof lawn. No football playing allowed! Yep, someone is growing grass on the roof!





Making use of all possible space, this house has a roof garden that looks like the plants took over!

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This is MY bench and you can't have it!

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Bikes are the major mode of transportation here. You have to have a bike to get to work, school, etc. Unfortunately there are many bike thefts. Some people even steal them and then resell them! So many bikers decorate their bikes in dreadful colors - bright neon color combinations, spray painted with stripes and dots - some even adorn their bikes with outrageous amounts of fake flowers! So maybe this guy is thinking that if his car is ugly no one will want to steal it?

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I find it very interesting to watch the construction and moving process here. Since land is scarce, everything was built UP - as a result Dutch houses are very tall and narrow, with steep winding staircases. Each house has a large hook on the gable that is used with a pulley system to move large objects up and in through the large windows. Smaller moving boxes are packed into a large metal box and then hoisted up.

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Jagger loves the Chinese restaurant across the street from where we are staying now. The restaurant lobby has beautiful marble floors and walls and is adorned with golden Buddha statues. The Koi fish pond has some of the biggest fish I have ever seen and the spiral, open-backed staircase winds above the pond so you can watch the fish as you climb the stairs!


Jagger enjoys counting the fish, naming their colors, giving them names, and deciding if they are male or female!



"Mom! I don't know how my hand got wet!"

Jordaan Pictures

These pictures were taken during our walk through the Jordaan area of Amsterdam yesterday.




A quiet Sunday morning on a side street in the Jordaan.



One of the many old bridges



The brown house boat is Te Koop! (for sale). Should we buy it?




Unlike other canal houses, these houses are directly along the canal without a sidewalk or street in between.







A typical tree-lined street with canal houses and houseboats in the Jordaan.




The houses in the Jordaan are known for their brightly colored shutters.







This enormous canal house has the royal crest (red with 3 black X's) on the gable.

A SPECIAL DAY!!!!!!

Today is a very special day! Justice is 10 years old!

Justice - we are VERY proud of you and we hope you have a very happy birthday today! We will give you a call later. Make sure you don't eat too much cake!!!

Sounds through the window

motor boats

squeaky bikes

hoofsteps of horses (police on horseback and horse-drawn-buggy rides)

the church bells

airplanes heading to or from Schipol Airport

motorcycles

police sirens

horns honking for yet another traffic jam

music from car stereos

people talking (every language you can possibly name)

car alarms

drunk men singing

drunk American men playing Marco Polo (I sincerely hope "Marco's" eyes were not closed as he searched for his friends near the canal!) (And how do I know they were American? First of all, they were speaking English, and second - everyone can point out the college-aged American male - the cool dude who struts along the street, bragging loudly about the joint he just smoked so everyone can hear - get a clue, dude! It's legal here so no one cares!)

A Six Hour Walk

A six hour walk - A three hour tour - I suddenly have the Gilligan's Island theme song running through my mind...........

We walked and walked and walked today! We started off walking through the streets of the Jordaan. We went past the Anne Frank house and at 9am (when it opens), and the line to get in was already forming the whole way around the corner of the building!

The Jordaan district was absolutely beautiful! The streets were quiet and peaceful. It was sunny, low 70's with a light breeze. There were not many people out and about, as is the case on most Sunday mornings, but there were a number of boats sailing through the canals.

Jagger was enthralled with the duck family we saw - a momma duck with 8-10 little babies. A man on the balcony of an apartment threw some bread into the canal and we were able to watch them eat. When they were finished we were able to walk along the canal as they swam along beside us.

We looked at the different houses and picked out what we would like to buy if we had an extra E500,000.

We ended up waaay on the other side of Amsterdam on Nassau Kade. There was a cute little park there so Jagger played on the playground a bit. Grassy spaces are few here, so it was nice to find a little park (that wasn't full of dog crap!) with a bench to sit and enjoy the weather. We do plan to go to VondelPark later in the week.

Then we headed over toward Spui Square (pronounced "Spou" and rhymes with "cow"). We grabbed lunch at a little sandwhich shop called Broodjies and Kootjies. Jagger and I used the bathroom and saw that Mary Kate Olsen (or at least someone who writes graffiti on bathroom walls and wants to be her) had been there!

Next, we stopped in at the "Green Bakery". It's the Turkish bakery that I wrote about before. It's actually called "Turkish Bakerij", but since the sign was green, the kids gave it a name to distinguish it from the "Red Bakery" that had hand made stroopwaffles. The Turkish man had just opened the bakery right before we arrived last time. He is right across the street from where we stayed last time and we visited his store daily. When we walked in today he came out from behind the counter and shook Jeff's hand. We have a hard time talking with him because he speaks mostly Turkish and a little Dutch. He was happy to see us and asked about the other "kinderen" (kids). Jeff told him they were back in the US and he grabbed a package of chocolate cookies and threw them in the bag and said "Da Kinderen". (So Justice and Journey - we will bring you back the chocolate cookies from the bakery guy!)

I panicked when I didn't see any Turkish Baklava at the bakery! I came all the way from the US to get some! The guy's wife makes it and it so do delicious! It is made of crispy pieces of phyllo dough, pine nuts, and a sweet clear syrup. I asked him about it and he pulled out a little tray with the last 4 pieces. Of course he threw that in the bag for free too! He said something about having more on March 1st.....I didn't realize until we were out the door and down the street that he was saying "Mondaag First"....Mondaag means "monday" in Dutch and I think he thought "First" meant "more" or something. So I guess we'll have to walk all the way to the other side of town again tomorrow!

Our next stop was the Amsterdam Historich Museum. We went there in March, but Jeff wanted to go back again. We went through it pretty quickly last time (it's a pretty long museum) and he wanted to be able to actually read the history of the city and descriptions of the paintings. Jagger enjoyed it because there were lots of buttons to push and things to touch. He loves to look at maps and likes to look at replicas of the Queen's Palace. I was able to look at the parts dedicated to WWII, since we missed those last time when the kids were tired.

The Historich Museum used to be a building that housed the city's orphans. It is next door to a nunnery (still in use). When the plague and other diseases hit Amsterdam, many children were orphaned. The children in rich families went to live with relatives, but the poor children were sent to the orphanage. One of the most intersting pieces in the museum is a beautiful old wooden chest or trunk. They believed that the chest had some sort of miraculous power, as a number of different terminally ill children had sat on it and it had cured them. The chest was hidden in an attic for a number of years before it was brought to the museum.

After spending a couple of hours walking through the museum we went to the shopping area to look for a cord to connect my camera to the laptop so I can upload pictures. I was frustrated that I forgot it and wouldn't be able to include photos with the blog. And then I realized that I WILL run out of disk storage space if I can't upload photos! Unfortunately the computer store and the photo store neither one had a cord. But I did realize that I can stick my disk into one of their instant photo machines and have the photos printed on CD. That way I will be able to put them on the blog and have permanent copies of them! Now all I need to do is get my bottom back there to get some CD's made!

Our last stop was the bookstore (again!). I bought a book called "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom. The story takes place in Haarlem, the Netherlands and is the other side of the Anne Frank story. Corrie's family hid Jews in their home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The book chronicles the hardships and risks that the family endured during that time. We plan to go back to Haarlem in a few days to visit the Grote Kerk (Great Church) again, so maybe we will stop by the Corrie ten Boom house for a tour too!

Jagger fell asleep in his stroller after we were finished at the museum (around 2pm) and is still sleeping now at slightly after 6pm. So it looks like he will do the same thing as yesterday - sleep all afternoon, wake up in the evening to eat dinner and play and then go back to sleep again, only to wake in the wee hours of the morning!

Why am I awake at 6am?

Because my 3 year old isn't use to the time change! I guess I shouldn't complain - it's better than 5am, which was yesterday's wake up time!

We took a walk down Kaalverstraat last night - that is the major shopping street in the center of Amsterdam. The new Harry Potter book was released in Europe yesterday, so we went to Wordsworth and bought a copy (and we got a free copy of a book called "Lion Boy"). The people at the American Book store said that they ordered 2500 copies of the Harry Potter book and they were almost sold out at 6:30pm last night.

The weather has been beautiful so far! Sunny, warm, light breeze, in the mid 70s. Record breaking weather seems to follow us wherever we go on vacation, so this has been a nice change. It's nice to see the country when there are leaves on the trees and everything is green. But once again I will not get to see the tulip fields! We were here a little too early to see them bloom in March and now it is too late! It has been neat to see all of the outdoor cafe's though. They were just starting to put tables outside in March. Now that the weather is beautiful the sidewalks are cluttered with tables and chairs - so people can eat out in the sunshine and fresh air while watching the canal boats go by. You just gotta watch where you sit.....yesterday Jagger and I were going to meet Jeff and I sat down in a wicker chair outside of a resturant. Jagger was still in his stroller in front of me. A young dreadockled British girl came out and politely told me I would have to move, as this was a coffeeshop! OOPS! I guess they don't like 3 year olds to smell the "coffee"!

We're going to take a walk through the Jordaan (pronounced "Yor-dahn") today. It is an upperclass, yuppie type neighborhood in the western part of Amsterdam. If we were to move here, that is probably where we would want live. It is absolutely beautiful and we always enjoy our walks there. And then I'm going to try to find a computer or camera store where I can get a darn camera cord! Maybe we should find a toy store too.....I didn't bring much for Jagger to play with. I brought a bunch of his Magic School Bus books (his obsession right now) but I didn't bring any actual toys. I did buy him a plastic cup last night. I was going crazy watching him drink from these thin little glass glasses here- holding it with one hand, not pushing it back far enough on the table, drinking water from a glass at night while his head was bobbing cause he was still sleepy....so I found this little housewares discount store and grabbed this little round sippy cup - shaped like a football with a bear face on the front. I *thought* it was just a cute cup. But Jeff and I watched last night while Jagger played "Hide and Seek" with his new sippy cup! He would hide the sippy cup, then cover his eyes and count and then search for the cup. Then it was the cup's turn to count! It was really quite bizarre! Since the TV shows here are "not real" (Jagger's description of Nickelodeon cartoons in Dutch), the poor kid is bored! I'm hoping to find a toy store that has some neat little compact playsets that we can easily take back with us.

We're baaaaack!

Visiting Amsterdam again! This time it is just Jeff, Jagger and I. My mom was generous enough to come down from PA to stay with Justice and Journey. Of course we're both regretting that decision, just as I thought we would ;) Jeff asked me (on the plane on the way here), how old a child has to be to fly by themselves. I didn't understand why he was asking until later when he said we should have brought the other two guys! Nope, they're not gonna do a 6 hour flight by themselves!

Jagger is missing his brothers like crazy. Yes, they fight A LOT, but boy do they keep him entertained!

Jagger is convinced that we came to the "wrong Amsterdam"! I think he thought we were going to stay in the same house we were in last time. I tried to explain it to him, but he didn't get it. That was a big place for 5 people for 5 weeks! We will only be here for 10 days this time and there are only three of us. We rented an apartment through a hotel we stayed with the first time we came as a family. It's a nice place - overlooks a canal with a nice size living room, a small kitchen, and a big bedroom. The bathroom is rather large for European standards. We're on the top floor so we have a nice view of the canal and street and we also have windows in the ceiling. I would call them "skylights", but they are more like windows that you can open (with a long metal screw bar that you crank). Jagger was thrilled when a pigeon feather floated into the living room awhile ago!

When Jagger was tired last night he kept telling us that he wanted to go home to the "real world!" No, I don't think he wants to star in any MTV reality TV productions. The kid was just tired and missed his brothers and wanted to go home! He's also obsessed with Six Flags ever since we went to their Hurrican Harbor water park a few weeks ago. He's still talking about going back and now he wants to go to Six Flags Amsterdam! We're hoping to take a trip to Scheveningen, a beach resort along the North Sea sometime this week, so maybe that will satisfy him for awhile. I can't image what the water temp will be like though. This kid was swimming on the tropical beaches of Turks and Caicos a few months ago......

I realized awhile ago that I forgot to bring the cord that connects my digital camera to my computer, so I'll have to wait until we get home to upload pictures, darn it!!!