Den Haag, Holland
A dear friend, Maryse, was working in Den Haag (The Hague) for the month of June, invited me to join her. Of course I jumped at the chance to live like a local. It was an incredible 10 days.
Den Haag (The Hague) is the home of the international Court of Justice - the judicial arm of the United Nations. Den Haag is also home to the Mauritshuis Museum, the permanent home of Vermeer’s most famous work: The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Many of the great artists of the Renaissance were Dutch: Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, and of course Vermeer. This small museum also housed their works.
Of course I went to Amsterdam, about 30 mins away by train. I did a walking tour through Airbnb Experiences and a canal boat ride that I booked at the dock. The Dutch pride themselves on always thinking of ways to make money or certainly not spend money. The traditional architecture features narrow houses because you were taxed on the width of the house, not the height or length. Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light district is next to a church so sailors and sex workers could pay the Catholic priests to forgive their sins, ahead of time- real confessions took too long and the lines were backed up, so prepaying for sins yet to be committed sped up the process. Lol.
I enjoyed my visits to the smaller, less touristy towns more. I went to Delft, home of the famous blue and white dishware and Vermeer, the Dutch Renaissance artist. Fifteen minutes away from Den Haag sits Leiden, home of the oldest university in Holland at 400 years. These towns were quite charming. The pace was very different than the big cities and I was able to experience people going about their daily lives.I did visit Rotterdam as well on my way to a lovely town, Kinderdijk, a UNESCO site full of working windmills, museums and gorgeous scenery. On my last day in Holland I walked to the local beach and had breakfast at the North Sea. The weather was perfect- 65 F degrees, the day before was 93F which is highly unusual. When you think of Holland, you don;t think of beaches, but Den Haag sits on the North Sea and has six miles of coastline.
A Dark History
Holland was an early adopter of the Reformation and was known to be accepting of different religions and nationalities. But those tolerances at home, didn’t apply to the colonies.
Holland was an early adopter of the Reformation and was known to be accepting of different religions and nationalities. Tragically, those tolerances at home, didn’t apply to the colonies. The WIC were key architects in apartheid in South Africa and committed genocide in Indonesia.
Because of its water access, Holland thrived as a shipping hub. It was a colonizer and made much of its wealth in the slave trade through the Dutch West Indes Company (WIC). The WIC was so rich that accounting for inflation,in today’s dollars, it had more money than Google, Microsoft and Apple COMBINED. It had a private army (financed by the Dutch government) and was accountable to no one.
Currently, the Dutch have made some strides in recognizing the atrocities of its past. At the Mauritshuis museum, which is home to Girl with the Pearl Earring. The museum is housed in the mansion of a former governor who made his wealth in the slave trade. They acknowledged what their benefactor did on a plague in the museum. I haven't seen such an acknowledgement before in my visits to other European colonizers. I have to give them some props for that.
Not overlooking its history, my time in Holland was lovely. I got to experience life as a local and I enjoyed the balanced approach to life that the Dutch embrace.
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