Netherlands

Pink tulips bring happiness to my mother. Knowing this, Alex and May sent her gifts emblazoned with pink tulips from their honeymoon in the Netherlands. Three years later she is still showing them off and telling the story. Mom, this video of a garden in the Netherlands is for you: https://keukenhof.nl/en/nieuws/360-tour-door-keukenhof/

I’m enjoying all the tulips that pop up this time of year. Last weekend was Suzy’s birthday, so I let her choose the yellow tulips from the options at Trader Joe’s. She sent me a picture this morning and they have bloomed beautifully. I had a head start on tulips this year as I received a tulip puzzle for Christmas. Even better, Heidi and Linda found maybe the most active way to enjoy the flowers of the Netherlands while staying at home – the Flower Route Virtual Challenge: https://www.theconqueror.events/flower/

Tulips are easy to find right now; businesses in California representing the Netherlands are harder. I both googled and yelped Netherlands, Holland, and Dutch restaurants and mostly came up with pancake houses and dessert places. To experience the authentic sources I found, Raquel and I made a day of it in March and first went to the Mar Vista Farmer's Market to pick up Oma's Puffers, little Dutch pancakes. Then we drove over to Holland International Market in Bellflower and took our time surveying the gouda, currant bread with almond paste, spiced cookies, jams, chocolate, licorice, peppermints, pickled jars of vegetables, blue and white ceramics, Dutch shoes, a pan for making the little pancakes, and so much more. The owner is friendly and helped us find exactly which licorice we wanted (one of the few with no salt). The next day, Allan and I ate the cake with the almond paste, the chocolate, and the licorice. I served the cherry jam and the ginger jam with homemade Dutch Easter bread at a pre-Easter brunch with a fabulous group of women friends. It was so good! For the succade, I used candied orange peel made by Kaitlin’s roommate’s mom and candied lemon peel that I bought from Amazon. Here is the recipe: https://honestcooking.com/paasstol-dutch-easter-bread/

More recipes from the Netherlands, which remind me that the country includes several islands in the Caribbean, are included here: https://www.tasteatlas.com/most-popular-soups-in-netherlands

There are so many great books representing the Netherlands. My childhood favorite is Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. I am thrilled to find it again on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/764

The World War II classics, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Hiding Place deal with a more serious subject. More about Anne Frank can be learned at https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/ and the movie The Hiding Place can be watched at https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/the-hiding-place-1974-1-1

Because I had read the above books years ago, to represent more recent works about the Netherlands I listened to both The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto. I learned about the creation of the middle class and why the very conservative Dutch find it important to be liberal. On the other hand, some of the things that the Dutch consider taboo are covered in the May 2014 issue of Words Without Borders: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/issue/may-2014

I haven’t read Erasmus, but feel that I should at least acknowledge his contribution to history: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30201

There are so many Dutch choices on Netflix including Just Say Yes (romance), Captain Nova (sci-fi), The Forgotten Battle (action adventure), Toon (quirky), and Ares (horror). I chose the romance and the quirky and enjoyed them both.

Art from the Netherlands might be more famous than anything I listed above. This last Thanksgiving, my parents, children, and siblings went with Allan and me to the Immersive Van Gogh in San Francisco. What a fun experience! Kanopy has a biography on Vincent Van Gogh: A Life Devoted to Art and the Khan Academy has an overview of “The Starry Night:” https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/later-europe-and-americas/modernity-ap/v/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night

Other online resources about Dutch art include:

· A look at the amusing “Dutch Proverbs” by Bruegel: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/northern/antwerp-bruges/v/pieter-bruegel-the-elder-the-dutch-proverbs-1559

· A video with views and commentary of the Rembrandts one can see at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena: https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/in-focus/rembrandt/

· A virtual tour of the Rijksmuseum: https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/rijksmuseum/iwH5aYGoPwSf7g?hl=en&sv_lng=4.885283712508563&sv_lat=52.35984312584405&sv_h=311.1699875145569&sv_p=-5.924133903625474&sv_pid=fOVcUXQW2wpRf33iUmxEfg&sv_z=1

· A virtual tour of the Van Gogh Museum: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/van-gogh-museum?hl=en

· A virtual tour of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3731445,4.8915467,2a,73.7y,275.72h,88.92t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjrRVlXsWV-t2vSdTx95sww!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The upcoming Dutch festival at Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego on May 1 commemorates the birthday of King Willem-Alexander. They are requesting RSVPs here if you would like to go: https://sdkingsday441556704.wordpress.com/

The Crazy Tourist lists the twenty-five best things to do in the Netherlands https://www.thecrazytourist.com/25-best-things-netherlands/ and I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in the Netherlands and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Jay Simmons https://unsplash.com/photos/HDP54awqaQA