Den Haag / Amsterdam / Zeewolde

Again with the lateness, I know. This post is about not last weekend, but three weekends ago. But my oh my, what a story it is!

Last weekend, Steven, Aaron, Skylar, and myself spent the weekend with a friend of Steven’s family, Ronald Wanders. Ronald lives with his family in Zeewolde, this tiny town in the middle of what used to be an inland sea, but those industrious Dutch drained the sucker about thirty years ago and built themselves some suburbs. Ronald is also a millionaire. Steven had also never met Ronald before. In fact, the only person who had met Ronald was Steven’s grandfather’s cousin. Despite this ridiculously thin connection however, Ronald invited us up to stay with him and his family for the weekend. Not wanting to refuse a free room, we of course accepted the invitation.

And so Thursday afternoon we hopped on the train to Zeewolde, not entirely sure what to expect. We arrived in Zeewolde that night, and called Ronald to come pick us up. A few minutes later, an Audi R8 and VW Golf screeched into the parking lot. This huge six-foot-four, 300-pound man wearing a black leather jacket and Ray Ban sunglasses climbed out of the R8 and grunted, “Is one of you fellas Steven Cutbirth?” We all looked at each other and knew we were in for a great weekend.

Despite the intimidating look, Ronald is one of the nicest men I have ever met. He is the epitome of hospitality. We weren’t expecting anything more than a place to sleep and night, and maybe directions to the bus stop. Not only did we get free lodging, but we had breakfast in the mornings, beers in the evenings, a posse of twenty year-olds to guide and chauffeur us around Zeewolde and Amsterdam, and-most surprisingly-access to his automobiles.

On Friday we were planning on taking the train to Den Haag, but Ronald told us to take the VW Golf. Before we headed out, we stopped by his office (his house and office are connected) to say goodbye, where we met his business partner, Eric. Looking out the window, I spied Ronald’s R8 parked next to Eric’s Audi S5, and joked, “So which one are we taking, the R8 or the S5?”

Eric cocked his head to one side and said, “Wait. I have idea.” He paused and looked at us inquisitively. “Do you want to take the S5?” We all laughed, thinking he was joking – the S5 is $100,000 of premium sports car – 350 horsepower, V8 engine, the works. But he just looked at us with a grin and glint in his eye. “Come. Come with me. We will see the car!”

We all followed diligently, making feeble attempts to decline the offer, but he countered us with every excuse. It was too small – “With a car like this, you don’t get space, you create space!” We don’t have Dutch driver’s licenses – “Can you drive in America? Then you are fine!” But Eric, it’s just too, well, nice – “Listen! The car? I don’t give a s#&% about it. Okay, well, I do give a s#&%, but I don’t. It’s fully insured, everything. Don’t worry! You are young, in the Netherlands, go have fun!” Before we knew it, Eric practically forced the keys into Skylar’s hands and we were on our way.

Bewildered but pleased, we typed Den Haag into the car’s navigation system and headed out. After a few hours of cruising we pulled into town and parked (very carefully). We walked to the Mauritshuis, one of the premiere art museums in the country, where we saw, among other things, Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and a few self-portraits by Rembrandt. After touring the museum, we grabbed a bite of lunch and then headed back to the car. On the way to the car, however, we passed by a stand selling a dutch delicacy, raw-herring. Skylar and I couldn’t resist – check out the video:

Mmmmm….tasty!

Before turning around to head back to Zeewolde, we decided to take a detour to the town of Scheveningen to set our feet in the North Sea. We felt like we were at the end of the world, because the only thing beyond the horizon is the North Pole. But there was no time for further exploring, because we needed to get the car back to Eric. We made it back alright, albeit 45 minutes late – the navigation system tried to sabotage us – but it was okay, Eric didn’t care.

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. We went to dinner with Ronald’s oldest daughter, Vicki, and then met up with Ronald and his wife Tina at Zeewolde’s only pub. We nearly picked a fight with some local teenagers who had been giving Vicki some trouble in school, but we decided spending the night in Dutch jail wouldn’t be the best option.

The next day we took the Golf to Amsterdam. After spending a few hours trying to find free parking, we ended up parking in a local apartment complex and rode the tram into town. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, especially if the sun is shining like it did for us. We visited the Van Gogh and Rijk museums, both who had really impressive collections. I really liked Van Gogh’s “Wheat Field with Crows” and Rembrandt’s “The Nightwatch.” Both were neat, to say the least.

That night, we met up with another of Ronald’s friends, and he walked us around Amsterdam a little bit. It was getting late, so we didn’t really have much time to do anything, but we did manage to go see Amsterdam’s “famous windows” in the Red Light District. It was strange. I think that people tend to trivialize Amsterdam’s stance on prostitution, making a sort of joke about it. Joking makes it easier to gloss over what prostitution is all about. Being there, however, showed the sharp reality of it all – those are real women behind the glass, they have mothers and fathers somewhere – and it cleared away the facade to show how dirty and sad it all is.

And that was about it for our little adventure with Ronald. We headed back to Zeewolde that night, had some more pizza, played cards with Ronald’s family, and headed to bed. The next morning, he drove us into Utrecht to catch our train back to Maastricht. And this post has been long, and very narrative-esque, so I will end it here.

Istanbul

So, confession time. I’ve been getting behind with the posting. I wrote about Carnaval a week after the fact. And here I am, again a week late, writing about Istanbul, even though I just got back from the most amazing weekend in Amsterdam and Den Haag. I apologize to my two readers, I hope that you will not be offended.

So, Istanbul. Amazing. Possibly the best weekend of my life. It is certainly up there with my ‘best of’ list: camping with Team Gus, anything in Costa Rica, the Lake District in England. We were fairly apprehensive about Turkey – we had heard alot of horror stories about the city, being crowded and dirty and dangerous. But that was not the case – or I guess the city was all of that, but just not in an irritating way. In fact, I loved Istanbul for the same reasons people hate it – I found that all of that hustle and bustle was just exciting.

After landing at Atatürk airport, we met our totally awesome tour guide, Mr. Arda. He was about sixty or so, dressed like Mr. Rogers, and he said the funniest things. For instance, he always addressed us as “Dear friends,” as in, “Dear friends, dear friends, the bus will be leaving shortly.” When we were leaving the airport, he told us that it was named after the founder of modern Turkey, of whom it is illegal to speak poorly of, noting, “Here in Turkey, we have good impressions of our country’s founder.” Sometimes he had trouble remembering words, so he would circumnavigate his way around by using phrases like, “And now is the time where we meet the night” in place of “twilight.” My favorite phrase by far, however, was “comfort stop” in place of “toilet.” He would say, “Dear friends, we now go to gas station. If you need a comfort stop of urgent kind, go here. If it is of the regular kind, then wait for comfort stop at the restaurant.” Classic.

First off, Istanbul is big. I mean huge. Weighing in at just under 12 million people, it’s the fourth largest city in the world, and boy we could tell. People everywhere, buildings everywhere, cars everywhere, hardly room to breathe. During our first night in town, Aaron, Skylar, Steven, and I (‘The Firm’) went out to find some dinner along the main shopping street in Istanbul, in the Taksim Square district. It was unbelievable – the street goes on for miles and miles, with trendy store after trendy store – Puma, Levi’s, Diesel – right next to crappy tourist shops and döner kebap stands. And of course wall to wall people, not to mention the trolly working its way down the middle of the lane and the occasional car as well.

The next day, we woke up for our first full day of tourism. Mr. Arda took us on a greatest hits tour of the city – the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine Cistern, and that was just before lunch. I was most impressed by just the sheer size of everything. The Hagia Sofia, for instance, is almost tall enough to fit the ALICO building underneath it, and it was built in the sixth century! Walking inside and seeing its enormity was like feeling the weight of the building’s rich history come crashing down upon my shoulders in one awe-inspiring moment. The Byzantine Cistern, a vast underground water reservoir from the sixth century, was also very impressive. I kept wondering, how did they make this? And how was this able to last through the centuries?

That afternoon we visited the Grand Bazaar, which is one of the world’s largest covered markets – over 4000 stores, 60 streets, 250,000 visitors daily. Turkey is known for a variety of quality products - besides the bootleg Louis Vuitton bags sold in every tourist shop – leather, glass, meerschaum, and handwoven carpets. So Justin, Sarah, and I wandered up and down the miles of shops, being accosted by the vendors to visit their shop, and this is a direct quote now: “My American friends! Come in, come in, what are you looking for? Let me help you spend your money!”

Thankfully the dollar is still worth more than the lira (YTL), so we were actually able to find some good deals. See, bargaining is the word in the Bazaar – the say 100, you say 20, and walk away. For instance, Sarah wanted to buy a carpet. We visited a few shops, talking prices, and wound up getting a 150 YTL carpet for 50 YTL. When we were bargaining, the vendor joked with Sarah, “You have excellent finance minister – you have expensive taste, he keep firm price!” We finally got him to come down to our price by getting up and heading for the door – with a flurry of hands and much sighing he shouted, “Okay, okay! Fifty lira! You are getting very good price, very good!” Buying that carpet was probably my favorite thing I did my whole time in Istanbul actually – I love the arguing and bargaining and the cultural interaction in general. I bought for myself a Meerschaum pipe, carved in the shape of a Turkish sultan. It is totally boss (to quote Juno). Justin swears that when he came into the shop the vendor and I yelling at each other “Forty! Sixty! Forty is as high as I go! No, sixty! Fine, I’m leaving!” and then him chasing me out of the store, “Okay, okay, forty it is!”

That evening, we went back to Taksim square and ate not one, but two döner kebaps – so tasty, my word – and then went to a lounge to enjoy a nargile – hookah, which is a water-pipe (tobacco only, Mom). This was also something I had been looking forward to, because I had always heard that hookah smoking was a big part of Arab culture. The guys who ran the place got a real kick out of us Americans trying to smoke, coughing about every five seconds!

The next morning we took a cruise up the Bosphorus river, which again illustrated the enormousness of Istanbul – the city sprawls along both sides of the thirty kilometer strait, reaching from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, spanning the gap between Europe and Asia.

After a delicious lunch, we took a tour of the Topkapı Palace, home to the Ottoman sultans of old. The palace is now a museum, housing various bits of Ottoman history, including ancient carpets and treasures from conquered lands. It had a very “Aladdin-plus-Islam” feel. My favorite exhibit, however, was their vast collection of religious relics. They claim to have in their possession some pretty crazy stuff – the Cooking Pots of Abraham, the Staff of Moses, the Sword of King David, the Skull and Arm of John the Baptist, and the Various Personal Effects of the Prophet Muhammad, including his cloak, sword, battle sabres, letters, footprint, five or six hairs from his beard, and one tooth. And the museum takes this stuff seriously – prayers from the Qur’an have been recited continuously in the Chamber of the Sacred Relics for the past 500 years. Even though I seriously doubted the authenticity of alot of the relics, it was still very interesting to see.

And that was pretty much it. Well, there were lots of other really great stories, like playing make-it-or-break-it and friends version 2.1, but this post is long. One final note however: Atatürk airport is ludicrously expensive. It would have been comical actually, if we hadn’t been so hungry. They were charging $15 for a Whopper. But I really stuck it to the man by filling out one of their comment cards and selecting ‘Very Dissatisfied’ for everything!

Stories from the most ridiculous weekend of my life are coming soon. Preview: Dutch millionaires, sports cars, priceless paintings, raw herring, and Amsterdam.

Carnaval

The Limburg province of the Netherlands is heavily Catholic, which means they celebrate Carnaval. Maastricht is the center of Limburg’s celebrations, and they certainly know how to throw a party.

The idea goes like this: Lent is a time of fasting, prayer, sacrifice – so you best get all your sinning out of the way before hand. Therefore, in the weekend leading up to Ash Wednesday, the whole town shuts down and becomes a massive street festival, complete with parades, marching bands, costumes, late nights, fried foods, and vast quantities of alcohol. Add all this up and you get some totally ridiculous combination of Homecoming, Halloween, the State Fair, and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one.

Everyone we talked to told us that the city gets totally trashed by the end, and they weren’t kidding. On Friday afternoon, the town started to board itself up as if a hurricane were about to pass through. All the shops on the main drag boarded up their windows with colorfully painted pieces of plywood, and the bars basically retrofitted their interiors with new walls and tables to protect against graffiti, spilled drinks, and broken glass. As this picture shows, trash cans aren’t of supreme importance during Carnaval – indeed, I felt fairly quaint looking for one to throw away napkins and wrappers.

The event officially starts on Sunday, but people start partying Saturday night. That night we all dressed up in costume and walked down the main square to see the party. The first thing I noticed was the music. I was expecting some European approximation of American hip-hop, but instead the bars were blaring German-style “oompa” music set to techno beats – and everyone was dancing to it! It was totally ridiculous, everyone in costume, holding a beer in one hand, a waffle in the other, and then bobbing up and down to Dutch-folksong-remixes, singing all the words at the top of their lungs. Totally ridiculous.

On Sunday, Justin and I rode our bikes down to the train station to validate our Eurorail passes, when we stumbled upon a huge parade. But it wasn’t like any parade I had seen before – it was totally chaotic and unorganized. Floats would just appear off of side streets and hustle their way into the line up, jockeying for position against ramshackle marching bands. Apparently, groups of friends just get together and decide to be in the parade, forming (I think) a mestreech. These groups build floats, or form marching bands, or just walk in the parade towing a keg a beer behind them in a decorated wagon. I met one guy who was carrying around a trombone, and I asked him if he was part of a group, and he replied, “No, I just join in with other people whenever I feel like it!” It was as if Baylor let the NoZe run Homecoming instead of Chamber.

Carnaval continued in this fashion, getting more ridiculous as the days went by. On Monday, some of us took a trip to Cologne to see how they do Carnaval, and my oh my, I have never seen anything like it. Although the police were in full force, carrying battle rifles and riot gear, you wouldn’t have known it. It was like controlled chaos – people everywhere, trash all over the place, and lots and lots of boozy Germans. We ended up along the parade route, screaming “Karmela, Karmela!” (which I think means something along the lines of “give me candy now!” but I am not really sure to be honest) at the floats as they tossed us candy, flowers, and small bottles of alcohol.

The last day of Carnaval, Tuesday, kicked off in due form with the “Battle of the Drunken Marching Bands.” I am not even kidding. All of the bands that were in the parade take to the streets, marching up and down, stopping at all the bars along the way, drinking themselves silly. We passed one bar where a band had filled the entire place, playing and drinking all at once, and then they all filed out and went on to the next one. Sometimes two bands would approach from opposite sides of the street, and everything would get very dramatic, and they would play and play and play as they got closer and closer, and finally one would stop playing to let the other pass through them. It was like a shootout, but with tubas instead of guns.

And then midnight came. Sometime towards the beginning of the party, a huge papier-mâché woman called the “Mooswief” is raised on a pole to preside over the festivities, and at midnight they cut her down. If this were America, the whole three days would be leading up to this moment, and the Mooswief would explode in a dazzling array of fire and light right at the stroke of midnight…but that’s not how the Dutch role. At about eleven o’clock, everyone began to gather around her, singing folks songs and swaying back and forth, and as the hour approached we all started to sing louder and louder, and finally midnight came, and…nothing. She was slowly lowered to the ground. No noise. No explosions. No fireworks. No song. Not even a cheer. Everyone watched her gently descend, and then we all turned to each other, and shrugged our shoulders, and wandered off. And so it went.

Despite the totally 100 percent anti-climactic ending, I thought Carnaval was just about the greatest thing since sliced bread. I enjoyed it because despite the drunkenness, it was mostly wholesome and harmless. While it could have been a sinister and dangerous debauch, wallowing in hedonism and decadence, it avoided this nastier route and was simply a good time for all. In Maastricht, Carnaval seemed to be more about parody, gently poking fun at our modesty without injuring it.

It pains me to think about how this would play out in America – I imagine we would try and take it all to the extreme, stripping all the tradition from it to make some oversexed and hyperviolent riot. See, the ridiculous traditions are what keep it all in check. All the silliness involved in being “sinful” – the goofy costumes, the impromptu parades, the ad-hoc marching bands, the bad dancing, the ridiculous music, the greasy food, even the mooswief – perhaps it made us forget about the more sinister urges within us, which seems like a good way to prepare for Lent if you ask me!