I loved my trip to the Netherlands.
Others love their trips, too. This is getting the hosts antsy. The government has responded, with a little success, urging that people look outside Amsterdam for a good time.
I’ve done my bit. Having been home almost a month, I’m going to say it again. If you’re going to the Netherlands, the last place you want to go to is Amsterdam. It’s fine for a day trip, if you know your itinerary. The Rijksmuseum and Momo are fine. The Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House, if you can get in.
But the canal rides are overrated, and don’t ride a bike there. I tried. There are too many pedestrians, and the streets are all cobbled.
Why We Go There
While the Netherlands has been around for hundreds of years, it is a new country in important ways.
Before World War II, many of its people were still peasants. As I saw at a museum called Vredegoed, this meant living hand to mouth in one-room hovels, heated with “peat” brought out of the topsoil at enormous effort, with lots of kids hoping one or two would survive. This country was literally pulled out of the sea, with its dikes and polders, yet today it is one of the world’s biggest food exporters.
The Dutch “Golden Age” of the 17th century shows ruffled men and women living in vast luxury, but this was true for just a few. These few began as ship captains, explorers who became colonizers and enslavers, then merchants, and finally bankers and insurance men. Most of today’s Netherlanders are no more related to them than you and I are. Much of the Dutch story, then, lies in its emigrants, its Vanderbilts and Roosevelts, Bothas and Krugers, Corneilles and van Halens.
Today’s country was born after World War II, emerging from the rubble with help from the Marshall Plan, uniting with its neighbors as the Common Market and the European Community. For half of that time, it ran under the American plan, until the traffic became too much. Since the 1980s it has forged its own identity, its bike paths (and those of Belgium) unique in Europe, its government as socialist and woke as any you may find, its educated young growing up to build the most powerful tech sector in Europe (pound for pound).
Where to Go
It’s this Netherlands that the world is celebrating, celebrating a little too hard according to the Dutch. It’s a unique and accessible culture, where everyone speaks English and almost everyone can claim membership in the middle class. Is it real, or is it a false front, as ultra-nationalists like Geert Wilders suggest?
I don’t know. All I know is it’s a lot of fun.
Like I said, avoid Amsterdam. I centered my adventures on Utrecht, a truly lovely place, and centrally located. If you love the beach, visit The Hague. Those who love flowers should come to the Flower Parade in April. If you love history you’ll find it in Haarlem, in Masstricht, in Gouda, Delft and in Zwolle. For fantasy there is Zaanse Chans, Gietthorn, and Efteling.
Instead of the Anne Frank House, I recommend visitors look down in any old city center they visit. Look for square gold or silver cobbles, with names on them. These are Holocaust victims, people who lived and worked in front of where your feet are now, until hate took them away from us.
Stuff I Missed
Despite spending two months in the country, there are whole sections of it I missed. I missed Groningen, I missed Leewarden, I missed the Frisian islands entirely, and I didn’t get any closer to Heerenveen than its soccer team, which lost to FC Utrecht 2-0 while I was there.
Here’s something that I much regret missing. Arnhem. I went through it several times, bypassing its Kings Day celebrations, watching it through a train window on my way to Mook and Eindhoven. I even got off the train one day and rode a bike to the Hoge Veluwe, the country’s largest national park.
But I never took the Audrey Hepburn walking tour. In Arnhem, during the war, she was Adriaantje van Heemstra., and it was there that she celebrated the first Liberation Day on May 5, 1945. The bridge that was too far in that movie? It’s also in Arnhem.
Why We Love It
My fantasy wasn’t about windmills or tulips or wooden shoes. It wasn’t about the idealized Dutch history shown to the tourists. As I’ll explain in my upcoming book, I was there for the cycling.
I wasn’t disappointed. The Dutch fietspad network is unique in all the world. It is a model for us all, albeit a model that needs tweaking, because the rest of the world has hills. It’s a model that’s also threatened by motorcycles, by faster fat-tire e-bikes, and by the Dutch people themselves, most of whom still drive to work. Many upper middle-class people use bikes and trains to get around, but so do the lower middle-class and the urban poor. This is creating both a growing class divide and a regional divide, east and west, because distances closer to Germany are bigger, density is lower there, and the paths are seen by some as an affectation.
There is so much to see and do, to know and to ponder, about the 21st century Dutch experience, that I haven’t even given a good summary here. It is in many ways the hope of the world, but it’s a fragile hope, as fragile as the coastal dikes being pounded every winter by rising seas.
See it while it’s still there.
