Author Topic: When I say Holland....  (Read 32655 times)

Offline David In Indy

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #80 on: July 14, 2006, 09:12:42 pm »
It's quite appropriate though, isn't it?  :laugh:

I was reading this post about wooden shoes/clogs/klompen and suddenly a memory of my trip to the Netherlands, along with a question popped into my mind.

When we were in the Netherlands, I saw very few people wearing klompen. In fact, about the only place I remember seeing people wearing them was in a couple of small towns in Zeeland.

I was wondering if there are any areas in the Netherlands one can find people still wearing the klompen, baggy pants, lace caps etc..?

Like I said, I saw very few people wearing traditional Dutch clothing when I was there, and my trip to the Netherlands was at least 25 years ago.

I also remember seeing a few fisherman wearing klompen. I had an unpleasant experience with a fish during this stop at the docks.  :P 

But that is a different story.  :)

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Offline David In Indy

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #81 on: July 17, 2006, 01:04:51 am »
Hmmm... Does this silence mean I was the only Dutch person in this forum over the weekend?

Or should I take it as a "no" answer. Have they stopped wearing traditional Dutch clothing throughout the Netherlands? Even in Zeeland?

Lieve Hemel!  :(

I hope this is not the case.

What is happening to my Mother Country?  :'(
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mvansand76

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #82 on: July 17, 2006, 06:28:26 am »
Hmmm... Does this silence mean I was the only Dutch person in this forum over the weekend?

Or should I take it as a "no" answer. Have they stopped wearing traditional Dutch clothing throughout the Netherlands? Even in Zeeland?

Lieve Hemel!  :(

I hope this is not the case.

What is happening to my Mother Country?  :'(

Pretty much, yeah, I'm sorry to say this, in some conservative villages they still wear them, and sometimes only for the tourists... Did I just burst your bubble? I hope not.... :(

Offline David In Indy

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #83 on: July 17, 2006, 03:38:20 pm »
Pretty much, yeah, I'm sorry to say this, in some conservative villages they still wear them, and sometimes only for the tourists... Did I just burst your bubble? I hope not.... :(

No, you didn't burst my bubble. I was pretty sure this was the case. I remember after we left Arnhem and Nijmegen we went to Eindhoven, and then took a train to Rotterdam. We did stop in Zeeland for a day or two (one night I think) along with a quick one day trip to Amsterdam. So, with the exception of Amsterdam, I only saw the southern half of the country. I wasn't too sure about the nothern half though. The only time I saw anyone in national costume was in Zeeland.

Everything is changing I guess. It's been 25 or 30 years since I have been to the Netherlands and I saw very little evidence of it then. So it doesn't surprise me to hear it.

An overseas friend asked me once if we (me and my People... I am one quarter Lakota Sioux) still wear headdresses! I told him people rarely even wear national costume on the Reservations anymore, except during powwows and things like that. Most Native American kids on the reservations dress just like any other American or Western kids... tee shirts, Levi jeans, Addidas shoes and a baseball cap! Most Native Americans do not even speak the old languages anymore. I guess this is why I am trying so hard to learn Lakota. I hate to think of this language dying out altogether. 

Owh han to-ka-ha iska nah-ceh-ceh (So sad but so true).    :(
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Offline Bigheart

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #84 on: July 18, 2006, 06:22:10 pm »
Pretty much, yeah, I'm sorry to say this, in some conservative villages they still wear them, and sometimes only for the tourists... Did I just burst your bubble? I hope not.... :(
And in Volendam they still wear them but mainly for the tourists. You can even get your picture taken wearing traditional Dutch clothing. LOL!!
A lot of farmers in Holland wear clogs around the farm, they are a bit different from the touristy clogs though  :)

Offline Andrew

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #85 on: July 18, 2006, 09:41:39 pm »
I don't suppose you got to the Hoge Veluwe National Park when you were in Arnhem, David?  That is one of my finest memories of the Netherlands.

I was there in May of 1999; in May it was still staying light until about 10:30 at night.  We arrived by foot, late - maybe at 6:00 in the afternoon.  We had spent the day at Het Loo.  We had been staying three nights at the other end of the park from Arnhem, at the Carnegie Cottage near Otterloo.  We kept meaning to get to the national park proper, but right across from the inn was a path going into an adjacent very wild and large local park, and day after day we let ourselves be sucked down that inviting path, which we could look out over from our windows under the high cottage gable. 

This was the last night before the morning we were scheduled to leave, so it was our last chance to see the national park, the official Tourist Destination of this part of our itinerary.  We walked over from the inn.  On the road just before the entrance there was a backyard filled with every imaginable domestic and small exotic animal.  When they saw us they charged the fence en masse -- clearly used to being fed by other visitors.  There is something so memorable about being charged by a rabbit.

We knew the Kroller-Muller museum with the fantastic Van Gogh collection would be closed by then, but it was our last night and we wanted to take the tour on the famous free white bicycles.  We found them neatly lined up in their lot and found ones that fit us.  The park has wonderful bicycle paths which run all through its savannahs - and that is the right word for them.  We had been looking at highly traditional European palace and formal gardens at Het Loo, and suddenly here was an open landscape with long parched brown grass and scattered, very African looking trees.  And of course, herds of moufflon, and deer.  The air was warm and dry, the breeze comfortable, the sun in no hurry to set, the park completely deserted by humans.  We sped along those seemingly endless paths with the feeling of being twice removed from home, as far from the Netherlands as from the US, in some place that was so perfect it didn't matter where it was, if it was a real place.  And the strange long day, as if the day at the park was tacked onto the day at the palace without any night between.  We did the full loop, up to the lake and the lodge then back another way.  When it was just beginning to get dark we left the bikes and walked back to the inn, completely wiped out and ready to pass out.

I want to go back!
« Last Edit: July 18, 2006, 09:49:59 pm by Andrew »

Offline David In Indy

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #86 on: July 18, 2006, 10:51:56 pm »
I don't suppose you got to the Hoge Veluwe National Park when you were in Arnhem, David?  That is one of my finest memories of the Netherlands.

Andrew, No I/we didn't go to this park when I was in the Netherlands. The name does ring a bell though. Grandpa took us to the Netherlands to teach and show us our family history and Dutch history. We didn't really spend any time going to the parks, although I would have loved it. Grandpa took us to 5 cities, and a few smaller towns in Zeeland, and we did it all in roughly 14 days. My little 14 year old mind was reeling from everything we saw by the time I arrived back home in Indianapolis. I remember the entire trip though. I would love to go back to the Netherlands someday and see the country again, but I would take it a little slower the next time.   :D

Edit: Andrew, I really feel as if I don't need to go and see Hoge Veluwe now. As I was reading your post, I could see it all in my mind. Have you ever thought about becoming an author? You write beautifully! You have a  way of painting pictures with your words. I wish I could do that!   :D
« Last Edit: July 18, 2006, 10:56:17 pm by David925 »
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mvansand76

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #87 on: July 19, 2006, 07:27:15 am »


I want to go back!

Hi Andrew - I love the way you describe de Hoge Veluwe, it's quite unique, isn't it? As David said, you have a way of painting pictures with your words, that's quite unique as well! Het Loo is beautiful, the gardens surrounding it are amazing. De Hoge Veluwe is one of my two favorite places in Holland, the other is the dune area at the coast around Bergen, Schoorl and Camperduin/Hargen, it's beautiful there, I love the beach, which is as quiet as they come in Holland, the woods, the place exudes peacefulness, I call it my Brokeback Mountain! Maybe a tip for your next trip to Holland?  ;D

Offline Andrew

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #88 on: July 19, 2006, 09:12:29 am »
David, you are obviously in need of a return visit to the Netherlands!  Your grandfather achieved his great hope: your ancestral home has become an  part of who you are.

Part of the underlayer of my trip was that it was my first back to Europe since I was 20, so I was relating everything in 1999 back to what I experienced im my impressionable early adulthood.  My family travelled to Europe once every three years while I was in my teens and I greedily took in whatever was unlike what I knew from Indianapolis, which was obviously, almost everything.  We tended to stay the most in Germany and Austria since my mother was of German descent and she and my father had studied a year in Marburg after their wedding.  For her, too, visiting these places was a connection to the past and a reminder that she was not a different person deep down than the young student of so many years back.  I was the youngest in my family and our births were widely spaced, so her year of study was twenty-eight years earlier than her first visit with her children.  Seeing Marburg again, knowing she had not just dreamed her past, I imagine was something indescribable for her.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2006, 11:22:23 am by Andrew »

Offline Andrew

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Re: When I say Holland....
« Reply #89 on: July 19, 2006, 10:31:19 am »
There is a way for me to get seamlessly back on topic, crossing from Marburg into the Netherlands via France, and it will be the more seamless now that I no longer need to show a passport or change currency as I had to do when I was last in Europe.

Not everyone knows that the mysterious beautiful land described in Baudelaire's poem L'Invitation au Voyage was the Netherlands, or at least his idea of it inspired by Vermeer. 

"...Songe a la douceur
D'aller la-bas vivre ensemble!
...
La, tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute,
Luxe, calme et volupte."


"...Think of the rapture of going there to live together!...
There, all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and pleasure to the senses."

Baudelaire was only the nex-to-last of the Romantics.  As you may have gathered by now, I'm the last...or at least I'm in that club.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2006, 11:37:28 am by Andrew »