Dutch Resistance

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just in case anyone was wondering, i'm still alive and well, just been a little busy the past few days, i'm in my fourth country and just got settled into florence for a few days, i'm staying with my best friend nicole in her flat, right in the center of the city. i've been living it up - laundry and silverware and electricity! but more on that in another blog.

so i flew into amsterdam with my cousin last wednesday - the weather, which had cooperated so well in ireland, went on sabbatical - we had rain the entire time in the netherlands. amsterdam is a crazy city, bikes and people and bikes and trams and bikes and scooters and bikes - you get the idea. so getting to the campsite was a little touch and go, almost had a few disastrous encounters with bikes, especially after being used to the traffic in ireland, and now all of a sudden it's going the other way. oh, and marc met michele and i at the airport in amsterdam, so now we're a big happy family. camping zeeburg was a large campground by a large canal - yup, the canals are everywhere. we dropped our stuff, checked in, had a few heinekens and set up the tent. so it poured that night, and three people and three packs in a real two man tent is a little tight, not so conducive to actually sleeping. so a night of restless sleep, then off to see amsterdam. yup, the red light district is different, women in their skivvies in windows, and the coffeeshops sell pot. not so much the things i'm into, so... we spent the day just wandering around, eating leiden cheese, pastries and trying to stay a little dry. so amsterdam has the most museums per square mile of any city, we picked the anne frank house and the dutch resistance musuem. both places were pretty intense - the anne frank house because you realize how touch-and-go their survival was - 8 people in very small area depending on 3 or 4 other people to provide them with food and information. the father was the only one of those in hiding to survive the war, and the house detailed his desperate search for his wife and daughters (anne died less then a month before bergen-belsen was freed) and his heartbreak when found out that they had died. it was hard to imagine how that many people could survive for that long, basically stuck in house arrest, thinking that every day you might be found out. it was just an intense place and not easily describable.

the dutch restistance museum was really pretty amazing - it chronicled the fight of the dutch people against the germans - interesting because the germans wanted to integrate the dutch into germany, but the dutch did everything that they could to sabotage any efforts - it was like a james bond movie. there were the obvious - demonstrations against actions/laws against the jews, railroad and milk strikes, and then the not so obvious - over a hundred underground and illegal newspapers to combat the german propaganda, women transporting guns in baby carriages, secret passages and codes, it was amazing. and i have to say that the dutch women were pretty cool. two stood out - one had a baby and couldn't decide on a name, the midwife suggested a "dutch name" so she named the baby 'wilhelmina beatrix julianna....." - the names of the royal family that was in exile. so the birth announcement went in the german controlled paper - basically giving the finger to the germans. then everyone sent congratulatory notes, and the woman took out space in the paper for a thank you and of course published the name again (giving the finger once again). she was jailed for that. another woman was jailed for some offense and all of the jobs that she was given she managed to mess up - "accidentally' darned the socks shut, burned meals, etc. another group of women smuggled jewish babies out of the german-run preschool - which was constantly being guarded and watched from across the street. as the tram would go by, the women would run out with a baby and run alongside until the next tram stop and hop on there, all red faced and out of breath. of course all the passengers knew what was going on, and would just laugh as the women got on - a few hundred babies were saved that way. so just stories and stories like that. it was a really interesting place and gave a personal feel to what the dutch went through when they were occupied.

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Comments

[Katherine]

Glad to hear everything is going okay! I was wondering if you were alive and well. I've really enjoyed reading your blog. Sounds like you're having a great time. Keep writing! Katherine