A Shock...then Debasement

Diary

Sunday morning. Slept late and lounged at the NH Naarden hotel's terrific brunch, waiting for the promised noon arrival of the Big White Box. In what passes for a lobby, I pass the time by drinking my fifth kopje koffie, sweating as a result, and reading (haha) a Dutch newspaper. The concierge takes a call and is soon yelling. She slams down the phone. She turns to me and explains: the BIG WHITE BOX is still in Chicago. Security there had some kind of problem with it. It will come on tonight's plane, and KLM will deliver it tomorrow between 9 and noon. It is delayed because it weighs (drum roll, please) ... 44 kilos! I told her that missing my first morning of work would probably be a bad omen, and so she agrees to sign for it, since so far as we know there are not customs issues. Maybe my painstakingly prioritized packing strategy (2-days' needs in my carry-on, 4-days' in the checked suitcase, 2-weeks' in the Big White Box, and 6-weeks' needs in a later airshipment) would pay off after all. There was nothing more to do, so I dug out the map, took a taxi 6 km to the town of Bussum, my new home. The driver knew the street, and before I knew it we were stopped on and admiring...

... Doctor Frederik van Eedenweg. My new neighborhood.
 

When I descend from the taxi, I note a field across the Dr F v.Eedenweg from apartments (yes, plural) 1A. Needless to say, being so close to urban open space in a nation as crowded as the Netherlands is quite the luxury...which is a good thing, since my apartment itself is, well, not likely to prove exactly luxurious.
 

== AND NOW A SHOCK. ==

Before I have walked 200 meters north along Dr. F.v.Eedenweg, I am confronted by...this. I am mesmerized, I have very strong and conflicting emotions. I also come to realize that I know this statue--from art class in my relative youth I believe, or perhaps just from reading sometime in the past year about the Netherlands--I can't say. I will have to do some serious research to find out. But just now I ignore the silent misting rain and step close, slowly, silently. I find I have put my hand to my mouth. I stop. I can no longer move. I feel myself breaking into sobbing.
 

Here I speak strictly for myself: this is easily the most moving statue I have ever beheld. The legend on the pedestal reads: VOOR DE GEVALLENEN 1940-1945. The subject is distressed beyond weeping and of course represents the grief of all the women and families and friends of all the soldiers and others who "fell", that is had their brains blown out or were crushed under rubble or worse, during the Netherlands' horror. The fallen don't suffer any more, it's over now, the dates on the pedestal want to say, but of course the hurt is never over. The flowers and ribbons around the base were placed there today, Sunday. Some--from the looks of it, a lot of people--remember and still suffer from all the years that could have been but were not. I hesitate even to photograph.

A couple of deep breaths help, and I turn away. I wonder, over time, how many others have wept too, in that very place, and with far better reason than I.
 

It is interesting that when I move into the apartment I will see this every day.

== ...and now: the promised DEBASEMENT. ==

With all the shops closed and no access to the apartment interior, there was nothing more to see in this neighborhood. I walked to the Bussum train station--a very pleasant 13 minute walk from the apartment--uitstekend!--and my new bank and two wine shops on the way. An excellent omen. I take late lunch at an Italian restaurant, from whose kitchen I hear four languages I can identify, Dutch, Italian, Arabic, and English, and perhaps I am hearing even more. I dutifully observe Lord Mountbatten's Rule (never pass up an available toilet) and start north to the hotel, an hour's walk.

At thirty minutes, I am indeed halfway, but the bladder begins to ask for attention. In another five minutes it is like a little child relentlessly repeating its demand, louder and louder. In another five minutes I wonder if there is going to be trouble. I look around me as I walk faster, and I realize for the first time that in the Netherlands there are always windows in almost every direction around you, and the shades are never drawn. In five minutes more things get serious--damn that last cup of coffee. In the middle of a dense apartment area come to a bridge crossing a narrow, muddy, tree-covered ravine, and turn down to near the stream's bank, and with just my head at street level I turn my back to the wall of apartments through the trees, lean close to a tree trunk, separate my feet at the last moment and--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaOOOOOOOOoooooooooohhhh whew. I breathe, I zip up and ascend to resume my walk as though nothing had happened. No policeman on the street, and in the windows no small ladies in lace pointing frantically and gutteralizing into telephones.

Well, after only 30 hours in the Netherlands I had committed my first Dutch crime, but it turns out that I needn't have worried. Such happens often enough in this nation of ardent walkers, beer + strong coffee, utterly no Sunday access to public WCs, that there is a word for it: wildplassen...technically illegal in the Netherlands, but so are pot and speeding. Right.