DUTCH The Netherlands and its people the magazine about at home and abroad
Essay: St. Nicholas revisited... How the good old Saint stays relevant through the ages
Fast food: Amsterdam, automat capital of the world Croquettes in the wall, a fast food success story
PLUS Rotterdam Renaissance Brian Bramson eats gloop Golden Age masters Oil balls: tasty!
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Issue 2 November/December 2011
November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 1
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2 - DUTCH, the magazine
A subscription is also a great gift! Layout and contents may differ slightly from images shown November/December 2011
The Map
Ternaard
GRONINGEN
FRYSLAN
Wadden Sea
Groningen
Leeuwarden Beetsterzwaag
Sneek
Lippenhuizen
Hemrik
Assen
Heerenveen
NORTHHOLLAND
North Sea
DRENTHE
IJssel Lake
Nieuw-Amsterdam
Lelystad
Zaandam
Zwolle
FLEVOLAND
Haarlem
OVERIJSSEL
Almere
Amsterdam
The Hague
SOUTHHOLLAND
Delft
Gouda
Schiedam
Rotterdam
Emmen
Deventer
UTRECHT Utrecht
GELDERLAND
Zeist Arnhem
Rhine
Dordrecht
ZEELAND
Den Bosch Breda
Germany
BRABANT
Middelburg
Eindhoven Veldhoven
Venlo
LIMBURG
Scheldt
Belgium
Major Waterway PROVINCIAL BOUNDARY National Capital Provincial Capital Larger city or town mentioned in the text Smaller town or village mentioned in the text
November/December 2011
Maastricht
Maas 70 Kilometers 43.5 Miles
DUTCH, the magazine - 3
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Hilariously funny, in his first book
BRIAN BRAMSON
warns his nephew about the strange habits of the people of the Lowlands.
Answers to quizzes on page 46: False friends: 1. boot 2. trap 3. bad 4. glad 5. proper 6. hoe 7. zit 8. brood 9. baker 10. drop. Match the Words: metaal-metal, geel-yellow, legering-alloy, ring-ring, medaille-medal, smelten-melt, goud-gold, geld-money, munt-mint or coin, munt-mint or coin. Who: Saint Nicholas. What: The Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. Where: The Hague.
EVERY SATURDAY: BRUNCH SPECIAL 11.30 am - 2.30 pm
On the cover: Under a rare blue sky the spire of the South Church in Amsterdam (see p.43) towers over historic gables. (Photo: Steve Cadman)
DUTCH the magazine
Issue 2 - November/December 2011
Published by:
Mokeham Publishing Inc. 457 Ellis Street Penticton, BC V2A 4M1 Canada
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Box 20203 Penticton, BC V2A 8M1 Canada PO Box 2090 Oroville, WA 98844 USA
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Editor
Tom Bijvoet editor@dutchthemag.com
Sales and Administration Mohrea Halingten info@dutchthemag.com
Contributors
Brian Bramson, Nicole Holten, Dirk Hoogeveen, Shirley Moskow, Tim O’Callaghan, Anne van Arragon Hutten, Ronald van Erkel, Jesse van Muylwijck, Ubel Zuiderveld.
ISSN: 1927-1492 Canada Post Corporation Publications Mail Agreement No. 40017090. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Box 20203, Penticton, BC V2A 8M1 POSTMASTER US MAIL OFFICES DUTCH (USPS 003-365) is published bimonthly. Periodicals postage paid at US Mail, Blaine, WA 98230 Address changes in the USA please forward to: DUTCH, P.O. Box 2090, Oroville, WA 98844
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All rights reserved. The views expressed in DUTCH are those of the respective contributors and not necessarily those of the publisher or staff. Although all reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, the publishers do not assume any liability for errors or omissions anywhere in the publication, or on the website. DUTCH considers unsolicited manuscripts and mail for the Correspondence pages. All editorial material sent to DUTCH will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and may be subject to editing. We reserve the right to reject submissions. We prefer to receive submissions via e-mail, but cannot guarantee that we will acknowledge receipt. We will not return submissions received in hardcopy format, please send copies only. Printed in Canada.
November/December 2011
Tom Bijvoet - Editor’s Brief
On the lookout for lost
Ontario mail, flyers and th’s
S
o we made it to number two! It has been quite the ride. Starting a magazine from scratch takes a lot of work on the design and editorial side, but we had plenty of time before the launch to prepare for that. The actual logistics of publication are another matter. There are a lot of steps in the process between the files leaving our computers on their way to the printer (the man in the huge hall with the big impressive offset machines, not the device in the alcove across from my office door) and the magazine landing on your doormat. When we got the phone call that the proofs were ready, a few days after sending the files, we jumped into the car, full of excitement and anticipation, this was after all the first time we would get an indication of what the magazine would look like in print. We drove the hour from our editorial offices to the print hall and were presented with twelve huge sheets of glossy paper, each with four pages of our magazine on it. “So what do we look for in particular?” I asked. Well anything that does not look right, is odd, out of place, the print man said. I did not see anything off hand, I thought it looked great, until I suddenly noticed something in one of the drop quotes in the first article. Instead of ‘There seemed to be cameras everywhere,’ it read ‘ere seemed to be cameras everywhere.’ I panicked. Had we missed that before delivering the files to the printer in such a prominent place as a huge drop quote…? I phoned Mohrea back at the office. She checked the files, no, the ‘Th’ was definitely there. I showed it to the printer, he checked the files and confirmed that the ‘Th’ was present and accounted for. He could not explain it. I started looking at the pages in more detail and noticed that on several other pages in lots of words starting with Th those two letters were missing. But not consistently, there were plenty of Thises and Thats and Thoses and Thingamajigs intact. The printer had no explanation. We spent a few hours trying to identify the issue, until he went for the drastic solution: recreate the print files and try again. Two days behind our initial schedule the CEO of the print company made the trip down to our offices on a motorcycle (no complaints on the customer service side, although it must be said that it was a beautiful day for a ride along the lake) with the new proofs tucked safely into his saddle bag. All looked well and we signed off. Seven business days later, rather than the five we had expected, the magazine was delivered to our mailing house, where a new set of problems presented itself, the most significant being the absence of software to perNovember/December 2011
form the US postal pre-sort. We ran up another two or three days delay. By this time people were phoning us to ask where the magazine was. All we could say at the time was that it had been printed, looked fine, and would be mailed very soon. The day after Labor Day I was supposed to bring the magazines across the border for mailing at the USPS-outlet in Northern Washington that we use, more than a week later than initially projected – because of the relatively low issue count we had dispensed with the expensive services of a courier and customs broker and decided to do the brokerage ourselves, something we have done often enough in smaller volumes for our other publications. The postmaster phoned just as I was about to set off to ask if I could come a day later. I may have thought the volume of items being mailed was low, he obviously did not. He did not have enough staff in to handle it and could I come the next day please. I did and despite some trepidation about potential hold-ups at the border whizzed across. Soon the first e-mails and phone calls confirming receipt started coming in. But not from Ontario. In Ontario the magazine was delivered very late, if at all. We are aware of problems with Canada Post delivery there, but hope that everyone who paid for it has now received the first issue. If not, please let us know! In the mean time encouragingly enough, new subscriptions to the as yet unseen magazine kept coming in. And writers started pitching material for future issues. Given the financial situation we are in as a start-up business, so we explained to them, we cannot afford to pay them the fees they may be accustomed to. It was heart-warming to see that some very experienced writers have as much faith as our founding subscribers and agreed to write for no fee or a nominal one, in the expectation of better times ahead. Some of those articles you will find in this magazine and let’s strive to keep our promise of better pickings in the future! Overall support and reactions are positive. We are going through some teething troubles on the production side and also still wonder what happened to the threehundred expensively produced flyers for the charity event in Ontario that seem to have vanished into thin air. But as we move forward and are almost, but not quite on target with our subscription numbers we thank you again for supporting DUTCH, the magazine and ask again: if you like it, show it to your friends and encourage them to take out a subscription! DUTCH, the magazine - 5
Contents
Poetry
26 Pleasantry De Génestet poked fun at the Dutch climate 160 years ago. Not much seems to have changed since!
Regulars
Cooking
30 Seasonal Cheer We celebrate Saint Nicholas and the New Year with rich, luxurious baked goods and oil balls (really!).
Travel
34 Rotterdam Renaissance
Epitaph
42 Milo Anstadt The unlikely self-taught economic refugee from Central Europe told the Dutch a story about their own history.
Place
43 The South Church Amsterdam’s first Protestant church has been without a proper purpose since 1929. Maybe plan a party there...
Skyscrapers in the centre of a once decimated city create a skyline that is the envy of Europe.
Comic Strip
Language
The Dutch Judge wonders: will Saint Nicholas come...?
40 This is the place We would rather be in the Alpha city than anywhere else, or so the famed song tells us.
46 The Dutch Judge Seasonal cheer (p.30)
Columns 27 Perspectives
Anne van Arragon Hutten
Immigrant children and the road not taken.
28 Digging for Dutch Roots Dirk Hoogeveen
What’s an o or two between close relatives.
44 An Englishman Abroad Brian Bramson
Breakfast and dress code. 6 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011
Contents
Sinterklaas in New Westminster (p.12)
Departments 3 The Map Your visual guide to what is where. Take a good look at the boundaries between Utrecht, North- and South-Holland. They will change!
5 Editor’s Brief Logistical challenges and lost magazines, flyers and letters.
Features 12 Sinterklaas revisited...
How good old Saint Nick manages to keep changing with the times, over and over and over again.
16 Wall food Where once New York ruled, now Amsterdam is the Automat capital of the world
8 The Courant Traditional parades in financial trouble, relaxed regulations for wind farms, inconvenient provincial boundaries, Almere is disappointed in Madurodam and a new name for a new square in multi-cultural Utrecht.
11 Correspondence About a missed Dutch language newsletter.
46 Fun and games Identifying false friends, deciding who, what and where and testing your Dutch word recognition skills. Plus a limerick.
Old and new (p. 8)
C/W: TOM BIJVOET - ESSENTNIEUWS - NICOLE HOLTEN
20 Golden Masterworks One of the most impressive private collections of seventeenth century masterworks goes on tour. We get a brief glimpse of some of the gorgeous paintings soon on display in Houston.
24 Living in the Indies Living in the Dutch East Indies often revolved about relieving boredom. In the second of a four part series about life in the Indies we join Tim O’Callaghan in Batavia, Bandung and Sukabumi. November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 7
The Courant
Sinterklaas arrives in Schiedam
Traditional Saint Nicholas parades run out of steam
T
he weeks after St. Nicholas arrives in The Netherlands from Spain by steamship in midNovember, which is televised and broadcast live for the whole nation to see, he is customarily welcomed in person in the cities, towns and villages of the country by local dignitaries, usually the mayor and aldermen. The arrival is celebrated with a parade, with marching bands playing special St. Nicholas tunes followed by the good saint himself on his white steed, surrounded by his Black Peter helpers who throw candy and spice nuts (see page 31) into the crowd of parents and children lined up along the parade route. This tradition is endangered by the economic downturn and resulting fi-
nancial hardship of many municipalities. Subsidies are being withdrawn by city councils and while major cities like Amsterdam can still rely on sponsorship by large corporations small towns and villages may well have to scrap the parade altogether. Several city councils, including those in Veldhoven and Breda, have announced that it is getting dicey and that they may well have to call off the parade for this year. Mr. Guus Smits of the Saint Nicholas Association of The Netherlands, a not for profit society that was founded in 2001 to support and maintain the tradition, explained that it costs more to organize a traditional parade than many people realize. “You need a Saint Nicholas and a horse of
course, but also things like security. In some places shopping centers help out, provided that after the parade Saint Nicholas can stroll through the mall, shake hands and hand out some gifts. But especially in the smaller villages the local government subsidy is essential.” For some towns, however, there is no question that it is a priority. Marc-Jean Ahne, Alderman in Deventer says that it is unthinkable to reduce the subsidy. “The Saint Nicholas parade is of huge importance to our younger citizens.” If you happen to be in Holland around that time of year, mark your calendar: December 3, 10 a.m. Saint Nicholas comes to Deventer, where by tradition he always arrives a few weeks later than anywhere else in the country.
Power struggle over wind farms
O
ne would think that it should be easy for the Dutch to erect a new windmill. After all, they have been doing it for centuries. Nevertheless it appears that building windmills, the new kind, wind turbines on long poles used for the generation of electricity, regularly gets bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire. Permits for building new installations on private land have to be obtained from 8 - DUTCH, the magazine
the provinces and the process is often frustrated by protests from residents of the areas in which the new turbines are proposed. The national Minister for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation now wants to transfer the authority for vetting requests for wind farms exceeding a capacity of 100 megawatts from the provinces to the national government. Under plans unveiled in a so called
‘green deal’ (there appears to be no workable Dutch equivalent for the term) between the government and the energy producers by 2020 an additional 6000 megawatts of energy will have to be produced by land-based wind farms. Currently only about 1500 megawatts are produced in that way. In addition to the land-based turbines, another 3000 megawatts will have to come from wind turbines erected off shore. November/December 2011
The Courant
Boundary Disputes
Madurodam: So where’s Almere?
T
C/W: DAVID OOMS - EDO DIJKGRAAF - SANDER VAN DER WEL
hey have been living in the same cozy house for years, but the Van der Boon family eat their dinner in the province of Noord-Holland and go to bed in South-Holland. Their house straddles the provincial and municipal boundaries. “We get two property tax assessments and in winter the snow plow stops right in front of our door, leaving one half of the street in front of our house unplowed until the plow from the other province comes”, says Robert van der Boon. This bizarre living arrangement will soon come to an end. The government has recently adopted a law that prevents buildings to be located across provincial or municipal boundaries. The three provinces of Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht will now have to engage in an exercise of redrawing their boundaries and swapping parcels of land. The new law will make life easier for the Van der Boons, who had problems getting the local paper delivered to their ‘out of province’ address and have found that delivery drivers often could not locate them, because the GPS-systems did not understand the odd arrangement. A sigh of relief is sounding at various spots along these old historic boundary lines.
November/December 2011
Big bucks for little buildings
S
ince 1952 miniature city Madurodam in The Hague has been a popular destination for people who want to see the most important architecture of The Netherlands, but have limited time or budget – or who simply want to see a very well-presented representation of many of the most important buildings of the country in the space of a few hours. Several castles and royal palaces, characteristic farms from various provinces, inner city canals, but also modern objects like Schiphol Airport, the Erasmus Bridge (see page 34), the Evoluon science museum in Eindhoven, an oil production platform, a wave pool and an amusement park are among the hundreds of objects painstakingly reproduced at a scale of 1:25. But the newest major city of The Netherlands, Almere, is conspicuously absent in Madurodam. Founded in 1975 in the newly reclaimed polder of Southern Flevoland the city has grown to about 200,000 people in a period of 35 years. Its city
centre was designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and it has some other modern structures of national significance such as its library, theater and the futuristic Brandboxx National Fashion Centre. When Madurodam announced a major renovation, that seemed an ideal time to reserve some space for Holland’s newest and most modern city. At least, that’s what Hans Snel of Almere City Marketing (ACM) thought. He was however unpleasantly surprised when he discovered that to be represented would cost the city tens of thousands of euros. “We don’t have that kind of money,” Snel said. “The principle is misguided. Madurodam is supposed to be a true reflection of the whole country and it is odd that we should have to pay to be represented.” So for anyone wanting to experience the architectural delights of Almere a trip to the polder itself will be required for the foreseeable future - to see the real thing, which cannot be all bad. DUTCH, the magazine - 9
The Courant
Church Street in the Frisian village of Ternaard
Church Street, Church Square: that’s so old...
T
he four most common street names in The Netherlands, in ascending order, are School Street, Windmill Street, Village Street and the undisputed number one: Church Street - that would be Kerkstraat in The Netherlands, except in the province of Friesland, as can be seen in the picture above. It is interesting to reflect on the very unscientific, but no less likely conclusion one can draw about the development of Dutch towns on the basis of that list: first a church was built for a rural community of farmers, around which a village grew and to make the village complete, it needed a windmill and a school. Neat and compact and probably not far from the truth. So Holland abounds with Church Streets and one may add, Church Lanes, Church Squares and Church Roads. How reflective is that of the new multi-ethnic, multi-religious nature of the country? Not very, in the opinion of the city administrators of Utrecht. And so, after the building work on a new Mosque and adjacent apartment complex in the Lombok neighborhood is completed Utrecht will have the first official Mosque Square of the country. The local Islamic residents, predominantly of Turkish origin are very excited. “About time,” said one man. “Our parents 10 - DUTCH, the magazine
came here fifty years ago, they will be very proud.” Another added: “I have been here for thirty-five years. It’s these little things that make people feel at home.” “It will bring people closer together,” the first man added. A spokesman for the real estate company that is building the apartment complex was less impressed: “We would have preferred a more sympathetic name, more reflective of the multicultural nature of the area.” He fears that the apartments will be difficult to sell with an address like that. The treasurer of the mosque in question does not accept those fears: “It’s a logical descriptive name. It is not more than a location indicator, the square is next to a mosque. The presence of the Islamic faith is a given in The Netherlands. It is unbelievable that we should still be debating this in the year 2011. Integration has to work both ways, we must be accepted for who we are! This is a fine example of that.” The consensus among locals, of both native Dutch and foreign heritage also seems to be that the opposition is unnecessary and outmoded. A passing student of Dutch extraction said: “Ridiculous. Why should we have a Church Square and not a Mosque Square!” Quite, although the mosques still have a little bit of catching up to do… November/December 2011
Correspondence Monthly newsletter missed
Congratulations on the first edition of DUTCH! We wish you all the best. An addition for your article about Dutch language newspapers in North America: De Nieuwe Amsterdammer was a monthly newsletter for the Dutch-language community in North America, published from 1991 through 2004. It was produced by Eleonore Speckens, Benno Groeneveld and Hanny Veenendaal. Guus Bosman, editor dutchinamerica.com Washington, D.C. We thank Mr. Bosman for reminding us of De Nieuwe Amsterdammer, which we did not mention in our article. Of more current interest is his own website, www.dutchinamerica.com, which is the predominant web-based news source for the Dutch on this side of the ocean. We recommend a visit to the site, especially for the comprehensive listings of events and businesses. We welcome your letters to the editor, but we cannot guarantee placement. We reserve the right to edit letters for accuracy, brevity, clarity and good taste. Submissions by e-mail to: editor@dutchthemag.com preferred. You may also mail your letter to: The Editor Dutch, The Magazine USA: PO Box 2090, Oroville, WA 98844 Canada: Box 20203, Penticton, BC V2A 8M1
Ina’s Story
a new book by Anne van Arragon Hutten
(author of Uprooted: Dutch immigrant children in Canada 1947-1959)
A true story about growing up on a Dutch freight ship on the Rhine during the Great Depression and WW II.
To obtain your copy, send a cheque for $20 to: North Mountain Press 181 Thorpe Rd, Kentville, NS B4N 3V7, Canada (includes shipping and handling)
De Krant is the only Dutch language monthly in North America. News items, essays, columns, letters, recipes, puzzles, poems, songs, jokes, written in Dutch from a North American perspective...
Request a FREE trial copy! NEL WITTEMAN
phone: (250) 492-3002 email: admin@dekrant.ca www.dekrant.ca
November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 11
Essay Sinterklaas arrives in New Westminster, British Columbia by paddlewheeler
Sinterklaas revisited...
...again and again and again
T
By Tom Bijvoet
here is no celebration or tradition as Dutch as the St. Nicholas, or Sinterklaas, feast of December 5. Where the Dutch go, there goes Sinterklaas, as we told our children when we stood on the New Westminster Quay in British Columbia, awaiting the arrival of the old saint. Each year Tako Slump, local businessman and owner of the Holland Shopping Center Dutch stores in New Westminster and Chilliwack, British Columbia, organizes the arrival of Sinterklaas by paddle wheeler, which is about as close as you can practically get to the traditional steamship. Across the continent and around the world many other Dutch Stores, communities and clubs organize similar events, though not always as elaborate as the New Westminster one. Sinterklaas comes to Canada especially for Dutch children. “Does he come across the ocean on the paddle 12 - DUTCH, the magazine
wheeler?” an incredulous six year old asks. “No, no he would not have time,” we answer, hearing the undercurrent in the question, “he flies across on a plane and takes the boat for the last few miles, but he does really travel from Spain to Holland on a steamship”. “How come Sinterklaas speaks English and not Dutch?” Well, there are a lot of children here who have Dutch parents, but don’t know the language very well and he knows everyone speaks English, so that is just better for everyone, that’s the kind of guy he is.” “He speaks very good English, doesn’t he…?” “Well he’s a saint.” And that’s that. Sinterklaas is a saint and he can do lots of things, like speak both English and Dutch very well, despite having been born in Turkey, living in Spain and only spending a few weeks each year in The Netherlands. Like riding his horse over slippery rooftops withNovember/December 2011
TOM BIJVOET
Good and bad kids in 1665 The feast of St. Nicholas by Jan Steen
out anyone ever seeing or hearing him (correction: as a little boy I once saw him on the tall steep roof of the Nielens’ house across the back alley when I woke up in the middle of the night and peeked out of my bedroom window). Like coming down chimneys, even in houses with central heating. Like being immortal. But that is what being a saint is all about, even if your parents adhere to a non-Christian faith or are not religious at all. Sinterklaas is Holland’s secular saint. When I showed a Canadian colleague the photographs of our jaunt to New Westminster and she saw Sinter klaas in his full bishop’s regalia with his long red robes, his miter adorned with a golden cross and his bishop’s crozier, she said: “that’s a religious celebration…”. Okay, December sixth is still recognized as an optional feast day for Saint Nicholas of Myra in the Roman Catholic church and he is still a figure of major importance in the Eastern Orthodox traditions. But if the feast had not had a strong folk culture component and if the symbols associated with it had not been largely secular in nature, it would never have been allowed to survive the reformation in strictly Calvinist Holland. The new protestant authorities did fight a largely unsuccessful rear guard battle against the centuries old tradition in the sixteenth century. And although Sinterklaas did disappear from public life for some time, the celebrations endured inside the home, with gingerbread, marzipan, the exchange of gifts, the placing of shoes by the chimney, and many of the traditions that we still associate with Sinterklaas today.
as the early middle ages and being presumed by some scholars to have roots even in pre-Christian times, it is so adaptable. Some aspects of Sinterklaas that we take entirely for granted are only very recent inventions. The incarnation of Saint Nicholas as he is represented in The Netherlands was influenced to a large extent by only one book, written by Amsterdam schoolteacher Jan Schenkman in 1850, called Saint Nicholas and his servant. This is where Black Peter appears for the first time, where we find out that Sinterklaas lives in Spain and arrives in Holland by steamship. Around 1890 Sinterklaas acquires a horse, before that time he traveled on foot and it is not until the 1920s that his horse is always white. Amsterdam started its traditional Sinterklaas arrival parade in 1934 and only in the 1950s does the one Black Peter suddenly multiply into a throng. In the 1990s Sinterklaas’s horse is christened Amerigo and the tradition keeps being reinvented. Three new developments since my last Sinterklaas as a resident of The Netherlands are that children now dress up as Sinterklaas and Black Peter themselves to greet the visitors, that where he used to sneak off back to Spain quietly during the night of December 5th Sinterklaas now is given a formal and public farewell parade in some cities and most strikingly, that Sinterklaas himself is becoming more of a jolly cartoon character replacing the venerable stately old wise man of the days of my youth, when the jovial role was played by Black Peters, who themselves even a few decades earlier had been fearsome enforcers of good behavior without any sense of humor. We can see these developments in popular depictions of Sinterklaas and one of the places where the image is particularly apparent is in the wrapping paper that is specially printed for the occasion each year, since it first became popular in the 1930s. A beautifully produced 1852: Not such a jolly fellow
One of the most striking aspects of the tradition is that despite the feast being documented to go back as far November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 13
1930: A warmer caring Saint Nicholas
book called ‘Sinterklaas Verpakt’ by biologist Jan Carel Zadoks, who has been collecting scraps of Sinterklaas wrapping paper since 1961, has just appeared. He has more than 1500 different pieces in his collection, a representative sample of which he has reproduced in his book, accompanied by a history of the feast itself and in particular a description of the historical and sociological aspects of the changes seen in the wrapping paper. The book beautifully illustrates the development of Sinterklaas’s persona over the more recent decades, from the stern Jan Schenkman inspired images, to a much more accessible and caring figure.
roses’ and ‘a nose like a cherry’. He comes on a sleigh with reindeer, two of whom are known as ‘Dunder and Blixem’, which are much more Dutch of course - donder en bliksem - than the German Donner and Blitzen, the names that are more common now. Of course we all know what we still recognize in Santa Claus: his name, coming down from the roof through the chimney, the footwear fetish even though he prefers stockings over shoes, the bright red clothing and the white beard. But the differences are striking enough for the two to live happily beside each other in many NorthAmerican Dutch households. And the elasticity of the tradition allows for that. Apart from the public persona of Saint Nicholas and his adaptation to modern times over the ages, most Dutch families have their own little traditions, quirks often, associated with the celebration. In ours it happens that since we live in Canada Sinter klaas and Santa Claus actually exchange notes about the kids’ behavior and are in fairly regular e-mail contact with each other. It helps Santa to know, when he arrives three weeks after Saint Nicholas, what particular transgressions of the past year have already been dealt with and that the kids do not need any more presents (well, let’s say, not many more presents). And if there is ever any doubt about the vibrancy of the Sinterklaas celebration, the reinvention of the feast on a continual basis gives us very good hope for its survival in the modern age, this is after all not the first ‘modern’ age to which the celebration has had to adapt. And the
I
n that respect Sinterklaas almost seems to be gradually transforming into a figure that is becoming to resemble Santa Claus a little more. And Santa Claus is the happy living proof of how fluid the tradition can be. The Dutch Settlers of New Netherland of course brought the most important folk celebration of their time with them to the new world. But the settlement predated Jan Schenkman’s book by two centuries and many of the outward appearances of Sinterklaas that are so established today had not been invented yet. The void was filled by Santa Claus and like Jan Schenkman’s book in Holland it was one text, a poem published in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823 that took a lot of the already apparently transformed local tradition and canonized it. ‘A visit from St. Nicholas’, or ‘The Night before Christmas’ as it is better known, introduces us to a ‘chubby and plump right jolly old elf ’ with cheeks ‘like 14 - DUTCH, the magazine
Young boy dressed up as Sinterklaas November/December 2011
Sinterklaas and Santa: Jolly cartoon characters becoming good friends
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commercial viability of publishing a book about as specialized a subject as Sinterklaas wrapping paper which is actually an interesting read, proves how central the celebration still is to Dutch life and society. Sinterklaas is not dead yet, even though it has been rumored over the ages that he died on December 6, 342. Anytime, anyday, anywhere with Excel Travel In addition to our tours, we offer you a full range of destinations and transportation choices. We pride ourselves on excellent travel service, before, during and after your trip!
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November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 15
Fast Food
Wall food by Febo
Amsterdam: the automat capital of the world
R
By Ubel Zuiderveld
emember Marilyn Monroe singing her hit song Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend in the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? A kiss may be grand But it won't pay the rental On your humble flat Or help you at the Automat.
The Automat - millions of New Yorkers used to eat there. But they stopped doing that when McDonald’s and Burger King conquered the city. Nowadays buying hot food from an Automatiek is typically Dutch. Without a doubt eating hot snacks at the Automatiek is as Dutch as windmills, wooden shoes and tulips. Thanks to the Amsterdam-based fast food chain Febo, the largest city of The Netherlands became the Automat Capital of the world. Many tourists think 16 - DUTCH, the magazine
the Automatiek is one of Amsterdam’s most outrageous attractions, besides the red light district and the coffee shops that sell soft drugs of course. Most of these tourists don’t know it, but sixty years ago not Amsterdam but New York was the world’s largest Automat town. In 1912 two entrepreneurs from Philadelphia, Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, opened their first New York Automat at 1157 Broadway. After having pioneered a so-called waitressless restaurant in their home town, Horn & Hardart came to the Big Apple with their cafeterias and automats (that they purchased in Germany). The novelty needed instructions: ‘First drop your nickels in the slot. Then turn the knob, the glass door clicks open. Lift the door and help yourself.’ Initially customers could only buy cold dishes at the Automat, like cakes, fruit and sandwiches, all at a very November/December 2011
reasonable price. Later on Horn & Hardart introduced hot Automats. The customers could choose components and thus compile their own hot meals. Horn & Hardart became a hot thing. The hard-working men and women of the fastgrowing city needed good, reasonably priced food. Horn & Hardart grew to be the biggest restaurant chain in the country. In the middle of the 1950s Horn & Hardart had about fifty outlets in New York alone. Horn & Hardart became a New York icon. The Automats were pictured on postcards, America’s own Rembrandt, Edward Hopper, made a famous painting of the Automat and Irving Berlin even honored the Automat in his musical Face The Music, as Marilyn Monroe did in her hit song Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend. Around the time Monroe sang the song, Horn & Hardart served more than 800,000 New Yorkers each and every day, mainly through their self service automats. But the company failed to innovate in time and lost relevance for the growing middle class population. McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s, where the consumers could purchase hot food at drive throughs, took over. Horn & Hardart lost the battle and New York lost its position as the Automat Capital of the World. In 2006,
with the aid of an Automat dealer from Groningen, Bamn! Food tried to bring the Automat back. The revival was not successful. Three years after opening, the Automat in the East Village closed. The glorious days of the Automat never returned to New Amsterdam. Old Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, took over, thanks to a Dutch familyowned business called Febo.
F
ebo turned 70 this year. The Amsterdam company celebrated its birthday with the publication of the book, Febo – A Phenomenon. Febo Automatieks can be found all over The Netherlands nowadays, but the company was not the first in the country to sell hot and cold food in Automats. The Automatiek conquered Amsterdam and the rest of The Netherlands in the 1930s, long before Febo opened its first bakery in Amsterdam in 1941. The bakery, started during the German occupation near Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium was an instant success. It was said in those wartime days of scarcity that entrepreneur Johan Izaäk de Borst could even create tasty food almost without ingredients. But there was one product that his customers liked in particular. Maison Febo became famous for its hot meat croquettes.
Dutch fast food
FEBO - JORGE ANDRADE
McDonald’s is by far the biggest fast food chain in The Netherlands. But there are still about 4,800 typically Dutch snackbars, cafeterias and fritures. After many decades of growth, from 1997 on the number of these fry-shops started declining by about a percent every year. But the typical Dutch fries and snacks are still popular. The most popular snack is the frikandel (see picture on facing page), a sausage consisting of meat, flour and herbs. The Dutch mostly eat their frikandel with pieces of onion, mayonnaise and hot curry sauce. Second comes the good old kroket (croquette), mostly filled with a hotchpotch of meat. Even McDonald’s in the Netherlands sells the McKroket (a croquette on a burger bun). Other popular Dutch snacks sold in automats are: cheese soufflés, burgers, satay, egg rolls, meatballs, bami- and nasischijven (crusty snacks filled with Indonesian style noodles or rice). November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 17
Busy crowd at a Febo outlet near the Amsterdam Arena Soccer Stadium
After World War II the Amsterdammers lined up in long rows for the delicious snack. Maison Febo made so much money with croquettes that De Borst decided to quit baking bread and pastry. He closed the bakery. In 1960, just around the corner from his former bakery, in fact in the family’s living room, he opened up his first Automatiek. The number of Automats in The Netherlands was already declining and the Automatiek would probably have vanished if it wasn’t for Febo. Thanks to the company, drawing hot food from the wall still is a common Dutch habit today. The first Febo Automatiek was only a very small snack bar without seats. It had some Automats and a buffet where the customers could buy fries and ice cream.
Again customers queued. The Febo croquette became popular in all of Amsterdam. To keep up with the growing demand, Febo opened more outlets in Amsterdam, especially in the 1970s. For a long time Febo was bigger than McDonald’s in The Netherlands. McDonald’s opened its first European restaurant in Zaandam in 1971 in cooperation with Dutch supermarket giant Albert Heijn and this outlet, about ten miles from Amsterdam, inspired the founder of Febo. De Borst introduced milkshakes, burgers and turned his business into a franchise organization, which was rather unique in the Dutch catering business of those years. Febo grew and grew. From Groningen to Den Bosch and from Arnhem to Sneek and Venlo. Fe-
Customer loyalty
Jan van Boven 18 - DUTCH, the magazine
Jan van Boven was born in 1923. He is a Febo franchisee in Amsterdam and he still works in his Automatiek every day. A remarkable man Jan is without a doubt the oldest fast food entrepreneur of The Netherlands. He tells about a couple that emigrated to America and came back for their first visit to Amsterdam in a very long time. After all those years they immediately recognized Jan. “Are you still working here?” they asked him. Jan answered: “Well, I’ve been to bed in between.” The couple told Jan they moved to the USA and it was their first visit to Febo in 26 years. Jan said: “Mmm, some fine customers you are, visiting us only once every 26 years.” November/December 2011
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Johan Cruyff with a young fan in a Febo outlet
Johan Cruyff
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Ask people around the world to mention someone famous from The Netherlands and, if they can, many will come up with the name of Johan Cruyff. No, not Vincent van Gogh or Rembrandt, but Cruyff. He is considered one of the best soccer players ever. Cruyff won a lot of prizes with Ajax Amsterdam, the club where he started his career, and CF Barcelona, his second home. In 1974 he played with the Dutch team in the final of the World Championships against the Germans (and yes, the Dutch lost the game.) He even spent two seasons in the USA, with the Los Angeles Aztecs in 1979/80 and with the Washington Diplomats in 1980/81. Cruyff is a big Febo fan. He wrote the foreword for Marcel de Jong’s book about the company. Cruyff’s Dutch office is in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. Opposite the arena are two Febo outlets. Broodje Halfom is one of Cruyff’s favorites. Broodje Halfom is a typical Amsterdam snack, a bread bun with salted beef, baked liver and sometimes pieces of bacon. The sandwich is said to have been invented more than a century ago by Jewish sandwich shops in Amsterdam.
bo’s can be found in nearly all large cities in The Netherlands. Today, it has 65 Automatieks and is still growing. About ten years ago the third generation of the family joined the organization’s management. Four years ago Febo opened a brand new factory in North Amsterdam, the most modern Dutch snack production facility. Febo innovates but stays true to the principles of 1941. The Amsterdam company went on making top quality snacks with the finest (and therefore not always cheapest) ingredients. While the vast majority of snack bars and cafeterias in The Netherlands sell frozen snacks, Febo still delivers fresh croquettes, frikandels, chicken wings, burgers and other snacks. And Febo stayed true to the Automatiek. It still accounts for about sixty percent of the turnover in the outlets. Some people, especially students, even use Febo as a verb. I febo, you febo, he febos and we febo… November/December 2011
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(604) 530-6771 1-800-811-2388 DUTCH, the magazine - 19
Collector’s items
Golden age masterworks
A unique private collection on display By Shirley Moskow
S
hh,” the well-dressed woman with a finger to her lips cautions as she stealthily approaches the man asleep in his chair. A self-satisfied look plays on her face and she carefully dips her hand into his jacket pocket. She need have no concern. From the pitcher and glass on the crimson tablecloth, it appears that he has passed out from too much drink. He is not likely to awaken. ‘Sleeping Man Having His Pockets Picked’ was painted around 1655 by Nicolaes Maes, a student of Rembrandt van Rijn. The oil on board genre scene is one of almost seventy masterpieces on view – portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and sea paintings, as well as Dutch and Flemish furniture – in ‘Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection.’ The Van Otterloos believe that it is a collector’s responsibility to share. From time to time they’ve lent pieces to museums, including the Mauritshuis in The Hague. But ‘Golden’ is the first opportunity for art lovers to view the collection in its entirety. The Peabody Essex Museum 20 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011
(PEM), Salem, Massachusetts, is home to an impressive collection of Dutch art objects and organized the exhibition, which went on a national tour of the United States with stops at The Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, (where it can be seen from November 13 until February 12). Art critics describe this private collection as ‘spectacular’ and ‘unrivalled.’ One called the Van Otterloos ‘the most important collectors you’ve never heard of.’ The couple now divides their time between their homes in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Naples, Florida, but Rose-Marie was born in Belgium and Eijk in The Netherlands. About two decades ago, when they started to collect, they followed the sage advice of experts to specialize in the paintings of their native countries. They were familiar with the art, which they had grown up with in their homes and on school outings to museums. They knew the languages and, therefore, had an November/December 2011
advantage in researching primary sources. Concentrating on the highest quality works in excellent condition - a good rule for any collector - the van Otterloos managed to assemble what some critics rank as the finest private collection of 17th century Dutch and Flemish art in the world. The 17th century, was the Dutch Golden Age, when The Netherlands
was a shipping power and mercantile center as well as a leader in the sciences and the arts. In contrast to most of Europe, the Dutch enjoyed religious freedom, which attracted great thinkers and innovators. The mercantile class prospered. Despite their newly earned wealth, however, the Dutch avoided ostentation. No flashy jewelry or showy clothes for these sensible people. Dutch entrepreneurs used their wealth to commission paintings, often portraits, by such artists as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan Brueghel the Elder, among others. They also enjoyed pictures of the sea, which highlighted their shipping interests, and landscapes, and genre paintings of ordinary activities like ice skating on a pond in winter.
T
hey displayed these lush and beautiful masterpieces on the walls of their homes. Like the original collectors almost 400 years ago, the Van Otterloos, too, enjoy their collection at home. Imagine the pleasure DUTCH, the magazine - 21
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November/December 2011
of living with Gerrit Dou’s appealingly rendered ‘Sleeping Dog,’ or the perpetual spring of Dutch flower paintings like ‘Glass Vase With Flowers On a Stone Ledge’ by Jan Davidsz de Heem, and ‘Still Life with Roses in a Glass Vase’ by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. Surely, the word ‘gorgeous’ was coined for this kind of art. The prize of the Van Otterloo collection is, without a doubt, the stunning ‘Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh,’ painted in 1632 by the 26-year-old Rembrandt. The sensitive lines etching her face, the delicate lace of her cap, and the luxurious fabric of her dress reveal as much about the talent of the young artist as the privileged life of the sitter. The merchants also commissioned furniture for their homes, massive dark wood chairs, tables, and cabinets covered with expertly carved religious figures. An oak and honey cabinet in the exhibition, for example, is substantial, just the sort of chest one might expect to find in the home of a pious businessman. It bears silent witness to hard-earned wealth.
These Dutch lived the good life in a beautiful city. They ate well. The exhibition includes paintings of lavish tables set with platters of food like ‘Breakfast Still Life with a Ham and a Basket of Cheese,’ painted around 1627 by Pieter Claesz. The artists also rendered beautifully detailed images of brick and stone buildings in a sun drenched Amsterdam cityscape. Jan van der Heyden’s canvas of the grand Westerkerk, for example, is a loving tribute to his native city mirrored in the waters of the Keizersgracht Canal. The lavishly illustrated exhibition catalogue is available in hardcover and in paperback from the Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, Salem, Massachusetts, and at the museum web site: www.pem.org.
November/December 2011
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo All illustrations accompanying this article are courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. The following paintings from the Van Otterloo collection are shown: 1. Study of a young woman in profile, Salomon de Bray (1636) 2. Sleeping man having his pockets picked, Nicolaas Maes (appr. 1655) 3. Winter landscape near a village, Hendrik Avercamp (appr. 1610) 4. Still life with roses in a glass vase, Ambrosius Bosschaert (appr. 1619) 5. View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam, Jan van der Heyden (appr. 1670) 6. Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh, Rembrandt van Rijn (1632) DUTCH, the magazine - 23
Bandung calling
‘Little Dutch kids’ at a Bandung school, 1931
Living in the Indies Part 2 in a series of 4 about life in the Dutch East Indies (1927 -1950)
A
s the Dutch and European populations in Java grew it became clear that certain fundamental requirements needed for an enjoyable life in the tropics were absent. Boredom, especially among the women, contributed to many ultimatums being delivered upon strained relationships and more often than not resulted in early return voyages to The Netherlands. It was simply not enough to live in paradise as the shipping and immigration posters advertised. A sense of purpose, culture, and sophistication had to be developed 24 - DUTCH, the magazine
By Tim O’Callaghan in order to maintain the European population that had traveled half way around the world in search of a better life. Batavia (now Jakarta) and Bandung especially began a campaign to deliver European culture to the Indies. Society clubs, concert halls and theaters were built in haste. Performers and entertainers in music, dance, stage, and opera, were brought to the Indies to provide an opportunity for certain residents to elevate their social standing; for most who now made the Indies their home it was a way to enrich
their lives… a morale boost for its citizenry. Housing for the constant influx of new arrivals needed to be built and neighborhoods needed to be planned. Wide tree lined avenues, parks, and architecturally stunning rows of houses were erected to cater to the avalanche of people that began arriving in 1915 and continued through the 1930s. On arrival at Tanjung Priuk families dispersed all over West Java with the two main destinations being Batavia and Bandung. My family settled in the Paris of the East, November/December 2011
Bandung. My Grandfather had been a policeman in Holland with few prospects for advancement due to an injury. Like many others he saw Indonesia as an opportunity to serve his country, to provide a better life for his family, and to rekindle the flame of his career. Within a few short years he had achieved the rank of Inspector First Class, his children were fully assimilated into Indies life, and he was observing his patriotic duty. Life was good.
L
ife in the Indies, at least for my family, revolved around routine and a strict religious conviction. The photos I have of the early years in Bandung show an integrated and happy community. School was a mixture of learning, playing, and birthday parties and those attending consisted equally of Dutch, Indo (mixed race DutchIndonesian), and Indonesian children. The perspective I have of this time is through the eyes of my mother and therefore through the
eyes of a child. Many of her friends were Indonesian and so to her this meant that life for Indonesians was the same as life for her. She had no reason to believe anything else. For her and every other child of the same age, with whom you spoke or played, and who you were taught by, was largely irrelevant. She had lived in Indonesia since before her first birthday and therefore the country was her home. The era known as Tempo Doeloe (the olden days, approximately 1870-1914) was already in the rearvision mirror as another decade turned over and the thirties fell upon the Indies. Life was changing and unseen forces were taking hold both nationally and internationally. The 1930s would prove to be the decade in which the colonial swan song would enter its final verse. For a child developing into a teenager and now living in the city of Batavia, life continued to feel the same as always. Sheltered from the
world by protective parents my mother and aunts knew of nothing that should be a concern. They attended St. Ursula and St. Theresa schools, attended St. Maria cathedral every Sunday where, with the fear of God in them, they would create fictional confessions… ‘surely we must have done something wrong,’ she told me once as she recalled her early life. Mass was always followed by an hour long walk around King’s Square. Holidays were spent in the hills around Sukabumi, visiting friends and enjoying the rural beauty of Java in addition to the urban excitement of Batavia. Living as a child in the pre-war era of the Indies was undoubtedly a special and important historical time. It left a deep and lasting impression on those who lived through it and tweaked an insatiable interest in the rest of us who are in some way linked to it; trying our best to gather insight and understanding and glimpse, if only for a second, into life in the Indies.
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DUTCH, the magazine - 25
Poetry
Pleasantry Oh land of freezing drizzle, of dung and dirty fog, Of inundated roads, of mist and rising damp, Oh sodden patch of soil, full of soggy bog, Of brollies and of gout, of toothache and of cramp! Oh dreary mushy swamp, oh manor of galoshes, Of frogs, cobblers, ditch dredgers, mud spirits, Of ducks both large and small, the careless and the cautious, Hear my autumnal woe, conveyed ‘twixt fevered fits! Thy clammy clime transforms my blood to mucky sand And mud; I have no song, no hunger, peace nor glee. Put galoshes on, oh blessed fatherland, Thou - not at my behest - wrested from the sea. -P.A. de GĂŠnestet (1829 - 1861) 26 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011
Anne van Arragon Hutten - Perspectives
Immigrant children
and the road not taken
MARCEL OOSTERWIJK - FABIO BRUNA
I
am probably not the only new Canadian to wonder what life would have been like if we had stayed in The Netherlands. How would our lives have evolved? It is a question that arises especially when we meet Dutch relatives who still live over there. They can seem so different, so… foreign, to us. At the same time we may find a strange similarity of hobbies, or unexpected family resemblances. That we are different should not be surprising. We have grown up in two different worlds, with different ways of thinking. I think of the poet Robert Frost, who speaks of two diverging roads, only one of which we can travel. When our parents made the decision to leave Holland they set our feet on the road less traveled, and ‘that has made all the difference’. I have wondered about those people who stayed behind, and never more so than last spring when I spent considerable time going through a box of letters received by my in-laws during their first decades in Canada. Mom left her mother, two sisters, and two brothers behind. All wrote letters regularly, although Opoe, as Mom’s mother was known, was of a generation where writing was a challenge. We have only one surviving letter she wrote with her own hand. The images I get from these letters of long ago are of simple farm people, growing crops and tending their animals, the women mostly running the household according to the old patterns. They knew how to November/December 2011
clean a sheep fleece, card and spin the wool, then knit the yarn into warm garments. Men might sit and smoke their pipe at night but women generally sat knitting or darning.
Y
et social change was rapidly overtaking that traditional lifestyle and it wasn’t long before the Turkish and Moroccan guest workers began making their presence felt. By the time my inlaws died, Holland was fast heading towards a multicultural, secular society. Meanwhile, we Dutch kids in Canada were trying to integrate, while
The road not taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
our parents wanted to retain what they considered valuable from their background. The importance of church was drilled into us, and in fact many immigrant families today continue to value their faith life. When I wrote my book on immigration I was surprised how many people told me, unprompted, that God had been good to them in this new land. This was during 1997-2001, when many of our relatives in Holland had long ago given up on religion as being old-fashioned. I saw another such difference when looking at an old family photo of Dutch relatives. All the adult children stood by their spouses except the unmarried son who posed with his ‘friend’. My parents may innocently have believed that the two men were just that, but Dutch gays were out of the closet much earlier than they were over here. I could name other examples: the cousins in Holland who daintily ate their bread and butter with knife and fork while my son and I used - what else? our fingers. The aunt there who was going to turf a pretty shrub on her front lawn because it was no longer ‘in’. The visiting Dutch cousin, wearing stilettos under skintight leopard print pants, while I wore a cotton shirt over jeans. I may not be able to quite put a finger on it, but we clearly have taken different roads during our life journeys. It’s impossible to second-guess what we might have chosen to do had we been the ones who ended up staying behind. DUTCH, the magazine - 27
Dirk Hoogeveen - Digging for Dutch Roots
What’s an o or two
between close relatives?
W
hen I arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1953 postal codes did not exist, letters were hand sorted and sorting errors were not uncommon. There were only two families with the name Hoogeveen in the city at the time, D. and B. Hoogeveen. Occasionally we received the wrong mail. We then delivered the mail to each other. This way I made the acquaintance of a man known as Bert Hoogeveen, whose original first name was Broer. He had come to Canada in 1912 from Emmen in the province of Drenthe. I stayed in touch with him until his death in 1980. He told me about his other family members many of whom lived near Shackleton, Saskatchewan, about 200 miles to the west of Regina. His oldest brother was the first one to homestead there. He had the nickname of Riek in The Netherlands, but he went under the name Henry in Canada. When I worked on the genealogy of this family branch in the 1970s I first wrote down what I had learned from the family and then did further research. Henry had come to Canada in 1906 and homesteaded in 1908. On his homestead application he gave his name as Henry Hoogeveen and he signed as H. Hoogeveen. In writing to the town of Emmen I found out that the boys’ family unit consisted of the two parents and fourteen children, most of whom ended up in Canada and 28 - DUTCH, the magazine
the USA. I also found out that their last name actually was recorded as Hogeveen in The Netherlands and that for some reason all of them are called Hoogeveen in North America. In Dutch Hogeveen and Hoogeveen are pronounced the same way, but in English they sound different. Henry’s actual first names were Hendrikus Jantinus. He was born in 1884. According to what the family
told me he had received permission from his father to immigrate to Canada in the spring of 1906. Before leaving he went to the Civil Registry Office in the town hall of Emmen and told them that he was immigrating to Canada. According to the family story he had travelled via Rotterdam to London, England and from London by ship to Montreal, Quebec and from there onwards to Winnipeg, Manitoba. From Winnipeg he worked his way to eastern Saskatchewan and after about two years, on May 1, 1908, he filed his homestead application in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He then travelled to his homestead about
150 miles west of Moose Jaw and started working on it. Also according to the family, he had met Ed (Edward) Cator in Rotterdam. They made the journey together, worked together and also filed for a homestead close to each other. Later they both brought over some of their relatives and the families intermarried. However hard I tried, I could never determine the ship they had travelled to Montreal on. Then because the families had intermarried I decided a few years ago to determine the ancestry of Ed Cator. Thanks to information on the Internet I found Edward Lambertus Cator, born 1873 in Zeist near Utrecht, who had travelled from Liverpool in England to New York on the s.s. Cedric. The ship was easily found on the Ellis Island website (www.ellisisland.org), an excellent resource for people whose ancestors arrived in North America via Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. It had left Liverpool on April 20, 1906 and arrived in New York on April 29, 1906. According to the ship’s manifest Edward Cator was 31 years old, was from Zeist and had $75.00 with him. It was further noted that he was a non-immigrant, destination Winnipeg. After scouring the manifest of the Cedric I found a Heoogereen, H. Gendronus, 21 years old, he brought $30.00 with him. He also was a non-immigrant with destiNovember/December 2011
Heerenveen
nation Winnipeg. He gave as his place of origin ‘Amsterdam’. He had probably indicated ‘Nieuw Amsterdam’ (New Amsterdam), a small community just south of Emmen, which belongs to Emmen administratively. This goes to show that one should be careful with presuming the accuracy of information passed on within the family, it is not always entirely accurate.
ANGELO ROMANO
T
he last name ‘Hogeveen’ was chosen originally by Henry and Bert’s ancestor Gerrit Wiebes (1775 – 1822) on March 16, 1812. His children received this last name at the same time. This was a measure introduced by Napoleon. Everybody had to register a last name, which could either be one that was in common use already, or a newly chosen one. Up to that time the ancestors of Henry Hoogeveen had used a patronymic, in this case Wiebes, which means ‘son of Wiebe’. The literal translation of the document in which Gerrit Wiebes officially acquires a last name reads: Before us Mayor of the community November/December 2011
Lippenhuisen, Canton Beesterzwaag, District Herenveen, Department Vriesland has appeared Gerryt Wybis living in Hemrik who has declared that he accepts the name of HOGEVEEN as family name and has one son and the following daughters, being Wybe thirteen years old Beitske eight years old Wytske four years old Antje sixteen weeks old all living in Hemrik And has signed with us March 16, 1812. This is Gerryt Wybes Hogeveen his own sign Also signature of the Mayor’. Gerrit signed the document with an X. In the translation I have faithfully followed the punctuation, sentence structure and use of upper and lower case, all of which appear rather haphazard. The name Gerryt Wybes is spelled in all later records as Gerrit Wiebes. This story illustrates the difficulties with spelling of names when researching a pedigree. The researcher can encounter all sorts of unexpected variations in spelling, in The Netherlands as well as in North America. It should be remembered that in most cases the
immigrants could not speak or understand English and hence communications with officials could easily be a source of misunderstandings. Dutch orthography is of course unknown to Anglophones. When I worked in England in 1950, the oo of my last name was pronounced like the u in tulip, rather than the o in rose, as it is in Dutch. The Hoogeveen last name existed in my branch of the family about 150 years before the civil registration started in 1812. It first appears in a church membership list of 1658. The spelling started out as Hogeveen, but has varied since that time. My grandfather wrote it with one ‘o’ as well as with two ‘o’s and officials also alternated the spelling. The way a child’s name is registered at birth becomes the official spelling of the name for that child. Of the eight children of my grandfather’s family, three boys were Hoogeveen, three boys were Hogeveen, one girl was Hoogeveen and one girl was Hogeveen. In the records a researcher should therefore anticipate spelling variations in names. DUTCH, the magazine - 29
Cooking
Seasonal cheer
ginger and spices for Saint Nicholas (and some oily balls to welcome the New Year)
S
everal seasonal events are announced by the arrival of traditional foods on the supermarket shelves. Chocolate eggs mark the beginning of the Easter season, and the catch of the first herring prompts Little Flag Day (Vlaggetjesdag). But nothing prepares us for the upcoming month of December, with its Saint Nicholas, Christmas and New Year celebrations more than the smell of speculaas from the bakeries and the sight of pepper nuts (pepernoten) in the stores. Pepper nuts show up as early as mid-September, three full months before the good-hearted Saint has even set foot on Dutch shore. This is a time for rich, luxurious baked goods. Almond paste is richly applied to cakes and pastries, and chocolate and marzipan 30 - DUTCH, the magazine
Text and Photographs by Nicole Holten figures soothe many a sweet tooth. Large pieces of speculaas, taai taai (which translates literally as ‘tough tough’), almond letter (banketletter) and bags of pepper nuts and spice nuts (kruidnoten) are traditionally associated with Saint Nicholas, the Dutch Santa Claus. As soon as he arrives in Holland children all over the country will start placing their shoes, filled with hay, a carrot or a handwritten letter, by whatever heating system the house possesses: a fireplace, gas furnace or central heating system. Why? Because at night, Saint Nicholas roams the rooftops on his white horse Amerigo and has his helpers, the Black Petes (Zwarte Pieten), go down the chimney to retrieve the gifts for the horse or the letter addressed to him. The letter usually contains the customary requests
for presents and the assurance that the writer of the epistle had been an obedient, kind and pleasant child all year long. In exchange for Amerigo’s goodies and the letter, Black Pete usually leaves a small piece of candy or fruit behind. He often also will leave a handful of pepper nuts and chocolate coins. The culmination of all this nocturnal gallivanting is on the evening of the fifth, when friends and family gather after dinner to exchange gifts. Not in the usual way, as in ‘here’s-from-me-to-you’, but in a typically Dutch tradition, full of humor and good natured mockery. Gifts are wrapped in secret packages, often shaped after something that identifies the receiver. For example, uncle Jos who is a firefighter might get his Saint Nicholas gift wrapped in a cardboard fire engine, November/December 2011
Aunt Nellie who earlier in the year had the misfortune of getting stung by a wasp, may find a large waspish creature, crafted from toilet rolls and yellow and black streamers handed to her. And as if that were not enough, each gift comes with a poem that is to be read out loud, indicating who the gift is for and pointing out several rather embarrassing facts about the recipient. The poem will be signed by Saint or Pete to conceal the identity of the giver. It’s all in good cheer, if anyone’s feelings are hurt they can help themselves to another piece of filled speculaas to soften the blow.
A
fter Saint Nicholas we celebrate Christmas and New Year. Although being Calvinists, bent on not having too much of anything and claiming that ‘being normal is crazy enough’, somehow we are set on extending the Christmas celebrations over
Spice nuts Ingredients 1 cup of self-rising flour ¾ cup of brown sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon of ground aniseed 2 teaspoons of cinnamon 1 teaspoon of white pepper 1 teaspoon of salt ½ teaspoon of ginger 2 tablespoons of butter Knead everything together into a stiff dough. You may have to add a tablespoon or two of water if it’s too stiff. Wrap and rest the dough in the fridge, preferably overnight but at least for a couple of hours to let the flavors blend. Roll small pieces of dough into little balls and place them on parchment paper or a silicone mat on a baking sheet and slightly press them down. Bake them at 400F in about 15 minutes until nicely browned. Let them cool off on a rack.
two days instead of one: Christmas Day is called ‘First Christmas Day’ (Eerste Kerstdag) and Boxing Day is known as Second Christmas Day (Tweede Kerstdag). And if you are
a member of a family that also celebrates Christmas Eve, that makes it two days and a half. Christmas Eve is traditionally the night when you dress up, go to an
Almond Letter Ingredients 6 sheets of puff pastry 1 egg, beaten 2 cups of ground almonds 1 cup of cooked white beans, rinsed 1 cup of powdered sugar 1 egg 1 tablespoon of almond flavoring 3 red candied cherries 6 green candied cherries ½ cup of powdered sugar 1 tablespoon of milk Thaw the sheets of puff pastry and lay them out on the counter: three in a row on the bottom, slightly overlapping their short edges, three on the top doing the same, but also overlapping by an inch the three on the bottom. Carefully use a rolling pin to seal the edges. Pulse the almonds with the cooked white beans, the powdered sugar, the egg and the almond flavoring. If the mixture is too sticky, add a tablespoon of flour. Roll the almond paste into a log slightly shorter than the length of your puff pastry sheets and lay it on top. Now wrap the puff pastry around it, making sure there are no open lines or edges. Shape to the letter of your liking (M, I, S and O are the easiest), and place it on a silicone mat on a baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 350F, brush the letter with egg wash and bake for about 35-40 minutes or until golden. When the almond letter has cooled, cut the red candied cherries in half, and the green candied cherries in fourths. Mix the powdered sugar with the milk to make a glaze, and brush the letter carefully, place the cherries as seen in the picture. November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 31
evening service or mass (even those that are not raised religiously will often attend) and upon the return home round off the celebrations with hot chocolate and, what else, a bread-based meal with luxury rolls. A stollen (kerststol), a rich sweet bread studded with dried fruits and candied peel, will grace the table. Slightly warmed, it pairs beautifully
with some salted butter. Christmas Day is a formal dinner day and one that is generally celebrated with family only. If you are invited to someone’s home on Christmas Day, and you are not family or in any way related, it is quite an honor! In trying to keep the peace between families and inlaws, children often switch back and forth between families on First and Second Christmas Day: one year you will celebrate dinner at your parents on the First, the next year at your significant other’s parents. Boxing Day is less formal. The leftovers are eaten, and everybody runs around in their housecoats, sweats and jammies, hanging in front of the TV, taking naps or going for long, wintery walks to get some fresh air. Friends will sometimes come over for a drink and a chat, or a less formal dinner (not leftovers!).
There must be something in the human psyche that makes us want to celebrate the end of another year by eating copious amounts of rich foods and by stuffing ourselves with large quantities of sugar and butter, all doused in a consistent flow of adult and non-adult beverages. It’s as if we were saying: ‘Well, I made it another year, you can’t take that away from me!’ while shaking a fat finger in the face of the inevitable. New Year’s Eve in Holland is a great example. What better way to ring in the New Year than by eating deepfried dough balls and coated apple slices? Oliebollen (literally ‘balls of oil’) and apple fritters (appelbeignets) are standard fare during the holiday season. The raisins and apples in the dough can hardly be considered a nutritional advantage but it’s one of those once-a-year treats that one looks forward to!
Filled Speculaas Ingredients for the dough 2 cups of self-rising flour 1 heaping tablespoon of ground cinnamon ¼ scant teaspoon of nutmeg, ¼ scant teaspoon of ground cloves ¼ teaspoon of ground ginger 1/8 teaspoon of white ground pepper 1 cup of brown sugar pinch of salt 1 stick and 2 tablespoons of butter 2 tablespoons of milk 1 egg yolk
Ingredients for the filling 1 cup of almonds, whole 1 cup of icing sugar, packed 1 egg, separated 1 tablespoon of almond flavoring
Pour two cups of boiling water over the almonds and let them sit for about fifteen minutes. Rinse the nuts with cold water, and slip off the brown skin. Save twelve half almonds for decorating. Put the almonds in a blender and pulse several times until they have a wet sand consistency, which should take only a few pulses. Place the almond meal in a bowl, stir in the sugar, the egg white and the almond extract. You should have a creamy, spreadable consistency. If not, add in a little bit of the yolk (beat it first) at a time until you do. Refrigerate until ready to use. Mix the flour, the spices, the sugar and the salt. Cut in the butter with two knives until the butter is reduced to pebbles and the flour feels like wet sand. Add the milk and the egg yolk and knead the dough until it comes together. Pat into ball, wrap in plastic film and refrigerate for several hours, preferably overnight. Divide the dough into two parts. Grease a 9" pie pan or spring form and roll out the first dough. Cover the bottom and the sides of the pan. Spread the almond paste over the dough, roll out the second dough and cover the filling and the edges of the pie form. Brush with the remaining egg yolk, place the 12 almond halves on the pie and bake at 325F for about 35 minutes until done. Let it cool before taking it out of the spring form, then carefully slice into 12 pieces and serve. 32 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011
Oliebollen
Ingredients 3 cups of all purpose flour 1½ cup of warm milk 4 teaspoons of active dry yeast 3 tablespoons of butter, softened 3½ tablespoons of sugar 2 teaspoons of lemon zest pinch of salt 2 eggs 4 tablespoons of raisins 3 heaped tablespoons of powdered sugar
In the meantime, heat the oil in the fryer up to 375 degrees F. Place a plate with several paper towels to soak up the excess fat of the fried balls. Stir the batter down. Now use a large spoon or an ice cream scoop to scoop out a portion, drop it into the hot oil and fry for about four minutes on each side or until brown. Slightly wetting the scoop or spoon before each scoop will make it easier to drop the batter into the oil. It's important to gauge the temperature of your oil: if too hot the oil will scorch the outside but the inside of the balls will stay uncooked. A low temperature will not fry the balls fast enough and they will become "sinkers": oil-saturated and inedible.
November/December 2011
Soak the raisins in some rum or warm water several hours before, preferably the night prior to the frying. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Mix the flour, sugar and the lemon zest, and stir the milk and yeast mix carefully. Add the egg and the salt and stir the batter for several minutes until everything is nicely blended. Stir in the drained raisins. Cover and let rise until it has doubled in volume, stir down and let rise again.
Drain the balls on the paper towels, then transfer onto a new plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Makes about sixteen large oliebollen. DUTCH, the magazine - 33
Travel
Artist’s Impression of the ‘Kop van Zuid’ after completion of current projects (courtesy of DPI Animation House/FPW Rotterdam)
Rotterdam renaissance
a city rebuilt on its own ruins
A pile of rubble in 1940, Rotterdam’s skyline knows no rivals in Europe today Text and Photographs by Ronald van Erkel
I
t still gets to me occasionally. A strange, unsettling feeling, a mix of exhilaration and alienation. A feeling I associate with one city, and one city alone. That place is Rotterdam, or more precisely, those few square kilometers that form the city centre. I might be strolling along the sky scraper-lined Weena boulevard from Central Station to City Hall when I suddenly remember that none of the buildings around me are much older than ten or twenty years. It's a perplexing realization that the city I see today did not exist sixty years ago. If I could use a StarTrek transporter and ‘beam down’ an ordinary Rotterdammer from 34 - DUTCH, the magazine
before 1940, this person would have no idea where he or she was. I’m sure I would quickly beam my time traveler back to the past, before I would have to confront him or her with the facts of history. During the Second World War, the historic centre of Rotterdam suffered a German bombing raid that killed 800 people, injured thousands more and destroyed tens of thousands of houses, factories, workshops, hospitals, churches, cinemas, hotels and public buildings. The subsequent fire storm lasted for days. When peace came in 1945, Rotterdam’s city centre was a barren wasteland, the port, already
the largest of Europe at the time, completely devastated and unusable. A city that had existed for over 500 years had been wiped away, a fate it shared with other ancient European cities such as Coventry and Dresden. Though famished and impoverished, Rotterdammers kept their will and determination intact. Even while under German occupation, Rotterdam had drawn up a master plan to rebuild its inner city in a new and imaginative way. The city would be everything it wasn’t before the war: modern, spacious, healthy, car-friendly. And so a unique and tantalizing experiment began. November/December 2011
I grew up in the midst of this experiment. As a small boy in the early Sixties, when the port had once again surpassed New York as the busiest in the world, my parents would take me through wide, deserted streets and windswept urban emptiness to an enigmatic statue symbolizing the resurrection of Rotterdam after the war. It was Osip Zadkine's The Destroyed City. A three-dimensional counterpart of Munch's The Cry: a huge, agonized human figure with arms raised to the sky and a great hole where its heart ought to have been. Through that hole you could see the sky from which the bombs had come. But now the sky was already being punctured by the spires of the new Rotterdam. New buildings were going up everywhere at an astonishing pace as The Netherlands experienced a post-war economic boom. Grand projects such as Van den Broek & Bakema's De Lijnbaan (1955) Europe's first pedestrian-only shopping center and Maaskant and Van Tijen's huge Rotterdam Business Centre (1953) had already become part of the emerging cityscape, although huge empty stretches would remain well into my adulthood. These vast holes in the urban fabric
The Destroyed City by Osip Zadkine: a pungent memorial to the bombing raid of 1940
earned Rotterdam the reputation of being inhospitable and unattractive, but to me and other Rotter-
Kop van Zuid: ‘De Rotterdam’ by Rem Koolhaas under construction
dammers they held the promise of something wonderful. And the promise was fulfilled. Today Rotterdam’s densely built centre is much livelier and crowded with often attractive, sometimes spectacular architecture unparalleled anywhere in The Netherlands. In an effort to lure affluent former city dwellers back from the suburbs to the inner city, high rise apartment buildings such as The Red Apple (2009), The Coopvaert (2006) and dozens of others have been going up. What’s more, there is the perpetual question: what are they going to put up on that building site?
P
eeping through cracks in the fences around building sites has become one of the most popular pastimes among Rotterdammers who wouldn’t know what to do if one day the city was declared ‘finished’. The anticipaNovember/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 35
New buildings have sprouted where once there was only rubble
tion remains, even if the rebuilding of the center is nearing completion and construction activity has
largely moved to the docklands on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas river where the ambitious Kop van The Red Apple
36 - DUTCH, the magazine
Zuid (South Head) dockland redevelopment scheme is now in its final phases. In the past, passenger ships used to sail from here, carrying thousands of immigrants to the New World. Today, gigantic and luxury cruise ships moor at Kop van Zuid’s international cruise terminal with great regularity. The atmosphere of arrival and departure remains. The robust and maritime character of the area does too. It is a unique part of Rotterdam, combining the present and the past, old warehouses and daring modern architecture. Here, high rise apartment buildings flank the riverside and their silhouettes complement the emblematic Erasmus Bridge (Ben van Berkel, 1996) that spans the river and connects Kop van Zuid directly with the city center. Kop van Zuid is the location of the country’s tallest office building (the 538 foot Maas November/December 2011
Tower) and tallest apartment building: the prestigious 45 storey New Orleans by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. Completed in 2011, most of the heftily priced apartments were sold within no time. The city’s most expensive urban dwelling can be found in the Montevideo Building (2005) next door. Its duplex penthouse on the 43rd floor (with private swimming pool) sold for over $3 million. It is a record that is bound to be broken as piles are driven into the ground and designs drafted for a whole series of new developments, including famed architect Rem Koolhaas’s De Rotterdam, which holds the promise of yet another striking landmark on the city’s skyline. As Koolhaas puts it: “De Rotterdam is conceived as a vertical city: three interconnected mixeduse towers accommodating offices, apartments, a hotel, conference facilities, gym, shops, restaurants, and cafes.” Construction started in 2009 and completion is scheduled for 2013. Koolhaas: “The towers are part of the ongoing redevelopment of the old harbor district and aim to reinstate the vibrant urban activity – trade, transport, leisure – once familiar to the neighborhood.”
A
lthough Rotterdam suffered a great tragedy, it gave the city the opportunity to rival places such as Singapore and San Francisco with a skyline that has no match on the European continent, where the historic inner cities are still mostly dominated by the spires of ancient churches. To the chagrin of history buffs, however, the building frenzy is not limited to spaces left open after the war or the redevelopment of derelict docklands, it now also targets some of the very buildings that were constructed immediately after the war. A good example is the Central Station. Designed by Siebold van Ravesteyn and built in the Fifties, Rotterdam’s Central Station was celebrated as a fine example of post-War optimistic, modernist architecture. The arrival of the high-speed railway conNovember/December 2011
The Maas Tower, the tallest office building in Rotterdam
The Erasmus Bridge, completed in 1996
Rotterdam, 1940-1945
On May 14, 1940 a fleet of Heinkel bombers destroyed the city center of Rotterdam in a successful attempt to blackmail the Dutch army and nation into surrender. ‘After Rotterdam, Utrecht and then on down the line, city after city...’ the Germans threatened. In Rotterdam more than 800 people lost their lives, 80,000 lost their homes. The Dutch army capitulated. A brutal five year occupation followed. The whole country suffered, Rotterdam and its people more than most. During the war Rotterdam with its harbor remained a target. In March of 1943 a number of Allied bombers missed the targeted harbor installations and accidentally destroyed a densely populated city neighborhood killing 400 people. On November 11, 1944 the Nazis surrounded the city and deported 52,000 men to Germany to perRotterdam 1945, form slave labor. They the rubble has been cleared, would not return until afa desolate wasteland remains ter the war. About 400 did not return at all. During the devastating ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944/45 more than 2,500 Rotterdammers starved to death, many others just barely survived. At the end of the war in 1945 the city lay in ruins. 38 - DUTCH, the magazine
necting Rotterdam to Amsterdam and Paris, the extension of the Rotterdam subway network as well as changed ideas about the function of a railway station in the urban fabric have made the old Central Station redundant, no matter how important the building was as a monument of post-war architecture. Yes, was, because it is gone and is rapidly being replaced by a futuristic station that will be able to meet the demands of the modern age in the decades to come. Chances are that my hypothetical great grandchildren will be living in a Rotterdam that might again look very different from the one I know. With some luck, in that far away future there may indeed be a ‘StarTrek’ device. Whatever the future holds, I hope I will get beamed up, if even for an hour, and get to have peek at whatever the Rotterdam of the future looks like. November/December 2011
The Dutch in Wartime Survivors Remember Book Series
‘The Dutch in Wartime: Survivors Remember’ is a series of books containing the wartime memories of Dutch immigrants to Canada and the USA, who survived Nazi occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945. Designed and written to be easily accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds, these books contain important stories about the devastating effects of war and occupation on a civilian population. The stories have been collected into separate volumes, each covering a specific theme or subject. The first of these volumes (’Invasion’) was published in June of 2011, with a new volume appearing every quarter, thereafter. Readers can order single copies as they appear, or may subscribe to the series at a discount, thus securing the receipt of the latest book in the series every three months.
UNDER NAZI RULE
The Dutc Survivorsh in Wartime Remembe r
Remembering Rotterdam, May 14, 1940: Suddenly the bombs started falling really close by, I can still see the wall of the restroom swaying back and forth. - Josine Eikelenboom in ‘Invasion’
The Dutch in Wartime: Survivors Remember Book Series
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DUTCH, the magazine - 39
Language
This is the Place! by Tom
I
have to apologize to those of you who ran into a little argument with your partner over a credit card payment. It may not have been immediately apparent, but ‘Mokeham Pub’, that’s us, Mokeham Publishing Inc. So the accusation that you blew $39.50 - or in the case of the lady who purchased two gift subscriptions in addition to her own and our series of WWIImemoirs $202.05 (thank you, thank you!) - in a shady drinking establishment, was groundless, as you knew of course. “And where is this place ‘Mokeham’ anyway?” I heard a voice ask in the background when I was on the phone with an enquiring subscriber. Well, that is – fair’s fair - a valid question which I shall gladly attempt to answer. But first things first: Mokeham should be pronounced the British way without putting stress on the final syllable, so more like ‘Moke-um’ than with a fully articulated accent on the last syllable, as is more common in America. Listen to the beautifully crafted song Birmingham by Randy Newman to know exactly what I mean. No true Brit could have rhymed Birmingham with Alabam’ or made the near rhymes with hand, land and Dan in any way convincing. Not that I have anything against the American pronunciation, it’s just that the name Mokeham originated back in Europe. It referred to a major city in The Netherlands, very thinly disguised by the English 40 - DUTCH, the magazine
Bijvoet
sounding name, in a long epic poem that I once started but have long since abandoned. I had stored the name safely in a little compartment in my brain and it could have stayed there until the day I died without ever appearing again. But as these things go the word suddenly popped out of my mouth, totally unexpectedly. I was sitting next to my wife Petra in a lawyer’s office. ‘Mokeham’, I said. The lawyer raised his eyebrows and Petra nodded. Yes, Mokeham, that could work. We were in the process of incorporating our new publishing business and did not really want to simply go with a numbered company. My own last name gives me enough grief in my daily life to have to deal with it in business correspondence, so the Bijvoet Publishing Company (no ma’am, that is Bee Eye Jay Vee Oh Ee Tea) was out. I felt that names relating specifically to The Netherlands or to cities within the country would box us in too much, so we sat there thinking when suddenly the little door to that hidden compartment sprung open and Mokeham jumped out. “Mokeham Publishing Inc. that’s it”, I said. Petra agreed and the lawyer could not care less. He wanted us out of his office, he had quoted a fixed fee for incorporating the company and did not really want to waste any more valuable billable minutes as we pondered the company name. November/December 2011
S
o what is Mokeham? Well, it is no more than a very thinly veiled reference to the capital city of The Netherlands, known colloquially, very colloquially, as Mokum. When used to denote Amsterdam the term conveys a very special feeling of warmth, belonging and comfort. Mokum is a true term of endearment. It is almost exclusively used by ‘Mokummers’, people from Amsterdam, whether by birth or by choice. It belongs in the realm of informal speech. You will not find Amsterdam referred to as Mokum in a newspaper article or scientific report, unless it’s surrounded by quotation marks. As with so many words in the Amsterdam dialect of old the term entered the local patois from the secret cant of peddlers and travellers which was heavily laced with Yiddish words. Mokum, from the Hebrew Makom, is Yiddish for place, or town. To distinguish the various towns that they visited on their travels, without alerting outsiders to their destination, the itinerant merchants would refer to them with their first initial in the Hebrew alphabet. Thus Berlin would be Mokum Beis, Delft Mokum Dollet and Gouda Mokum Gas. Sometimes a term could be more descriptive of the characteristics of a town, hence Glock Mokum (Clock Mokum) for Basel in Switzerland and Mayem Mokum Dollet (Water Mokum D) for Dordrecht, a city in the Rhine Delta. And Amsterdam? Well Amsterdam was of course Mokum Aleph, the A-city and not only because its name started with an ‘A’. It was the capital, the center of commerce and the home of by far the largest Jewish community in The Netherlands and one of the largest in Western Europe. There was no doubt that Amsterdam, deserved the ‘Alpha City’
November/December 2011
epithet, however much the people of Klein (Little) Mokum, Rotterdam, Amsterdam’s main rival may have resented that. As time passed even the Aleph was dropped and Amsterdam became simply ‘Mokum’, the place. And that is what it remains. The term which for a long time was restricted in its usage to the bottom end of the social scale was popularized in music hall style folk-entertainment and when Amsterdam entertainer Johnny Jordaan sang in one of his major hits that he would ‘rather be in Mokum without dosh than in Paris with a million bucks’ the once obscure name had become a household term. The argot has moved on. The youth of Amsterdam’s suburbs, where first and second generation immigrants form a majority, now speak a new dialect, dubbed ‘street slang’ by Dutch linguists. Although still liberally sprinkled with the Yiddish words of Amsterdam’s traditional patois, it borrows a lot of its vocabulary from new immigrant languages such as Moroccan Arabic, Berber, Turkish, and of course, almost inescapably, English. Although Mokum definitely has a place in street slang, it is a word that in the eyes of its speakers at least, belongs to the language of the establishment, almost. The new word to use when referring to Amsterdam comes from Sranan Tongo, an English based creole, which is the predominant language of the former Dutch colony of Surinam. For Mokum, substitute Damsko and you will appear to be perfectly clued in to the latest developments. But don’t expect to see Damsko Pub on your credit card statements anytime soon. Lawyers are too expensive to change the name of the company along with the fads of street cant.
DUTCH, the magazine - 41
Epitaph
Milo Anstadt
Milo Anstadt, the Polish Jew who taught the Dutch a history lesson, died July 16, aged 91.
T
elevision was a new medium in The Netherlands in 1960 and no program did more to popularize it than a documentary series called De Bezetting or The Occupation. The fifteen years after the end of the war in 1945 had been devoted to reconstruction, to rebuilding the devastated, plundered country. There had been little time for reflection and as Dutch media historian Chris Vos has said: “people knew what happened in their own street, but what happened in all those other streets...?” The Occupation tied together all the loose snippets of information about the war that floated around without any seeming structure in the national consciousness. Streets were deserted as a nation watched its own recent history. Many people bought their first tv-sets to be part of the momentous event. The public face of the series was national historian Loe de Jong, but behind the scenes it was created by director Milo Anstadt, who received a prestigious national cultural award for the series after only two episodes out of 21 had aired. Anstadt was not the most logical person to undertake the task of defining the national narrative. He had never completed high school, was a journalistic autodidact and did not even become a Dutch citizen until 1953. Anstadt was born in Lwów in Poland in 1920. His mother made a meager living as a seamstress and the family lived in a bug-infested one room apartment. Poland had only been in existence as a nation state for two years when Anstadt was born and the city, Lemberg in German, had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of World War I and is now Lviv in The Ukraine. It was a cosmopolitan place, where Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Lithuanians and Russians rubbed shoulders. Anstadt grew up in an environment that was tolerant towards people of different backgrounds. His parents were thoroughly assimilated Jews and were as proud of their Polish culture as they were of their Jewish heritage. It was not because of anti-Semitism or persecution that the family emigrated to Holland in 1930, but purely for economic reasons, to escape utter poverty. As a teenager in The Netherlands Anstadt quickly adapted and learned to speak Dutch fluently and without an accent. To supplement the family income he started work in a factory when he was 15. His interest in his roots drew him into youth clubs for both German and East-European Jews, which were his early intellectual training ground. The left-wing politics of these clubs coupled with a fierce anti-fascism instigated a youthful flirtation with communism, but as he matured he graduated towards social democracy. Anstadt, his wife and two children survived the occupation, despite several close brushes with the occupying Nazi forces. His parents were deported and perished in the Holocaust as did virtually all of his East-European relatives. 42 - DUTCH, the magazine
During the war Anstadt was active in the Dutch resistance movement and befriended future social-democratic primeminister Joop den Uyl, who guided him into a job in journalism and broadcasting after the war. As the writer and director of radio dramas for the social-democratic channel VARA he was noticed by the fledgling television division, which is how he ended up creating The Occupation with fellow Jewish survivor Loe de Jong. Anstadt remained active in television and print. Fluent in German, Yiddish, Dutch and Polish and with a passable knowledge of several other Slavic languages, including Russian, Anstadt often acted as the unofficial interpreter between east and west, filming in Russia and Poland. His critical stance against the communist ideology which once attracted him got him barred from Poland for seventeen years during the height of the Cold War. He published several acclaimed autobiographical works and wrote three novels. Anstadt’s early history in multi-cultural Lwów and as an immigrant and outsider in The Netherlands influenced his outlook on life. He always believed that forced assimilation is futile and that it is through ethnic institutions embedded within immigrant communities that true adaptation to life in a new country is most effective. He thoroughly believed in voluntary assimilation and the fusion of cultural groups and identities, which during the last fifteen years of his life made him look at developments in his adopted country with serious misgivings. He believed that the course of polarization and alienation that The Netherlands followed in its struggle to come to terms with its multi-cultural make-up was doomed to spawn intercultural loathing and hostility. Because of his background and experiences he was possibly in a better position than most to understand and analyze these complex, ever topical issues. Milo Anstadt died on July 16 in Amsterdam. He was 91 years old. November/December 2011
Place
Amsterdam’s South Church
FLAVIO ENSIKI
A
a building in search of a purpose
nyone who has ever taken a tour of Amsterdam on a canal boat knows the view of seven bridges in a row on Reguliersgracht and has probably taken a photograph there. All tour boats slow down and stop and occasionally in high tourist season that can lead to chaotic scenes, both on the boats as aspiring photographers jostle for the best spot and in the canal itself as the tour boat captains do the same. After the seven bridges, probably the most photographed canal view of Amsterdam is the one of tree-lined Groenburgwal with the spire of the South Church (Zuiderkerk) at the end of the canal, towering above two beautiful seventeenth century gables, taken from the vantage point of Staalstraat bridge. The view not only excites modern tourists. In 1874 impressionist painter Claude Monet immortalized it, including the bridge on which most modern photographers stand. His painting can be viewed among many other splendid works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After you have taken the photograph, wander down Groenburgwal toward the South Church. Its spire reminds us of the more iconic West Church (Westerkerk), a couple of miles across town. That’s not surprising. Both were built in the early seventeenth century, in the style of the Amsterdam Renaissance and were designed by architect Hendrick de Keyser. It’s just that the South Church, even though it is smaller and less-well known has had a more mottled history than its big brother across town, which basically started life as a Protestant church and still is just that. The South Church’s original claim to fame is that it was the very first church built in Amsterdam after the Reformation specifically as a Protestant church. Older churches like the aptly named Old Church (built around 1300) right in the center of the red light district and the these days slightly less aptly named New Church (construction started around 1400) began as Catholic Churches. Religious services were performed in the South Church until 1929, when a period of neglect caused rapid deterioration. The blackest page in the church’s history was written during the wartime winter of 1944/45, known as the Hunger Winter in Holland. Most able bodied men were either in hiding, had been deported to Germany or were not ablebodied enough to have the energy to dig graves in the often frozen ground. Besides, fuel was extremely scarce and if there was wood it would be burned, rather than wasted on making coffins. Thousands of people literally starved to death or died of hunger-related diseases and the South Church was used as a makeshift mortuary, hundreds of bodies were temporarily stored there.
November/December 2011
By 1970 the building had become so derelict that it had to be closed to the public. The City of Amsterdam, which had acquired the church in 1968 renovated it between 1976 and 1979. Ever since it has been a struggle to find a suitable purpose for the historic building. The City of Amsterdam used it as an information center for the public for some time. Now the Dutch Museum for National History, which has no fixed abode – the government had promised €50 million for a permanent building, but when it turned out that constructing just the parkade at the proposed site would run to €60 million plans for a permanent site were abandoned – uses it for office space and temporary exhibitions. So the question remains: what do you do with a huge old church without a real purpose? Well, one positive aspect is: for the relatively reasonable sum of €1,250 per half day the church can be rented for meetings, weddings or receptions. There is space for 376 people to sit down to a communal meal. And maybe that is the most appropriate destination for a place where the Lord’s Supper was celebrated thousands of times, but where also - lest we forget - many victims of the most devastating famine The Netherlands has ever known found a resting place until they could get a proper burial.
View of Groenbur gwal with the South Ch urch in the distanc e DUTCH, the magazine - 43
n Brian Bramso______________________ __
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co.uk bramson@abs. n. ia br n” so m “Brian Bra co.uk nnie.win@abs. “Jennie Win” je 11 20:41 31 October 20 dress code Breakfast and
Hi Jennie, back at base?
need to be sk. I reckon I’ll ta e th of ze si ould you the tting a feel for that. For now w ge ow I’m kn ys m hi da t w le t to y morning here a fe the MD last nigh out on Monda d – Now I’ve been t le ai as m le eat I k t. weeks ye ion for next wee here for a few d accommodat an ts gh fli e m please book nks. ning room riday night. Tha down to the di t and back on F en w I ng ni ld meat or first mor rson wants co hotel. On my pe a m ed ru lis ar vi S ci is o mbled egg out th ast. N . I chose scra l buffet breakf Still not wild ab gs te eg ho d le ch oi ut D -b steaming , hard etypal egg? Picture a rtainly not cold to find the arch ce ed bl d m an ra y sc da l for the batime of ch hote paste. And as ever seen Dut cheese at that u er yo ap e lp al av w H d e. g an stry. They mov pig rearing indu of powdered eg and bacon. Bad ge re tu hu ix a m s a ha p, of grilled olland w gloo chy, curly bits bacon ‘bits’. H un s tureen of yello cr , ou le ul ib ic ed rid in e of just thos serve a heap con, there are rashers, so why in es m co n know baco el. porcine shrapn ical dramas bacon? It’s just enes in TV med sc e os th ow d revives u kn outs “Clear!” an hotel coffee! Yo sh t, ch ut es D ch of ’s th im e a sip of e vict e streng st give the blok paddles onto th And oh Lor, th Ju al a. et m am e dr th s at th all or slam ’s no need for where the doct ectricity? There el of lt . bo a him with wake the dead tually. One coffee. That’ll lly. Odd taxi, ac Sarruma Hotel ra tu na , te la V gadget was had this little T onday morning er M iv dr on e th te si at ’s th Holland, or erned e client Good Morning The taxi to th was a bit conc g I in . ch gs at in w th e er le-mov spent more tim of those peop and I’m sure he d ar bo sh da e ad ahead. fixed to th as, than the ro w ow sh e blokes had e th r whateve e. Only half th fic of ’s nt ie cl the was wearing down’ day at chap, I swear, ss ne re O ‘d s. as an w je y in onda d everyone was Seems that M at morning an th e av sh to bothered ement are chiffon scarf. Dutch manag a T-shirt and a nd la ol H in e er they were g. H back in London eeting first thin m am te am is Te th ct et je m a Pro n we in action. But Wheeled into visited us. Whe , you saw them ey ow th kn n u he Yo w . rs emed not so much gotiato meeting was not as they se ct quite tough ne je d ro an P ke st -li fir ss s sine and feelings . Thi The opinions thing like that very formal, bu n. no io ’re ss ey se th y ap nd when they grou p ther preciated even here on home rum as a grou ap fo d g in an ak ed m dg on le cisi sment’, for know an executive de eam Self-Asses ‘T aired, heard, ac as be w to d da ha en t ag esen st item on the of everyone pr elevant. The la irr or e iv tit pe were re . heaven’s sake
How are things
44 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011
Brian Bramson - An Englishman abroad I’m now beginnin g to pick up on D utch elevator etiq occupied lift and uette. In England, it’s normal to say step into an alre something like “T buttons will pres adyhree, please” an s ‘3’ for you. Eith d th e person neares er that, or whoever floor?” and hit th t the ’s nearest the bu e button. Dutch ttons will ask “W elevators are stric tons for anyone hich tly self-service on else. In fact no on ly. No one presses e speaks to anyone ton even if you ha butelse. You have to ve to reach past press your own bu other passengers ‘close-the-doorsto do it. But this ru tnow’ button which le does not apply is under the sole the Lift; someone to the control of the se so pressed for tim lf-appointed Cap e he can’t wait th automatically, so tain of e four seconds fo takes it upon him r the lift doors to self to shut the do close ors manually - at every stop until hi By Wednesday th s own. e Sarruma Hotel ’s cleaning staff ha occupant. So they d worked out that took away half th my room has only e tea bags and in plastic teaspoon one stant coffee sach . How’s that for D ets - and the seco utch efficiency? nd Anyway, I’m out of here tomorrow and back to bles where the bacon sed civilisation fo comes in rashers, r the weekend: So where the coffee where the tea ba medoesn’t take the gs don’t dangle fro glaze off the cups m strings. and Oh, by the way: Tu rns out Monday w asn’t a ‘dress do exactly the same wn’ day after all. scruffy kit the rest Everyone fetche of the week. Have a nice wee d up in kend, Brian. Brian Bramson Senior Consultant Acme Business System
s Ltd
brian.bramson@
abs.co.uk
Disclaimer This message (in cluding any attac hments) is confide recipient, you sh ntial and may be ould not disclose legally privileged , copy or use any . If you are not the the e-mail and an pa rt of it. If you have intended y attachments im received this e-m me dia tel ail in error, pleas y an d notify the Acme co.uk. e delete Business Systems Ltd helpdesk at su pport@abs. Whilst all reasona ble care has been taken to avoid the to ensure that the transmission of vir opening or other uses, it is your res us e of this messag ponsibility as rec Acme Business e an d any attachmen ipient Systems accepts ts will not adverse no res po ns ly ibi affect your syste lity for damage ca out such virus an ms. d other checks as used by viruses and you should, you consider appro therefore, carry priate.
November/December 2011
DUTCH, the magazine - 45
Fun and Games
False friends Words spelled the same in English and Dutch, but with different meanings, for example ‘wit’ (meaning white in Dutch), form a category of linguistic ‘false friends’. Which false friends are described by the following clues: 1. Does Sinterklaas transport or leave gifts in a ___? 2. Be careful not to fall into or down a ___! 3. You could smell ___ if you don’t have one. 4. The icy road is ___, which I’ll be to get home safely. 5. It’s only ___ to leave the guest room that way. 6. ___ do you use this agricultural tool? 7. If you have one on your behind you may not want to __. 8. This is what she feeds her ___. 9. The ___ delivers 8. 10. Don’t ___ it on the floor, even if it is too salty for you. A sweet adolescent from Sneek And her boyfriend went out for some cake She thought ‘Chocolate’s the Snits Like for sure I’ll get zits, I’ll have fruit there’s just too much at stake.’ Send us a limerick with a Dutch place name at the end of the first line. We will publish the most original ones.
Match the words Match the Dutch word on the left with its English translation on the right.
Metaal Geel Legering Ring Medaille Smelten Goud Geld Munt Munt
Mint Ring Medal Yellow Money Coin Alloy Metal Melt Gold
Answers to all quizzes on page 4
Who?
What?
Where?
• I wear red robes and a red hat embroidered with gold and carry a golden crozier. • I once gave a man three bags of cold coins to use as dowries for his three daughters. • I still hand out gold coins, particularly to children in The Netherlands.
• I was first used in 1928. • I won a gold medal in the 1928 Olympic Games. • I was home to soccer club FC Amsterdam from 1972 until 1980. • After significant renovations Prince Willem-Alexander reopened me in the year 2000.
• Each year on the third Tuesday of September the monarch travels through my streets in a Golden Carriage. • I am sometimes called ‘The Widow of the Indies’. • In my coat of arms I have a stork. • I am also known as ‘the Residence’.
Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Theme for this issue: Gold.
The Dutch Judge
46 - DUTCH, the magazine
Jesse van Muylwijck
November/December 2011
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DUTCH, the magazine - 47 - pentictonschoolofdance@gmail.com - www.pentictondance.com
48 - DUTCH, the magazine
November/December 2011