Twice Mice

Archive for the “The Netherlands” Category

May 27 2009

The Netherlands in Belgium in the Netherlands

Posted by: Lydia in Belgium, The Netherlands, tags: bizarre, borders, fun, nations, silly

On the weekend we showed our houseguests one of the quirks of living in Europe – international borders that are a little higglty pigglty. Baarle Nassau and Baarle Hertog are two towns on the Belgium/Netherlands border. In fact, the border between the two countries is so confused that the towns have to place a diagram in the main street to explain the situation – the red perspex represents Belgium and the clear perspex represents the Netherlands:

This confusion is due to centuries of sales and swaps between the lords and dukes of the region. Yet still today, these borders are considered strict international boundaries. As we strolled through Baarle, we crossed the border dozens of times, and I was careful to have my passport ready. As we explored the suburbs, we noted that most of the residents were very nonchalant about the location of their house. For the most part, the only way that we could tell which country we were in was by very carefully examining the house numbers. Dutch houses have a red stripe on the left and a blue on the right. Belgian houses have a black/yellow/red flag in the top left hand side. This apartment complex straddled the border, and had two front doors, so the residents had both a Netherlands (left) and Belgium (right) address – very useful for tax purposes:

The two cities of Baarle Hertog and Nassau have different police forces, laws tax systems, fuel costs, speed limits, alcohol licensing laws, closing times, and mobile phone rates. A letter posted from Hertog to Nassau travels via Amsterdam. And yet the border quite often cuts right through a business or home.

But best of all, in these odd tangled territories, the sun was shining and all the stores were wide open on a Sunday. So we were able to sit outside, eat chocolate and beer, and soak up the sunshine in the enclaves and exclaves of these intertwined cities (note how the border continues down the middle of the road behind us before finally crossing the street).
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Oct 06 2008

Inside the Secret Annex

Posted by: Lydia in The Netherlands, tags: amsterdam, Europe, The Netherlands, Travel

When Adrian suggested that we visit Amsterdam on our last day in Benelux, I realised that I would be able to visit the Anne Frank Haus. Reading “The Diary of a Young Girl” touched me deeply, and the thought that I would actually be able to walk through the Secret Annex was bizarre.

Photo from annefrank.org

Anne Frank started this diary on her 13th birthday in 1942 and continued it for two years. At the beginning, she simply is a young girl from a Jewish family, living in Amsterdam. By the end, she is living her whole life in hiding from the Germans who have occupied The Netherlands and who are sending Jews and so many others to concentration camps. She details her day-to-day life in her diary, confiding her thoughts and dreams. She states that after the war, she would like to publish her diary and become a Dutch writer.

Photo from annefrank.org

As I read her diary, I connected with her on a very personal level. I felt that she was writing directly to me, and she became a dear friend over the course of the pages. Her diary is one of most important and touching books that I have ever read. Being able to visit her house was a privilege that I never imagined.

The place in which she lived is now a museum. I never realised that it was on the edge of a canal, though the chestnut trees that she describes in her diary are prominent as they line both sides of the street. As we walk through the entrance, we can see ads for Otto Frank’s pectin “Opekta”, used for making jam, and the bags and barrels in the storeroom at the front. He also sells “Petacon”, used for making sausages. Then, we walk through the rooms until we are confronted with a bookcase, slightly ajar to reveal a stairway behind it.

Photo from lydiamann

It was an extraordinary and surreal experience to walk behind that bookcase. I walked up the stairs, and then I was actually inside the Secret Annex. After the family was betrayed and captured, the Nazis took all the furniture, though left Anne’s diary laying in the debris. Otto Frank requested that the house remain unfurnished, to allow free movement of visitors, and as a reminder of all that was lost in the Holocaust. In Anne’s room, her pictures remain stuck to the wallpaper. The royal family, film stars, figure skaters, her friend’s summer home, and thirteen postcards are all visible. I stuck similar images to my own wall when I was fourteen. There is a postcard of tea-drinking chipanzees, sent to her by her mother in 1937 from England. I stood for a long time in that room. The room in which Anne wrote her diary, confided her dreams and her fears. The windows completely blacked out – no glimpses of sunshine through the cracks. My heart broke for her, and for the millions of others who have lost so much due to war and prejudice. There are photos displayed of what the room may have looked like when Anne was in hiding:

$anne frank\'s bedroom$

Photo from annefrank.org

There is a book by the exit that lists the names of over 100 000 Dutch Jews who were deported to concentration camps. The name we all search for – Frank, Annelies Marie – appears as a single line in a volume as dense with people as a phone book.

At the bookstore, we bought The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank – six women’s stories who had been in the death camps with her after she was betrayed, and survived to tell their story. One of the women, Janny Bradnes-Brilleslijper, who sought out Otto Frank after the war to tell him that his daughters were dead, ends her story with this message:

I want to repeat, I have told this because I want to make it very clear to a large number of people that all discrimination – whatever form it takes – is evil and the world can go to pieces because of it. Actually, literally, go to pieces. Discrimination against someone because of his skin color or his ears or his hair, or God knows what – we can all die from that. It only takes one person to say, “He isn’t as good as I am, because he has…” You can fill in the rest.

All discrimination deserves moral outrage.