Barbara's already written about our last week in Europe, wandering about Amsterdam and other towns in the Netherlands, but I thought I would add in a few more photos--such as the one on the right, of Barbara amidst the summer flowers, which she does not include in her own postings. (And truth in packaging--we are in fact back in Minneapolis as I write this, sitting in my Dunn Bros. coffeeshop while it's over a 100 outside, but part of me is still in Europe, so in one sense I do feel like I'm still "writing from Europe.")
We've been to Amsterdam a few times before, and this time we often sought to find new neighborhoods and sights we hadn't seen before. One of our train trips (the extensive train network in Holland is what the bus network was in Estonia) took us to Haarlem, where one can see lovely local folks (as in the photo to the left) by historic windmills). The name reminded us that early on the Dutch were at least a temporary presence in what would become the U.S.--New York was once New Amsterdam, and still has an important community called Harlem. We also wandered around an area with more recent immigrants, and came upon a beautiful Turkish mosque built in 1979 (a wave of Muslim immigration a generation earlier than those coming from places like Morocco today).
If we hadn't seen the word "camii" (Turkish for mosque) outside, we'd have known it was Turkish once we took off our shoes, Barbara wrapped her scarf over her head, and I headed into the sanctuary while she climbed the stairs to the women's section (perhaps unnecessary since no one else was there, but we try to do more than just "what we can get away with"): the blue tilework was SO distinctively Turkish, as were other elements of the design. We'd both had good experiences in various mosques in Istanbul when we were there in the fall of 2009, both large and local, and felt much "at home." I recalled a conversation I'd had with a Turkish man there, who asked if I were a Christian, and whether I was able to live as a Christian should. We both admitted ruefully we so often fell short of what we knew was asked of us, but as we parted, he said "perhaps, inshallah (God willing), we will meet again someday in heaven." 
Take a close look at the photo to the left. In my experience, mosques usually have a clock or several clocks indicating the time, since (with some parallels to Jewish ritual practice as well), the times for daily prayers are set relative to the day and night (such as sunset). But these change during the course of the year (unless a mosque were to be on the equator, I suppose), so the exact times for prayers change each day (slightly), and it becomes important to have a common time-keeper so everyone will know if it's time for prayer (of course, the "call to prayer" by the muezzin also performs that function). What is particularly interesting in the photo, however, is that it reflects the long day in a northern country like the Netherlands: dawn may signal the time to get ready for the first prayer (at almost 3:00 a.m. on the first clock), and the last prayer of the day (the evening prayer) is noted as at 10:30 p.m. (!). (Ths will also have implications for Ramadan, which will run for the whole month of August this year, during which observant Muslims are to avoid food and drink from sunrise to sunset--a much longer time at this time of year than if it were in January.)
The photo to the right shows the main town square in Haarlem on a Sunday afternoon, with the huge old cathedral in the background. Sunday afternoons seem to be a time when many local folks gather there to visit, eat, and relax, a peaceful pause in the week's busy schedule.
In Den Haag (The Hague), the highlight of our visit was to the Escher Museum. It gave me a new appreciation for his work--I'd thought of hin primarily as someone whose main claim to fame was as someone who could devise carefully executed images that fool the viewer. But here I saw his earlier work, such as the etching of the Garden of Eden in the photo below. He reminded me more of someone like Durer (the well known artist who brought etching to the level of "real art," I think).
Change of scene: we are sitting in the synagogue where the folks we are staying with are active members. The building itself is rather new, quite striking, though the congregation itself has been around for generations. One of the service leaders comes over before things begin, and ask Barbara for her Herbrew name (somewhat different from her everyday name), for, as it turns out, she's called up to sing the blessings (given an aliya) before the reading of one of the sections of the Torah portion for the day. Her voice rises clear and lovely over us all, as it always is, though she confesses later to having been a bit nervous.
After the service, we go out into the adjacent area for kiddush (blessings over the wine, and coffee and cookies). Above the counter is a large photo of Anne Frank, the iconic one that is usually on the cover of her diary, for her family had been a member of this congregation, and older folks remember them. As I saw when I visited the Jewish Historical Museum (thanks to it for the photo on the left of a kosher butcher shop in the 1920's), Amsterdam was a relatively safe and welcoming place for Jews going back to the 1600's, when Spanish and Portuguese Jews were still fleeing persection from the Inquisition in Iberia. And yet three-quarters of those in Holland died in the Holocaust, shipped with reluctant cooperation of the government to the camps farther east (in my understanding of what the museum was saying, there was little official resistance to the deportations). Some would flee west, some would survive the camps, some would be hidden by sympathetic Dutch Christians at risk to themselves. Their stories survive.
A Jewish textile factory was requisitioned under Nazi occupation to produce the yellow cloth on which "Jood" (Dutch for Jew) was printed inside the Star of David, to identify Jews in public and make their persecution more easy.
Today (as in a number of European countries), there is political controversy and discussion about the "problem of immigration." And new immigrants do provide challenges to a society that now thinks of itself as very democratic, very tolerant, and very progressive about issues for gender and gas and lesbians (Holland was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage several years ago).
And yet, too, as my visit to the excellent Troppen Museum helped me understand, there is (as I suppose there always is!) an historical dimension that makes such issues more complex. At its height, during its "Golden Age" in the 1600's and 1700's, the Netherlands was a wealthy and powerful nation, small as it was, based in part on significant overseas colonies--Indonesia most significantly (which today is the largest Muslim country in the world), but also a history in South Africa, and in the New World (Surinam, in South America, little known to most Americans)--the Troppen noted that the Netherlands was involved in the slave trade (along with Britain and others), bringing over half a million people from West Africa to the New World. Slaves and sugar to the West, coffee from Yemen to the south, and the very lucrative spice trade to the Far East, helped make the Netherlands a wealthy nation. Some of Amsterdam's immigrants come from such places, while others (such as Moroccans) do not--but this longer historical perspective is important to consider as context for recent controversies.
At the end of June, for example, an alliance between one of the rising anti-immigration parties and an animal-rights party were able to get a new national law passed forbidding ritual slaughter of animals (halal for Muslims, kosher slaughter for Jews)--allegedly because modern slaughter is more humane. Yet the very rationale for religious slaughter is party to minimize pain to the animals involved, and many find it difficult to believe that historical feelings of both Jews and (more recently) Muslim immigrants aren't part of what made this law political possible. (At least it's created some alliances between Jews and Muslims!)
Such political controversies aside (and I haven't even mentioned problems with the euro and cutbacks in various government services, even in a relatively wealthy country like Holland), we much enjoyed our hours of wandering about Amsterdam, nearly always along one of its many canals. The larger ones are full of activity, including hundreds of bicyclists buzzing along past the outdoor cafes, while the smaller "side canals" (like the one in the photo to the right) are quiet and peaceful, often places where houseboats are moored. And we seek out various immigrant areas; the photo above shows Barbara in Amsterdam's "Chinatown."
In Den Haag (The Hague), the highlight of our visit was to the Escher Museum. It gave me a new appreciation for his work--I'd thought of hin primarily as someone whose main claim to fame was as someone who could devise carefully executed images that fool the viewer. But here I saw his earlier work, such as the etching of the Garden of Eden in the photo below. He reminded me more of someone like Durer (the well known artist who brought etching to the level of "real art," I think).
Change of scene: we are sitting in the synagogue where the folks we are staying with are active members. The building itself is rather new, quite striking, though the congregation itself has been around for generations. One of the service leaders comes over before things begin, and ask Barbara for her Herbrew name (somewhat different from her everyday name), for, as it turns out, she's called up to sing the blessings (given an aliya) before the reading of one of the sections of the Torah portion for the day. Her voice rises clear and lovely over us all, as it always is, though she confesses later to having been a bit nervous.
Today (as in a number of European countries), there is political controversy and discussion about the "problem of immigration." And new immigrants do provide challenges to a society that now thinks of itself as very democratic, very tolerant, and very progressive about issues for gender and gas and lesbians (Holland was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage several years ago).
At the end of June, for example, an alliance between one of the rising anti-immigration parties and an animal-rights party were able to get a new national law passed forbidding ritual slaughter of animals (halal for Muslims, kosher slaughter for Jews)--allegedly because modern slaughter is more humane. Yet the very rationale for religious slaughter is party to minimize pain to the animals involved, and many find it difficult to believe that historical feelings of both Jews and (more recently) Muslim immigrants aren't part of what made this law political possible. (At least it's created some alliances between Jews and Muslims!)
I also spent some time at Amsterdam's Botanical Gardens (I have become a Cultured Person during my time abroad--often having more time to attend concerts, visit museums, or wander through botanical gardens and parks than my hard-working spouse). One of the benefits (at least for visitors like myself and professional botanists) of empire is that the gardens in Amsterdam have such a rich variety of plants from all over the world--but particularly from Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, such as the large palm-like plant one of whose "leaves" (?) is seen in the photo to the left. And the trees are sometimes several centuries old! (Another benefit is cafes with Surinamese and Indonesian foods.)
Well, enough for now. We've been enriched by our travels and sojourns, and privileged to have them. There are things whose meaning or implications for us we may still be sorting through--we may have a "reflections" entry later this summer for those of you faithful readers who want to check back later. But for now--many thanks for "following" our footsteps. Bruce
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