October 3: Leiden's Ontzet / The Seige of Leiden

Preface: I am adding a whole bunch of new stories all at once. I’m trying to catch up because, being me, I can’t put up stories out of order. Thus, they may not all be as creative as they could be, but you’ll get the idea.

October 3: Leiden’s Ontzet / The Seige/Liberation of Leiden

My high school friend Philip came to visit on October 3rd from his study abroad post in Madrid. He chose a great weekend. October 3rd is Leiden’s Ontzet (in Dutch) or the Liberation or Siege of Leiden – I’ve heard it translated both ways. It’s a huge festival celebrating the defeat of the Spanish in 1547. Think the 4th of July meets the Iowa State Fair.

The whole city was transformed almost overnight. There were carnival games and rides everywhere: roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, and various other highly entertaining Adventureland-like rides appeared in and around town square. Cotton candy stands and fruit-filled doughnut stands and stroopwaffels (a Dutch delicacy of a warm thin waffle – similar to a freshly-made waffle cone with a caramel-like syrup in the middle) beckoned on every street. Vendors called from their games to knock down bottles, shoot darts, or play bingo to win a stuffed animal. Heineken and other beer stands found every few feet had lines of customers waiting. Herring stands – the tradition food of October 3rd – had shorter lines, but lines nonetheless. Amongst all of the food and games vendors were stands selling anything else you could possibly want from scarves to raw meat or cheese to electronics to customized street signs to decorative toilet seat covers. Restaurants extended their storefronts to include tents to form outdoor patios and added Hutspot to the menu for the day – a meal of mashed carrots and potatoes served with beef. The streets were packed and it was nearly impossible to walk a bike through, let alone ride it.

The whole town closes on October 3rd. Shops and grocery stores close early the night before and the University cancels all classes. Festivities focus around the night of Oct 2nd. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it’s because everyone has Oct 3rd off, but not the 4th, so they celebrate all night Oct 2nd and recover on Oct 3rd. This year, however, the 3rd fell on a Friday so festivities ran all of both days.

Philip arrived around noon on Friday (Oct 3) and we walked around town for a bit, collecting my bike from the opposite end of town in the process. I managed to ride it in the previous night before the crowds got too large, but wasn’t able to get it home. My basket was a little bent, but the bike made it through the night in fine form overall. We got an appeltaart to go – the standard Dutch dessert – before I biked him back to my house to drop off his bag.

Philip had never ridden on the back of a bike (or at least not in the last 18 years) and I had only chauffeured Gul, my 110-lb, 5’1” housemate who is able to straddle the bike for even weight distribution. Philip doesn’t weigh much more than Gul, but his backpack did and he is significantly taller. It took a few initial attempts, but we finally made it home without any crashes, scrapes, or bruises the first time or any other time throughout the weekend, including when Philip took a turn to bike me. I live about 10 minutes by bike from the city center (15 minutes with a passenger) so I got my work out as we went back and forth all weekend.

After dropping off his backpack, Philip and I returned to town and explored the canals and enjoyed a couple of carnival rides. We also tried the herring sandwich. That is now crossed off my list and I need not do so again. The top of the tallest ride provided a great view of the city which I was able to capture on film, though I did fear for my camera as I took the pictures. We went back home for dinner then back into town for the evening. I was able to recover both my purse (left at a friend’s house the night before) and my phone (a friend had borrowed it and accidentally left it at a house party) and then met up with the gang at a pub whose name translates to “The Cow.” We stood under the tent there, specially erected for the Oct 3 celebrations, waiting for the downpour to subside before we headed back to town square for the carnival games and rides. Toby was determined to win a tiger, and I really wanted one as well, but we were unsuccessful. He was awarded a consolation prize – an oversized “Mr. Perfect” tie – for his effort. After exhausting the rides and our wallets, we turned in for the night. Poor Philip had been up nearly 24 hours because of his early flight but he was a trooper. We set the alarms for the next day’s Amsterdam Adventure and got some much needed sleep.

October 4: Amsterdam Adventure

Philip and I made our way to Amsterdam the next day a bit tired, but ready for some sightseeing. Knowing he would be visiting, I hadn’t done many of the tourist destinations yet myself. We started off the day at the Anne Frank House, grateful that the sun finally came out. The line wasn’t too long, just about a 30 minute wait, but since it was mostly outside, we were thrilled that it wasn’t raining.

Having acclimated to living 5 km south of the North Sea and being used to the temperate climate and frequent changes in weather, I was thinking how nice the weather was. Philip had also adjusted to his new country of residence and had been enjoying the warm Spanish weather. So as I basked in the sun, he bundled up in several layers, gloves, and even purchased a hat to keep warm as we toured the city. It was then that I realized that I no longer judge weather so much by the temperature as by whether the sun is shining and whether the sky is clear. The city isn’t so bright that you can’t see stars here, but the skies are rarely clear enough.

The Anne Frank House was fascinating to see. It’s a former warehouse that’s mostly the same as it was when she was living there, but the furniture was removed long ago and Otto Frank (Anne’s father) didn’t want it to be replaced – a symbol of the emptiness and loss. Nearly all Jews in the Netherlands were exterminated during WWII. The NL declared neutrality early on so the Germans stormed in and set up camp right in 1940. The completeness of the eradication of Jews was due in part to the Dutch bureaucracy’s detailed records and in part to the fact that there’s just nowhere to hide. It’s a densely populated country (population density = 480 persons/square mile) without mountains or a vast unpopulated countryside. The Frank family was discovered in August 1944, over two years after the family had gone into hiding. Anne died in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by the British in April 1945.

After visiting the Anne Frank House, we caught the tram to the Van Gogh Museum. I decided that I like the portraits done in Belgium and the paintings of Parisian scenery best. Then we walked through Dam Square and had a nice dinner at A-Fusion in Chinatown, including bubble tea – one of my favorite drinks back home. Philip hadn’t experienced bubble tea before and expected hot tea with fizz. The poor guy was so excited about a warm beverage on such a “cold” day rather than a cold drink of smoothie-like consistency with tapioca pearls inside. After dinner, we wandered around the Red Light District for a bit then headed back to Leiden.

The following morning we headed to Den Haag for mass at the English speaking church there before he headed back to Madrid in the afternoon and I went home exhausted. I’d been jealous of my European friends whose friends were able to visit so easily and it was fun to get to have a friend in myself too. It was a quick trip, but we did a lot and had a great time.