It is time to get out of the city!
We have taken no advantage yet of the excellent train system to explore
the many day-trip options from Amsterdam, and we still don’t, as Bill opts to
rent a car for our adventure. Our
destination: the Park de Hoge Veluwe,
which is a large national park that also happens to contain a museum with the
second-largest collection of Van Goghs in the world. The park itself was the former private
hunting preserve of the Kröller-Müller family, who also happened to like to
collect contemporary art. Mrs. K-M was
particular fond of VG, and had the resources to buy them, so the centerpiece of
the museum is the more than 90 Van Goghs, spanning his entire career. When the K-Ms lost all their money in the
1930s, the whole kit and caboodle – park, house, museum – was donated to a
state foundation. Now you can tour their
outrageous “hunting lodge,” view the politically-questionable monument to Boer
colonel Christiaan de Wet (fortunately in the middle of nowhere), and of course
visit the art museum with all those Van Goghs and its jam-packed sculpture
garden. The latter struck me as much of
a muchness – a lot of monolithic black stone and metal – until we found the
fantastical Dubuffet moonscape that you can climb around on. It looks like something out of 1930s-vintage
sci-fi movie and is brilliant. Pointy
hats and laser beam guns would not be out of place.
But the best thing about this park are the bikes. I’ve been eyeing Dutch bikes since we got
here, amazed by the riders’ abilities to multi-task and look good doing it,
while not causing accidents. At every
gate and stop in this park, there is a bike yard with about a thousand white
bikes all lined up. You just choose one,
adjust the seat and off you go along the roads and bike paths. There is a child seat on every bike, which
turns out to be a convenient hat-catcher when Izzy’s flies off, and bag-holder,
and my god are these things comfortable!
Big comfy seats, tall handlebars, no neck-killing hunching over the
handlebars. I could do this all day and
we are happy to be taking advantage of some sun and warmer temps to toodle
about.
Some in our party have a hankering to see the bridge across the Lower
Rhine at Arnhem, the final objective of the failed Operation Market Garden in
September, 1944. Market Garden was a
large and complex Allied action that aspired to capture territory in Holland
and bridges across the Rhine, in order to move forces into Germany in a final
push to end WW2. It failed for a variety
of reasons – weather, intelligence, logistical issues, excess ambition, overbearing
personalities – and was made into one of those night-of-a-thousand-stars kind
of movies called, wait for it “A Bridge Too Far.” It also featured Peter’s favorite character
of WW2, one Alison Digby Tatham-Warter, a British captain who led his troops
into battle carrying an umbrella (for identification purposes), disabled a
German armored car with said umbrella, was wounded and captured and escaped in
dramatic fashion, and generally was very eccentrically British about the whole
thing. Unfortunately, ADT-W ended up
later fighting to put down the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya so his reputation is pretty
much destroyed by that. But discussion
of him provides a colorful addition to our travels as we motor toward Arnhem,
across the bridge, and then almost don’t make it back to A-dam before the
rental car place closes and without a full tank of gas. A bridge too far, indeed.
The real tragedy of Market Garden is that everyone thought the war
was over when the Allies got to Belgium that fall, but as you know, it was
not. The failure of this particular operation,
and continued stiff Dutch resistance resulted in perhaps 1) the Battle of the
Bulge, and definitely 2) the Germans placing harsh restrictions on the local
populations. They cut off food and fuel supplies
to the Netherlands for the remaining months of the war, and this time became
known as the Hongerwinter, when thousands of Dutch died from starvation and
exposure. It was a vindictive act of a
desperate combatant that brings home how ugly this conflict was.
Tonight, we are more than happy to dine at KT’s swell apartment
overlooking the Amstel, on great Indian takeaway and tasty Dutch cookies and
ice cream. All to the accompaniment of
Buster and Teddy who, though banished to the bedroom, nevertheless make sure we
know they are there.
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