More Museums than Days

Jason on the Hofvijver
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Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we were in the Hague and energetic enough to venture out to museums and sights we had not seen before on our many previous visits here, or at least not seen in quite some time. It was raining here at least half the time and we focused on rest and cultural enjoyment, with a few brief trips to bars in the evenings. With three weeks still remaining in the trip we tried to be budget conscious, both with our time and our energy.

The Gemeintemuseum in den Haag is a major civic attraction, an art museum in a 1930s modern and perpendicular architectural style. The Helene Schjerfbeck exhibit was very interesting - she lived 1860s to 1940s, Finnish by nationality but spending much of her life in Sweden, and not appreciated enough during her lifetime. Her grim, essentialist style of self-portrait (in her old age she could not afford to pay models to sit for paintings) is her hallmark. I don't know enough about art to be of much use in conversation after we see things like this, but her story touched me. She fell and broke her hip at age 4 and never properly healed. She was a success in art school in Paris, evntually becoming a teacher, but had to quit because of all the stairs she had to climb every day for the job. Then her fiance broke off their engagement because of her poor health, which he mistook for symptoms of TB. She ended up in a rural cottage setting with a long-suffering mother and gave up showing her work for many years, only to finally get the recogntion she was due in her final years. She sadly wrote in a letter late in life that she hoped the world would be kind and forget all about her. Instead, her work now sells in the millions - when it comes on the market rarely, anyway.

We saw the ossifying finger and tongue of a Dutch republican statesman torn to bits by an angry royalist mob.

Everyone looks their best with Art Nouveau lettering
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In the evening we sat for a spell at the Cafe de Vink, a small gay bar just off the Grote Markt in the Centrum. It is noted in a few of the more detailed local travel guides as the longest continuously operated gay bar in the Netherlands and features a local crowd, 8,000 songs on the sound system and frequent jolly singalongs, often to Dutch-language folk tunes played on accordion. We chatted up the bartender and a few of the regulars, talking about the new tram cars, the American legal system, their recent trip to Key West and Miami, and the vast distances of the American West, as well as designer watches and the secret of a thrifty cocktail in Holland (order your Coke Light spiked with genever instead of vodka, it is cheaper and has a little more of a tangy taste, too).

Johan de Wit called; he would like these back
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Wednesday we squeezed in some miscellaneous clothes shopping before heading to the Hague Historical Museum, where a Dutch history exhibit is now showing with overflow materials and portraits from the Reichsmuseum in Amsterdam, which is right now largely closed for renovations. We saw a suit of armor, the count's formal chair from the 1780s, and the ossifying finger and tongue of a prominent Dutch republican statesman of the 17th century who was once torn to bits by an angry royalist mob here in the Hague. An exhibit of torture implements, guillotines, etc. rounded out the visit ... and weirdly, was the happy playground of a few children cheerfully pointing out and questioning about the thumbscrews, pillories and whatnot. One amusing item in the collection was a chunk of rock upon which William III first set foot during the Glorious Revolution, in the which Catholic-weary British Parliament invited the Dutch stadhouder to come be their King as well.

The Dutch brought diesel engines to Indonesia, then celebrated it
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Down the way a few blocks sits the Mesdag Panorama, a jewel of the city and well worth a 5 Euro admission. Mesdag was a Hague painter who loved the beach at Scheveningen, a timeless fishing village adjoining the North Sea right alongside den Haag, but which today has become a slightly tacky beach resort with casinos jammed up against the quaint and beautiful historic village center. Mesdag painted a 360-degree panorama of the view of the ocean, beach and village as it appeared from a high sand dune in 1880. Up the center of the installation a winding staircase takes you to a platform from which you look out at the panorama. It is cleverly dressed up with sand and flotsam piled up around the viewing platform, with the painting far enough in the distance that it fools your eye completely into seeing yourself there at the beach 127 years ago. (Sorry, no pictures allowed, but look it up online and certainly visit if you make it to this place someday.) There used to be 300 panoramas in the world, which toured the major cities and gave people a chance to see faraway places they might not otherwise see in an age before jet travel, film and television. This remaining example is not only charming but a reminder of the luxury we enjoy of being able to travel in this age.

This tree-lined street made us happy
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Thursday morning has now arrived and we're packing for a four-night side trip to Amsterdam. Along with pre-planned outfits for going out, all the dirty laundry of the last 8 days is coming with us as well since there's a laundromat just up the street from our hotel which we have used before. It is typically full of British adolescents who ask for help figuring out the mysterious pictograms and Dutch-language washing instructions on the coin-operated equipment.

More photos to come if we don't run out of time before our train to Amsterdam - otherwise, look for them in a day or two. Tot ziens!