Windmills, Wyoming, and how the Dutch are saving civilization

We took advantage of a Czech national holiday (September 26th-St. Wenceslas Day, patron saint of the Czech lands) to enjoy a long weekend in the Netherlands, the country of five happy years of my youth.

We flew into Amsterdam on a Wednesday night. Unfortunately, right away we relearned, yet again, that ol' lesson that you get what you pay for. We had decided to save a few Euros by staying in a hostel just north of downtown Haarlem called the StayOkay, which was, alas, only okay. It's not that we deeply minded sleeping in bunk beds or that we particularly loathed having to bring our own towels and soap. BUT what pushed us over the edge was the design of our private bathroom, which erred on the side of "cleaning efficiency" rather than "comfort" (e.g., the toilet, sink, and shower all shared a room-sized stall with a common drain...wierd). I mean, it WAS very clean, but not having a shower curtain meant EVERYTHING in the bathroom got wet during one's showers. On the bright side, it was the ONLY time in our marriage that Betsy wanted me to keep the toilet seat UP. And besides, it was kind of fun to squeegee the bathroom (think post rain delay at the US Open minus, thank God, the line judges). Oh, and another thing: the StayOK also offered the traditional Dutch breakfast: bread, cheese, meats, butter (um...margarine), and "hagel" (chocolate sprinkles...sometimes called "muisjes" as in mouse-___. hmmm...). Maybe it's just me, but I just can't help but admire a nation that doesn't impose limits on the times of day one can eat a good thing like chocolate sprinkles.

Day 1: In the Dunes, awkward comparisons to Wyoming, and Haarlem.
The hostel aside, Haarlem was a great place to stay. It's one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands AND it's right next to a huge (by Dutch standards) national park of dunes ("Zuid-Kennemarland") that is crisscrossed with walking ("wandelroutes") and biking ("fietsroutes") paths. Note to you historians and geographers out there: these dunes were created when most of the Netherlands was part of a post-ice age Rhine River-on-Steroids delta. Ye olde Dutche wrestled (and continue to wrestle) most of the habitable land in the Netherlands from the water behind these dunes. So, unlike most places in the world, when you bike to the sea, you bike UPHILL!

The dunes are pretty stunning...maybe even more so than I remembered from being a kid. The rolling dunes are covered with sage-colored dune grass, occasionally broken up with small stands of trees or high brush. Oddly enough, it most reminded me of parts of Wyoming...except that, unlike Wyoming, a plate of fries and herring was never more than a short bike ride away. And nobody has guns. But in an eerie similarity to Dick Cheney's favorite state, a special breed of extra cute and furry cattle is allowed to graze in selected parts of the sanctuary.

Powered by our breakfast of hagel, we biked through the dunes, played with Sophie on the beach, and then coasted back inland for a dinner of tasty Indian food (i.e., NOT Czech food--Happy Sophie)

Day 2: Childhood revisited and civilization (as understood from the seat of a bicycle)
The next day we also biked, but this time through my childhood home of Heemstede, the town just south of Haarlem. As a kid I was occasionally lonely (I went to an American school very far away from my house and, thus, never developed many local Dutch friends), however most of my childhood memories are very positive. Here's my theory: Holland's extensive system of public transport and bike paths give me a loads of independence. With bikes paths on EVERY major road complete with their own lanes, bike garages, crossing lights, and rights of way, children can get around safely and healthily while parents do whatever it is that parents do when kids aren't around (i.e., sleep). Building bike paths seems like such reasonable public policy--a great way to invest the dividends of industrialization--and a nice preemptive strike against child obesity, global warming, etc. Bikes are pretty cheap; because Holland's so flat they don't need gears or even hand brakes. And beacuse no one has to wear a helmet, you can't really even use your hairdo as a reason not to get on and pedal.

Highlights of Day 2:
1) My childhood house was more or less as I remembered, including the huge climbing tree that served alternately as Lord Vader's death star, a pirate ship, and Batman and Robin's cave. The climbing tree was MUCH bigger than I remembered, no doubt fertilized with my blood.

2) As we were biking by some fields, I recognized my old soccer club. The club "store" was closed, but a custodian who had worked there when I was a kid presented me with a jersey "fresh" from the laundry hamper! (yummy). Odor aside, the whole back-slapping exchange was strangely moving...and he even gave Sophie a club soccer ball...(By the way, I can't resist saying something else about agency here: I used to bike to soccer alone. No mini-vans or car pools. In other words, soccer was MY thing and not just another after school driving chore for my parents.)

3) We rode south along some dikes to one of the old steam-powered pumping stations (now a museum) alongside the great "Circle Canal" that moved water out to sea and helped turn a vast inland lake into habitable land. Although the story of Dutch land reclamation could easily be read as some kind of environmental apocalypse, the sight of the dikes, pump houses, and hand-made dikes DO tell an awe-inspiring story. AND, conveniently for touring cyclists, this history of "men with wood shoes beat the water" has created a landscape that is GREAT for biking; it's full of cows, windmills, blue herons, and absolutely quaint boat houses. And cheese. I think I forgot to mention the cheese. Yum.

Day 3: Windmills and Amsterdam's Canals
Our last day fulfilled Sophie's dream of seeing a working windmill doing its windmilly thing. Just north-west of Amsterdam there is a collection of windmills on the campus of large outdoor museum (Zaanse Schans) celebrating traditional Dutch industries. A complete tourist trap, yes, but fascinating. One highlight of the day was our tour of a tiny clock museum accompanied by Mr. Fanatical Clock Dude with his cute white gloves, passion for gears and springs, and ability to convey the unique tragedy of mass-produced time pieces. But THE highlight was visiting a working dye mill, with its HUGE mesmerizing mill stones rolling around and around, lurching with each gust of wind and pulverizing the dyes while the whole building creaked and shuddered. Both terrifying and amazing.

Our last hurrah before retiring to the airport hotel (read: shower curtain) was an early evening boat ride along Amsterdam's canals. Amsterdam may require a future trip. It was SOOOO much more crowded than Haarlem and "stuff" is certainly happening. But the boat ride was more like our bike rides: a chance to appreciate the beauty of the place, be together as a family, and marvel at the civilization the Dutch have carved from the prehistoric delta.

Czech Hospitals

Unfortunately, we now know more than we wanted to know about Czech hospitals.

Last week Sophie spent four nights in the hospital with an ear infection (she's fine now, so no need for you to any worrying...we did that for you).

Although the experience exhausted us emotionally, we left feeling surprisingly positive about Czech health care. A few observations:

1) No privacy, brave kids, and mellow parents: Sophie was garrisoned on a ward with her fellow nose, ear, and throat patients, ranging in ages from two to seventeen, all housed in four coed rooms which were separated from one another by glass. Imagine our first reaction: "Sophie in the same room as a teen aged BOY?!" But the more we hung out, the more we appreciated the charms of Czech hospitals (no, there wasn't any beer or mushrooms, but we did have to wear slippers!).

But first we had to get over this shock: there were virtually no parents visiting their children! It was enough to almost make us feel self-conscious about being with Sophie the moment the doors opened in the morning until she feel asleep at night (they wouldn't let us spend the night). That said, it was pretty incredible to watch all these LITTLE kids--who could barely speak or walk--being taken care of by the occasional nurse, but more frequently, by some older kid who might to read to them or help them out of their crib so they can go to the bathroom. I was humbled by these children, their resiliency, and their capacity for responsibility and independence!

2) Inexpensive health care: A visit to the weekend clinic here in Brno costs about 300 Czech crowns ($15). Sophie's week in the hospital cost about 6500 Czech crowns (~$320). So yes, health care must be subsidized at some level. And yes, Czech hospitals seem much more frugal than they are in the US (i.e., no buttons to make the beds recline). But it did make you want to be a fly on the wall when health-care big wigs in the U.S. are lobbying our political representatives. By the way, the hospital's frugality did not seem to extend to the actual health care: Sophie got all the proper tests, x-rays, hearing tests, etc. That said, I would have endured a bill of $400, if they could have hired an on-staff translator.

3) Trigger-finger hospitalization: although we were completely surprised when they told us Sophie would be sleeping over in the hospital for this infection, we were even more surprised when we met the other kids on her ward: many were in the hospital for something that would be an out-patient procedure in the U.S. (e.g., removing wisdom teeth). Sophie had room mates sleeping in the hospital in ANTICIPATION of surgery, not just from the recovery from it. The average stay were so long (4 or 5 days!) that, in addition to usual "activities" for kids, the hospital also has to provide "school" every morning for those patients conscious enough to shuffle down to the little cafeteria/activities room.

Thus, there was this interesting mix of kids in post-surgery catatonic slumber and perfectly peppy kids who were bored out of their knockers (seriously, with the wrong "sleepy to healthy" ratio the place could have easily gone "Lord of the Flies"). Needless to say, sweet Sophie was a welcome distraction for all. But the co-mingling of healthy with recovering, older with younger, and girls with boys engendered a very groovy atmosphere.

4) The power of communication skills: The worst part about this experience was our lack of Czech. (e.g., imagine my reaction when they told me that Sophie needed "to go to ambulance"..."ambulance" means clinic; it has nothing to do with sirens or blood-stained EMTs administering tracheotomies). Sophie didn't seem to mind everyone jabbering away at her in Czech, but Betsy and I both wished we could do a better job advocating for Sophie and asking clarifying questions. On this front we learned three major lessons:

• Start taking Czech lessons ASAP!
  

• Distill one's questions and request to a limited number of gestures and words (e.g., "sucking chest wound"). This worked both ways: the most helpful hospital personnel were those who accepted the language barrier and used short key phrases that we could find in our dictionaries.
  

• Smile and have faith in humanity. Help came from the strangest quarters. Our guardian angel was the ward "matron." Although she spoke not a single word of English, she put aside her laundry and food-service duties to call for doctors, walk us down to hard-to-find clinics, or rustle up the dermatology staff who had "left for the day." What a hero.

My general advice? Avoid having your child hospitalized in a country where you can't even imagine being able to say the word for "Thursday" ("čtvrtek"--as in "what do you mean she'll be in the hospital until Thursday or Friday?!!). But if you can't avoid the hospital, relax, put on your slippers, and trust that just about everybody wants to love and care for children, especially when they are as brave and cute as Sophie.