Schiphol to Haarlem
By Rick Steves
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport offers a no-stress but sterile introduction to Europe. The seeds of cultural homogenization must come in by air, sprouting first in and around airports. Even communication problems are weeded out. Because in Dutch "e" is pronounced aye, and "i" is ee, you won't find any gates identified by those potentially confusing letters.
In the scramble to turn airports into shopping malls, Schiphol is a prizewinner — voted "best in Europe" by businesspeople whose priorities matter. Corporate banners — not windmills — blow in the Dutch breeze. The sandy, below-sea-level land still looks newly reclaimed. It's littered with sprawling rent-a-car lots and glassy office parks that missed the Houston exit.
Hoping to glean some new insight into the Dutch youth culture, I share a seat on the bus with a kid just getting off work at the airport. I say I'm from Seattle. A fan of the grunge band Nirvana, he's still mourning the suicide of lead singer Kurt Cobain in 1994. Any chance of a discussion of Dutch culture vanishes.
As we glide over and under huge freeways, I mourn the passing of a quaint, traditional Europe. We sit side by side in silence, each lamenting the loss of something entirely different. Then the bus dips under a sailboat that's navigating a canal-freeway overpass. Suddenly, our century is replaced by an earlier one, and we rattle down a cobbled lane into the tidy market town of Haarlem.
A Dutch Masters kind of town, Haarlem is a good place to start a European trip. In small-town Holland, cultural differences are obvious and travel is easy. Haarlem is a cultural wading pool that slopes gradually into the more challenging waters of central Europe.
I hop off the bus and set my sights on Haarlem's towering church spire. It's said a society builds its highest monuments to its greatest gods. But the cross on this spire towers over a community that worships trade.
Much of the architecture of today's "old Holland" is from the 1600s. That was Holland's golden age — when merchants ruled the waves, stockpiled profits, and hired Rembrandt to paint their portraits. While Haarlem has its fancy old guild halls and business has reigned here for centuries, the town's strictly enforced building code assures that the church tower will always dominate the downtown.
After the futuristic Schiphol Airport, Haarlem's market square cheers me with a festival of flowers, bright bolts of cloth, evangelical cheese pushers, and warm, gooey stroopwafels. The carillon clangs with an out-of-tune sweetness only a medieval church clock tower can possess.
Savoring the cheery dissonance, a street vendor named Jos dishes up herring. The sign on his van reads "Jos Haring — Gezond en Lekkerrr" ("healthy and deeeeeelicious").
I order by pointing and ask, "Gezond?"
Jos hands me what looks more like bait than lunch and says, "En lekkerrr."
I stand there — not sure what to do with my bait — apparently looking lost. Jos, a huge man who towers over his white fishy counter, mimes swallowing a sword and says, "I give you the herring Rotterdam style. You eat it like this. If I chop it up and give you these" — he points to the toothpicks-"this is Amsterdam-style."
As I take a bite he asks, "You like it?"
Even with three "r"s on the delicious, "It's salty" is the only polite response I can muster.
"Yes. This is not raw. It is pickled in salt. Great in the hot weather. You sweat. You need salt. You eat my herring."
Nibbling tiny bites, I wander deeper into the market, happy that Jos is piling chopped onion on herring rather than dealing in Happy Meals.
Under high-stepping gables and yawning awnings, the square bustles expertly with the same commercial game it's practiced for centuries. In the town museum, 350-year-old paintings by hometown boy Frans Hals show the same square, hotel buildings, market bustle, and the church.
A noisy traffic circle in the 1960s, the now car-free area has become the town's social and psychological hub, the civic living room. Dodging flower-laden one-speeds, I feel like part of the family here. America is gone. Schiphol is gone. I'm in Europe — with raw herring breath.
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