Haarlem

Thursday, August 21, 2014
Day 9—Haarlem

As I defrost from an experience that you will get to hear about tomorrow, I will write today’s blog. The day started around 8:15am. Can I tell you it is getting harder and harder to wake up every day, this backpacking stuff is not for the faint of heart. But as I always say, I truly am loving this wild and crazy adventure and all the ups and downs it has to offer. We had to check out this morning so we got up, showered and packed our things, and then headed into the café lounge area to eat breakfast.

The breakfast today was French toast and it was both filling and delicious! The lounge area at this hostel was very cool. There are tables, couches, and benches all over the room and an array of pillows are strewn about in all patterns, colors, and sizes. There is a guitar hanging on one of the far walls, and there is also a giant painting of the city of Amsterdam with the word Jesus painted in large letters above it. All of the workers here are volunteers from all over the world. They are all believers and receive free housing in exchange for the opportunity to work in a community of Christians, and together share God’s love with the people of Amsterdam. They were from a variety of dominations, and they came from Germany, Texas, New Zealand, El Salvador, Colorado, as well as many other places. Each evening they have a Bible study, and a little later each night they have prayer time. The whole ministry was awesome, and I really enjoyed our stay there.

Anyways, we stayed in the area for a while after we checked out to sit and use the wifi to post pictures and videos and blogs. I ended up talking to one of the workers in the café who was a recent college grad from Texas. He was telling me about working in the hostel and living in Amsterdam for the summer. I actually never learned his name, but I started talking to him because he was playing Ben Howard, which made me happy because I lost my phone and haven’t been able to listen to any of my music.

My new shoes!!

After that, we locked up our bags at the hostel (they have a free service and we could leave them until 6pm) and headed out to take a train to Haarlem, another city in the northern part of Holland. We really enjoyed Haarlem! It was very cute and was similar to Bruges, in that it was small and less crowded, but still full of beauty. It was very quaint, and right off the bat we got more frites and mayonnaise cause they’re just too good! 


My bike charm!

We walked down the main strip and found the Corrie Ten Boom house, which was our main reason for coming into Haarlem. What’s funny is that we asked some people in Amsterdam and a girl working at Starbucks in Haarlem to tell us where the Corrie Ten Boom house was, and literally no one knew who she was. But we found it anyways, and found out that we couldn’t tour the house until 3pm. So we walked around the main square, where there was a giant pair of Dutch shoes that we stood in, a gorgeous church, and a ton of amazing stores. We found another H&M, a toy shop where I tried to find a toy for Cole (but it’s honestly all the same junk he could get in the states), and a Pandora store (where I bought a cute little bike charm to remember this unbelievable journey)! 

The lovely Haarlem square!

We went back to the alley where the side door to the Ten Boom building is located. Now back story. When people talk about Europe they have all sorts of things to say, and they show you pretty pictures of historic buildings and things, and they leave out some of the weird stuff. Like the birds. They’re everywhere. They fly low, dive bomb, take off sporadically, and worst of all they aren’t scared of you so they don’t go away. Morgan and I hate them. That may sound harsh, but they’re psycho. Literally though, while we were sitting in the alley (it’s not a wide alley mind you, very narrow, and people are all around waiting for the tour), one of them was walking along before it suddenly took flight right towards us. I mean the alley is already narrow so opening his wings, even gently, was a bad idea. But no, it just shot up with no restraint (cause it’s a bird) and I screamed. Which is just embarrassing because people stared at me. But I couldn’t help it, it really freaked me out, I hated it and I can’t believe no one ever told me or warned me about the bird problem over here. So, if you are planning to go to Europe be ready for the birds, THIS IS YOUR WARNING. Another thing no one mentions is that there is WAY more graffiti than I ever would have thought. It's all really colorful and artistic graffiti and its all over, on trains, tons of buildings, bridges, and overpasses, and it’s oddly beautiful, except that it also sometimes ruins beautiful things. I just never expected that.

The place where they hid
the ration cards!

Now back to the subject at hand, the Ten Boom house. First of all, there is still a clock shop in the front of the building, and the woman who worked the museum said that it was all largely the exact same. In the watch shop you can buy watches that actually say “Ten Boom,” on the face, which I thought was awesome. The Ten Boom Museum is actually one of my very favorite things that we have done on this trip so far, and it was completely free! It was cool because we had studied the book and the story so extensively in Mrs. Crain’s seventh grade language arts class, and I remember it all very well. So when I saw the steps where they hid the radio, or the actual clock that was used as a signal, when I saw the space where they kept the ration cards, and when I saw the hiding place itself, it was all so incredible to me to actually be there and see it all in the flesh. To stand in the space, crawl through the secret passage, I loved every second of it. Even the fact that they ran drills for everyone to get into the hiding place in 70 seconds, flipping their mattresses, taking all their food with them, climbing the long spiral staircase that runs all the way through the house, and getting into the space in that amount of time is very impressive, especially when you see it in person.  


Morgan and I in the hiding place!

It was also amazing to see the living room where they sang worship songs and had Bible studies and prayed for God’s people, the nation of Israel, every single week without fail for 100 years (Corrie’s grandfather started the tradition when he bought the house in 1844, one hundred years later in 1944 the Ten Booms got arrested). The whole thing is especially touching to me with everything that is going on in the Middle East. Their prayers were necessary then and they are necessary now as well (times one thousand). God’s people are still under attack, and this family went out of their way, they went above and beyond, and they gave their lives for the people of God…happily. They saved so many lives, not only physically, but spiritually as well. Even in her later years, Corrie’s humility to ask God for the strength and power to forgive the man who beat her, led to his salvation. Countless others, before, during, and after the war, are better off as a result of the love and hospitality that the Ten Boom’s gave to anyone in need. I want to be like that. A refuge for those who need safety, a stream of water in the desert, the very picture of Isaiah 32:1-4. This story is one that has always inspired me to love God more and to love myself less, and to be there in person was an enormous blessing and inspiration. Not to mention the fact that the lady that showed us the museum was the cutest, old, Dutch woman in all of Holland. She made a point of telling the story as God’s story, not as Corrie’s story, or the Ten Boom’s story, but a story of God and the work that he did through an incredible family. 


The hiding place with the passage
door open (on the bottom left).

The tour started out in the living room, which is furnished with photos of the family, and is decorated as closely to the original decorations and furniture as possible. We sat in the living room while the old Dutch woman told us the story of the Ten Boom family. If you have never read the book “The Hiding Place,” then you should read it, but basically **SPOILER ALERT** this is generally what happens... Corrie starts a web of underground activity aimed at helping the Jews. She creates a list of over 80 contacts, she gets help from friends and family, and together they have safe houses, money, and ration cards. They use a Swedish clock advertisement to alert people that may be coming to the house for help as to whether or not it is safe to come in. If the clock is in the window, they are safe, if not, they are not safe at all. People come to and from the house with needs that Corrie and Betsy and their father, manage to find solutions to. They have a hiding place built in upstairs so that six Jews could stay with them. Corrie had an architect friend build in a false wall (out of brick so that you couldn't knock and hear a difference) in her own bedroom on the top floor of the house. Eventually, a man working with the Nazi’s comes to the family “needing help,” and Corrie helps him. Then, because she helped him, the Nazi’s bust in to take her and her entire family away and search the whole house for the Jews but cannot find them anywhere. The Ten Booms are all (including Betsy and Corrie's older brother and sister, and their sister's son) are taken to concentrations camps where the majority oaf them are killed. Miraculously and clearly at the hands of God, Corrie survives, and she spent the rest of her life running healing programs for concentration camp victims, and traveling the world, speaking to people about God’s love. That’s essentially the story, but you should still read the book. It's a story of hope through unimaginable pain, and forgiveness in impossible circumstances, and it is absolutely inspiring. The whole museum really made me think of my mama! I know her well, and she would have loved it!

The little Swiss clock signal
in the alley window.

At this museum, I didn’t really learn anything new, but I loved it because I was able to see all the things I had read about and seen in the movie. Even the deck on the roof that the Jews could crawl onto for a little fresh air! However, I did learn one really amazing thing. The old Dutch woman told us all the fates of the six people that were in the hiding place when Corrie and her family were arrested. They were all saved there, but some of them were later found and taken in to a camp and killed, and others thanks to the Ten Booms, survived! They knew what had happened to five of the people but they had never been able to find details about the sixth person, a young boy. A few years ago, when they were doing their normal daily tours, they told the story of the Ten Booms in the living room as usual. They were touring all through the house, but when they got to the hiding place and they spoke about the fates of all five of the people and explained that they never actually knew what happened to the sixth man, one of the older men in the room spoke up and said that he was that sixth boy. He said that he had escaped from the hiding place and had stayed in hiding elsewhere until the end of the war when he immigrated to the US. This was the first time that he had been back to the Netherlands since! What an amazing story, makes me wish that Corrie was still alive to see him again and celebrate in his long and blessed life. 

We finished the tour in the dining room where the museum had on display a bunch of different copies of books about the family in all different languages. They also had one of the visual aids that Corrie had used when she was speaking all around the world to describe a life guided by God. The trip to Haarlem was definitely a success, and a highlight for me thus far.

We took the next train back to Amsterdam and went shopping for souvenirs. We found some nice post cards, and headed back to the hostel where we found our friend from Pennsylvania, Lauren, who we sat and talked with for a while before we all three decided to get some dinner. We went to an American-style diner, and I got to have a Caesar salad and some cheesecake. I was so thrilled to have vegetables, and the cheesecake was scrumptious! Although, I would kill for some movie theatre popcorn right about now! The hostel workers said we could stay until our train left at night, so we stayed in the café talking to Lauren and her friend Amanda (who was on a bike ride when we went to dinner), they are both really sweet girls who we are hoping to meet up with in Berlin. I also passed the time by blogging and watching fox news videos about the issues in the Middle East, and the way the president handled them, as well as by watching my feed full of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos, which were all awesome. I especially liked watching my little cousins Elin, Cam, and Cole, accept the challenge. But most of all, I enjoyed watching my cousin Farrah take the challenge, which was hysterical. I was challenged by my mother, and while it may be impossible to make it happen in 24 hours, I am planning on taking her up on it (and donating some money as well)! I also got to read a couple of Relevant articles, and I felt like I was connected to the world again, before we finally left for our series of night trains, which you will hear all about on the next blog!

I want to end this post with a shout out to my grandpa who is celebrating his birthday on a river cruise somewhere in northern Europe, like me, his life is really hard!!