Netherlands, Schiermonnikoog and Thoughts on Travel Writing

I'll be writing my latest Dutch trip up for a newspaper, so I can't blog about it till after the piece has appeared.  As it is about taking kids to Holland, a lot of it was like this  ......

(One of the "Six Servants" at Efteling Park's Fairy Tale Land)

Or this..........

(a pirate ship playground marooned on a huge sandy beach in Scheveningen.)
 
But I've been remembering other trips to Holland, starting when I was a child.  Then, there was the exciting night ferry ride, getting-on the train in your pyjamas and waking joyfully to a land where people ate chocolate vermicelli sandwiches for breakfast -.

(and they still do!)

And at Christtmas time, you might see Sint Nicolaas with his elfish assistant, Black Peter, handing out marzipan to good children.

 (photo from Bloglandlane, which has more about the Sint Nicolaas tradition)

After I grew up, I returned to Holland occasionally to write articles. And in looking through my cuttings file,  I've noticed something. Nearly all the travel articles I've written in the last few years are descriptions of outings, attractions and hotels.   But until a few years ago, my articles were about real life in the countries I visited - and I have to say they were far more interesting to write.

One of these old Dutch articles was on "green" and eco aspects, travelling by bke and visiting hippies, visionaries, eco gardens, and all kinds of wind powered places, including a sawmill.

And I learned quite a lot about all kinds of windmills.  This thatched one (can you see?) was quite an experience with its narrow stairs and ladders, as the sails creaked round and it puffed out dust.

The Dutch article I  most enjoyed writing was a magazine feature about the northern province of Friesland.  This focused on traditional foods and cooking (yes, there is some).   I searched around today and found some of the background notes I made for this story, and have put them at the end of this post.

Reading these notes through really brought it home to me why I wanted to do travel writing in the first place. I wanted to learn how people live and think in other countries, how their lives are different, what they do, what their grandparents did and how they think about life.

Sadly, very few editors now commission articles that deal with things like this.  It was only a few years ago that top-range publications would hire writers and photographers to produce several pages on an unusual destination, its life, history, art and culture. But it hardly happens now - have you noticed?  Perhaps people no longer want to read thousands of words evoking a place, specially when they can pay a virtual visit via YouTube or read someone's blog much more quickly.  Do you agree?

(Credit)

But actually I think it's mainly because print media (magazines, newspapers and books) are in big trouble. Circulations have plummeted by 50 or 75 percent over the last decade, advertising revenues have dropped through the floor and as yet, nobody can think of a way to deal with it, except by cutting staff, cutting fees cutting expenses and, in many cases, cutting quality.

For instance, one extremely famous international publication now pays precisely NOTHING to contributors to its online travel pages.  It is relying on its reputation - and the online editor says that the "travel writers" are happy not to be paid because they can enjoy freebies from commercial partners, and also get "exposure" for their work.

Well, that's true. Trouble is, the "exposure" isn't worth much, if nobody's prepared to pay a fee. .  Meanwhile, staffers or regulars fill up space by compiling lists of places they may or may not have visited themselves - top ten country walks, top ten waterside hotels, etc. It's cheap copy, and advertisers like it. Perhaps it is also what readers actually want from travel pages these days, too. 

Anyway, times change. But I liked reading through my half-forgotten notes which were made on the Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog.    Since they're notes, they don't link up into a complete narrative, but you can take my word for it that it was interesting to do the research. 

Notes on Schiermonnikoog
 
At about ten o'clock, the sun breaks through the hazy cloud like a big silver ball, and an ear-shattering boom shakes the ground. The birds are shocked into silence, but after a while, they gradually resume their singing. The sea continues to pound quietly at the edge of the beach, a long, long way away.


Schiermonnikoog island is only ten miles long, but the wrecker's wind sweeps the sand towards the East, adding thirty metres a year to the coast.  If it was only in the South Pacific, say its residents, it would be called Treasure Island, for there is plenty of gold and silver lying beneath the fierce North Sea that lashes its shores.

The map in Hendrik's lighthouse is dotted with wreck symbols. That blast at ten o'clock was the controlled detonation of a 50-year-old mine,, he says, and he shows me the entry in that morning's log. You often find the detritus of long-fought battles and tragedies in these rough grey waters, and Hendrik knows a good deal about the dead ships. He puts his finger on the chart at the spot where the "Lutine" went down with thousands of silver coins in 1799. Since then, her treasure has stayed where it is. Only her bell was ever retrieved, and it this bell which is tolled at Lloyds of London every time a ship is lost at sea.

 I descend the spiral stairs of the lighthouse, and then cycle down one of the many tracks to the beach. The few roads are more like lanes, for visitors don't have cars. Only the island's 900 residents are allowed to drive here, and mostly they don't. The tide seems to be out, or perhaps it is  just the sheer size of the beach that makes it seem so.


I leave the bike where the sand gets deep, and walk towards the sea until it is hard and smooth and dappled underfoot, with odd, branchlike patterns from algae, and long, thin shells half buried. Birds wheel and swoop and cry overhead or feed at the water's edge - oystercatchers, plovers, sanderlings, dunlins, shrike, silver and black-backed gulls.  


Schiermonnikoog is a national park, a place where the boundaries between sea and land blur.   Most of the island is wild: tidal mud flats, dunes,, some windbeaten woodland and scrub, countless rabbits and hares.  Several times a year the sea engulfs large parts of the island. People know when it's going to happen, because the hares and rabbits make for the dunes, impelled by a kind of sixth sense. 

The island does have visitors - many visitors - about ten thousand a year.  They somehow manage to lose themselves and have a quiet time in their holiday homes,  or in the white, angular Hotel Van Der Werff in the centre of the town.  Dutch and Belgian Flemish are mostly spoken, although many islanders know English too, and some still speak Schiermonnikoogs, the island's own language, an ancient mixture of Saxon and Scandinavian tongues. It is incomprehensible to mainland Dutch people, so it is dying fast.


"We're all Europeans now" shrugs restauranteur Jan Berend Bazuin, but Hendrik is sad, looking back at the generations who have spoken the language and realising he is one of the last.  Until this century, the island's men would go away to sea, sometimes for years at a time, and they would only get to speak their own language when they got home.  It wasn't only the men who travelled - their wives did too, and their families. A hundred years ago, Hendrik's great-grandma went overland by train and coach to St. Petersburg and then Marseilles with her three little daughters to visit her husband when he was in port. 


The island's one town - or village, really, is a relaxed place with wide verges and trees, and trim, low Dutch houses. I stayed in an 18th century house, now a youth hostel, where ducks and horses peer in through the windows.  Almost opposite is a large field in which the islanders keep their pets.

The Frisians seem rather fond of fancy livestock, in particular little brown goats, but the people of Schiermonnikoog have branched out into peacocks, donkeys, deer, Shetland ponies, pouter pigeons and extraordinary fancy hens like walking feather dusters.





They all live together like animals in a children's story, rushing periodically up to the end of the field where people came to feed them with household scraps.


 Down a path in the middle of the scrub is a little war cemetery for airmen or sailors shot down or claimed by the sea.  Several times a week Jan Groendijk cycles along in the early morning to tend its flowerbeds and trim its shrubs. A quiet man, he first did the job because he was asked to, but then, he says, "I was caring for their graves and I began to wonder who they had been. It didn't seem right not to know."


Knowing that most came from England, Jan wrote in fractured English at his own expense to local papers in the mens' home towns, asking for information. Gradually, relatives and friends came forward, and now only about six men are still unknown. There were letters, visits, eventually group reunions, Now Jan has a file for each man, with momentoes, old school reports, letters, photos.


"We can think of these people, here", he says, as he plants out the spring bulbs.  "We think of them all. It is sad, but at least the sea which killed them, has brought them to a good final home."


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