Oktobookfest, Episode 1

The following dream may contain words in languages other than English. Reader xenophobia is discouraged.

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I was walking through the mall, looking for signs that anyone might be hiring. Times were tough and most retail stores were letting people go, but I needed a job. Bills don't care what some stock market somewhere does. They demand to be paid. The mall was the one place where I could take a walk, see a help wanted sign and get a pretzel all at the same time.

The German themed bookstore was hiring, but just as I was about to walk in and ask for an application, I realized that I was dressed for the harsh winter outdoors. My parka, toque and Sorels were not the look I needed to land a job.

When I went home to change, I picked out a little black Jean Patou dress. It was casual enough to not look too formal for a bookstore and I knew it made me look better than all the slackers in t-shirts and jeans who would be applying for the same position. Whether the store manager was a man or a woman, that dress would help me stand out. Albeit for different reasons.

Back at the bookstore, I asked for an application. There were three people behind the counter. One was obviously a cashier. Her opinion was irrelevant. The man and woman standing a few paces back and away from the general public were clearly in management, but I couldn't tell who was the manager and who was the assistant manager. Maybe one of them was a district manager, but they looked like they did more work than that. Though clearly not as much as the cashier.

Before I could fill out the application, both the man and woman asked me to step outside for an interview. This was a small bookstore. The tiny backroom was big enough to hold a few cleaning supplies and boxes of stripped books, but nothing close to a break room. The interview took place at a table near the mall's food court.

Marlene introduced herself as the store manager. Josef was the assistant manager. What really struck me about the interview was their complete honesty.

“We want to hire you because you look right for the part,” Marlene told me. “You'll look good in the uniform.”

Oktobookfest was famous for two reasons. According to the corporate line, customers went for the discount prices on every single book they sold. Nothing went for the cover price. According to almost everyone else, the store was known for how its employees dressed. Every man wore lederhosen and white shirts. No hats, unfortunately. Every woman wore a short dirndl. One of the first things I noticed the first time I set foot in one of their stores was that none of the women seemed to be wearing bras. I wondered if that was a coincidence, until Marlene told me how to wear the uniform.

What I wore under the skirt was my own business, but bras were verboten. The only thing women were supposed to wear above the waist were a low cut white peasant blouse and a dark brown bodice that acted as a shelf bra. While the bodice as bra should have been my biggest complaint, it was the apron over the skirt that annoyed me the most. This was not a food service job, and I thought the white apron might be a bad idea while working around dusty books. In hindsight, I should have worried more about working with nothing more than a peasant blouse to cover my admirable breasts. Most of the male customers would turn out to be either middle aged men who were always on the lookout for a midlife crisis or socially awkward nerds who came to the bookstore for our large selection of science fiction and large breasted Verkäuferin.

Despite having shopped there from time to time, I never realized that Oktobookfest was the Hooters of bookstores until my first day on the job. At least at Hooters, you could flirt with customers for better tips. Flirt with customers at a bookstore and they will talk all day about that great novel they intend to write at some indeterminate point in the future.

I also realized on the first day that this would be the worst job I ever had. At least until the next one.

Liberation Day

Liberation Day is the newest national holiday in the Netherlands and one of the few that have nothing to do with religion, with New Year's Day and King's Day. Rather than celebrate their Fourth of July or Cinco de Mayo, they celebrate their more recent liberation from German occupation in World War II. May 4th is Remembrance Day, when people reflect on the sacrifices their countrymen made to free their people. May 5th is the day to party.

A popular event on Remembrance Day is to talk with survivors of the war. Watching how the people of the Netherlands treat their elderly is a beautiful thing. It is not simply respect for their elders. We have that in China. What I see in Amsterdam is a population that genuinely cares about what the oldest generation has to teach them. I could not help but imagine how much better off the United States would be if we followed this example, and how that is never going to happen. At least in my lifetime.

A lot of people also visit cemeteries. Someone told me that surviving members of military units go to the graves of their former brothers in arms. That sounds like a great tradition to me. Since World War II ended 74 years ago, there are still a few people around who remember it all in vivid detail. All too soon, we will only have what they told us.

At 20:00 on Remembrance Day, the entire country falls silent for two minutes of commemoration. It is a remarkable thing to witness. The people of Holland are not especially noisy. They can never compare to Chinese or Americans. But Amsterdam is a crowded city. It is never painfully loud, but I have never heard it as dead silent as those two minutes. As an American, I fully expected some smartass to make some smartass remark while everyone else was quiet. Americans are nothing if not attention whores. The people of Amsterdam were nothing but respectful of what those two minutes represent.

Liberation Day is less somber and a lot louder. Since the holiday is in spring, it looks a lot like Easter and King's Day, without all the eggs and orange. People go to free concerts and parades. There is a children's festival in Vondelpark. I have been to too few places where children are treated with the compassion and respect they need, and given the education they deserve. Israel and the Netherlands immediately come to mind. Nowhere else does.

Something Amsterdam did that I have never seen anywhere in the world is what they called open houses. It had nothing to do with real estate. On Remembrance Day and Liberation Day, people who live in houses where Jewish families lived or were hidden during the war open their homes to the public for short commemorations. Someone in each house, either a survivor, their descendant and/or the current occupant tells everyone the story of whoever lived in that house. Rather than a history of the entire war, it is a capsule history of a single family or a single person, and what they went through to survive, or in too many cases, not survive.

Each house was its own little temporary museum, but the procedure was mostly the same. The host read the names of everyone who was being remembered in that house, which is a very Jewish thing. If your name is read out loud, you are not forgotten. The best thing Steven Spielberg ever did as a filmmaker was have a lot of the actual names of the Schindler Jews read out loud. They were survivors, but it is the same principle.

Then someone tells the story of whoever lived in the house and, this is an important part, why they want to tell the story. None of this is a dry museum exhibit. These are all personal stories, mostly told by the people who lived them, or their children. Afterward was a short question and answer session that I wanted to last a lot longer. But no one had all day because we all went to multiple houses.

The first time I went to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, I heard a little old lady tell her story. She sat in a chair and talked about her life. It was heartbreaking, even though she was overwhelmingly optimistic. The open houses had too few people of her generation, but they augmented the first person accounts with photographs of everyone in happier times. People read poems and sang songs. Most surprising, several people read from diaries. Most of us probably only think of Anne Frank when you talk about diaries of people trying to escape the war, but there were countless diaries written in as many quiet rooms. Anne Frank was one of the more naturally talented writers, but all of those stories need to be told.

The emphasis is on personal history, but the entire event is educational for the community as a whole. Before this all started, thousands of people were living in houses that were owned by Jewish families before they were kidnapped and taken away to death camps. Many of the current residents had no idea about the history of their homes. When you buy a house, they tell you when it was built and the last time it was remodeled, but no one ever gets a full history of the past occupants. For most of us, World War II is an abstract event in the past. The open houses bring it all closer to home.

The open houses are mostly for the people who live in the neighborhoods, but outsiders like me were more than welcome. Several people happily switched from Nederlands to English when they realized I was a foreigner. In my experience, the people of Amsterdam, unlike a lot of other places, have absolutely no objection to using a foreign language. Most of them speak better English than most Americans.

Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants

Spring is a great time for Amsterdam, and Holland in general. Just the word Holland makes me think of flowers, and spring is the time to see them. Keukenhof is one of the largest flower gardens in the world, 79 acres with over 7 million flowers, and only open from late March to the middle of May. I knew this trip would be my best chance to go. Keukenhof is in Lisse, South Holland. Amsterdam is in North Holland. Fortunately, all of Holland is pretty small – less than 20% of the Netherlands. I took a bus from Europaplein, which is right next to Beatrixpark. The bus goes straight from the station to the garden in about an hour. Going from Schiphol is supposed to be faster, which makes sense. The train from Centraal to Schiphol takes about 15 minutes. Schiphol is roughly halfway between Centraal and Lisse. So instead of an hour bus ride, I could have taken a 45 minute train/bus. Maybe next time. Unfortunately, I missed the flower parade, which everyone says is impressive. That was on the Saturday before I arrived in Amsterdam. The end of April might be the best time to avoid crowds, but the beginning of April is probably more eventful.

Since Keukenhof is only open for two months, and more people go than ever before so they can put pictures online, I assumed it would be ridiculously crowded. It was not. I was far from the only other person there, but I saw more flowers than people staring at their phones. I was later told that I picked the best time to go. Weekends are always more crowded, and I went on a Tuesday. I went as early as I could and still get in because I am a morning person. By the time I left the garden, more and more people started flooding in.

I could have stayed longer and maybe waited until sunset to watch the flowers glow, but it was getting too crowded and I had other plans. Lisse just happens to be an excellent place to ride a bicycle. There are at least a dozen places downtown to rent a bike. The fields and canals are an easy ride away. Since Holland is flat and there are bike lanes all over the place, everywhere was an easy ride. Even downtown. Lisse is a tiny town that looks more like the residential suburbs of Amsterdam than the more famous and crowded Grachtengordel. What really struck me was how easy it was to ride around in the middle of the city.

I don't own a bicycle. I want to. I love to ride and it is great exercise. But the parts of Hong Kong with all the people are a very dangerous place to ride a bike. I don't live out in the middle of nowhere. I am surrounded by a few million people on a peninsula the size of JFK Airport. There are some nice spots in the country parks and around Lantau Island, but getting there from my apartment with a bicycle is nothing but trouble. It is almost always oppressively humid in Hong Kong and you can get stuck in a sudden downpour at any time. By contrast, Lisse was safe, clean and charming. April is never hot in Holland and the only rain we have had on this trip so far has been a few light morning or afternoon sprinkles here and there.

Just a few minutes outside of downtown Lisse was pastoral countryside, which is a little impressive when you know how densely packed Holland is. I was never far from a house or farm, but there was plenty of open road and a ridiculously long canal. I looked it up later on. It is about 15 miles long. I would imagine it is always a beautiful ride. I would love to see it covered in snow or even the greens of summer, but all the colors of spring flowers blooming is what I will always remember.

The houses along the canal reminded me of Normandy, north of Caen and Bayeux; quaint little cottages near the water with tiny gardens in the front yard and a small road to get you into town. Neither place is especially popular or on any lists of the great cities of the world, but I felt just as comfortable riding around Lisse as I did driving around Normandy. Though I have always lived in large cities, I could picture myself settling down in either of these beautiful village areas.

It was such a simple day, but about as close to perfect as you can get. I spent almost no money, made no reservations and followed no schedule. I walked around a garden and rode a bicycle in the countryside. And it could not have been a better day. I could almost imagine the smell of all those flowers.