On Thursday of last week I was lucky enough to snag the last available spot on the Meertens Instituut's yearly excursion. After getting up at 6 am, I made my way to the station for 6:42 and was there before the bus left at 8:15. The Meertens Instituut is a research facility dedicated to ethnology (ethnography), folklore and linguistic phenomena (see their website for an official declaration), and so we were taken on a guided tour of the traditional (and very touristic) Volendam, Marken and Monnickendam area. Packed tourism and Dutch identity at its best! We started off our tour in the Spaander Hotel where we ate traditional Dutch cakes with coffee (I had a slice of mocha cake at 9:30am, a very good start to the day) and received an explanation of the style, art and architecture of the hotel. This hotel, like much of Volendam and Marken, is decorated in what is called the 'traditional' Dutch style with white and red wooden shutters, green or dark blue exteriors and orange tile roofs. The rooms are decorated with many plants, blue and white ceramic tiles with ships and clogs painted on them, portrait paintings, circular plates mounted on the walls, and furnished with large circle wooden tables covered by red and white tablecloths (a nightmare for the cleaner in charge of dusting!). From there we walked around the town and received a history lesson in the importance of smoked eel to the Volendam community. Eel is a politically sensitive topic at the moment because the Dutch government (and European) has just enacted a 60 day ban on Dutch eel fisherman from October 1st to November 30th, the height of eel fishing season. Eels are being protected because their numbers are dwindling due to over fishing and other ecological factors such as consumption of eels by protected bird species. This topic remains controversial as many eel farmers and whole communities like Volendam are worried about the state of their livelihoods.
After lunch and more tourist activities (yes, we dressed up in traditional Volendam ware and had our pictures taken) we took the local ferry to Marken across the way. I'd already been to Marken last year during my preliminary trip and decided to forego the trip inside the church so that myself and a couple other colleagues could walk around the village a bit more. After our quick jaunt, we made our way to the parking lot to catch the bus to our next destination only to find that our bus had in fact left without us (there were three of us in total)! I'm a magnet for this kind of stuff I think...no matter, my colleague quickly got on her phone and requested that the bus turn around to pick us up. Normally, this would not be an issue but Marken is in fact a former island that is now connected to the mainland by a land bridge or, more accurately, a 2-kilometre dyke that was built in 1957 (Yes, Kath, this is what we cycled along). The dyke runs from the town of Monnickendam, located just north of Amsterdam. And thus, turning a big bus around on the dyke was not an option.
So as we waited for the public transit to come and find us to bring us to Monnickendam (where the rest of the group were enjoying spirits and bitter ballen) we cheers our cola-light to the weather as it was warm and sunny instead of rainy and cold. We eventually made it to Monnickendam and even ate bitter ballen (a Dutch delicacy the ingredients of which are better left unknown) and then all the way back to Amsterdam in one piece (and as one group) on a day of justifiable tourism. This tourism was justifiable in my mind because I was not a single tourist on holiday from Canada but a member of a large group coming from a Dutch-based institute on a day of relaxation and fun. That, and we had bitter ballen at the end, what more justification does one need?
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