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May. 5th, 2006 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omimouseToday is Bevrijdingsdag in the Netherlands. Yesterday was a day of memorial .
Yesterday, at 20:00 in the Netherlands, it was quiet for two minutes. The streetlights went out. Traffic stopped. People stopped where they were. When I lived there, the start and finish of this period of time was announced with an air raid siren. It probably was again yesterday.
I remember the first 4th and 5th of May that I spent in the Netherlands. I was 11 at the time. Even at that age, I remember comparing how it was treated by the Dutch to how I'd seen Memorial Day celebrated in America. I remember that my Opa and Oma, who had both lived through the war (my Opa in a slave labour camp because he refused to join the German army) were usually pretty quiet on the 4th. I remember that it was one of the few things that my highly irreverant Opa took very seriously.
I remember the silence, the country-wide silence. Something like that has a great deal of weight to it, and it was the first time I ever felt like part of a country.
The 5th of May is a great deal louder. Celebrations and stuff. There was a parade, that year. Opa explained to me that freedom was being celebrated, because I was very confused about such a ruckus happening one day after such silence.
Of course, now I really miss all the stuff I was allowed to eat on the 5th. Koek, vla, stroopwafels, olliebollen, patat met, poffertjes, frikandel, kroket . . . Lucky for me, I was having my 'bottomless pit' stage, so I didn't give my self a tummy ache stufing my face. Olliebollen were the rare treat of the lot, so I ate a lot more of those than probably should have.
Ahem. Pardon me, seem to have drifted off into introspection and babbling there.
Yesterday, at 20:00 in the Netherlands, it was quiet for two minutes. The streetlights went out. Traffic stopped. People stopped where they were. When I lived there, the start and finish of this period of time was announced with an air raid siren. It probably was again yesterday.
I remember the first 4th and 5th of May that I spent in the Netherlands. I was 11 at the time. Even at that age, I remember comparing how it was treated by the Dutch to how I'd seen Memorial Day celebrated in America. I remember that my Opa and Oma, who had both lived through the war (my Opa in a slave labour camp because he refused to join the German army) were usually pretty quiet on the 4th. I remember that it was one of the few things that my highly irreverant Opa took very seriously.
I remember the silence, the country-wide silence. Something like that has a great deal of weight to it, and it was the first time I ever felt like part of a country.
The 5th of May is a great deal louder. Celebrations and stuff. There was a parade, that year. Opa explained to me that freedom was being celebrated, because I was very confused about such a ruckus happening one day after such silence.
Of course, now I really miss all the stuff I was allowed to eat on the 5th. Koek, vla, stroopwafels, olliebollen, patat met, poffertjes, frikandel, kroket . . . Lucky for me, I was having my 'bottomless pit' stage, so I didn't give my self a tummy ache stufing my face. Olliebollen were the rare treat of the lot, so I ate a lot more of those than probably should have.
Ahem. Pardon me, seem to have drifted off into introspection and babbling there.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-07 11:23 pm (UTC)Bevrijdingsdag isn't exactly what it used to be, nowadays - it is for the elder people, but us from the third generation? It just doesn't mean as much. The silence is nice, though.