In The Hague, v2

TRAIN TICKETS
Procrastination. Why - when I have been planning for months to leave Amsterdam to start the Camino on the 1st of May - hadn't I booked the train tickets to St Jean Pied de Port? I'd looked up the website in Sydney but didn't go through with the booking because I thought it would be better to get the tickets in Amsterdam - perhaps I'd find another random deal like last year when we travelled to Paris first class for half the second class rate. After we arrived in Amsterdam, I put it off again until we came back from Italy because there just wasn't time with all the bike-riding and visits to friends...then there was the volcano in Iceland.

It was only yesterday, when I finally looked up the NS.NL website again, that I began to panic. Only 5 days from Estimated Date of Departure and they include Queen's Day on 30 April, which is such an anarchic public holiday that all international trains from Amsterdam Central Station are cancelled for 24 hours. Everyone goes crazy, wears orange, drinks beer and the whole country becomes one rolling garage-sale.

And this year, Dutch school holidays begin on the 1st of May so most locals want to have their cake and eat it - like us - and are planning to go to the national party and then leave first thing in the morning. That means a mass exodus of sun-seekers from the Netherlands heading south. The scenario worsened when I discovered that across the rest of Europe including France and Spain, the 1st of May is a national holiday (like Labour Day) so transport schedules will be limited. And because of the volcano, many who would usually fly have decided to go by train.

I realised with sinking feeling behind my solar plexus that this time I might have blown it and worse still, this time, I've committed online to start out on the 1st of May to all those wonderful people who have sponsored our walk.

The International Office at Den Haag Central Station closes at 17.00 on Sundays. I arrived with my friend Lisette at 16.30. When '74' lit up in red on the LED screen, I dared to hope that we would find a solution. The ticket-seller, a petite woman, with neat brown hair and dewy skin tapped her keyboard with the confidence of someone who has spent '25 years at this desk'.

'There are no places on the ten o'clock train to Paris. And on the seven o'clock there are only standing room places to Paris,' she said. 'You will be standing up all the way to Paris.' Four hours being squished up against our bags in the body-width aisles, elbows in the belly as people walk through the carriage and jittery girls.
'What about Bayonne?' I asked. 'For the children and I'.
'On the TGV there are places but what do you mean there are children, I thought you said 3 people? I'll have to look for children's places. Yes...'
'I'll have to take them.' I said. Lisette's blue eyes darkened. She had been hoping to join us for the trip south with her daughter as part of an Interail holiday but had just discovered that it wasn't going to be possible. 'We have to leave, I have no choice.'

LISETTE
When I first moved to Amsterdam in 1994, I arrived with one suitcase, a new demanding job and nowhere to live. Some friends of a new friend agreed to lend me - who they'd never met - their sunny two floor apartment on the Binnenkant, 'the inside side' of one of the fattest canals in town. I loved it so much that I didn't look for anything else and on the day before they were due to return, I realised that I'd run out of time; that I had to find an apartment that day and preferably in that street. It was a balmy summer's day, which I later discovered was not normal for July in Amsterdam, when I walked out the door and noticed a 'Voor Huur' sign on the building next door. A woman in her late twenties opened the racing green door :
'Hello, I'm Josephine, just wondering...do you know anything about the apartment for rent?'
'Yes, I'm Lisette, come and have a look. I'm just moving out of it now, downstairs.'
The second floor loft had a shiny yellow oak floor with three large windows onto the canal. 'I like it. Do you know how much?' 'I'll call the 'huis baas'. You can keep the curtains if you like, they don't fit downstairs, they're new,' Lisette said as she passed me the phone. Within two minutes I'd made a deal with a stern Mr van Gaalen, and the next day I had my own place in Amsterdam.
One night a few days later, Lisette rang the door bell at about nine. 'Come down, the people next door have put some good furniture out on the street.'

Felipe moved in 1995 and two years later we returned after our summer holiday in Australia to discover that not only was Lisette pregnant but so was I. Rutger and Luna were born within a week of each other but shortly afterwards Erwin, Lisette and Rutger moved to Spain and we moved to Sydney. Now, Lisette, Erwin and their three children live in the The Hague.

Every time we come to the Netherlands, Luna, Rosa and I spend at least one night with them. This year, we were there for 'Oud en Nieuw', New Year's Eve which is the other time of pure pandemonium in this otherwise rational and pragmatic country. The whole night was like a war zone with fire works going off continuously all over town and beyond. Luna looked at me with disbelief when I told her that she could go out unaccompanied with Rutger and the 'kids in the hood' and....they had their own fireworks...we all ended up around a massive bonfire of christmas trees and old furniture at the local intersection at midnight, children's eyes covered with hard plastic goggles.

Nearly four months later, we are back in The Hague and last night, we went to the annual festival of Rutger's new high school, the 'Haganum'. It is a 'Gymnasium' which means the focus is academic and Greek and Latin are required material. Lisette had written that the school was like Hogwarts: neo-gothic turrets, grandiose ceilings, Greek friezes and stained glass windows....and old-fashioned science labs with what Rutger described as 'dead babies in bottles'. At the party, larger-than-life Roman sculptures were illuminated from below with various shades on neon and slam-poets screamed in the stairwells.

CEES NOOTEBOOM
I was amazed when I recognised writers on the programme of the 'Haganum Festival'. Alumni of the school were presenting their work and these included Cees Nooteboom, one of my favourite writers initially because the first present I received from Felipe after we met was Rituelen (Rituals) by Cees Nooteboom in Dutch! Nooteboom was an international guest at the Sydney Writer's Festival in 2009 where I bought two of his books: Roads to Santiago about the Camino and a fantastic fairy tale inversion called ...In The Dutch Mountains...He is a writer's writer and spoke eloquently about his work on the Radio National book show. . .

Wearing red trousers and a navy blazer, Nooteboom casually strode through random lines of parents and their mobile-mesmerised teenagers at his old school to read from Rode Regen (Red Rain), a collection of short stories, memoir and poetry. It was the first time, I'd heard him read in Dutch and I found his tone - in his native tongue - more visceral and intimate.

Today I saw in the newspaper - the NRC Handelsblad - that Cees Nooteboom just won the Golden Owl Prize - the most respected literature prize for a book in Dutch or Flemish - for his most recent book. Gefeliciteerd!