On Monday morning, we give up trying to have a good breakfast at the American Hotel, skip out on their picked-over cold cuts and dried-out potatoes, and walk to a local cafe, where we have eggs, toast, croissants, jam, and coffee. All of these same items, it seems, are on the American Hotel breakfast buffet, but at the cafe, they are at least served up hot and fresh, and in more pleasant surroundings.
After we finish, we take the tram to Centraal Station and make the quick train trip to Haarlem. Compared to dizzy Amsterdam, Haarlem is positively sleepy … but even this morning, which is a holiday, the town is filled with happy local shoppers browsing the market and eating mayonnaise-covered French fries from paper cones (a snack that tastes better than it sounds, I discover).
Throughout the morning, we keep running to young men with faces painted solid black. They’re clearly white, Danish people, but they’ve chosen, for some reason, to spray-paint their faces the color of coal. We discover later that they are celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas (a day much like our own Christmas Day) by dressing up like Pete, Saint Nicholas’ black assistant.
Hey, kids! It’s Black Pete!
When I remark that, in the (ostensibly “free”) United States such a get-up would be illegal (white actors on television and on stage, for example, are forbidden to appear in black face), a local explains that, some years ago, black people in the Netherlands complained about Black Pete, who, after all, is rather like a subservient slave to a large white man.
Talk of banning Pete led people to take the streets with faces painted in every color of the rainbow; shortly after this demonstration, the sensible Dutch decided to let people choose for themselves whether or not to participate in the ritual. Now, some don’t … and others do.
Letting adults decide for themselves what they will do about a controversial subject — image that. In America, politicians would have made “Black Pete — Cultural Heritage or Racist Symbol?” into a campaign platform and manufactured a controversy designed to polarize voters.
After touring the beautiful Great Church, we leave town. On the way out, we pass the city’s strangest feature: a sex shop, nestled in amongst the cafes and day care centers. Every small Dutch town has such a shop, I’m told, to take care of its citizen’s sexual needs. Here, such shops are part of every day life — no more remarkable than, say, a 7-11 or a Mickey D’s.
We brought back a bag of chocolate black men for our friends in the states. Big hit. Definitely pop into a grocery store and grab yourself a handful of the tasty gentlemen to reward your friends and family for the holidays, or just to keep on hand for those long cold nights.