Atlantica - 01.09.2004, Blaðsíða 26

ty culture makes me want to aspire to
something more elitist. My Discovery
Channel Pocket Guide to Amsterdam rec-
ommends The Hague with the following
description “The Hague is elegant and
refined… and a trifle smug.” The perfect
solution to a near encounter with master
thespian Rob Schneider.
CLASSICAL HAGUE
The drive takes twenty-five minutes, and
the highway brings us directly into the cen-
tre of town—directly to the well-blockaded
American Embassy three blocks from the
palace, and two from the surprisingly noble
parliament building.
A walking tour of the capital area of Den
Hague can be done in a comfortable couple
of hours. The streets are large, the build-
ings not too tall, so one can take in some
sun while looking at the many art galleries
and bookstores, and at the palace and
memorial gardens. The capital area has a
modest and classic European charm—the
quiet polar opposite to the much louder
Amsterdam.
A couple kilometres from the austere
Hague downtown is a Dutch hybrid of
Coney Island, Malibu and Barbie’s beach
house. Every ten meters the entire person-
ality of the beach changes. We stand at one
restaurant and are told we are in the tourist
area, and then we are told to walk exactly
twenty meters to the place where locals eat.
We set ourselves up at a beach bum style
restaurant where most patrons sit on
designer beanbag chairs, their bare feet in
the sand. As we eat and later walk around
we watch the following activities: horse-
back riding, kite boarding, beach soccer,
volleyball, children bouncing on inflated
castles, bungee jumping, relaxed dining,
up-scale dining. Everything related to
beaches in general squeezed into one
beach. We hear only Dutch and a small
amount of English spoken, typically with a
California accent.
We leave during the 10 o’clock sunset,
stopping at the UN International Court of
Justice. There a polite, thin, shivering man
with bad teeth informs me that he has been
waiting to talk to me. He and one other man
are the only people protesting outside the
Peace Palace which houses the court. And
their protest involves standing and waiting
to tell an American – I am the first to stop by
– that George Bush should not be re-elect-
ed. The man, who refuses to give his name,
as “one never knows about American oper-
atives”, shivers through a twenty-minute
rant, stopping often to spell out key points
24 A T L A N T I C A
THE CAPITAL AREA HAS A MODEST AND CLASSIC EUROPEAN CHARM–THE QUIET POLAR
OPPOSITE TO THE MUCH LOUDER AMSTERDAM.
AMSTERDAM
022 Amsterdam ATL 504 -24.ps 23.8.2004 18:05 Page 24