Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday, after the graduation and lunch were over, Theta and I drove to Amsterdam and I got to experience rush our on the Dutch highways. Luckily we had lots of catching up to do and so we didn’t notice that we inched a long for half an hour. We still arrived one hour early for a reunion of a student committee (de lustrum commissie) that organized a gigantic 5 day celebration that takes places every five years at the student association Minerva of the University of Leiden. It is one of those ritualistic events with a long history, an illustrious cast of characters who call themselves the Winnie de Poeh Society (intentional Dutch spelling) and no gender balance until 1974. Ours was the first event organized by and for both sexes and Theta and I have the honor of being the first female commissioners in this exalted committee. We had not seen each other for many years and then started making contact again when our hair turned grey and the act of retelling old stories became increasingly rewarding. Only our treasurer was missing. It was a wonderful occasion to test our memory of the joys and nightmares of that intense time of organizing and managing together; it was also a test of spontaneous recall of names and people who populated our various subcommittees and the dramatic events that now seem exceedingly funny.

My memory was probably the worst and I can blame it on the crash or on the fact that at the time I had fallen in love with someone from outside the student society who had little patience with our vision of grandeur and accompanying follies. Since I saw everything through his eyes (love is blind as far as one’s own eyes go) I erased many of the memories, good and bad; but over cocktails and a wonderful dinner last night things began to come back into focus. My stops in Holland are a great excuse to meet up again, and continue the telling of stories, interrupted for so many years.

Being in Holland is a complex emotional experience for me. Although on some level I am home, I am not in the country I left some 30 years ago. At that time Holland was mostly a white, Calvinistic country. Now, people who used to be foreigners hold Dutch passports and speak Dutch quite fluently. There is of course resentment about that. A recent book by Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam, describes the context of Theo van Gogh’s murder and the changed make-up of Dutch society. This morning I witnessed a scene that warmed my heart. A cleaner, probably from Turkey, rolled his cleaning cart into a waiting area where one black man was sitting. He approached the gentleman and spoke to him in perfect English, “Sir, are you from Africa?” followed immediately by the words, “You are very welcome in Holland.” The two two engaged then in conversation while I walked out of earshot. It made my day.

I got my upgrade for the flight to Dubai after only two, very short, lines. It still required some back and forth and I cannot get anything arranged for the return trip, but I am happy with what I got now. And now on to Dubai.