October 5: The Hague

Last Friday I decided to venture down to the political center Den Haag, better known as The Hague. While Amsterdam is the official capital city of The Netherlands, the parliament buildings are here. It's a little strange, but we're talking about a country where people used to wear wooden shoes.

The train station in The Hague was the nicest and largest I'd been to, which makes sense as it's also the headquarters of the national railway company. Emerging from Den Haag Centraal, you are met with a busy atmosphere of modern and funky office buildings, and cranes that are working to build more modern and funky office buildings. From first appearances, The Hague was completely different than Amsterdam.

After a bit walking, I reached the city center and found the good ol' historic streets I had started to become used to.








The downtown shopping area was much less crowded and lively than Amsterdam (I seriously doubt I'll find any city that could compete), but it was nice enough. The Hague also has what was once the country's first covered shopping mall.




The Parliament Buildings (Binnenhof)

The cluster of buildings that form the parliament block here are an ecclectic mix of different styles. The grounds were orginally established as a mansion in the 13th century, and the other buildings have slowly popped up over time.

In front is a man-made lake, which makes the complex look very nice from that side.

This is "Knight's Hall", where the Dutch equivalent of the Throne Speech is given every year.




Embassy Row

On the opposite side of the lake from the Binnenhof is the embassy district. It's a very classy, diplomatic area, with blocks of upscale row housing that has been converted to foreign embassies, museums, ministries, and other such governmenty-type stuff.

My usual strategy when visiting Dutch cities is what I call 'steeple-chasing', where I spot a church steeple on the horizon and walk towards it, taking pictures of everything I see along the way. My strategy in The Hague was 'embassy-hunting', where I attempted to find every embassy possible.

Stupidly, I had forgetten to check the address for the Canadian embassy, so that was my ultimate goal to find.

French Embassy

Swiss Embassy

Spanish Embassy

British Embassy

Swedish Embassy

Norwegian Embassy

German Embassy

Greek Embassy

I'm reasonably certain that after taking the above photo, I was followed for a short ways by a plainclothes security officer. (Slow afternoon for them?)

Well, I decided after a while to stop taking photos of the embassies, because really, all I was getting were doorways.

However, there was one embassy marked out specifically on my map: the American one. So I set out to find it.

As I passed a back alley, I came across a gated opening that had a car parked just outside of it, waiting to leave. It was being thoroughly combed over by two security officers, one with a flashlight and the other with what looked like a metal detector. They were emptying out the car of all its contents and checking under every compartment they could.

Yep, this was the place!

I'm almost depressed to show the following pictures. This is how the American embassy in Holland looks. It's a friggin' bunker.

The outer green fencing is, I'm sure, meant to halt any would-be car bombers.

No embassy I came across in The Hague was even close to being as fortress-like as the American one. Even Israel's was just part of a simple office building.

The state of the American Embassy can, I think, be attributed to two things:
1) Yes, a consequence of American policy that is often aggressive and unilateral and leaves the country as the primary target for those with an oppossing ideology, but
2) Also the sad result of the reality that Holland has a sizable and impoverished Muslim population. Not every ethnic group would give the Americans reason to fear a suicide attack.

I never did find Canada's embassy, which is too bad. I'll go back and find it someday, and, I don't know, take a picture I guess. However, I did go onto the website just now and finding a lisitng for Canadian War Memorials in The Netherlands, so that's a useful thing to have.

Royal Palace

There are multiple buildings in and around The Hague--and around the country--for the Dutch royal family.

I find it funny that Holland has its own King and Queen, and this was the subject of a hilarious conversation with me and Hans and Lieselot as they recounted all the Royal Hijinx. Many European countries have their own royalty: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Beligum--Belgium's King actually once gave up the throne for three hours while an abortion law was signed in because he felt it went against his religion.

Silly monarchies. (Although I guess Canada still is one, in a sense.)

Anyway, I got confused after a while what was and wasn't "Royal", but I'm pretty sure these are palace buildings.

The Hague also has an assortment of what are apparently very fine museums, especially this first one (the Mauritshuis), but I didn't visit any of them.




There are statues scattered all over the city. I snapped a small sampling.








You may have noticed that last one wasn't a statue. Well, I didn't know what other category to put it in, and it didn't really seem to deserve a category of its own.

And finally, as seems to be required of any Dutch population center, The Hague has a massive downtown church. I can't even remember what this one is called, but it was big.






There was a sign on the door that said "Church is only open during public events". What the sign could have but didn't say after that was "In the meantime, feel free to get hammered in the pub which has been built into the side of the buildling."