by Marcel Beijer
“I WANTED to see the real Netherlands. Not Volendam and not even Amsterdam. I found it really surprising to see how you deal with water. The pumping stations in Flevoland, IJsselmeer, the canals, the lakes, the ditches: water everywhere. I thought the Netherlands would be mostly arable land, but I was amazed at the forests around Apeldoorn.”
Alan Patera (80) is a man of the world. From his hometown of Portland, Oregon, as a pensionado, he has enough time and enough saved money to travel the world. That’s what he does. His passport virtually warps from the visa stamps. In between traveling, he and his publishing company, Western Places, also publish two books a year, mostly on the history of western America.
He himself has written more than 50 books, including on the rise and fall of the fascinating gold mining town of Rhyolite.
In 2018, he traveled from Portland to Nevada, where I was at the time doing research for my own novel, Golden Mountains. He shared all kinds of useful information there that gave me an excellent picture of how the prospectors lived and worked there in 1907. He also helped with the translation into the English version of the book.
So I was overjoyed to finally be able to give something back to Alan. For three days, my wife and I dragged him through northern and central Holland. Hoorn he thought wa grandiose, Alkmaar was great. He enjoyed Doesburg, Haarzuilens, Deventer and, yes, even new town Almere.
Americans are capable of many things, but building a city with a population of 230,000 within forty years: Alan doffed his baseball hat. He was less enthusiastic about hagelslag sprinkles on bread (“may I have an extra cup of tea, please?”) and the lack of benches along walkways.
And what we all agreed on: how is it possible that so few catering establishments are open on Whit Monday? Unthinkable in the US: a day off means tourism, equals patronage, equals income. Alan hence unintentionally got to see the real Holland. Almost every restaurant is closed on Mondays. Even on Whit Monday, op een mooie Pinksterdag.
* Marcel Beijer is a journalist in Almere and winner of the Dutch News Magazine Journalism Prize 2023.
