Texel and Ontzet
Posted October 27th, 2009 by
The weekend after visiting Liverpool, the Central College program set up an optional weekend field trip to Texel (pronounced Tesel), which is a large island (large for the Dutch) that located just north of North Holland. Since the field trip was optional, we had to pay a 50 euro base fee, plus the 20 euro train ticket. But in my opinion, 70 euros for an island weekend is a pretty good deal. Traveling to Texel was fairly easy, just a two hour train from Leiden to Den Helder (a northern town in Holland) and a 30 minute ferry from Den Helder to Texel.
After getting of the ferry, we all rented bikes for the weekend and took a 15 minute bike ride to our lodgings. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was that we literally biked everywhere. We stayed in a sort of large cabin that held around 30 bunks, 4 bathrooms, a kitchen, an indoor sitting area, and an outdoor sitting area. In short, I was pleased with our shelter. Almost directly after dropping off our things, we departed straight for the supermarket to get food for the weekend. That night we ate a Dutch favorite, Erwtensoep, or pea soup, which was surprisingly good. After dinner, we took a 30 minute night bike ride out to the beach and back.
For the next two days, we went biking around from museum to museum and beach to beach. For those who will enter the Leiden program in the future, I would highly recommend going on this field trip.
The following weekend I decided to stay put in Leiden, mostly for one particular reason: Ontzet! Or for those who don’t know Ontzet is the celebration of Leiden’s independence from Spain in 1574. It happens every year on the 3rd of October and Leiden is the only city in the Netherlands who celebrates this event. Needless to say it’s like a Dutch Mardi Gras. People, beer, music, and carnival gimmicks fill the streets of Leiden for the weekend. I must admit, Ontzet was a pretty good time. Although the one thing I didn’t like about Ontzet this year was that the big parade was titled “The American Dream,” which I found strange for a nationalist holiday.
