Hague
Yesterday in Utrecht we were treated to some amazing architecture, historical monuments, and extraordinary information about the city. However today, we had to change from a micro to macro perspective of the Netherlands. Making an early start to the day, we took the train from central station into the capital of Netherlands, Hague. In Hague, we visited the Dutch House of Representatives, wherein we got a tour of the parliament building. The parliament, the library, and a couple of other rooms were shown to us. An interesting observation about the architecture of the building was the merging of an old 17th century building into a modern 21st century building. The way glass was used to make them seem compatible reminded me of the glass walkway that the tour guide cum architect in Utrecht had built inside an old building. The glass allowed for a new structure to be joined to an old existing one thereby preserving the latter in its original form.
Moving on, the next item on the Agenda was our meeting with the top advisor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The advisor discussed the relationship of the Netherlands and U.S.A. From her presentation I realized that the Netherlands and the U.S.A. are very important partners not only economically, but also politically, and militarily. Together they play an important role in maintaining global peace, in supporting the UN, and other such organizations. Moreover, even the current Gulf of Mexico spill had the Dutch lending a helping hand to the U.S.A. Unfortunately, due to complicated legal issues, the Netherlands is unable to fully support America in this catastrophe, but they are still doing the best they can. Another show of Dutch loyalty to the US is the resigning of the ex-government over the Afghanistan war. This shows the importance the Netherlands gives the U.S.A. and I feel that the latter has every right to demand this importance. For if it were not for the allied forces during WWII led by the U.S.A., the freedom of Netherlands would have probably still be under threat. By looking at the relationship between both these countries I realized that the Dutch are also very loyal. I think that it is a very big step for a government to resign because of a conflict of interest. In fact, I found it very odd that the government would resign over the war issue, when a decision could have been made. But, I guess the moral side of the Dutch truly came to the forefront with their decision making.
After our meeting, we quickly changed our focus back to art and made a trip to Mauritshuis, and then visited the world’s oldest surviving panorama painting. After walking up the stairs to the room where the painting was on display, my jaw literally dropped on seeing the painting. The circular nature of the painting got me feeling as though I was present in the scene painted. His depiction of a very realistic warm sunny day by the beach added to it illusionary effect. The coastline was full of activity with the military on their horses accompanied by canon, fishermen drying their nets, traders loading and unloading cargo from their carriages onto ships. The town preceding the coastline can be seen clearly divided into posh, common, and religious areas. The presence of a church nearby, and a couple more in the background show the influence of religion in those days. I felt this picture truly represented the Dutch Golden Age with its flourishing trading, and business activities. Additionally, the prominence of religion and the elite which was an important characteristic is also shown. Lastly, the division of the society into different sections based on religion, and wealth reflected the reality of those days.
After seeing the panorama, we had our last visit of the day scheduled with a Dutch language professor. We were not able to learn much about the Dutch language as most of our conversation revolved around topics that were much different from the Dutch language. However, I was still able to extract some interesting information from the professor. His favorite moral lesson was from a Peter Burger landscape painting have the message that ‘great fishes tend to eat the smaller fish’. I found this quote the truth of life, as history has always proved that the people in power are usually the ones who exploit those that are weak, and the basis for their power. A truth that I learnt about any language from the Professor was that ‘a language is dying when the parents say to their children that it is not important anymore’. I found this a very interesting revelation as it is always the parents who teach a language to the child before they join school. Therefore, it made a lot of sense for the professor to say, because if the parents don’t teach their children, why will they learn?
No comments:
Post a Comment