Bon Voyage!

I recall growing up, Papa Bear Flynn spent most of the year traveling. I don’t remember at what point, but somewhere in our brattish history my siblings and I began requesting tokens of affection from Dad from these far flung places. After each long trip, we would each receive a tee-shirt memento of the duty-free gift shop type, which would eventually grow into an embroidered flamingo, dogs in sunglasses, national treasures heap of cotton, entombed in Rubbermaid in our attic.
This will come to no surprise to my immediate family, but for whatever reason, I have only one recollection of any of my separate gifts—a hand-held drum on a stick from Osaka, Japan—but can recall, in detail, almost every gift my sister received from these travels. Years of fighting over space in a shared room most likely has something to do with it, but more likely it’s a result of my sister’s memorable mini obsessions with seemingly random icons. For a long while, it was Big Ben that captivated her and a drawer full of watches and several paperweights from London soon followed.
There was one fixation, however, which always seemed to puzzle me the most. M. went through several years in love with wooden clogs, windmills, and dolls with flaxen braids and porcelain water pitchers. Amongst the clutter and disorder of my sister’s designated half of our room’s surface space, these trinkets held a special place of honor and were often admired by both of us. A tiny red sweatshirt exclaiming “IT’S HOLLAND”, embroidered next to a happy tulip toting, wooden shoed, psychedelic bunny got repeated wear and continues to be a favorite wintertime bedshirt for me even now.
What’s funny to me now is that neither my sister nor I had any real concept of the cultural importance of these typically Dutch symbols, and until college, I never even dreamed of traveling to the land of windmills to live and work. But here I am, days away from a semi-indefinite stay in this amazing country, and I’m finding I’m not the only one who knowledge of one of the most historically prosperous European nations is a bit sparse.
I think if you really dig deep, though, you probably know more about Holland than you think! Tulips and canals and wooden shoes, oh my! If nothing else, images of spring breaks in Amsterdam and all that entails should at least ring a bell. But my stay in this beautiful country will be dotted more with foreign diplomats than strippers as I tag along with the Dutch traditions of justice and tolerance. I’ll be able to relay how so more once I start work next week, but for now, feel free to check out the organization’s website at www.unpo.org.
As I'm finishing packing I'm just thinking: Holland hier kom ik!