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Postcard from Holland
By: Michael Martin

BP Markowitz and wife Jamie are joined by Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands

I tell anyone that will listen that spring is the worst season of the year here in the Netherlands. We Dutchies are good at hunkering down for our dark, rainy winters, only to have some early March grey sky peel back a little bit and the sun goes warm and the crocus and narcissus start blooming. Then those Dutch tulips bulbs do their thing in those perfectly laid-out, color soaked fields—all part of some great, beautiful design I guess to break our sun-starved hearts. Because spring after spring it’s always the same thing— the drizzle and North Sea winds come right back in our face like the big bad days of muddy winter had never left. Last year I had to turn the heater in the house on one cold night in early June. I’m not lying.
After a few beers I laid all this keen information out for Marty Markowitz and his wife, Jamie, over at the Amrath Hotel in central Amsterdam this past March. The Brooklyn Borough President was in fine spirits after several sunny days of being feted by the Dutch government, here as he was, like many NYC dignitaries, to help kick off the year-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s 1609 discovery of NYC for the Dutch.
Ever since the 2004 publication of Russell Shorto’s best-seller, ‘The Island at the Center of the World’ a historical and cultural love-fest has ensued between New York City and Holland, NYC’s true mother country. The Hudson discovery festivities will last over a year here and in NYC, with a load of events sponsored by the John Adams Institute and the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation.
During his time in Holland, Markowitz met with the good folks in our village of Breukelen (Brooklyn’s namesake), spent some time with the Mayor of Amsterdam—Job Cohen—and opened our beloved tulip season at the world’s largest flower garden, the Keukenhof Gardens, just outside of Amsterdam. Still, what beats mixing a little Brooklyn with Royalty? Markowitz had an audience with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, when he happily gifted her with a Brooklyn pin. (Dear Beatrix: Marty gave me two.)
Since the Markowitzes have left Holland the festivities have continued. Russell Shorto and Dutch historian Geert Mak spoke at a town meeting sponsored by the HH 400 Foundation a few weeks ago in Amsterdam and Markowitz recently hosted the Dutch Cabinet Minister for European Affairs back in Brooklyn.
So far, a Dutch spring too good to believe—record-setting sunny temps and little rain.  As I sit out here in my small garden on the last day of April—an official holiday here, ‘Queen’s Day’ celebrating Queen Beatrix’s birthday—drinking cold Heinekens and getting sun-burned, I call my five-year-old Dutch and English speaking son over to me and show him a map of New York: “Yonkers, Harlem, Staten Island and Brooklyn,” I tell the kid. “Everyone of them a Dutch name.”

For more information on the HH 400 foundation, click on this link:
http://www.ny400.org/