"De Pijp" is the Dutch name for a stove pipe and it is a legendary watering hole in my college town of Rotterdam. The name is a reference to the shape of the place which is nothing more than a narrow stove pipe offering room for some 60 revelers. I revisited the place today for lunch with my fraternity brothers and found that it is about the only place in Rotterdam that has not changed in the 47 years that have gone by since I graduated from the Erasmus University. But boy did we change!
My friends had offered me the opportunity to present my book 'NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, A First Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism' and they cut me no slack in debating the premise and the contents with me. We are all of a generation of Dutch who will remain eternally grateful to America for the leading and decisive role it played in fighting and defeating Nazism and then followed through with the Marshall plan, restoring the infrastructure and economies destroyed in the war. That has not changed. But my fraternity brothers are incredulous when they hear the words 'American Exceptionalism' because they are not convinced that America is the same inspiration and positive force in the world of today. I hear two major lines of criticism: America's interventional foreign policies, from Vietnam through Afghanistan, and American tolerance for the developing of an underclass at the bottom of the social pyramid at home.
Of course, my book is mostly about the latter even though I largely agree that America has been overly adventurous in military interventions in places where it had no business. In my book I point out that America has not won a war since World War II (Desert Storm was an unfinished work that had to be redone to remove Sadam Hussein). America has stirred up a lot of hornets nests without ever taking out the stingers.
I get the impression that my book is better received in Holland than in America and sales seem to confirm that perception. Quite a few people in audience at de Pijp have lived or spent substantial time in America and by and large underwrite my assessment of the flaws in the American system. They are less confident than I am that America will prove to be up to the challenge and do what it has to do to remain on top of the world.
It is too hard for me to accept that America will not or cannot, like it did once it got involved in the two World Wars, mobilize all of its energy, drive and potential to win the competition now under way for global leadership among nations. But I will accept that it will take an act of exceptional leadership and willingness to fundamentally change the political system.
The subject of Greece also came up and was told that Greece will ultimately buckle under the pressure of its creditors and will start to bring some order in its financial house. This in spite of the overwhelming rejection of further austerity at the July 5 referendum. There is much criticism in the Netherlands of the 'one size fits all' rule of Brussels, but my compatriots are also quick to point out that Greek culture allows tax cheating, black markets and a bloated bureaucracy that traditionally has been pampered. The country has teetered several times on the brink of communism and left and right are about as divided there as they are in the US. The problem is, of course, that the Greek economy has a lot less size and vitality than the US and recovery from the very deep self inflicted financial crisis is inevitably going to be hard and long, with or without new support from the EU and or the IMF. In that sense, for the unfortunate Greek population, Grexit or not is not likely to make a big difference.
Back to the Netherlands, I experience it as vibrant, clean and busy. Cars are new and -if anything - overly plentiful. The main traffic arteries are choked by the volume of traffic with great regularity.
It makes for anxious driving, bumper to bumper across four or five lanes. Distance between your origination and destination is no yardstick for time of travel. Only traffic density is. No wonder there is much more reliance on public transportation and - other than in the US - in Holland it is modern, clean and it works.
Then you have the typical Dutch delicacies. I respect that taste, like beauty, is in the senses of the beholder, but I find myself feasting on new herring, Dutch shrimp (crevettes grises) and smoked eel. And, of course, Dutch cheese. Not the industrial grade plastic wrapped Kraft stuff but the real deal, cut from the huge wheel of cheese you find in the local cheese store. You don't realize what you miss, until you come back to the low country and have it all abundantly available again, of high quality.
Tomorrow we will be touring Rotterdam and experience how that city has morphed into a world class mix of old and new. The gaping hole that German bombardment caused in 1940 has finally been rebuilt with eye catching architecture. And few cities in the world have made their abundant waterfront more accessible and integrated in the housing and recreation universe.
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