Here we are in the middle of summer. But instead of sun-kissed, put-on-your-pretty-dresses days, it has been bleak-skied, windy, and back-in-your-jacket weather in the Netherlands. Everything is so dull. Colourless. I miss seeing flowers on the trees outside my big Dutch window which made me think about spring when they were full of white blossoms. It prompted me to pick up this article I had left on the back burner for quite some time. I know that there is a pattern here. I am never in season. But this will just have to do.
I think the Netherlands is in its full glory in spring. You suddenly see the first snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils looking up from the newly awakened earth. The trees come back to life sprouting fresh shoots. Suddenly, there is the humming of bees and the chirping of birds around you. The days get longer and sweeter, wrapped in cardigans and light weight sweaters instead of the cumbersome winter layers.
My first real Dutch spring was in 2020, the pandemic year. I was still in my short stay phase and was in the Netherlands in peak winter. That's when the worldwide pandemic lock down happened. I could not go back to India and had to stay for three more months in Delft without a visa. Between that winter and summer was the most beautiful spring that I had ever seen. Soon the walks that were necessary to get out of the single room in the shared apartment despite the wintry cold became wondrous and sweet as our whole locality became awash with colours. It was as if that year’s Google earth doodle game came alive near our house. Wherever we turned, there were blooms and bees and more blooms and bees. The lanes were full of cherry and almond blossoms and the park near our house was a riot of colours. It was unlike anything that I had ever seen before. Finally, I went back to India on one of the repatriation flights in the middle of summer. That spring was the highpoint of my visa-less stay. But I had yet to see the highpoint of Dutch spring.
I got to see the Tulip fields only the year after. This time, I was back in the Netherlands on a residence permit. We had moved from Delft to the Hague and I came right after a bout of heavy snow. We went to see the Tulip fields in Bollenstreek in April. Instead of going directly to Bollenstreek, we accidentally took a more circuitous route which took us through the Keukenhoff woods and reached the flower fields in the evening. On our way we passed a few daffodil and hyacinth fields too but it was the tulip fields that completely stole the show. Rows and rows of whites, yellows, purples, and shades of red dancing in the winds and blushing in the evening sun. Mute swans stared at you in graceful disdain from the canals that surrounded the fields. Some fields had quaint old windmills and some were bordered by railway tracks where the passing yellow and blue Dutch trains provided the background for a picture perfect snap. This was a time when the corona travel ban was still in place in the Netherlands and most fields were nearly empty- an impossible occurrence in an alternative universe which was not hit by the pandemic. The pretty fields basking in the russet gold rays of the setting sun was an unforgettably beautiful sight.
I have been staying in the Hague for more than two years now. Another spring has passed. But this year more than the flowers, it was the birds that captured my attention. As usual, the streets were lined with trees full of flowery canopies and wildflowers ran amok on every available patch of earth. But I started noticing the variety of waterbirds that flocked around the canals and parks. The coots, ducks, and mute swans with eggs and chicks became a regular sight. At the lake behind Mauritshuis, one could see all the common waterbirds in one go including the ferruginous duck and the great scaup duck. Gaggles of Egyptian geese, Barnacle geese, and greylag geese, and bevvies of Whooper swans sunbathed on the canal banks. Overall, bird sightings were the bestest in spring.
As a kid, I used to look at posters and paintings of the spring landscape with so much wonder. I could not believe that they were real and there I was, right in the middle of some of the most picturesque scenes. Back home in Kerala, we don’t go through such dramatic seasonal transformations alternating between life and death. So when I saw it for the first time, I was completely mesmerised. Then, it became something to look forward to every year. Often, spring is a symbol of promise and hope; of better days where shadows and darkness retreat and colours seep back in. I am waiting for the next spring and it can’t be that far behind, can it?