The beach at Scheveningen shows the aftermath of the weather that brought us here. Or perhaps better: caught us here. The soft stand up by the road is covered in a light dusting of snow. Starfish, mussels and all manner of North Sea debris has been cast ashore by waves that are by now more unruly than violent. The sun breaks through moody looking clouds that grow darker the further you look inland.
Here on the beach, where the high winds of the previous three days have dropped to mere blustery, it is a place for a perfect early year coastal walk. Across the rest of the Netherlands the trains have stopped running, most of the planes are grounded and discussions continue about how to get the country moving again.
We aren’t even supposed to be here today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.
Our post-Christmas trip to visit family in Ireland and the UK made it as far as Amsterdam’s Schipol airport where the departures board ran red and thousands of bleary eyed travellers in the middle of journeys far longer and more onerous than ours stood in queues for information that nobody seemed to have access to. First our connecting flight was pushed back two days. We spent a snowy day in an Amsterdam that looked primed for a Hallmark Christmas romcom, as the flakes fell between the bridges, canals and crooked houses. Then our flight was pushed back again, to the point where the trip no longer made sense.
We spent six hours back at the airport, trying unsuccessfully to recover our bags and then, after a long wait, to find some form of transport that could get us to The Hague. In the KLM baggage office, we had made a spontaneous decision. We didn’t want to go home, and we were not even sure if we could for a couple of days at least. We needed an address for when they located our bags. And we had vague memories of someone once telling us about some nice days spent in The Hague and that it was close to the beach. With barely a word shared between us, the new plan was agreed and booked. Four hours later, with all trains cancelled, we finally found a taxi to get us there and checked into our hotel in the heart of the old town.
‘Did you have a good trip?’ the friendly receptionist said as she took our ID cards.
Where to begin. We told her an edited version of our story.
‘So now you have an unplanned holiday with us?’
And through our forced smiles at a cheerfulness we certainly didn’t share in that moment, there was the glimmer of recognition that despite our disappointment at not being able to see our family, there is sometimes opportunity to be found when things don’t go to plan. That adventures are made from unexpected shifts in a planned journey. And that if you approach the world with curiosity, even (and maybe even especially) when you are really not in the mood to do so,
In Scheveningen we pass beneath the pier in all its off-season gloom, and head into the dunes, passing by the crumbling remnants of the German’s Atlantic Wall fortifications and into a snow-dusted landscape of sandy hills and hollows, waterways, grass and stunted trees. It is truly beautiful, in the soft light of a winter’s day. Our walk winds through the dunes in a loop that we share with strollers, dogwalkers, joggers and, this being the Netherlands, cyclists who are braving the icy trail. Everyone greets each other with a smile and a hello, as if we are the only ones in on the secret. The whole country has shut down. Trains are stopped. Schools are closed. Articles are being written about whether the Netherlands has forgotten how to deal with a proper winter.
There are no doubt thousands if not even millions of people whose plans and routines have been frustrated. We didn’t plan to be here. Part of us doesn’t want to be here. But the wind blows in off the North Sea in a way that cannot help but clear the head of negative thoughts. The grasses wave and birds sing and, as we approach town once more, we spy the collection of snowpeople in the gardens and outside apartment blocks, built out of the joy and optimism that comes even when the weather is playing havoc with the rest of our lives.
Being in a place that you didn’t mean to be, with no plans of how to fill your days, is a gift, if you choose to see it that way. There is the reminder of when travel was more likely to contain those spontaneous moments where the magic really happened. When you just had to see what you could do and make work.
I was taken back to long hours at Sarajevo bus station, in a time when there were no smartphones or data roaming, and the book in my backpack had already been read through twice. I was walking snowy streets in Sopron once more, the last train of the day stopped at the Austrian border, looking for a hotel or guesthouse that we could afford or was even open. I was back in Erfurt for the first time, discovering through happenstance a place that I knew nothing about, but that captured something in me during those short hours that I have returned a number of times since and look forward to doing so again.
From Scheveningen, because we have no plans and there is still plenty of the day left, we decide to take the tram from one end of the line to the other, passing through The Hague on our way to the canals and squares of Delft. There we visit the Vermeer house because it is open and we happened to walk by it. We eat Broodje that we need two hands to hold because they are so big. We walk the streets and talk and just share time together that is sometimes all too rare, even when away from home.
Over the next few days we explore The Hague and, as with Erfurt all those years ago, leave a psychological stone on these cobbled streets to make sure that we come back one day. We watch a film in a neighbourhood cinema, visit countless bookshops and spend hours in cafes and bistros listening to the international language of this city as life goes on around us. We read our books and scribble notes, and shop for extra underwear and t-shirts because we still don’t have our bags, but it doesn’t matter now because our trip that was to be one thing is now something else, and there is no question that it will live long in our memory.
The Hague is a pleasantly odd city, in its mix of architecture, street art and sculptures, and perhaps because of the context in which we came to get to know it. Being here for these four days has given us something quite interesting beyond the city itself. It has given us some unexpected time. Time to think. To talk. To be together. Perhaps that is why we like it, and why we look forward to when we will return.
Note: As with everything that week, our journey home did not go to plan. We ended up spending another unexpected night, this time in Bielefeld. Some readers might know that there is a long-running joke in Germany that Bielefeld doesn’t actually exist. Having spent two nights in the city, we can confirm that it is a real place, with some nice corners and friendly people. However, the fact that we have stayed there twice and didn’t plan to do so on either occasion leaves open the possibility that if Bielefeld exists, it only exists if you really need it to…
Words by Paul Scraton
Photographs by Katrin Schönig
