Tulip Time

Last week, roughly 500,000 tourists attended Holland, Michigan's 77th annual Tulip Festival, according to Holland's official website, most of them wandering about below white permed hairdos or riding in big unwieldy coaches that fail to use the Michigan left turn (which, honestly, most of us wish we could do anyway). I might feel differently if I actually lived in Holland as an adult, but as a child, Tulip Time was just about the best thing ever. It meant a week of half school days during the best weather of the year, parades to watch every day, even a few to participate in, and opportunities to pressure parents into cotton candy submission. It's fantastic, really.

I, however, haven't been to Tulip Time in about seven years. And I miss it. This year, though, I got a chance to celebrate my own Motherland version of the festival. It's amazing how strikingly similar yet utterly different the original culture is from that of the Dutch Calvinist immigrant descendants back home, but I did what I could. We got back from Holland the day of the other Holland's Volksparade. The Volksparade, as opposed to the mildly interesting Kinderparade and the fantastic Muziekparade, involves usually normal, sane people dressing up in Dutch costumes, scrubbing the parade route with brooms, and throwing water at members of the opposite sex if under the age of 18, all at the behest of the mayor (the scrubbing, not the throwing). I celebrated by flying past large fields of blooming tulips on a train, lounging at canalside cafes, hanging out with surnames like Feenstra and Wiersma, buying Wilhelmina peppermints, and consuming large quantities of Leiden Komijne Kaas (cumin cheese). Yum. If I can't have the real thing, I'll take my Tulip Time any year.