HOLIDAY ALBUMS
Cabinet E takes up more than one metre and is filled with vacation photo albums. Usually these are ring binders filled with written texts, based on what I minutely wrote down during those holidays in small notebooks. And then there are photos, sales slips, maps, drawings, gouaches, pasted papers and other stuff.
My first real holiday album dates back to1959. My parents recently returned it to me. It is a thick notebook. I was nine years old, and I went on summer holidays with my parents and sister for the first time ever! Camping! And abroad as well! To Larochette, in Luxemburg. Such a thing was considered – in our circle of friends at least- to be a hazardous adventure. We therefore went with the Nederlandse Reisvereniging (Dutch Travel Club). In my travel report there is a booklet from the NRV with a number of tips: "Did you know that a white necklace and earrings look very nice against a brown skin?" "Should you walk without a jacket on, never do so without suspenders!" "Gentlemen can swim in their swimming trunks almost everywhere, except in Spain".
My notebook also contains the original train tickets from Middelburg to Maastricht. They are of course those old stiff reddish-yellow small cardboard tickets, fl 9, 30 for grown-ups, stamped on 24th July.
Strangely enough there is nothing in my report about that first day, when I remember that day as if it was yesterday. We drank coffee in a genuine café! (In De Vogel Struys in Maastricht). And between Maastricht and Mersch we passed through 30 (or 31?) tunnels. It was all great! Not in the least because the train from Maastricht was pulled by a real steam locomotive. The large black smoke clouds were blown into the carriage as we went through the tunnels. But not a word about these things in my notebook!
The first words in my notebook are written down the next day and concern groceries. I meticulously wrote down the prices of things: Ten cents for a Tiki lemonade bonbon to make lemonade, and yoghurt that costs 23 cents per 1/8 litre! Completely crazy! And I took meticulous notes on all the trips we took. We especially went for long walks, to the Schiessentümpel, the rocks of Hohlay. Here the Romans already carved out millstones from the rocks (I found that very interesting), the Hallerbach, and the castle of Beaufort. We took the tram and rode through the entire city of Luxemburg, for only 12 cents.
Slightly embarrassed I read what I wrote down. Underneath a photograph of a man who is quarrying stone: The stonecutter but not the one from Multatuli. Oh what a smarty-pants was I. But underneath a picture of a man with a movie camera I wrote: Uncle Bob photografed quite a lot. Apparently I had no idea that that was not a photo camera. And I made a spelling mistake as well!
And the word croissant was also completely unknown to me: I called it a horse-shoe roll. It had been a grand vacation, with the result that my parents had gained so much confidence that from that moment on they went camping without any guidance.
Next year we camped in Haamstede. My sister A. was born very recently, so my father went camping with his two eldest daughters. In the holiday album I wrote down what we did each day, thereby mentioning every possible detail. That we had tent label white 44 and stood near the alder-trees. We put chocolate bars of the brand Delta on our sandwiches. We washed our faces with Lyril, and our hands with a cheaper brand of soap. That my father bought a large tube of Brylcreem at a busy hairdressers' shop. That we saw a dead crow. That there was a thunderstorm on the morning of the 9th August. And then there are sales slips, entrance tickets, photos, drawings, macaroni boxes, empty boxes of Honig Momento rice, PK chewing gum, butter, nutrix, treacle-waffles and French caramel custard ("do not boil"). It is a book filled with touching trivialities. And at the same time, it also gives a lot of information about a certain period. There is a leaflet about the film screening of a "wonderful Agfacolor 16mm film" in hotel Bom: at the time such a thing was a real adventure with beautifully printed and numbered entrance tickets. The programme for the summer evening parties in Zierikzee advertises Anny Palmen, the Wama's, Greetje Kauffeld, Tobi Rix, Rita Reys and Corry Brokken. There is also a sheet of exercise paper on which we wrote down our favourite book titles. This sheet of paper came from the provincial registry where my father worked at the time. It is form D of the Finance Bureau of the Wederopbouw (Marshall Plan). The Wederopbouw! A term from the history books! Indeed it was only a sheet of exercise paper in 1960, but still. This way a holiday album is linked to the BIG History.