| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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On the train we wrestled our luggage into the rack above the seat and sat down. A group came on and Evelyn said, 'I bet they're going to the convention.' 'Why?' 'Because he's carrying a copy of CROSS-TIME ENGINEER.' And they looked at us and said, 'It's the Leepers.' This time it wasn't a question if our fame having reached to some unexpected point. These were all people we'd been introduced to before, but my twin-carburetored, dual-action, turbopowered 7/100-volt memory had somehow forgotten them entirely. One said we'd been introduced twice. The other is a math teacher whom I'd met at the last Worldcon and whom I'd chased around discussing math with two or three times. He is Bruce Burdick. We talked about Amsterdam and the con and fandom through the ride. It turns out Bruce is staying at our hotel. The ride itself is under an hour and from a distance I saw my first--and so far, only--windmill.
We got to the Hague, bought three-day tram tickets, and rode out to our hotel. We are sharing a room with Kate Pott. She had already checked in but was not in the room. We looked through the tourist books to find something to do and hit on the Gevangenport. Literally that means the Prison Gate and it is a museum that fits in with my interest in macabre history. It is a museum of legal punishment and torture through the ages. It is, in fact, Europe's largest museum devoted to this subject. It is not as sensationalized as England's London Dungeon, but it feels more authentic. The guide appears to be a policeman whose presentation combines black humor with an obvious knowledge. They had racks, but not stretching racks as one might expect. It is really just a device for holding someone down. There were stretching devices but the ones they had were all vertical. The rack was really for people to be 'broken on the rack' and that is a different process.
They had a collection of thief catchers, which contrary to their names were just devices for holding thieves at a safe distance at the end of a pole when being walked to prison. Presumably it would not be too painful if the prisoner cooperated. Another way to keep a person harmless is basically to put a barrel over him with a hole in the top for his head to stick out. That makes it tough to lift a sword. I won't go into detail about some of the more painful devices. Many were just sort of degradation devices. People would be tied up in a public square or in some other way restrained and passersby could throw mud, rotten vegetables, even rocks at them. Often a collection box was placed next to the person and those who enjoyed this high-minded activity would be expected to contribute to the poor for the pleasure they were getting. At least this way somebody benefited. Then there was a nice collection of beheading swords.
The rich could get special treatment if they wanted to pay for it. (Big surprise, huh?) The poor were packed twenty or more in almost pitch-black cells about ten feet square; the rich had spacious rooms with nice panels, paintings on the wall, and for entertainment a view of the town gibbet. There was also a medium class of accommodations for debtors. The tour ended with a visit to the torture chamber which I will not describe in detail, and a tenminute slide show.
Local heroes--or martyrs might be a better word--are the de Witt brothers, Johan and Cornelius. They were accused of attempting to kill the king, though they are now thought to have been blameless. They were held in the prison and later apparently killed by the crowd. There are now statues to them at various places.
After the Gevangenport we decided to walk around. The air was just a perfect temperature, a little warm if there was not a nice cool breeze that brought the temperature just down to perfect. The sky was very blue and to be walking around the pond in front of the civic center with its geyser fountain in the middle was just exactly the experience people are looking for in an idealized view of what things are like in Europe . About the only thing less than perfect was the occasional blaring of loud American rock music from passing cars. We walked around the tourist section for a while and it blended into a downtown area like any medium-sized city. It just had fewer restaurants. Eventually we bought a pseudo-Delft eggcup for our chatchka table. It was real Delft, but it was Delftic.
Dinner was at an Indonesian restaurant and, while the service was not good, the food was. What he had was basically a feast with two big sample plates. There was sate, which is meat on brochette with a peanut sauce. There was meat in a spicy sauce. There was something like half a hard-boiled egg that is then fried on the outside, cut in half, and the interior covered with a spicy sauce. There was chicken in a bland sauce. And of course, there was rice (in my dish), noodles (in Evelyn's), and coconut.
After dinner we decided just to go out and ride the trams (which were now free by virtue of our three-day tram passes). What we saw was a lot of what looked like London suburbia. Lots of blocks of flats. Eventually we returned to our hotel. Kate was there. She had already registered for the convention. I started flipping through her program book. One item attracted my attention and I went through:
Pleasure--I see my name in the program book.
Surprise--It is a program item; I didn't think I was on the program.
Fear--I have to get up in front of an audience.
Curiosity--What do I have to discuss? 'Big-name fans have their say.'
Astonishment--Somebody considers me a big-name fan.
Terror--What do they mean I have my say? What do I have to say?
Indignation--Why has nobody told me in time to prepare for this panel which would be in about 22 hours and which I had found out about by chance.
Let me go off on a tangent about the organization of the convention ConFiction (and I am actually writing this Saturday afternoon, when the convention is about half over). There are some things about this convention that are working reasonably well, but the organization of the program is having problems like I have never seen at a world convention. I found out I was on the program by noticing my name on a program item. So I registered with Evelyn as a program participant. It turned out our materials had to be retrieved from the materials of the non-participants. Seeing my name buried in the program was my only notification. Well, I am not a major guest in spite of having been mislabeled a 'big-name fan.' But it is turning out that very few panels seem to have even half the advertised participants. Many of the panels list people like Clive Barker, who are definitely not at the convention. Other people were listed for panels before their arrival at the convention. Clearly there was a breakdown somewhere.
So we were sitting around the room at 10 PM and started hearing fireworks on the beach. It turns out there is an international competition in fireworks that is held in Scheveningen each year and awarded to whichever country puts on the best display. There are ten competing countries, so there were to be two fireworks displays Wednesday night, two more Thursday night, then on Friday and Saturday night there were to be three each. Our room's balcony is a very good place to watch because, while there are buildings between our hotel and where they were fired off, there is a conveniently placed gap in the buildings so we can see the rockets fired off. We saw one display at 10 PM and one at 11 PM. The second one was from Japan and appears to be the one most locals expect will win the four-night competition. They have rich blues which are apparently hard to get, but what is really impressive is an effect I have never seen. They can fire a cloud of pieces that flash at random to give the effect of a cloud of falling glitter or the way light reflects off water. It is a very nice effect.
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Thursday morning we had breakfast. Breakfast is pretty good at our hotel: fresh fruit and bread and cheeses and meats and cold cereal, all on a buffet. Ever see a box of Frosted Flakes with instructions on how to eat Frosted Flakes printed in fourteen languages? The bread is really very nice. We sat with Bruce. Then Kate, Evelyn, and I took the tram to the center of town again, very near the Gevangenport. For the Mauritshuis Museum. Once again we saw paintings we had only seen reproductions of before. There were Rubens, Van Dycks, the obligatory Rembrandts. What impressed me the most was a painting of two bulls by Paulus Potter.
I will not go into great detail about the convention since I am certain Evelyn will cover it in greater depth. AT 2 PM we were at the convention for the opening ceremonies. The chairman of the convention came out and gave a talk about how good it was to be in charge of the first Worldcon to have a contingent from Eastern Europe and from China, as well as the more usual countries. The Guests of Honor made a dramatic entrance through a trap door in the floor of the stage. The Dutch Minister of Culture made a speech that has been hotly debated since. I think it was a bit patronizing. She drew the distinction between 'reading matter' and 'literature' and said that really some pieces of science fiction could be considered actually to be literature. While it is nice to have such an important person at the opening ceremonies, one suspects that her frankness in basically saying that she is above all this stuff was sort of a put-down.
After the opening we checked out the Huckster Room, which is smaller than we would have expected. The last convention in Britain had a huckster room of easily twice the size and probably more like four times the size. Not that it really matters. With the expense of books here, I will probably end up not buying anything.
At 4 PM we attended a panel 'Guest of Honour--Honour or Harassment?' at which Algis Budrys, Poul Anderson, Norman Spinrad, and Robert Silverberg discussed various inconveniences they had been put through being convention guests of honor. The sort of thing is being asked to be interviewed on radio in a foreign language. Budrys once went what he claims was 2000 miles on a bus to go to a remote convention. Along the way he had to change the tire on the bus because the driver did not know how.
After this panel we started scouting places to eat around the convention center. We walked out on the street, could find nothing open, and ended up eating in the cafeteria actually in the convention center. The food was not very good. I got a sort of baked chicken with some sort of potato balls and mixed vegetables. The sweet roll I had for dessert was quite good, however.
After that was my panel. Not being a 'Big-Name Fan' and not having a whole lot to speak out on, I decided to follow the lead of the others. In fact, there was nobody on the panel who really did have a whole lot to say. We all introduced ourselves. There were two Americans, a Dutchman, an Australian, and a German. The German when introducing himself said he had been in fandom longer than any of us, having gotten started about 1945. As the discussion started to drag, things were getting awkward. I decided that Waldemar Kumming, the German, was the most interesting person on the panel, so I took the bit in my teeth and started to interview him. Now realize that I have a very bad ear for untangling accents. Waldemar spoke with a very thick German accent, so at least one sentence in three I was not absolutely sure I knew what he had said. After about ten minutes the moderator tried to wrest control from me and Waldemar. Bruce Pelz, the other American on the panel, cut off the moderator. He did not want to return to the former awkwardness, I would assume. In fact, I got some interesting information from Waldemar. |
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