Nov. 16-18: Counts Family Meets Sinterklaas and Piet

Art’s Parents were in Holland for several weeks in November. We were in Spain for part of their visit, and had Staci visiting us for nearly the rest of their time in Holland, but we did manage to get over to Utrecht for the weekend to spend some time with the family. The weekend we just was coincidentally a very big weekend for Holland. Two major events were taking place: the arrival of Sinterklaas to Holland and the Dutch National Team qualifying football (soccer for Americans) game, and we got to participate in both!

We arrived in Utrecht in time for afternoon coffee at Oma’s. Annemieke again graciously allowed us to not only stay at her apartment for the weekend, but also vacated her room for us as well! Once she got home, the three Dusseldorfians and Art’s parents said our goodbyes to Oma and Tante Mieke and headed over to Annemieke’s apartment. It was a low-key evening, just sitting around and visiting. Saturday was the big day! Annemieke was given the special privilege of getting to be part of the group that greets Sinterklaas at the end of his long parade through the city. AND, she was able to invite people to accompany her! It was a wonderful event. We headed down towards the Dom around 2pm – the parade already in full force. We avoided most of the crowd since we had to get to the ending point, at the University of Utrecht. We were ushered into the building and got to wait for the arrival of Sinterklaas in the warmth and comfort of the university building. At long last, a crowd of singing dressed up kids and adults alike converge outside, one story below us. We got to see the tail end of the parade, as it ushered in Sinterklaas, riding his white horse Americas. The back story was that the original horse got sick or died, and this horse was brought in at the last minute. The new horse was NOT a fan of the crowds, so Sint dismounted and walked the rest of the way to the Univ. Sint was surrounded by several Piets, which was something new for me. I thought that there was just one Piet and one Sinterklaas, but there is only one Sint, and many many Piets, of varying expertise. There is an entire back-story every year, as told each evening before the regular news, on Sinterklaas Journal, of how the novice Piets get into trouble and mess things up, always threatening the success of Sinterklaas making it to Holland. It goes on for weeks. All of this was new for us.




Sinterklaas makes it to the University and is officially greeted by several people. He then goes out onto a balcony to address people. After that was our chance! We got to meet Sint, as well as several of the Piets, and take pictures with them. Our normally jovial little boy turned difficult, refusing to take a decent picture with anyone. He did enjoy Piet because he passed out papiernoten (a gingerbread like treat) which Zach thought tasted great!



It was a very neat experience to see all of the craziness that goes along with Sinterklaas’s arrival to Holland.






Back to Annemieke’s apartment where we get ready for the BIG GAME. We all put something orange on – Art and I had brought our Dutch jerseys for the occasion. There were tons of yummy treats (Zach trying to eat the Hamkaas) to snack on. Zach went to bed early and the game started around 8pm. It was a better game than the Dutch generally play. I unfortunately was beat and went to bed at half-time, after practically falling asleep on the couch.
Zach slept deliciously late on Sunday, and we got together for one last visit over at Oma’s. Zach had to be awakened from a nearly 3 hour nap so that we could get back on the road and give Oma a chance to rest. What a wonderful trip!