There is only one thing you really need to know about the Hague – one simple fact, one accident of history, one utterly damning weakness. The terrible truth is that the Hague is not Amsterdam.
The two cities are only half an hour away from each other. They have the same language, the same government, the same climate and culture and yet they are utterly different. The Hague does for the south of Holland what Haywards Heath does for the south of England, while Amsterdam… well, it’s probably better not to think about it.
In fact, that’s likely to be the main activity for any casual visitor to the Hague – trying not to think about ‘the other place’ with the cobbled streets and the most beautiful canals outside of St Petersburg, and the Van Gogh house, and the Rembrandts, and the sweet nostalgic clouds of Lebanese Red drifting across the Dam Square, and all those wonderful dark-wood bars with the smell of fresh coffee – especially the Scheltema, just behind the Dam Square, where the journalists always used to meet, but no, stop, stop, only madness lies this way. The Hague. Think about the Hague. The Hague has its attractions. Of course it does.
There is the international court of justice, for example. It may not be everybody’s idea of the perfect break and the fact is that it is rather difficult to get in, since the guards on the Peace Palace are about as peacelike as your average inner city bouncer plus you have to join a guided tour and there are none between three o’clock on Friday afternoon and ten o’clock on Monday morning so any weekend tripper will be stuck at the gate and probably tempted to turn north to a city that never sleeps, to the city which is probably the most pleasure-loving in Europe and – yes, anyway, the Hague.
Well, the Hague also offers the Gevangenpoort museum which houses a considerable collection of instruments of torture and execution, including guillotine blades, racks and gallows, and the very cell where the republicans Cornelius de Witt and his brother Johan were imprisoned before a Royalist mob hauled them out and chopped them into pieces which were sold off to the highest bidders. No. Perhaps not. Or you could try the Meermanno-Westreenianum Museum on Prinsessegracht, which has “a small collection of remarkably well-preserved mediaeval illuminated manuscripts and Bibles”. Or not.
Probably the best show in town is the Royal Picture Gallery in a seventeenth century mansion called the the Mauritshuis. This is a fine collection – lots of the old Flemish winterscapes where the more you look the more you see little tableaux of people up to mischief, some Holbein, some Vermeer and several Rembrandts including the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp although, of course, they are nothing to compare to the breath-taking collections in another place whose name we won’t mention.
Now, don’t give up yet. There is more. The Hague, for example, also has the Doma club, allegedly the most famous sado-masochistic bar in the world. Whether it was out of curiosity or desperation, I went and I watched and I’m afraid I nodded off. I never believe men who say they find pornography boring but if you swallow several vodkas and sit in a small room, warmed not only by overpowering central heating but also by a dozen chubby regulars who are baking nicely in black leather underwear, and if you have nothing to keep you awake but the sight on stage of a middle-aged woman laboriously tying ropes around a motherly barmaid, then off you nod.
The trouble with the Hague is that it belongs to the rich and powerful – the politicians and bureaucrats of the Dutch government whose parliament and ministeries are here, various flunkies and parasites who attach themselves to Queen Beatrix’s household at the Paleis Noordeinde (no admission) and the herds of apparatchiks who service the international court and the various dull and usually pointless conferences which are held here. The city is functionally efficient but indifferent to joy. It was also bombed to buggery by the allies who were trying to destroy V2 launching sites, and it suffers from some deeply ugly reconstruction.
So a trip to the Hague becomes a quest. There are moments when it succeeds. Here, on a windswept pavement on Paleispromenade, is the door to the Juliana Cafe which turns out to be a warm and comforting place to idle, decorated with relics from a Belgian church and with the busts of long-forgotten burghers. Or here, on Frederikstraat, is Plato’s restaurant, crowded and candle-lit, serving Dutch and French food in a bustle of conversation. And here, on embassy row, amidst the remains of old baronial mansions, is a real jewel, the Hotel Des Indes.
It is invariably true that the rich tend to take what is best, and this hotel has real character and warmth. In 120 years, half of the dictionary of national biography has slept here – King Faisal, Czar Nicholas II, Bing Crosby, the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, Theodore Roosevelt. Haile Selassie dined here. Anna Pavlova died here. It has a nice rambling feeling to it – in fact, the Nazis used it as their headquarters without realising that there were people hiding in the attics.
But there are times when the quest simply fails. Worst of all, when you head out of town, ten minutes drive, towards the coast and to the resort town of Scheveningen. Unless you have worked in a kennel, it is unlikely that you have ever seen quite so much dog shit. It may well be that while men in suits gather to confer in the Hague, global dog groups meet here to discuss world events or possibly simply to exhibit their turds in endless piles along the pavements. If that is their purpose, they are doing a tremendously good job.
I tip-toed to the beach. If the sun were to come out – as eventually it must – and if the horizontal sleet finally exhausted itself, you could sit on the sand which reaches for miles and miles and watch the seagulls dive. But on the other hand the wind off the north sea is so strong and so persistent that the locals have invented their own deckchair, made of straw, with a mighty hood, to protect you from the blast. And, down by the sea’s edge, there are hardy Dutch people on healthy walks, leaning into the gale, while behind them, their dogs trot. And squat. No place to paddle, I think.
So, what do you do in the Hague? Head for a good-looking restaurant you noticed last night? No, it’s closed for lunch (Have you ever heard of a restaurant that was closed for lunch?). Head back to the car and drive out to the countryside. No, the buggers have clamped it. So, what do you do? You walk to the hideous railway station in the shadow of the hideous shopping centre and you do what you should have done as soon as you stepped off the plane. You buy a train ticket and you head north. And, half an hour later, everything is all right.
ENDS
Five things to do in the Hague -
Drink in Juliana’s
Eat in Plato’s
See the miniature city at Madurodam
Get caned in the Doma Club
Leave
Five things you must never do in the Hague -
Light a joint
Take sun oil
Park without paying
Think about Amsterdam
Stay
