Unusual Collections (!)

Yesterday, following our work at the hospital, we went to Haarlem to visit the Teyler's museum, which is the oldest museum in the Netherlands. It is shown in the bottom picture. It primarily houses the scientific collections of Pieter Teyler van Hulst, who lived during the 17th century. He obsessively collected fossils, rocks, and scientific equipment such as microscopes, instruments that generate electricity, and globes. Interestingly, a 20th century Dutch writer, critic, world traveler, and personality named Brondewijn Buch also left his collections (but not his 100,000 books) to Teyler's museum when he died in 2002 at the age of 54. Buch was famous in contemporary Holland because he hosted a travel program on TV in the 1980s. There he talked about his eclectic collections, which included his obsessions with Goethe and Mick Jagger, the American Civil War, the dodo bird, and all things related to islands. There was not meant to be any logic in the connection between these things! By name dropping, we got special admission to the private archives upstairs in the museum, where we saw part of Buch's collections, including the only dodo bird bone in Holland, a wooden model of Darwin's ship (the HMS Beagle), a printer's proof of Goethe's condolence card, and some Civil War bullets. After reading about the collection online I also found out the Buch supposedly also owned Napoleon's private parts, which were removed post mortem. I do not know if this is true or not, but they certainly were not on public display! We had dinner at Sicco and Yvonne's "tent cabin" at the beach. It is not much bigger than a tent but it has a full kitchen and space for a dining table. It is right on the beach, so one feels very much a part of nature. The tents are delivered by forklift in April and are taken away for storage in October, with all furniture and dishware inside. We returned to Noordwijk after dinner. Today we started working on the grant at 7:30 AM and worked all day with only a short break for lunch. It was a very Calvinist day.