Grote Kerk...St. Bavo Church -- Haarlem, Holland

About a 20 minute train ride west of Amsterdam by Dutch Rail , you'll find The Grote Kerk ('Great Church'), or St. Bavo, in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Holland is one of my most favorite countries and I have such powerful memories of my many times there. In fact, I think I have been to The Netherlands more times than any other country that I've visited. And our last visit there was one heck of an exciting day. One of our Top 10, in all actuality. One of those days you won't soon forget and will talk about over and over. St. Bavo has been made famous for many reasons. Two of them are that the 10-year-old Mozart played its pipe organ in 1766 and it was also the church where the Ten Boom family went to church in the true story The Hiding Place. I have been to Haarlem several times and been through St. Bavo twice. The most recent time was February 2004 with my partner and my parents. It was cold. And very few tourists anywhere. We like to travel off seasons so that we have most anywhere that we go completely to ourselves. We actually toured The Hiding Place with just the four of us on the tour...no one else was there that day. This is a watch shop in the center of Haarlem owned by the Ten Boom's, a Christian family, who made their home above the shop. During World War II, the family hid Jewish folks in a converted closet in one of it's bedrooms until they were discovered and all sent away to various concentration camps throughout Europe. It's a fascinating place to visit and you'll find my name in the guest book three or four times. So, this particular day in February 2004, we also made our way over to St. Bavo. It was cold outside and equally as cold inside. The floor is stone -- in fact, grave stones for the most part. We made our way around the building quietly and prepared to leave. In fact, my mother had already stepped outside of the main cathedral when it hit. And boy, did it. The pipe organist hit the first notes of his practice session for the week. It was one of those hair-raising moments. All of our eyes glanced around at one another and one of us quickly ran for my mom...to get her back inside. If you're a musician or person who appreciates the arts, you'll know exactly what those moments are like. We sat, nearly alone, for the next bit of time while the organist played and played, practiced and practiced. I kept on thinking of a very young and talented Mozart up there in the same place as the organist that we were watching...238 years ago. We left with our eyes wide open in such appreciation that we were the ones that happened to be there at just the right time. Completely unexpected. Completely amazing. We have a lot of those moments in our lives and we appreciate every single one of them.