In Noordwijk, the Hans Brinker is a hotel for children where parents could park their offspring and take a day off, a week, a school vacation, or for as long as three months.

Suppose there were hotels for children, where parents could park their offspring and take a day off, or a week in the country —or a round-the-world cruise —secure in the knowledge that the children would have expert care, careful supervision, and a wonderful time? Europe has had such hotels for…

The once bitter enemies, Netherlands and Indonesia have recently begun exchanging public compliments, friendly trade delegations and full resumption of diplomatic relations.

Trade, as well as politics, makes strange bedfellows: Spain and Castro’s Cuba, Britain and Red China, Israel and West Germany. One of the strangest tie-ups these days is between The Netherlands and its former colony, Indonesia, which severed diplomatic relations in 1960 and seemed headed for a full-scale war. The…

The little farming and fishing community of Elburg was horrified seven weeks ago when four local youths reported that they had seen pretty, blonde Matje Leusink, 26, kissing the pastor.

“I solemnly declare before God and my parish that I have committed adultery,” announced Pastor Bastianus Gerardus Andries van der Wiel from the pulpit of the Reformed Church of Elburg in The Netherlands. The congregation listened in thrilled silence; then the chief elder rose to deliver a thunderous, hour-long sermon…

Thousands of jobs go unmanned in Europe, like in the Netherlands (150,000). The Dutch recently discharged 6,000 soldiers from military duty to work on construction jobs.

WESTERN EUROPE

Every Monday morning a Turkish Airlines plane lumbers to a stop at a Belgian military airfield near Charleroi, and out step 50 tanned and slightly bewildered Turks. Clutching yellow envelopes containing their X-ray pictures, they are welcomed with sweet Turk ish cigarettes, fruit juices, a round of speeches…

Ecumenical marriage ceremonies have taken place in the methodically unity-seeking Netherlands.

ECUMENISM

“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” intoned the Rev. Claudius Miller, an Episcopal minister, at the wedding last month of Susan Ekberg, an Episcopalian, and Patrick C. Barker, a Roman Catholic. The words were from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and the wedding…

Lately, the sources of radical and rebellious Roman Catholic thinking is the staid and sober Netherlands. The latest incident to alarm Rome’s Holy Office involves a lively magazine.

The sources of radical and rebellious Roman Catholic thinking used to be the industrial missions in urban France or the theological faculties of German universities. Lately, the fount of ideas that may skirt heresy — or may become the accepted reshaping of church thinking — is the staid and sober Netherlands.

The…

An account on the life of the Spanish royal family, with Prince Carlos Hugo, who hopes to use Princess Irene considerable fortune to advance his ambitions.

As sunrise touched the jagged rocks of Montejurra last week, 60,000 Spaniards followed wooden crosses and old battle flags up steep paths toward a plateau on the mountaintop. There, at the heart of the old northern kingdom of Navarre, they gathered for their annual commemoration of two bloody 19th century…

Juliana and Bernhard watched Princess Irene get married. But they watched from a distance of 800 miles and over television. Includes also other information on the Royal Family.

THE NETHERLANDS

Queen Juliana of The Netherlands and her consort, Prince Bernhard, last week watched their daughter, Princess Irene, get married. But they watched from a distance of 800 miles and over television in a room at Warmelo palace, near Amsterdam.

The TV power failed at 12:15 p.m., but there…

In a country precariously balanced between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the crisis flared up again when Princess Irene and Prince Carlos went for an audience with Pope Paul VI.

THE NETHERLANDS

Stuffed tripe, boiled eggs, Edam and Gouda cheeses, several kinds of sausage, salt shakers filled with chocolate to sprinkle on the bread and butter—it was the usual Sunday breakfast enjoyed by a prosperous Dutch middle-class family. The quarrel raging over the breakfast table was recognizable too. The…

The trade-minded Dutch, who are more interested in new profits than in salvaging old concessions, were eager to do business again with Indonesia.

His reception was pointedly restrained, but the dapper, dusky VIP who debarked at the Amsterdam air port last week could hardly expect brass bands. Dr. Subandrio, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier, was the highest-ranking official from Djakarta to set foot in The Netherlands since the Dutch bitterly granted his…

A new European approach to birth control has here and there gone from theory to practice. Sales of the pill in the Catholic south of Holland reportedly rose 40% last year.

Revisions in theology start inconspicuously enough—usually as footnote-laden articles in grey, learned journals with modest circulations. Future church historians may well date a profound change in Roman Catholic thinking on marriage from the current issue of a scholarly Belgian periodical called Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, There, the Rev. Louis Janssens,…

Princess Irene, got engaged to Carlos de Borbon y Parma. Without the govenment’s approval, she renounced the right of succession and agreed to live in exile. So died a princess.

ōTHE NETHERLANDS

With 17 suitcases, a pair of bright blue skis and a parakeet in a cage, Princess Irene of The Netherlands tripped gaily aboard a chartered KLM airliner last month, unnoticed by the press. Prettiest of four royal sisters and second in line of succession (after Princess Beatrix, 27),…

In the past seven years the Dutch Air Force has recorded 413 bird-plane collisions. Zoologist Dr. Hardenberg found a way to prevent bird accidents.

As long as any Dutchmen can remember, the airspace over their crowded lowlands has swarmed with birds. But the birds have increasing competition. Part of the sky over The Netherlands has been invaded by commercial air routes; another part has been taken over by the military. And the birds are…

Leave it to the Dutch to be different. Before the Dutch Parliament this week is a bill that will make a private company out of the government-held Dutch State Mines.

Leave it to the Dutch to be different. While industry is being nationalized from Italy to Indonesia, The Netherlands has decided to move in just the opposite direction. Before the Dutch Parliament this week is a bill that will make a private company out of the government-held Dutch State…

Last week the tariffs on steel imports into the Common Market were raised to a standard 9%. With very little steel of its own, The Netherlands (4.5%) wanted to keep prices low.

Continental Europe’s ailing steel industry, already plagued by overcapacity, has been seriously jarred by a recent invasion of cut-rate steel from Japan, Austria, Britain and the Iron Curtain countries. Since the Common Market’s steel producers have the right to align their prices to the lowest import offer, they have cut…