Hello, readers!
I am in an unfortunate spot. I am not too keen to write this email, as I am back in Vancouver and am, thus, returning to daily life. I did not bring my camera or the plug for my computer's charger to the library, where I am currently located. I am hungry. I am hebetudinous. I had some other complaints that have slipped my mind but would have reinforced the impression that I do not want to write this email. [Edit: I remembered one of my gripes. I could easily enough have continued to write daily emails if only I had asked my hosts for their wireless password; I did not have the perspicacity to even ask if they had wireless internet. As it turned out, I was free to write each evening, and I instead spent my time reading. Such is life.]
My blog would be incomplete without a final email capping it off, though, and my trip to Holland was sufficiently magical to warrant detailed description. I should start by saying that my hosts were phenomenal. They are welcoming, considerate, and very interesting people; they are both outstanding cooks; they provide their guests with everything necessary for an enjoyable stay, including train tickets and spare house keys; and they have an excellent library. If you know who they are, I recommend that you go visit them; if you do not know who they are, then I refuse to tell you, as I would not want dozens of people beating a path to their front door and requesting lodging. I am afraid that such an experience would make them ornery and kill all desire that they have for hosting people.
My last day in Berlin was longer than I wanted, insofar as I spent more time walking through the city than I had planned to do, having walked, as usual, increasingly slowly as the afternoon wore on and I grew more tired, and did not have time to watch a full movie before I left. The flight to Berlin was marked principally by my sitting in front of incredibly-annoying passengers and having an excellent view of Holland's canals, the ripples of which were clearly visible from the air (i.e., the larger ripples that one would not have even noticed from the ground, as they would have been too global to appear to be ripples). When I arrived in Leiden, the city was bathed in pellucid evening light. I biked with one of my hosts through the still streets (the other of them having taken my luggage for me via bus - another service offered free of charge) of a city that is quintessentially Dutch: the buildings along the main road have rectangular, white window frames; dark brown brick, and intermittent layers or adornments of white brick, marked many buildings' facades; narrow, winding side streets snaked off of each larger road; the city was dotted with churches and chock-full of canals; we passed a high-backed bench that looked like a sculpture of some sort made of very old brick; and we even passed one of the famous Dutch windmills. The evening was cool, and the city was clothed in evening blue. The host of mine who was biking with me said that they had just experienced a heat wave which had ended on the afternoon of my arrival, as though the city had been preparing for my arrival.
The morning after my arrival was mostly marked by a slow start, which did not prove to be any problem, as my hosts helped me work out an itinerary for the next several days and provided me with maps for some of the cities that I was going to be visiting. I went to Haarlem in the afternoon and learned that all of western Holland is so closely-connected by train that one can get from any point (in that part of the country) to any other point within an hour or so; many cities are close enough that one can reach them within a half-hour. Haarlem was not as pretty as Leiden, as it had fewer canals and a smaller city center, but it had a great many former almshouses (like Leiden itself), highlighting Holland's superlativeness as a social welfare state (Is that a term? I mean a country in which people are more or less equal - in which the divide between rich and poor is intentionally lessened.), and one of the city's main canals was so still that I could see the clouds perfectly reflected in it. At 4:00 PM I went to a free organ concert, which would have transported me if I could have lain in a soft bed with a book in my hand while listening to it (I was feeling somnolent.). It also allowed me to enter a church that would normally have cost me 2.50 Euros for free.
I took the wrong train on the way back from Haarlem, resulting in my journey's taking twice as long as it should have, but, upon my arrival in Leiden, I discovered that my navigation skills were vastly better than they were last time. I had no time biking back to my hosts' place, which I did by stopping every couple of hundred meters to check my Google map (which was, for once, accurate) and make sure that I was going the right way. It is amazing how much a few years of travel experience (and other personal growth) augments one's independence: while I could not find out which trains were going in which directions when I first visited the Netherlands, I have now grown smart enough to ask people what "Do not enter" means when it is written on overhead displays next to trains, and I can find my way around without undue difficulty. My returning late from my first day trip in Holland did not turn out to be a big deal, as my hosts had not been counting on my getting back early, and it did not get in the way of my writing, as I had already decided to throw that by the wayside. I spent the evening reading, not knowing that it was going to turn out to be one of the chief activities of my trip.
I do not want to provide a day-by-day description of each of my following day trips, especially as I have little of note to say about each of them individually. Over the four days following my trip to Haarlem, I saw Utrecht, Leiden's market and fort, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. I could trivially have seen the Hague on the way back from Rotterdam, but I was feeling a little tired (despite having done very little in Rotterdam; I should have had plenty of energy left), and I was mostly interested in taking some pictures of Leiden's city center, which I had theretofore been unable to do because of being on my bike whenever I went through it, and continuing to read. Perhaps I was a little tired of being a tourist by the time I reached Leiden; perhaps the comforts of the home in which I stayed were enough to lure me away from more touristy day-trips. Whatever the case, I feel the spending time in Leiden itself was a good way to more intimately acquaint myself with Dutch living, and the time that I spent in Leiden was inimitably pleasant. I read three books and fragments of four other books, took day-trips that did not tire me out, and enjoyed my hosts' company (and that of their cats) during my stay. One can hardly regret not having seen more new places in light of such a successful conclusion to this trip, especially as I saw Holland with new eyes, as it were.
My observations of Dutch life, besides Holland's seeming to be better than most places at keeping the poor from dying of starvation on the streets, were many. Besides Rotterdam's having a very modern city center due to its having been bombed extensively in World War II, there are very few reminders of the war here - that is, far fewer that one noticed in Germany or Eastern Europe. The Dutch have far less Greek- and Roman-inspired architecture than the Germans, reflecting Holland's being a less grandiose and warlike country than Germany. Even Holland's statuary is humbler than that of Germany: while many German statues are gigantic and are meant to symbolize the greatness of the person or persons commemorated by them, Dutch statues are rather more whimsical, often consisting of children in various poses or of families. The Dutch countryside is not actually as monotonous as I first found it on the way to Maastricht; while it is flat, the towns that one passes between large cities, and the ever-present canals, are very pretty. Dutch people live much more closely together than North Americans, as evidenced not just by their houses' being scrunched together shoulder-to-shoulder, but by one's hearing neighboring people talking outside at night; I think that I like their fairly communal life more than the isolation of North American domiciles. Finally, Dutch people themselves are generally affable and nonthreatening. They are apt to engage foreigners in conversation and are both helpful and pleasant to talk to.
I only have two more general comments to make before trying to think of a conclusion for this summer's blog. Firstly, the Dutch train system is almost as good as that of Germany. Dutch trains are cleaner than German ones, just as prompt, and just as frequent, and they even have TVs inside of them that display one's current location and upcoming stops. The only downsides to the Dutch train system are that those very same TVs often show the railway system's logo, and nothing else, instead of the train's schedule, and stops are not orally announced as they are in German trains. Finally, Holland is so bicycle-friendly as to be pedestrian-unfriendly, so to speak: the roads are designed with such a mind for cyclists that sidewalks are often cramped, tiny, or even non-existent. This surprised me; it was a curious and somewhat risible oversight. Dutch cyclists are less reliable than those of Berlin, often switching lanes without shoulder-checking and cutting each other off. Pedestrian and cyclist movement are extremely chaotic, as cyclists are supposed to yield to pedestrians in many inconvenient situations but expect pedestrians to yield to them, and roads are often barely wide enough for one car (between the bike lanes), let alone cars going in opposite directions and trying to avoid cyclists. Holland's smallness is cute and an endearing quality in many ways, but it is a curse when it comes to roads, especially given that the pedestrians there are almost as dumb as those in Linz and seem intent on getting run over by bikers (though they rarely succeed).
As usual, I forgot to mention a whole bunch of things. Many cities in Holland employ street sweepers, making them the cleanest that I have ever visited. Amsterdam, on the other hand, is extremely dirty, so much so that one feels dirty just for having visited it. It is an architectural wonder and worth visiting as such, but it is not a city of the same cultural import, from a historical point of view, as any of the other capitals (except for Bratislava) that I visited on this trip, let alone many capitals that I have not yet visited. Holland, like Germany, has not yet invited the free restroom or public water fountain, and its free bathrooms are, unlike those of Germany, which one can find almost exclusively in fast food joints, located in churches! This was a surprise to me, given that I had not visited churches in any other country that had free bathrooms, but it struck me as humane and made sense, as churches should be places in which everyone is equal, and the length of sermons and concerts disposes people to want to use the bathroom. The fact of churches' having free bathrooms also inclines one to donate handsomely to them - that is, when they are free of charge, which is far from guaranteed in Holland.
I have had a blast writing these emails and wish that I could end this one in some earth-shattering way that would change your outlook on life. Alas, I have nothing especially significant to say except that I will continue to update my blog when I start my next trip to Europe, next summer. I have phased Tunisia out of my coming trip, both because there is more of it to see than I expected, and I would not want to see it incompletely, and because it might make more logistic sense to see all of Northern Africa in one fell swoop in a few years. It is unfortunate that the Middle East and Northern Africa are in a state of such political turmoil at the moment; one wonders if I will be able to visit them at all in a few years. I suppose that that part of the world can always wait, if the worst comes to the worst, as the cultural artifacts that I would like to see there are reasonably unlikely to disappear overnight; the only question would be that of being able to take a sufficiently-long vacation to see them all. This is a problem for future years, though. I thank you for having read my blog and exhort you to continue reading it in future summers!
I am in an unfortunate spot. I am not too keen to write this email, as I am back in Vancouver and am, thus, returning to daily life. I did not bring my camera or the plug for my computer's charger to the library, where I am currently located. I am hungry. I am hebetudinous. I had some other complaints that have slipped my mind but would have reinforced the impression that I do not want to write this email. [Edit: I remembered one of my gripes. I could easily enough have continued to write daily emails if only I had asked my hosts for their wireless password; I did not have the perspicacity to even ask if they had wireless internet. As it turned out, I was free to write each evening, and I instead spent my time reading. Such is life.]
My blog would be incomplete without a final email capping it off, though, and my trip to Holland was sufficiently magical to warrant detailed description. I should start by saying that my hosts were phenomenal. They are welcoming, considerate, and very interesting people; they are both outstanding cooks; they provide their guests with everything necessary for an enjoyable stay, including train tickets and spare house keys; and they have an excellent library. If you know who they are, I recommend that you go visit them; if you do not know who they are, then I refuse to tell you, as I would not want dozens of people beating a path to their front door and requesting lodging. I am afraid that such an experience would make them ornery and kill all desire that they have for hosting people.
My last day in Berlin was longer than I wanted, insofar as I spent more time walking through the city than I had planned to do, having walked, as usual, increasingly slowly as the afternoon wore on and I grew more tired, and did not have time to watch a full movie before I left. The flight to Berlin was marked principally by my sitting in front of incredibly-annoying passengers and having an excellent view of Holland's canals, the ripples of which were clearly visible from the air (i.e., the larger ripples that one would not have even noticed from the ground, as they would have been too global to appear to be ripples). When I arrived in Leiden, the city was bathed in pellucid evening light. I biked with one of my hosts through the still streets (the other of them having taken my luggage for me via bus - another service offered free of charge) of a city that is quintessentially Dutch: the buildings along the main road have rectangular, white window frames; dark brown brick, and intermittent layers or adornments of white brick, marked many buildings' facades; narrow, winding side streets snaked off of each larger road; the city was dotted with churches and chock-full of canals; we passed a high-backed bench that looked like a sculpture of some sort made of very old brick; and we even passed one of the famous Dutch windmills. The evening was cool, and the city was clothed in evening blue. The host of mine who was biking with me said that they had just experienced a heat wave which had ended on the afternoon of my arrival, as though the city had been preparing for my arrival.
The morning after my arrival was mostly marked by a slow start, which did not prove to be any problem, as my hosts helped me work out an itinerary for the next several days and provided me with maps for some of the cities that I was going to be visiting. I went to Haarlem in the afternoon and learned that all of western Holland is so closely-connected by train that one can get from any point (in that part of the country) to any other point within an hour or so; many cities are close enough that one can reach them within a half-hour. Haarlem was not as pretty as Leiden, as it had fewer canals and a smaller city center, but it had a great many former almshouses (like Leiden itself), highlighting Holland's superlativeness as a social welfare state (Is that a term? I mean a country in which people are more or less equal - in which the divide between rich and poor is intentionally lessened.), and one of the city's main canals was so still that I could see the clouds perfectly reflected in it. At 4:00 PM I went to a free organ concert, which would have transported me if I could have lain in a soft bed with a book in my hand while listening to it (I was feeling somnolent.). It also allowed me to enter a church that would normally have cost me 2.50 Euros for free.
I took the wrong train on the way back from Haarlem, resulting in my journey's taking twice as long as it should have, but, upon my arrival in Leiden, I discovered that my navigation skills were vastly better than they were last time. I had no time biking back to my hosts' place, which I did by stopping every couple of hundred meters to check my Google map (which was, for once, accurate) and make sure that I was going the right way. It is amazing how much a few years of travel experience (and other personal growth) augments one's independence: while I could not find out which trains were going in which directions when I first visited the Netherlands, I have now grown smart enough to ask people what "Do not enter" means when it is written on overhead displays next to trains, and I can find my way around without undue difficulty. My returning late from my first day trip in Holland did not turn out to be a big deal, as my hosts had not been counting on my getting back early, and it did not get in the way of my writing, as I had already decided to throw that by the wayside. I spent the evening reading, not knowing that it was going to turn out to be one of the chief activities of my trip.
I do not want to provide a day-by-day description of each of my following day trips, especially as I have little of note to say about each of them individually. Over the four days following my trip to Haarlem, I saw Utrecht, Leiden's market and fort, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. I could trivially have seen the Hague on the way back from Rotterdam, but I was feeling a little tired (despite having done very little in Rotterdam; I should have had plenty of energy left), and I was mostly interested in taking some pictures of Leiden's city center, which I had theretofore been unable to do because of being on my bike whenever I went through it, and continuing to read. Perhaps I was a little tired of being a tourist by the time I reached Leiden; perhaps the comforts of the home in which I stayed were enough to lure me away from more touristy day-trips. Whatever the case, I feel the spending time in Leiden itself was a good way to more intimately acquaint myself with Dutch living, and the time that I spent in Leiden was inimitably pleasant. I read three books and fragments of four other books, took day-trips that did not tire me out, and enjoyed my hosts' company (and that of their cats) during my stay. One can hardly regret not having seen more new places in light of such a successful conclusion to this trip, especially as I saw Holland with new eyes, as it were.
My observations of Dutch life, besides Holland's seeming to be better than most places at keeping the poor from dying of starvation on the streets, were many. Besides Rotterdam's having a very modern city center due to its having been bombed extensively in World War II, there are very few reminders of the war here - that is, far fewer that one noticed in Germany or Eastern Europe. The Dutch have far less Greek- and Roman-inspired architecture than the Germans, reflecting Holland's being a less grandiose and warlike country than Germany. Even Holland's statuary is humbler than that of Germany: while many German statues are gigantic and are meant to symbolize the greatness of the person or persons commemorated by them, Dutch statues are rather more whimsical, often consisting of children in various poses or of families. The Dutch countryside is not actually as monotonous as I first found it on the way to Maastricht; while it is flat, the towns that one passes between large cities, and the ever-present canals, are very pretty. Dutch people live much more closely together than North Americans, as evidenced not just by their houses' being scrunched together shoulder-to-shoulder, but by one's hearing neighboring people talking outside at night; I think that I like their fairly communal life more than the isolation of North American domiciles. Finally, Dutch people themselves are generally affable and nonthreatening. They are apt to engage foreigners in conversation and are both helpful and pleasant to talk to.
I only have two more general comments to make before trying to think of a conclusion for this summer's blog. Firstly, the Dutch train system is almost as good as that of Germany. Dutch trains are cleaner than German ones, just as prompt, and just as frequent, and they even have TVs inside of them that display one's current location and upcoming stops. The only downsides to the Dutch train system are that those very same TVs often show the railway system's logo, and nothing else, instead of the train's schedule, and stops are not orally announced as they are in German trains. Finally, Holland is so bicycle-friendly as to be pedestrian-unfriendly, so to speak: the roads are designed with such a mind for cyclists that sidewalks are often cramped, tiny, or even non-existent. This surprised me; it was a curious and somewhat risible oversight. Dutch cyclists are less reliable than those of Berlin, often switching lanes without shoulder-checking and cutting each other off. Pedestrian and cyclist movement are extremely chaotic, as cyclists are supposed to yield to pedestrians in many inconvenient situations but expect pedestrians to yield to them, and roads are often barely wide enough for one car (between the bike lanes), let alone cars going in opposite directions and trying to avoid cyclists. Holland's smallness is cute and an endearing quality in many ways, but it is a curse when it comes to roads, especially given that the pedestrians there are almost as dumb as those in Linz and seem intent on getting run over by bikers (though they rarely succeed).
As usual, I forgot to mention a whole bunch of things. Many cities in Holland employ street sweepers, making them the cleanest that I have ever visited. Amsterdam, on the other hand, is extremely dirty, so much so that one feels dirty just for having visited it. It is an architectural wonder and worth visiting as such, but it is not a city of the same cultural import, from a historical point of view, as any of the other capitals (except for Bratislava) that I visited on this trip, let alone many capitals that I have not yet visited. Holland, like Germany, has not yet invited the free restroom or public water fountain, and its free bathrooms are, unlike those of Germany, which one can find almost exclusively in fast food joints, located in churches! This was a surprise to me, given that I had not visited churches in any other country that had free bathrooms, but it struck me as humane and made sense, as churches should be places in which everyone is equal, and the length of sermons and concerts disposes people to want to use the bathroom. The fact of churches' having free bathrooms also inclines one to donate handsomely to them - that is, when they are free of charge, which is far from guaranteed in Holland.
I have had a blast writing these emails and wish that I could end this one in some earth-shattering way that would change your outlook on life. Alas, I have nothing especially significant to say except that I will continue to update my blog when I start my next trip to Europe, next summer. I have phased Tunisia out of my coming trip, both because there is more of it to see than I expected, and I would not want to see it incompletely, and because it might make more logistic sense to see all of Northern Africa in one fell swoop in a few years. It is unfortunate that the Middle East and Northern Africa are in a state of such political turmoil at the moment; one wonders if I will be able to visit them at all in a few years. I suppose that that part of the world can always wait, if the worst comes to the worst, as the cultural artifacts that I would like to see there are reasonably unlikely to disappear overnight; the only question would be that of being able to take a sufficiently-long vacation to see them all. This is a problem for future years, though. I thank you for having read my blog and exhort you to continue reading it in future summers!
