Bicycles

If you think that the age of the bicycle has long passed then you obviously haven't been to the Netherlands yet. Yup, it's the only place I know where you can ride a bike in the middle of the busiest city, where bike theft is a worse problem than car theft, and where it's common for people over 20 to not have a driver's license! Being car-less is actually an advantage - it's cheaper, environmentally friendly, quicker to get around in cities than cars or public transport, and you've still got a way to get home after a few beers at the pub (the police can't book you for drunk-cycling just yet).

Utrecht

An old city with a massive Dom (cathedral) whose nave caved in during a ferocious storm a few hundred years ago. Now it has a street through it so that the bell tower is separate from the church!

I stayed with Jose, a girl I met in Warsaw, who showed me around the elegant streets of the town (canals, townhouses, cafes) and also quickly introduced me to the art of riding on the back of a bicycle: wait until the bike is moving and then jump on sideways!

Amsterdam

A city of great contrasts - a collision of arts and elegance with drugs and sex, a melting pot of cultures.

What can I say about Amsterdam except that I didn't see enough of it? I only spent 1 1/2 days there - one day on a bike with Jose and half a day with my great aunt and uncle (the cutest old couple in Amsterdam whose daily routine would put even "Abbot & Costello's" act to shame). With Jose I took on the manic streets of Amsterdam, riding along picturesque canals, over tram lines, to markets and museums. We visited Anne Frank's house, a poignant museum about her family and their story. I got the chills when I stepped behind the movable bookcase into the "Annex".

As Jose studied at the Conservatorium of Music in Utrecht she had a lot of musical contacts and one of them managed to get a few tickets to a small concert at the Concertgebouw.

Southern Netherlands

A different place to the populated North - there are actually open fields and woods here! I stayed with Siang Lie and her family, old friends of myself and my mother's. Siang Lie lived in the university city of Eindhoven while her parents lived in the very small town of Boxtel. Through Siang Lie I saw what a typical Dutch university student gets up to: living in cramped, sometimes pathetically untidy rooms, going to pubs, and not much studying at all (well, I didn't expect they would).

I got to see most of the region during my stay (Den Bosch, Eindhoven, Maastricht), and they were nice and old. Oh, I also got a lot of cycling practice (naturally).

Delft/Den Haag

I only stayed a very short time here (I was running out of time) with another old friend, Alice, and her family. Delft is another old town that's particularly famous for its pottery (believe me, its flogged everywhere). While I was there, I found out that the No. 1 tram is the most useful form of transport in the area, as it got me to Delft's old town, to Den Haag (The Hague), even to the beach!

I ate some typical Dutch food: hagel slag (chocolate sprinkles) on bread, stroopwafels and patat frites with mayonaise from market stalls, boorenkool mashed with potatoes for dinner, chocolate vla for dessert, and pannekoek (Dutch pancakes that look and taste more like giant omelettes) at the restaurant!

Finally, I saw plenty of windmills!