Still in Europe

Our next destination was Holland, whence we went by train from Heidelberg. We spent a weekend there at my aunt’s friendly and warm house. We were warned about the weather in Holland, but it obligingly changed on the occasion of our arrival – it was unusually warm and sunny and, at times, even hot. We somehow managed to see Haague, Leiden and Amsterdam, and would have stayed longer and seen morel if our next destination wasn’t already planned.

Here are some typical landscapes I snapped from the train window. According to a book I got in Amsterdam, the Dutch are very proud of the orderliness and "man-madedness" of their landscape. I must say, it looks very nice!

Race horses - lots of them, of the nicest stature are grazing everywhere, many covered with cloth so as no to catch a chill, I guess...


Fat and happy black-and-white cows...

And yes, a windmill!

Leiden, where my relatives live, is a quaint little town with calm green canals and big grassy parks, tidy family homes and family bicycles of all shapes and sizes. Literally every other bicyclist we saw (and there were hundreds everywhere) carried a baby either in the front, or in the back. There were bikes with baskets, bikes with attached carts, bikes pulling kid wagons, families on bikes, couples riding their bikes together, linking arms… it’s a bicyclist’s paradise!

There are a lot of bicycles in Amsterdam, too – but that city is far from quiet, or calm. It’s hustle and bustle, traffic, hordes of tourists and crowds of local youth, people of all colors, orientations and walks of life, weaving through traffic, avoiding bicycles and rubbing shoulders in boardwalk cafes and crowded shops. There are scores of narrow houses with pretty gables lining the canals, each with a furniture hook up om a gable - because, you see, the staircases in those houses are so narrow, that when people move in or out, the furniture goes through the window.

The soil in this part of Netherlands is sandy and prone to shifting, so many houses end up leaning one way or the other, looking like the fallig tower of Pisa... some of them would probably have fallen by now, if they weren't propped by the neighboring ones.