Warning: Does Not Include Robots OR Aliens (or, the Rural Roadtrip to Rotterdam)

Halfway through our time in Amsterdam, we decided that rather than stick to cities for the following week, we would venture farther out into the rural regions. We picked up the cheapest car we could get (a teensy Toyota Aygo) on a weekend discount and headed north.

By nightfall we had crossed over the longest dike in the world, stretching from Nord Holland to Freisland, sheltering the Ijsselmeer. We spent the night across the provincial border back in Groningen, camped a few kilometres from the ocean. We hiked out to the seawall and gazed for a while at the barrier islands and the chilly North Sea, then as the rain picked up, retreated to the campsite.

Zeehondencreche. My new favourite word.

The following morning we began with a visit to the Zeehondencreche - seal rehabilitation clinic - near the coast in Pieterburen. Not an awful lot to explore, but the seals and seal pups are just adorable, and the admisson price goes to help the creche continue to save seals that have been injured by stray netting and oil and such.

We drove south and found Peize, the town from which Dan's grandparents emigrated to Canada, and then went south along the German border, through the rural heartland of the Netherlands.

If you think miniature horses are cute, and you think baby horses are cute, google images of baby miniature horses. Adorable, right?! You're welcome.

Sunday we spent the morning at the Oorlogsmuseum in Overloon, which is the site of the biggest tank battle ever fought in the Netherlands. The park surrounding the museum used to be littered with tanks and other military paraphenelia, left for decades just as it was all dropped as an in-situ memorial. Now, as the weather was destroying the equipment, its all been moved inside, part an enormous collection. In additon to the vehicles from Overloon, it contains more WWII vehicles and a large selection of American military peices from later conflicts. The other side of the museum is devoted to a display on the Dutch Resistance.

Happy Father's Day Dad!!

It was Father's Day, so as a tribute to my dad, I looked dutifully at the various tanks and whatnot. And did not mention even once that they all look the damn same.

(Cue outburst!)

We left Overloon and tore across the southern Netherlands into Belgium: rather than a half day in Masstricht, where from my research I feel we could spend several days, we decided that Bruges would be rather easier to tackle in the time remaining to us.

Bruges

While I wouldn't say the buildings in Bruges are more beautiful than those in the other old cities of Europe, it just has a seemingly endless supply. Every plaza, every canal is lined with gorgeous, Gothic architecture. Its a bit overwhelming in its fairytale-like atmosphere... save for the hordes of tourists, there to break the spell.

We spent our final day with the car driving back up through Zeeland and Suid Holland. We stopped in Middleburg, a cute town on one of the islands, amd spent a half hour flat out on the chilly beach that runs the length of the long dikes. Would have been a great beach if we could have so much as taken off our sweaters.

By evening, we'd made it to Rotterdam, where, after dropping of the car, we would spend the next three nights.

We did two things in Rotterdam that I enjoyed far more than I anticipated I would, both to do with the port. First, we took a 75 minute harbour tour. Although not enough for Dan, who wanted to see more of the heavy industrial side of things, it was enough for me to learn the basics of the fourth largest port in the world (It has its own theme song. Dan likes to sing it. I do not. I was forced to ban it for my own sanity).

Nerdy as it is, I thought it was cool to watch the cranes and trucks unload the giant cargo ships - it happens so quickly, and in such a beautifully synchronized way. It's impressive, really.

My second port experience took place as we were waiting to board our ferry from Hoek Van Holland to Harwich, England. With five hours to kill, and Dan always keen to explore ridiculously large constriction sites, we made our way to the information building for Maasvelt 2, the newest piece of the ever-expanding Rotterdam harbour, which is currently being built on open water. Seriously, they throw a whole bunch of coarse sand into the water until it stays, then they stick in concrete reinforcements. Voila! New land. Crafty Dutch!

Key point for potential visitors: although the place is called 'Futureland,' there are in fact neither aliens nor robots involved. It is literally just about land that will exist in the future. There IS, however, a partial mammoth skeleton that was sucked up when they were relocating all that sand. The opposite of futuristic, but pretty nifty.

The receptionist at the info centre was so blown away by the fact that we had voluntarily shown up to check out the site that she arranged for someone to give us a special talk (in English!) and to answer our questions. Later on, she brought over the company president to meet us, and when we were leaving, gave us stuffed Port of Rotterdam duckies as a present. Going off the beaten path is awesome sometimes.

After our Maasvelte 2 experience, we boarded our ferry and spent the night out on the North Sea, destined at last for English-speaking lands.

What I have learned is that, although they are certainly the friendliest people in Europe, do not mess with the Dutch. If you are trying to take them over, they will resist you. They will undermine you. If you are the sea, they will build a dike, drain you out and reclaim the land. They might even build some extra land. On open sea. Out of sand. Just for the hell of it. They are fantastically stubborn, and it makes them incredible.

S.

Amsterdam

Leaving Bremen, we spent a night in Groningen, the colourful, canal-filled student town at the centre of an otherwise rural and quiet province in the northeast of the Netherlands.

The Canadian Grand Prix was on that night, and to Dan's great delight our private room was equiped with a television. I took a little walk to explore the centre, ringed with canals. A few of the buildings are pretty, the museum is a mass of adventurous architecture and colour. And I found the red light district by accident - it's much more discrete than the one we'd see in a couple days. But after my wanderings, I too had an early night.

On Monday morning, we grabbed a train and within a few hours we'd crossed half of the tiny country and arrived in Amsterdam.

We has intentionally split our four nights between two hostels - Monday and Tuesday aboard a little barge in the harbour, Wednesday and Thursday we decided that to get a taste of the city's wilder side, we would stay at a hostel in the red light district.

The boat - the Avanti - had tight quarters, but was cute and well-kept. Our twin cabin had bunks that were half the width of the room, and ran the entirety of its length. Which makes the cabin sound roomy - let me assure you that at roughly one and a half metres wide and two metres long, it was not.

But we did fit in - Dan literally just barely fit into his bunk - and the staff (crew?) was very helpful and friendly. It was great to try something new after the dozens of hostels we'd been to over the past months, and at €56 was one of the cheaper (and I bet cleaner) private rooms in the city centre.

In the first two days, we explored the city centre and its extensive canal network by foot. We checked out the Van Gogh Museum - expensive, but it was nice to focus the day's learning on one artist and his immediate peers. I am sure I retained more this way than I usually do in my scattered veering around museums. It helps that I enjoy Van Gogh and his enthusiasm for colour. We also wandered through the Vondlepark and went to the Heinekin brewery. Which is pricey and at times a bit campy, but the tour shows you very comprehensively how beer is made, and includes three beers. Sold!

We didn't party as such while staying on the boat - past the Heinekin brewery we only had a couple of beers on a patio to celebrate the sunshine. We did buy a piece of 'space cake,' and then spent the evening crammed into the bottom bunk watching Arrested Development in an agoraphobic huddle. When we did get up to the kitchen to make our cup-a-soups, we found ourselves watching This Is Spinaltap.

Our second hostel was the infamous Bulldog, known primarily as a well-established chain of coffeeshops throughout the city. Remembering that in the Netherlands, coffeeshops serve soft drugs along with a caffeine hit. The hostel itself has been around for twenty-odd years, which often would mean worn-out facilities, but here means that they have the management of stoned-out backpackers down to a science. Our room was clean and blissfully removed from the racket of the bar, smoking wasn't allowed in the rooms.

We briefly explored the heart of the red light district once we got to the Bulldog. It's everything you assume it is: scantily clad ladies in windows who would like to get to know you better... biblically. They stand in pretty underthings under red lights, some smiling, some on their cell phones. The window is actually a door that opens into a small room containing a bed and little else (it also has a discrete panic button for the prostitute's safety. There are advantages to a legal sex trade). Closed curtains mean business.

Wednesday night was the Stanley Cup final. We had heard from another Canadian in the hostel that a bunch of people were planning to watch the game at a sports bar nor far away. We had a nap, and then around one in the morning, we set off. Fortified by kebabs (with questionable meat in Dan's, we discovered later) we found the bar. Turns out that no one in Holland really cares about hockey - the gaggle of Canadian and American tourists that had gathered were unceremoniously booted out at 3. Which is fine except that I had just bought a round of beer and we weren't warned... anyway, probably best that we went home. After stopping for frites and mayo. Obviously.

The next day we woke late, and spent most of the day wandering around the canals again. The architecture in Amsterdam is so pretty. The houses are thin, no more than three or four metres usually, but rise upwards at least three, often four or five stories. There are few alleys. In a city of canals, space is precious, and so the houses are shoved up against each other.

The peaked roofs are often hidden by a false front that contains a pulley for swinging furniture through the massive windows. So that nothing smashes into the walls, many of the street-facing walls lean forward at a conspicuous angle, as if craning over the bricked streets to see the swans floating down the canals.

Amsterdam is an interesting city. I think the novelty of the sex and the drugs would wear off quite quickly for anyone who stayed for long (with the exception of a few time-battered hippies we saw who have in all probability been in the same haze since the eighties). The Dutch are actually known to be a generally conservative bunch. Just because they have decided that a person should be allowed to smoke dope or hire a prostitute does not mean that they themselves wish to do so all the time, or even at all. It just means want the right to make the choice.

In fact, apparently a law is coming into effect soon banning the sale of legal soft drugs (meaning weed, hash and truffles/mushrooms) to non-residents. Amsterdam doesn't want to be known as the city of drugs anymore, and having witnessed the mayhem of stoned tourists in the city centre, I can't really blame them. The city has so much else to offer - why specialize in getting the rest of the world blazed?

That said, it's fun to smoke a joint without feeling like a criminal. The trick is to not get so wasted that you abuse the priviledge, or miss out on the delights of a beautiful city.

S.