How to be Dutch

Its easy to pretend to be Dutch when your blonde and the first word that generally comes out of your mouth is "hallo". Then they say something, like "can you help me hold my bike while I get one of my spaniels into the basket and the other one on the leash on the side", and then you look at them blankly. A minute goes by and then you finally say "Do you speak English?" and then they realise that you are a little shorter than the average Dutch and wear a little more mismatched clothing than the average Dutch and that you are in fact a tourist. It happens.

It's one with the roses

 And so we found ourselves in one of the most heavily populated areas on the planet. Although it came as a surprise because, like London, the buildings are only a few stories high, only squashed together like you wouldn't believe (with a few gaps where one corner has started to sink into the ground/mud/sand). Canal-side tax avoidance also prompted some who clearly did not feel squished enough to build ridiculously narrow buildings like this 1.3m wide house. I suspect it is full of single beds that are hard to make, dishwashers and washing machines whose doors do not open fully and an overall closet ambiance.

Mmmm, breakfast beer

We followed up our first breakfast (and a quick stir of the brew with a guy with an awesome moustache) at the Heineken brewery with a reasonably informative walking tour guided by an over enthusiastic Nigerian Bulgarian Dutch that sounded like an American. Multi-cultural much?


Add a belt bulging meal of Tapas with Kees's nieces, a boat along the canals, a stroll through Jordaan, a peruse at the sex for sale, half a dozen croquettes from the FEBO oven-vending-machine-thingeemabobs that the locals call 'The Wall" and we were done with Amsterdam and off to Zeist.

Mmmm, croquettes from The Wall

Doesn't sound like too much serious sightseeing but from the average two day holiday in Amsterdam its likely we saw much more daylight than the average tourist from London. Or New Zealand. As it turns out Kiwi's smoke more of the green stuff than any other country. We also had pretty good weather - sunshine that we didn't fully appreciate until the four days it rained afterwards.

And so we spent the next few days rugged up, catching up with some friends from Perth, having a look around Utrecht, drinking a lot of beer, seeing a windmill, eating lots of Dutch breakfast food: chocolate flakes on break, raw meat spread on bread, cheese on bread... bread on bread. I do love bread.

We spent the most of our time in this tunnel come bar

Windmill, check.

And then it was our time to depart to the Hague... so we all (all four) jumped, no squished, into our sweet two seater smart car(you can bet your arse I was glad we only took one pack) and headed off the motorway to the coast.

My reason for visiting the Hague was to catch up with Malin, the poor girl who used to have to swap stamps with me every week until she moved back to Norway when we were eight-ish. As a bonus, she had been working in the Hague for four months which as it turns out is enough time to know the city well enough to not get lost and give directions to tourists, but is not enough time to have done all the touristy things just up the road. So we headed off the Escher in the Palace to view the full mind boggling back catalogue of labyrinth drawings that is M.C. Escher.

He is awesome.

This was followed by Harring from the market (translation: Raw Herring). This is how you eat it by the way... We don't do things for show all the time.

Downing it

On our second day we hired bikes and, without Malin to guide us, proceeded to get lost. We did manage to see the Peace Palace, where they hold the International Court of Justice (for Country Vs. Country hearings), which we were only allowed to see from the gates. We also found a park. It was nice. Then we managed to cross town and negotiate our way past a big industrial park to find the International Criminal Court (for International Community Vs. very bad people hearings). Unfortunately Qaddafi wasn't in, but we did get to watch 15 minutes of a trial  (some guys from the Democratic Republic of Congo who had an army of child soldiers) from behind bullet proof glass. I might know a bit more had they not been in a private session with no commentary for all but five minutes of it.

It was hot. And we had biked far. That's ICC in the background by the way.

Then we headed back into town and out to the beach, where we enjoyed a picnic dinner on a picnic table in the sand.

Our sturdy picnic table

Then we got lost and asked a stranger for directions. The stranger turned out to be a neighbour of Malin. That was strange.

And that was our holiday. Pretty much. So I will conclude on a random fact of the day: The Dutch are on average the tallest Europeans, and if some dodgy looking websites from 2008 can be trusted, then also the world.