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Sunday, June 05, 2005
Netherlands Natter
Going through my old files, i came across an article I had written back in June 2003 when I was coming to Holland for the first time.... it still reads pretty well, so i thought I'd stick it up... let me know what you'll think !
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June 29, 2003
Two months in the Netherlands – I was bombarded from all sides with things to do and places to go to by family and friends when they heard about it. Everybody (and I mean everybody) has either been to Amsterdam or knows someone who was in Amsterdam. Consequently, everybody has a Point-Of-View on Amsterdam. There is a definite proprietorial air in which they expound on Amsterdam, its surroundings and its hedonistic lifestyle. From the sounds of it, all that Dutch folks do is smoke weed and have sex, not necessarily in that order.
Determined to add my voice to the chorus, I boarded the KLM flight from New Delhi at 0050 hours. There was the usual mad rush for the boarding gate as soon as the first call for boarding was made – everyone pretended that they were traveling with babies, had severe disabilities or were in seats 34 to 45. The jostling and edging continued till a newly married (as evidenced by her many red bangles or “chudas”) KLM ground staff member fairly shouted at everyone to form one line. Things quieted down and proceeded in quite an orderly fashion after that – as orderly as you can expect in Delhi!
The plane itself was an old B737-400. To travelers used to in-seat screens, it was almost a throwback to Orville and Wilbur – there weren’t even any personalized air ducts, for chrissakes! After a less-than-sumptuous dinner, comprising what looked like two chicken kathi rolls (whatever happened to plates , cutlery and the good life ?!), I fell asleep in my usual awkward foetal position and awoke only half an hour before landing, with a very stiff neck – about par for the course.
The best thing about traveling to Europe rather than to the States is that you get on a plane, you get off and you’re done. No waiting around for 3-8 hours for the connecting flight, no reconfirming to make sure that your luggage is on your connecting flight and not halfway to Timbuktu, no filling I-94 forms and then waiting in long lines at US immigration – gotta love that !
My bags showed up pretty quickly at Schiphol airport and I was on my way to the train station, which is under the airport. The ticket vending machine was hilarious – it was bilingual till, about halfway through, it decided that it had had enough of speaking lousy English and forged ahead in pure Dutch. Moving away from technology for the moment, I made a beeline for the manned ticket counter and bought tickets for s’-Hertogenbosch, or Den Bosch as it is known to every Dutchman.
Den Bosch is a town of 160,000 people situated about 100 km southeast of Amsterdam. Upon asking the taxi driver what was worth seeing or doing in Den Bosch, he responded after a minute of deep thought and suggested that I catch a train to Amsterdam!
At Den Bosch, I also found out the hard way that the Dutch believed that Sunday was a day of rest – all the shops were closed. Apparently, the shops in most of Holland open from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays, 9 am to 1 pm on Saturday and are closed on Sundays. I subsisted on a basic diet of Heineken and chips from the hotel minibar on Sunday. The air was thick with the sound of my protests at this injustice!
To be continued....
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June 29, 2003
Two months in the Netherlands – I was bombarded from all sides with things to do and places to go to by family and friends when they heard about it. Everybody (and I mean everybody) has either been to Amsterdam or knows someone who was in Amsterdam. Consequently, everybody has a Point-Of-View on Amsterdam. There is a definite proprietorial air in which they expound on Amsterdam, its surroundings and its hedonistic lifestyle. From the sounds of it, all that Dutch folks do is smoke weed and have sex, not necessarily in that order.
Determined to add my voice to the chorus, I boarded the KLM flight from New Delhi at 0050 hours. There was the usual mad rush for the boarding gate as soon as the first call for boarding was made – everyone pretended that they were traveling with babies, had severe disabilities or were in seats 34 to 45. The jostling and edging continued till a newly married (as evidenced by her many red bangles or “chudas”) KLM ground staff member fairly shouted at everyone to form one line. Things quieted down and proceeded in quite an orderly fashion after that – as orderly as you can expect in Delhi!
The plane itself was an old B737-400. To travelers used to in-seat screens, it was almost a throwback to Orville and Wilbur – there weren’t even any personalized air ducts, for chrissakes! After a less-than-sumptuous dinner, comprising what looked like two chicken kathi rolls (whatever happened to plates , cutlery and the good life ?!), I fell asleep in my usual awkward foetal position and awoke only half an hour before landing, with a very stiff neck – about par for the course.
The best thing about traveling to Europe rather than to the States is that you get on a plane, you get off and you’re done. No waiting around for 3-8 hours for the connecting flight, no reconfirming to make sure that your luggage is on your connecting flight and not halfway to Timbuktu, no filling I-94 forms and then waiting in long lines at US immigration – gotta love that !
My bags showed up pretty quickly at Schiphol airport and I was on my way to the train station, which is under the airport. The ticket vending machine was hilarious – it was bilingual till, about halfway through, it decided that it had had enough of speaking lousy English and forged ahead in pure Dutch. Moving away from technology for the moment, I made a beeline for the manned ticket counter and bought tickets for s’-Hertogenbosch, or Den Bosch as it is known to every Dutchman.
Den Bosch is a town of 160,000 people situated about 100 km southeast of Amsterdam. Upon asking the taxi driver what was worth seeing or doing in Den Bosch, he responded after a minute of deep thought and suggested that I catch a train to Amsterdam!
At Den Bosch, I also found out the hard way that the Dutch believed that Sunday was a day of rest – all the shops were closed. Apparently, the shops in most of Holland open from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays, 9 am to 1 pm on Saturday and are closed on Sundays. I subsisted on a basic diet of Heineken and chips from the hotel minibar on Sunday. The air was thick with the sound of my protests at this injustice!
To be continued....
