The Netherlands: Day 4 (exploring)

A Big Day

The Brazilians went to bed early last night since they had to catch the bus at 8 from Centraal Station to Eindhoven Airport. I decided that I would wake up at the same time and go see some other parts of the Netherlands, most specifically the tulip fields the guy had told me about at the hostel the day before. I went to bed early too but couldn’t fall asleep because I was so excited about the next day. I really love those days where you are always moving and see a bunch of things and I knew that today would be one.

The Plan

The plan for today was to take the train to Haarlem. The guy at Bob’s Hostel who told me about the flower fields said that from here I could take a bus to get out to the flower fields. However, someone else told me about renting a bike and riding there (maybe 15km). This is what I was planning on doing. After visiting the fields I was planning on riding back to Haarlem and maybe taking the train to Rotterdam (or some other Dutch city) to see what the Netherlands are like outside of Amsterdam.

Haarlem

After a large breakfast (how big days begin) I took the train to Haarlem (about 15 minutes from Amsterdam). I planned on just renting a bike in Haarlem and biking to the tulip fields but Haarlem was actually a really pretty town and I spent a while roaming around checking out some of the cool buildings and such.



Off to Lisse

The town that the Keukenhof Gardens are in/near is called Lisse so I started biking in that direction. Biking is really popular and easy in the Netherlands. There are a lot of bike lanes and people bike everywhere. Also, almost everyone speaks English (usually pretty well) and there are a lot of friendly people so it is easy to get directions.



The Dutch countryside is beautiful. It is very green, which reminded me of Ireland.

Planning on just grabbing some food and leaving, I stopped in a restaurant Hillegom (a small town on the way to Lisse). The only people in the restaurant were the person working there (Tinakay...I don’t know about that spelling) and a guy who was sitting by the gambling machine named George who was either her husband, a regular or both. I never asked. They were really friendly. When I ordered a second coke (I couldn’t resist, it was from a glass bottle!) George bought it for me. I stayed and talked with them for a hour (or two? I don’t know; time flies). George told me some intersting things; one is the words in Dutch and German are the same (spelling and pronounciation) but have different meanings. Also, he told me that he thinks more Americans should learn foreign languages so that they can be more accomodating to tourists who visit. He said that in the Netherlands they learn English and try to accommodate for English-speaking visitors. In America they do not. I agree with him that it would be good for more Americans to learn foreign languages but not for that reason. The chance that you can use a foreign language other than Spanish in the U.S. is very low. It just doesn’t make sense to learn Dutch and sit around waiting for some Dutch tourists to come so you can use skills. Also, so much of the world speaks English and tourists who come to the U.S. will probably come speaking English. It’s rare that you will be walking down the street and hear a little Dutch and be able to jump in. Also, I think that George has a huge economic benefit in learning English and that this is probably the main reason he learned it. Either way, nice guy.

Keukenhof Tulip Gardens

The tulip gardens were really beautiful.



I don’t really know if it is worth it to pay the 13.50 or whatever it is to go in the gardens. Inside, it is just a bunch of different flowers. I was all about seeing the big rows of tulips (like you see above). These are outside of the gates so you don’t have to pay for this part. Inside is this kind of stuff:



Probably worth it for people who are really hardcore about flowers.

Rotterdam

When I got back to Haarlem it was maybe 7:30 and after I turned my bike in I went to the ticket counter at the train station. Rotterdam was about an hour away from Haarlem and a little more from Amsterdam. Going to Rotterdam would cost at least 15 more Euros and I would only be able to spend a couple of hours there if I wanted to come back at a reasonable hour, which I determined was 1am since I had to wake up early the next morning. I walked around and debated it for a few minutes but finally just said, “What the hell!” You only live once, right?

Rotterdam wasn’t that exciting and I only ended up staying for maybe an hour and a half.



Rotterdam is a very nice, new and modern city but the downtown was kind of dead. Either way I am glad that I went because it was totally different than Amsterdam. Actually, out of all of the places I have visited I think it felt the most like a U.S. city. I don’t know why but it just felt that way.

Two interesting things did happen:

-I met a Hungarian working at McDonald’s who, when I told him that I lived in the Astoria area of Budapest, said, “oh man, that isn’t such a great area.” He also said that he hasn’t been back in so long that he “doesn’t know his country anymore.” Wow, things must really change around here because I have to say Astoria is definitely considered a pretty decent area here. Nothing fancy but pretty fun and safe. It’s interesting because it kind of reminded me that we are living in an area of the world that is still rapidly changing. It couldn’t have been that long ago that he was here since he didn’t look very much older than maybe 25 or 30 and he grew up in Hungary.

-I met some Greek girls by the statues in the above picture. They were studying abroad in Rotterdam and asked where I was from. I told them to guess. I gave it to them after four guesses because they were getting close with Great Britain. I still can’t believe the guesses they made:

1) The Netherlands
2) Germany
3) Sweden
4) The UK

For a guy who always sticks out as American this was pretty funny :)

Back to the Hostel

Tired and ready to get a goodnight sleep. As I am about to get ready for bed, one of the three Spanish guys staying in the room asked me what kind of music I like. I told I really like just about everything except really dramatic, middle-schoolish R&B. He then randomly asked me, “do you listen to the Killers?” This was the end of my chances of getting to bed early. These three Spanish guys were obsessed with the Killers and we spent almost an hour and a half talking about exclusively about the Killers (we talked about Green Day for a couple of minutes). They went to a Killers concert in Spain and showed me some video of it. Too bad they are playing in the U.S. right now and will be in Europe when I am back in the U.S.