Holland

It’s another rainy day in Liverpool and the Beatles and Darwin are crying on behalf of the UK as I am leaving the promise land for a time never experienced before… It seems I am not going to catch the plane as I wait for the bus that is going to take me to the airport 40 minutes more than the time I was supposed to take it. It finally come and it looks a bit sad, it is dirty, wet and crowded with people that were walking under the rain. My back is better now (I am not going to explain now why I say this), but I feel I need a seat, and I find one next to an old lady that smiles all the time, that’s nice.

I arrive at the airport just in time and when I check in they sent me to take my bag to another place because of the straps. I run with the 23 kilos I carry, and a man with a case full of shampoos, creams, etc is being checked and I wait 3 minutes and it seems that the guards can see my worried face as they ask me “Do you have any problem, sir? And I answered yes! They take my bag and I run again,  I don’t know but it seems that when I am in a hurry the whole world is walking slowly as every single person I meet in my way is an obstacle now! But finally I make it and I board the plane. See you later Britain…maybe.

I arrive at Amsterdam in the middle of another rain. I wait a bus what is going to take me to Haarlem, a nearby city where I am going to “couchsurf”. It takes 40-45 minutes to arrive and I think a lot, It’s so amazing that within an hour languages change in Europe, I am from Argentina, and I can travel 5000 kms north or 5000 kms south and I will not have any language barrier, but here you can be surrounded by countries who speak different languages. I finally arrive at Haarlem and Patricia and Mariska, two Dutch sisters are waiting to collect me in their car, “a luxury” I can say. I try to forget that I am shy (YES I AM) and we talk a bit on the way to their house.

When we arrive I cannot be more happy and amazed,, as the “house” ends up being an old bakery factory! Gosh! That is so cool! They are using part of it, it’s really spacious! It feels good! How I ended up here? I was going to stay with a guy but things didn’t work and on the same day I flew to Holland I sent like 20-25 urgent requests, some people answered on the day, saying they weren’t able, and only Patricia sent me a text to help me, only 6 hours before I arrived to Holland!

The next day I needed to talk about the “Mate”, It’s something I cannot deny, I like it and I like to show people something really Argentinian. Patricia tried one and was very polite, then she shared with me a Dutch cheese that was very good (the people who know me, know how much I like cheese, and how much I like to try cheeses from different places), then she gave me a map of Haarlem and a couple of leaflets with information about the city. So there I go, as I like to do (being anonymous when going to a place where nobody knows me). I don’t know why I find myself more comfortable walking and waving to cars and smiling at people in places where I don’t know anybody, that’s what I was doing and people did the same, are they nice? Am I nice? Or are all of us?

It wouldn’t be acceptable to go to Holland and not to see a windmill, so when walking down a street I could see an enormous one standing by a river, and what can I say? I felt like a kid again, as I only saw windmills from far away in Scotland and then only on TV. As I understood it was the only one in Haarlem, (I need to check that again), I walk and I walk, and I realised it’s my birthday, I am getting old, but I am more than happy that I am doing what I like the most, that is traveling. Last year was Ireland, I wonder where it will be in 2014… I don’t really fancy my own birthday celebration (I escaped from you Andres!). I met some Argentinians on the street, how do I know they are from Argentina? They are swearing and saying bad words… I don’t say bad words as I don’t find them really useful, but listening to them saying bad words in my language and with my accent made me laugh, gosh, I realise now that I miss even the bad things from my dear Argentina!

I continued walking and reached the city centre, my eyes didn’t want to get a rest, they were so grateful they were able to see such a beautiful scenery everywhere. I went to a famous church “Great Church or St. bavo’s Haarlem”, it was so interesting to look at the floor because I could only see gravestones, then I read that there are about 1500 gravestones forming the floor. The time of prayer started and I ran away, not today, I guess I am not used to it. That day there was a vocal concert, and I went to listen to them, oh man, they were so good, that kind of music really touched my soul, or was it because I was in a church? There were many things very interesting there, but I don’t want to stop only in details of the church, but the last thing I want to highlight is that there is an organ in the church, which had the honour of having been played by Mozart and Handel more than 200 years ago, it is 30 meters high and it has 5068 pipes.

Haarlem has a reputation of having very nice houses, and I can say that is true.

As I walked there I fell in love with the city, even though the plan was to go to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, in this occasion I didn’t mind. I could stay there for a long time. The bicycles are a very important part in the Dutch people lives. After spending a day and a half there and after riding a bike, I can give my opinion about riding a bike there… “Cycling is an art”, it is so beautiful! I quite enjoyed looking at the pedestrian path as well as the cyclist path, it is so well organised, and I continued falling in love. I will compare cycling a bike in the Netherlands as drinking the Argentinian Mate, because in both activities there is no distinction between young and old, female and female, rich and poor, they all share the same activity.

After walking quite a lot I returned home and the girls prepared dinner (I helped a bit, but asking how to cut leak!! Haha) anyway we had a really good dinner cooked by them, listening to Carajo (an Argentinian rock band) and I tried a typical Dutch dessert. After dinner we went cycling to a gig, and that was the last thing to experience before leaving Holland, the first guy was such a funny one, there was no doubt that he was really high, after him, a girl called “Elektra” sang her songs and showed a video… no comments. And the last band Roois Was (I think it was called like that) was pretty good, I didn’t get a word but the music was so cool. I went back home cycling and once again I saw the beauty of cycling, even though it was after 1am, there were a lot of people cycling. Last thing I did was to draw a map from where I was staying to the bus station and it was awesome (not because I did it). I hope to come back and see more of this beautiful country which has an Argentinian Queen (yes, she was born in Argentina, etc, and married the (at that moment) Prince of the Netherlands.) Oh, and yes… I saw tulips and orange things…

some random pictures I like =)