We left London yesterday morning and flew on 3 separate flights to
Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Our hotel is in Rotterdam and is
absolutely gorgeous, I have no idea what they would have to do to get
upgraded from 4 to 5 stars, it is fabulous! Right in the heart of the
city. I thought that was an exaggeration, but literally any direction
you walk in from the hotel, you will find shops, clubs, cafes and
everything.
Before going on a trip, I usually go online and check out the place
and see what I want to do and see what the place is like. I didn't do
that for this trip. I thought I was coming in with no preconceived
ideas. I picked up a Lonely Planet on Western Europe in London and
skimmed through the Netherlands pages and didn't get anything.
Here are some notions I thought I didn't have until I got here and saw
the place (and this is Rotterdam I'm talking about. We are going to
Amsterdam tonight... me and the guys, we'll see what that's like!)
1. I thought the Netherlands was a big flat country full of tall pale
blond people who all look alike.
It's flat. The people are generally tall. That's about it. The
Netherlands is small. There are fields and windmills.... and cities.
Last night was the World cup game between Holland and Portugal. We
bought some orange scarves and hats and stuff and joined the
merrymakers to watch the game. A whole street one over from the hotel
was cordoned off and all the clubs on that street (about 7 in 100
metres of street) had tents out front and a jillion TVs and people
watching them. The people... it was unbelievable. How come no one ever
told me how beautiful Dutch people are? There were the tall blond
ones, yeah, but there were black peoople, white people Asian people,
Latin American people, Arab people.... and every single combination of
them you can imagine! And all of them were beautiful!!! The guys with us on the tour wholeheartedly agree.. it's not just the guys who look good, the girls too.
2. I guess I expected that even in a cosmopolitan city, there would be stratification among the races.
Seeing different types of people all together, but in a country where the natives are pale and blonde, without realising it, I expected prejudice and separation between the groups of people here. One thing we noticed at the nightclubs was that you would hardly see a group of people all together of the same race. Interracial couples seem to be the norm, in fact, I didn't see any couples with 2 people the same race, except for the Dutch people. From our limited observation on that night we also realised that they like black people. We weren't looking at racial tolerance here, it was more than that. I have seen an insane amount of interracial blending here, people of mixed races, couples, friends, groups... I didn't realise how unfamiliar this was until I saw it. It's sad that it's so obvious. It shows how much it is lacking everywhere else. We were talking about it the other day, and it is really an amazing feeling as a black person to be walking down the street and not feel antagonism or hatred or a sense of superiority from the people around you. How refreshing!
3. I thought all the cities we'd be visiting would look similar, or feel similar or something...
Rotterdam is so different from everywhere I've been. It's the biggest port on the face of the planet. But that's not the difference, in fact you can't even see the porty stuff from where we are. The interesting thing is the bicycles. They are everywhere. Everyone rides bicycles. There are thousands of them. Every street has a bike path, they even have their own traffic lights. There is a clean feeling in the air, probably because of the bicycle traffic instead of cars. The streets are clean, the air is clean. Everything is clean. The people are all fit and healthy. I've never seen so many healthy looking people! The thin people don't look anorexic and scrawny, just slim and fit. There aren't many fat people. The portion sizes in restaurants are normal, not crazy big. Everything about the place seems so wholesome. Out in the country all the animals are big. The horses are big. The cows are biggeer than any I've seen. even the pigeons and the seagulls are big. This plus the fact that the people, on average, are like a foot taller than everyone else I know, makes me wonder what this place does.... Maybe it's something to do with living 20 feet below cea level.....
Oh and the tap water tastes better than bottled water!
No comments:
Post a Comment