All good things must come to an end, as has my holiday. We drove to Schiphol airport, and I waved my family goodbye. It really has been a great holiday. Then we drove back to my grandads place. See, my holiday is over, but my time in Holland is just beginning. For the last 3 weeks my parents and I have been scouring the country for people that might know us and getting free food out of it. Some tried to give us heart attacks by feeding us Dutch cakes, biscuits and puddings which are made out of pure cholesterhol. Many others tried to poison us with coffee so strong that it confuses electronic equipment. They forget that we too are immune to such things.
We´ve been to big cities, small cities, small farming villages, windmill filled countryside, many different museums, Christmas markets, Dutch markets, a wildlife reserve (containing no actual wildlife), the zoo(a much better option, plus it has a playground!), an exhibition of ice sculptures of famous Rembrandt paintings in a hall kept at -8°C, a natural history museum, Germany and Belgium, and to get a real sense of culture we visited a Dutch trailer park. So its safe to say it was a very fun-filled holiday.
But now my parents have abandoned my like an unwanted baby. But this baby wasn´t illegitetimate or deformed. It was sick, and left for dead in a strange foriegn country while the parents went off to holiday in Hong Kong. Well, although I am much better than I was at New Years, I wasn´t able to shake off the sickness completely. Yes, I spent my first day on my own in Holland in the Doctor´s waiting room.
This did however allow me to gain a valuable insight into the state of the nation. Holland is well known for its excellent health system and I was honoured to be a part of it. After half an hour in the waiting room, I was feeling healthier already! The magazines even looked healthier than those in New Zealand- all new and crisp, but unfortunately written in Dutch. So I had a consultation, and I can happily report that doctors have a healthy income. From my calculations, they recieve roughly 500 euro per hour, putting them on a par with tobacco company lawyers. The chemist was also fascinating- a fully automaticcomputersiedmechanised system of counting pills, leaving the friendly staff free to dish out free stuff.
6 hours later I crawled home, clutching to my wallet. See the great thing about travelling with parents is that I never had to pay for anything. Welcome to the real (Dutch) world. I´ll be sure to cash in on my travel insurance, so one day, this story will have happy ending after all.
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