The Even Greater Tokyo Region

It has been a very different type of holiday the last few weeks. Instead of travelling the length of Holland (about three football fields) on a daily basis, I've been taking it easy. This doesn't mean I've been wasting time. I've been staying with a family in the outskirts of Schiedam (pronnounced: "shkchgg-eeeee-dom"), which is my hometown. From here there are many interesting paces you can easitly get to by bike. So I've had to learn to ride a bike again, which is an adventure in itself.

You see, the last time I rode a bike (please skip this paragraph if you have heard this story before), I was biking to my last exam at university when, and I swear I am not making this up, my front wheel fell off. This type of accident, while extremely comic, does leave its share of physical and mental damage. But you know what they say: "get back on the horse, even if it has only two legs".

Luckily Holland is a country of bicyles. There are bicycles everywhere: at everyone's home, at train stations, at the supermarket, at the bottom of ditches etc. And the Dutch have a system of bike paths which are truly the arteries of the nation. In a country where it is not unusual to have a total length of 300-400km of traffic jams at one time, it is a good idea to have a bike.

This is really the way to see holland. It is the equivalent of taking a camel ride in Egypt, travelling across America in an SUV, or exploring New Zealand by bungy. There is nothing quite like biking through 600 year old Dutch towns, over canals, past old churches and windmills. Or, biking alongside the dykes, looking over the crayola green fields filled with birds, passing boats, going over bridges and stopping every 500 metres for another postcard photograph.

So I've been having a true holiday of relaxation. Only, usually you'd go to some tropical resort for a relaxing holiday; its about 25 degrees too cold for that here. It is far from tourist season. The tulips are below the ground, its rainy most of the time and all the trees are bare. But in fact, this is the ideal time to have a holiday in Holland. I realised this at Kinderdyke, a famous place where there are many windmills all in one small area. What was notable was the absence of tourists (read: Japanese tourists). The only other people there were walking their dogs, riding their horses or rollerskates. This is the true Holland which I came to see. So my advice to everyone is this: Visit Southeast Asia in monsoon season, go to Israel during elections and Norway during the winter. Only then will you have a true holiday.