After a long trip to Asia, with lots of long flights on the way, a quick visit to the Netherlands seemed like a minor commute. I landed at Schiphol late on a Monday evening, and fought my way through hundreds of Dutch tourists, queueing up for their midnight flights to Spain, Greece and Turkey - it reminded me of being at Gatwick, but without too many chavs. Eventually I managed to get to my hotel, and crashed - still jetlagged a bit.
The next morning I got up and went to The Hague for a meeting - getting the train from Schiphol. On the journey, I experienced a true novelty - a delayed Dutch train. I don't think I've ever seen such a thing before, and even though the delay was all of 10 minutes, everybody seemed to be very apologetic. On the way out of Den Haag Centraal station, I saw several hundred bicycles, arranged in pretty much every direction you could see - a few of which are in the picture here. Very Dutch.
After the meeting, it was straight back to the station, then to the airport for the flight home. Whilst waiting for my train, I partook of a Dutch peculiarity, the snack bar. Unlike normal snack bars, a Dutch snack bar involves a wall of mini ovens, each containing a piece of unhealthy food (a cheese croquette, a "chicken stick", a hamburger, etc). Put some money in the slot, and the door unlocks for you to remove your fix of dirty, cheap food. A chicken stick for 1 Euro seemed too good to resist, so I did not resist. Mmmm.
The next morning I got up and went to The Hague for a meeting - getting the train from Schiphol. On the journey, I experienced a true novelty - a delayed Dutch train. I don't think I've ever seen such a thing before, and even though the delay was all of 10 minutes, everybody seemed to be very apologetic. On the way out of Den Haag Centraal station, I saw several hundred bicycles, arranged in pretty much every direction you could see - a few of which are in the picture here. Very Dutch.
After the meeting, it was straight back to the station, then to the airport for the flight home. Whilst waiting for my train, I partook of a Dutch peculiarity, the snack bar. Unlike normal snack bars, a Dutch snack bar involves a wall of mini ovens, each containing a piece of unhealthy food (a cheese croquette, a "chicken stick", a hamburger, etc). Put some money in the slot, and the door unlocks for you to remove your fix of dirty, cheap food. A chicken stick for 1 Euro seemed too good to resist, so I did not resist. Mmmm.
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