In Netherlands (with updated pictures)

Hello everyone,


I'm here on my first day in Netherlands where I just had a meal in their student cafeteria - one whole serving of chicken curry rice with peas, one traditional Dutch vegetarian sausage, and an appetizing gulash soup for a whopping €5.25 or CHF 8.65 or $7.87 CAD. It's nice to be not vegetarian sometimes:)




On first impression, its like I am back in North America as you hear English all over. Dutch signs are usually coupled with English signs as well as the higher percentage of Asians in the country. Other than that, it was quite scary this morning at the airport where I was instructed to go to another room in the immigration together with tonnes of contract workers. It so happens that flights from Manila has just arrived the same time as my Geneva flight and I was asked to wait there for some 30 minutes. More on this later on as there is somebody on my back waiting to use this public terminal.

continued....

In the immigration area, I joined other third world people from notably from Turkey, Pakistan and the Philippines being subjected into intensive questioning. I even overheard one person emphatically beging to have mercy... the thing he's beging for mercy? That I do not know...

After waiting for 25 minutes, my turn finally came and I was asked several questions regarding my business in visiting the Netherlands and who do I know in this country. They also asked me which city in the Netherlands I am planning to visit and where my hosts live. Then, another question was that wheter my host is a Filipino living in the Netherlands or Dutch which I answered a ''Dutch person who was naturally born here.'' Good thing I brought with me an invitation letter from them which I thought silenced everything. Finally, he asked me how am I going to finance my trip. I was soo lucky to print out records of my Canadian banks or else I wonder what line of questioning would be next. I always have tough times with immigration with my green passport.

Delf is a quiet, picturesque ethnically diversified university town nestled between two big Dutch cities - The Hague and Rotterdam.






I toured their university today and was surprised that it just looks like Canada, with plenty of international students mostly from Asia. Later on, I get to grab a newspaper which actually stated that the university's student population is 15% international. And the amount of English I have been hearing is overwhelming as students in the cafeteria speak to each other in English. There's a greater rate of bike use in the city as well, far more than what I observed in Geneva.

Bikes all over the place

Bikelane infrastructure is also developed as in Switzerland

Like Switzerland, some road signs and direction markers are quiet similar. However, the pedestrian crossing is white and sometimes cars do not really respect to stop.

I want to observe the so-called liberal-mindedness and tolerance of Dutch society. I noticed that the Netherlands, by my present observation, is a multicultural country with lots of people from various ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. There's a thriving community of Turkish, black, asian and Muslims in their traditional hibab dress in the community.



If Switzerland is densely populated, then Netherlands is far more densely populated. With 16 million people, there are 395 people living per square kilometre. Public transit is well developed as well with trams and trains but not as prompt, organized and spotlessly clean as the good old Swiss transit system.



Ticket counters on each bus stop is not present and there are no automated announcements on each stop of the train. As an anglophone, finding your direction is easy as English is universally intelligible.

In the Netherlands, I was able to discover that clay courts are not really...


made of clay