My journey began with an overnight flight from Toronto's Pearson Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. The flight was about an hour late in leaving and took approximately seven hours in total. Having cleared customs, which takes some time for travellers with non-EU passports, I was greeted by my great friend Samuel Vandeputte, whom I was delighted to see again. As I wrote in my last post, we saw each other regularly during his studies in Canada. After he returned to the Netherlands and then entered graduate studies at Leuven, Belgium, we kept up with each other via regular online conversations. He now works in the field of journalism.
We deliberately kept monday and tuesday fairly free of commitments to allow me to adjust to the UTC +2 time zone covering western Europe. My first days were spent at the Hotel Landgoed Oud-Poelgeest in Oegstgeest, a village north of the city of Leiden. The hotel sits on a beautifully wooded piece of property on which stands a kasteel, or castle. No, not a mediaeval castle, but a stately mansion in which lived the famed Dutch botanist and polymath Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). During my stay there, I would walk around the property every morning after breakfast, enjoying the footpaths, water channels, and diverse flora, much of which is unfamiliar in North America. However, Boerhaave planted a famous tulip poplar that lived into the mid-20th century. Only shoots survive into the 21st. This tree is definitely familiar to me because we have one in our front garden. Many locals walk or run through this lovely property on a daily basis.
Here are some photographs:
Het Kasteel (castle)
Visitors to the Netherlands cannot help but notice that bicycles are an integral element of the transportation infrastructure. Special red-coloured lanes are reserved for bicycles, and I quickly discovered that pedestrians must avoid walking in them. These are not like the bike lanes we know here in Hamilton. They are generally physically separated from vehicle traffic, with pedestrian sidewalks located adjacent them in most cases. I took some long walks through Oegstgeest in different directions from Oud-Poelgeest and admired the tidy and well-planned neighbourhoods.
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| Bicyclers along Oranje Nassaulaan |
As I am a railfan from childhood, I was favourably impressed by the railways, which are mostly electrified and run with remarkable frequency. On tuesday I walked from Oud-Poelgeest south along Oegstgeesterweg until it turns into Ypenburgbocht until I came to this railway bridge:
I am grateful to Floris Wagenaar, my principal host during these first days in his country. In my next post I will continue this series with photographs of my time in Leiden, a city whose principal university dates to 1575.
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