Phase 1: Arrival (or, 'Wait....what?!)

hase 1:  Arrival
I always forget how much I hate space travel.  On a 9 1/2 hour flight, I go back and forth:  is it better just to get there and get on with it, or do I take the layover and give my $## a break?  Obviously this becomes a theoretical exercise once you're miles above Greenland.  Plus, hooray!  A middle seat, which pretty much guarantees 'no sleep.'  I did watch 3 movies, though....couldn't tell you which ones, but I did watch them.

Suffice it to say, I showed up in Amsterdam a bit of a wreck:  poorly watered, awfully tired, pretty hungry and having a little difficulty standing up.  And the pack's good and burly.  Yasss.  Oh, also, the exchange rate at the Portland Airport was ludicrous to the point where I suspect that I misunderstood something.  So, I'm there with no cash.  None of these is a crisis, but some take longer than others to remedy.

My first planned stop was the bike rental place in The Hague (Den Haag [which means The Hedge {referring to someone's old hunting lodge where the 7 provinces discussed unification in the 1500s}]).  That would be 2pm at the latest, after which I'd get to my first night in Utrecht.

In the planning, I thought I might take some time in Amsterdam that first day, you know, take a canal tour, see some Rembrandts.  Then go The Hague.  Except, The Hague and Amsterdam are in opposite directions from the airport.  Throw in all the rest of this mony/food/sleep stuff and, hey, remember to add time for getting lost.  Plus, man, this pack....

Right.  The Hague it is.

Got there with no trouble, found the bike place, paid for my 2-week rental, and kind of tottered my way back to the central train station.  The bike, as it happens, weighs about as much as my pack.  For the unwary and sleep-deprived (hi), this is a nice experiment in dynamic centers of gravity.  No hi-jinks ensue, fortunately.

Back at Den Haag Centraal Station, I learned that:

-nobody likes VISA, or even credit cards, here. But definitely not VISA.  Mastercard is OK.  AmEx to some extent.  But only VISA debit cards in the train ticket machines.  Credit cards are only usable with live customer service people.  Did I wind up in Japan somehow?
-taking your bike on the train costs almost as much a second ticket.  So much for renting in The Hague and then taking the bike with me everywhere.....
-oh, you can rent bikes from almost every train station in the Netherlands, for $4 a day.  Saved!  I'll park my bike here in The Hague while I figure things out in Utrecht....so tired.  Now on 30 hours with no sleep...
-most Dutch banks are on different ATM networks from mine. No cash for me here.
-public toilets here at the train station are coin-op.

Hmm.  Time to get out of The Hague...

Phase 0: Leadup (or, the greatest trip ever?)

Heyo.  After a bit of a delay, it's my Netherlands blog.  Yeah, the headcold I picked up on Sunday has had its effect, but here we go.

So, Mitch....seriously...what is this?  The Netherlands?  Lemme 'splain....

This trip has kinda come out of nowhere, but also not really.  I'm 4th generation Dutch.  Growing up in a place called Holland, Michigan, some part of me thought I knew the Netherlands (ja, ja, windmills:  check.  Tulips:  check.  Wooden shoes:  check).  And I spent 3 days there while studying abroad.  In December.  Funny, everything was either brick colored or grey...

Something changed this summer, listening to an interview with a Dutch flood engineer.  Totally matter-of-fact dude, very practical and quite reasonable.  And the engineering he was describing were astounding things:  big flood gates, but also lowlands and valleys being reclaimed as the natural flood storage that they are.

It got me thinking about how I hadn't gone back since college, which is actually extra-weird because I was so curious about, you know, the medieval wool trade and how it helped create the first real towns in Europe, right here in the Lowlands (meaning Belgium and the Netherlands, which were co-owned by a variety of monarchs for a while).  And then modern banking spins off, international trade, etc.  I mean, what's not to love about this stuff, right?

And right now you're thinking:  the weird part was...which...exactly?

Anyway.  I was riding my bike to work just after that interview, in the usual "joust and jockey" style now seemingly necessary in Portland commuting, and I thought to myself:  'Self, wouldn't it be great if there were a place where everyone biked and driving cars was sort of a secondary....wait a second.'

And besides that, it occurred to me that Western Michigan (where I grew up) is pretty flat, agriculturally-based country, with sand dunes running along a big lake.  If I were to visit the Dutch province of Zeeland, wouldn't I find pretty flat, agriculturally-based country, with sand dunes running along a big lake?  Hmm.

We're not even talking (yet) about cheese.  And beer.  And red cabbage.  And little pastries filled with almond or whatever.  Or panenkoeken, the gigantic uber-crepes that the Dutch call 'pancakes.'

We're also not talking about the astounding art or the canals.  Seriously, I could even get excited about windmills and tulips.....I probably draw the line at the shoes, though....

Placeholder C: Tokyo and the rest

This is the last day of the trip, in which I make no attempt to see all of Tokyo in one day, and a realization about tthe Tokyo train map.

Placeholder B: Kyoto & Himeji

In which I describe Kyoto a & Himeji, an astounding fortress and a bamboo forest just parked in someone's back yard ("back yard").

Placeholder A: Train of thoughts of trains. I think.

I still have a bunch to write about Japan, but it's not quite ready, I don't want to mess up the sequence and I want to get on to the current trip.  So, placeholders.  Why didn't I think of this before?

So:  placeholder A, in which I describe a random assortment of train related thoughts.

Sewer

One thing I noticed while traveling around most of Japan was the storm sewers.  I'm inclined to do this...who can say why, exactly.  It certainly can't have anything to do with being employed by a sewer bureau for over a decade.  Still... practically everywhere I went, the storm sewers were segmented, box by box, each 1-3' long with a removable lid, and all installed as the basis, the foundation of the sidewalk (more or less).  We learned from the engineer in Usuiso that, outside the cities, most homes have their own little septic system, which overflows into the main storm drain (or, you know, the ocean, if you have one handy).  I couldn't help but wonder: why there isn't more underground sewer piping and mass treatment?

[two seconds of thinking.....]

Right.  In a country with this many earthquakes, how ridiculous would their repair budgets be?  Ooops, broke another pipe.  Ooops, there's another one.  Ooops there's another one....  Why would you bury a pipe just to unbury it every 5 to 10 years?  Much cheaper to pop out the small broken pieces at the surface.  And before the advent of the diesel backhoe, I suspect this aspect of public health was a formidable and constant challenge.  You'd think their cities would constantly have open sewage flows and probably disease outbreaks, too, if they weren't EXCEEDINGLY careful.  You'd think such a society would develop a strong habit (bordering on a taboo) against wearing shoes in living spaces.  Oh, wait...

I mention it because it's a reminder of how much we are influenced by our environment.  In the US, for example, we perceive that we have unlimited space, and that leads us to to be loud and oblivious and to want a lot of space.  In Japan, where 75% or so of the land area is unbuildable, everyone is crammed into the remaining 25% and develops a society where politeness and a certain decorum are highly prized.

I know this is a bit of a giveaway, but I'm off to the Netherlands in a few days:  another country with a lot of environmental pressures.  How have floods and flat land shaped their history and how people interact with each other?  Stay tuned.....