Dutch Class

As noted in the previous post Oxford’s twin town in the Netherlands is Leiden and it is similar to Oxford in the sense that it is an old town with a prominent University distributed all over the town.

There are however also differences between Oxford and Leiden. One obvious one is that Leiden is one of the Dutch towns that has many canals running through it so that going from one place to another usually entails crossing at least one bridge. The picture below shows a canal view shot from a bridge on a somewhat sunnier day.



Leiden really does have this “picture book” Dutch look about it. There is even a windmill in the centre opposite which you can buy Dutch pancakes. All that is missing to complete the picture is a herring selling cart and some seagulls although, some to think of it, you could find those too…

Leiden is the twin town of Oxford. In many ways Leiden is quite similar to Oxford. It is a picturesque medium sized town with an ancient university in it and just like Oxford the university is distributed all over the town.

I will be writing more notes on Leiden and how it compares to Oxford but for now I would like to reflect on cloudy skies being a very Dutch thing. If you have seen a few of them in Holland you will know what I mean. All countries have clouds but the Dutch get clouds. The below is an example. I took this picture with a camera phone while staying in Leiden last year.

The picture was taken in the centre of Leiden. It was a remarkable metereological effect even by Dutch standards. The sky went from fairly clear to heavily clouded in the space of a few minutes with the clouds moving rapidly and swirling into existence.

It was almost like an apocalyptic special effect out of a movie. I have never seen anything remotely like it here in Oxford.

As the largest airport in the Netherlands, Schiphol Airport is the destination of many flights to/from Holland. This is also the European terminal of the first transatlantic “fast lane“, via which Dutch and American citizens may cross the borders of the Netherlands and US by automated border passage. 

This recently announced (19/05/2008) scheme called “The International Expedited Traveler (IET) Program” is an Initiative of the Dutch and American governments, which links Schiphol Group’s Privium program with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Global Entry program. The program will be executed in the Netherlands by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND), the Dutch Border Police (Koninklijke Marechausee), and Dartagnan (a wholly owned subsidiary of Schiphol Group).

Further information is available from the Schiphol Group, operator of Schiphol Airport.

Ik houd van de kust. Nu en dan ga ik naar het strand. Ik loop op het zand en ik fotografeer de prachtige zeeschelpen. Ik fotografeer het ook het zeewier. (Ik houd van tekenen. Ik neem fotos in plaats van te tekenen omdat ik niet genoeg tijd heb om te tekenen.)

De kinderen fotograferen niet. Zij spelen op het zand. Het kinderen op dit strand in Dorset (England), maken zandkastelen.

Iedereen houdt van de zon, de golven en de zee. Wij zonnen op het strand en kijken naar de schepen op de zee.

Woordenlijst

In case you would like to print this posting we have made it available to download easily. Just click here: Print the page “Ann de kust”.