Dutch Class

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.