As I mentioned yesterday, we had a great break in Holland and Belgium. We travelled to Brussels on the Eurostar last Monday morning, and for once there were no delays. We went First Class, and this has much to recommend it, and although the complimentary food was a bit variable (the pastries were nice, but the omelette was the usual rubber-like affair you might be familiar with from air travel) it was a welcome break away from the extortionate prices charged at the buffet – nearly making up the difference in price…
We didn’t stay in Brussels on the way through, but connected on to a train bound for Amsterdam which was very easy – we were on our way about half an hour after getting off the Eurostar. Despite the proliferation of cheap flights over the last few years I’d still prefer, given the time, to travel by train. I think that you get a better sense that you’re travelling than you do on a plane – the landscape passing the windows, the stops in small, unheard-of places – you actually get to see what lies between your home and your destination, and a real sense of the physical relationships between places.
Amsterdam certainly lives up to the hype. At once it’s beautiful, quiet, busy, hardcore, relaxing and hectic. I can honestly say that the four days we spent there were the most relaxing I’ve had for a while, and that’s not due (entirely) to the local attitude towards smoking cannabis.
I think that the Dutch attitude towards Cannabis is very enlightened. Given that a significant percentage of the people that I know either smoke it or have done, and yet do not break the law in any other way, I feel that providing a legitimate outlet for the use of Cannabis has to be something worth considering. The coffeeshops seemed like a very civilised way of doing this, allowing at least some element of supervision by the authorities. One problem with current trends here – which seem to be towards a kind of unofficial decriminalisation in the sense that the Police aren’t going to bother putting a lot of energy into harassing users – is that everything still remains underground, unlicensed and in the hands of people who may have links to other parts of the criminal world.
There were a fair few tourists around, but not so many that you couldn’t duck down a quieter street and escape from it all (something we were glad of one day when some of our football-loving compatriots were busy making exhibitions of themselves in the bars of the red light district). I understand that it gets pretty busy in the peak seasons; it seems that late February is a good time to go, and we certainly had fantastic weather for it, too – there’s nothing quite like a cold, crisp but sunny day.
The Dutch themselves lived up to their reputation as friendly and laid back. We never felt unwelcome or foolish, despite getting laughed at by the multilingual Dutch when we tried to at least say “bedankt”. I think they may prefer to speak English than listen to us mauling their language. They probably speak it better than I do anyway.
After a few days relaxing in Amsterdam, we got the train back to Brussels on Friday and stayed there overnight. Brussels and Belgium generally appear to have a bit of a reputation for being dull – “why, oh why?” was the reaction of a friend when he learnt we were going – but if you like good food and good beer at reasonable prices, you can certainly find them in Brussels. And it’s a good pressure valve after the hedonistic delights of Amsterdam. I’d recommend it as a reasonably priced alternative to Paris if you’re more interested in chilling out than sightseeing, although there are a few things to see in Brussels itself, not least the spectacular Art Nouveau Musee Victor Horta, based in the house in which he lived and designed.
Why do holidays always go so damn fast?