Looking back, three months to the day, and I realise I have taken away one brain singeing feature from The Netherlands. It is an odd feature to have worked it’s way into the valleys of my cranium as I have never cared for it before, and nor do I care for it now. It was just our time spent in this one tiny country that it held the slightest influence, if any, on my average day. Yet it is what stands out three months later like a Cruiser on Australia Day. It is architecture.
I’m not talking about your typical centuries old Renaissance or Medieval buildings. Not the buildings that are towering over the huddle of ants below taking flash after flash of each stone in it’s wall. Not the building with whichever limestone carved saint or goddess is staring down on these ants on one knee bending over backwards with their foreheads pressed on the pavement and their tongues in their ears to get that perfect shot. Not the buildings that make Europe Europe.
I’m talking late 20th century Dutch architects who couldn’t accept things like how a house is a cube flat on the ground. It’s too easy. A Dutch architect would huff at this kind of practicality. “What if we tilt it so that it sits on one corner?” Does it matter that you’d have to walk up the wall to cross the floor?
Or the trending phase I noticed of “One building being just one building?! Ludicrous!”. So everywhere there is “one” building made up 6 or 7 or at one point there must have been at least 20. It’s hard to imagine what I mean unless you see it for yourself. If there’s a way to make a building not a building. They’ll find it.
However it’s not to say that architecture was the only standout thing in The Netherlands. Amsterdam was incredible but not in the way you will ever hear about it. Maastricht has charm, Rotterdam has old men living for old ship bones and Den Haag has a beach though I would advise against swimming if you find it unsettling to be submerged in poo. And I learnt a lot about myself in The Netherlands. I discovered the level of my brains intelligence when I scoffed at my travel buddy for asking me if Holland was a place in The Netherlands. I later found out that my reply of “OH MY GOD YOU DUMBASS! It’s the same thing!” dropped my intelligence level by 3 notches. Awkward.
stephmoni 