I walked out onto my hotel room balcony and looked out over one of the wide, sandy beaches of the Netherlands.  Beaches?  In the Netherlands?  On the North Sea?  Sure, makes perfect sense.  Believe it or not, Noordwijk, a small coastal town about 30 miles from Amsterdam, is a big beach town.  It didn't particularly feel like beach weather on a cool October Sunday, but the place was bustling with weekend crowds. 

I wasn't there for the beach, but rather for a meeting at the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC), one of the large European Space Agency's centers - basically the European version of NASA.  One of the things they do at ESTEC is build and test European weather and climate satellites, of which we got a nice inside tour.

Language/Geography Trivia (which may be skipped without any negative repercussions):  One thing that I realized when visiting the Netherlands is that "Netherlands" in Dutch is "Nederland".  This is the same name as a town just up the canyone from Boulder.  All these years and I never knew that.  "Netherlands" means "low lands", which is a perfect name for the European country - it's as flat as anywhere I've ever been.  But it's rather odd for the Colorado town, which is at an elevation of 8233 feet.  Of course, maybe it's all relative - the surrounding mountains are well over 10000 feet high.  Actually, Nederland really means "Netherland" - non-plural, which is what it should really be called in English, but it has not been adopted yet.  The Netherlands is often referred to synonymously as "Holland", but Holland really only refers to a region in the western part of the country.  The people of  the Netherlands are usually referred to as the "Dutch".  However, Dutch technically only applies to those from the Holland region.  And actually, Dutch was originally synonymous with German (i.e., the Pennsylvania Dutch are actually German descendents) since historically a distinction was not made between the two groups.  (In fact, the Dutch language is quite similar to German, with a bit of French thrown in.)  So, really folks from the Netherlands should be called Netherlandic or Netherlandish.  It's all so confusing.

There were several of us at the meeting and we went out to a couple of group dinners.  We each paid individually for our meals, which is called "going...", um, "going...something", I can't remember right now.  So what is Dutch food like?  Well, I can't really tell you because in my weeklong stay in Holland I ate:  Thai, Italian, Asian fusion, Middle Eastern, and french fries.  Actually, the french fries are quintessential Dutch fare, at least from the number of places selling them and the number of people eating them.  There "fritjes" places all over.  Now, what makes them Dutch instead of, well, French, is that the Dutch eat them with mayonnaise.  And to paraphrase Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, "they really do drown them in that stuff".  But, while mayo is most popular, it's far from the only sauce to order with fries.  There were several, though the only other two whose names I could recognize were curry sauce and, of course, ketchup.

After the meeting in Noordwijk, I had a day to spend in Amsterdam.  Before my visit, most of what I know about Amsterdam I had heard from Vincent Vega in the movie "Pulp Fiction", but my guide book filled me in on a few things.  Amsterdam is primarily noted for three things:  (1) the Anne Frank House, (2) great art and art museums, and (3) red light district entertainments.  I took in two out of three.  First, the Anne Frank House is where Anne and her family (as well as another family) hid from the Nazis during World War II.  I was rather surprised by their hiding place.  I had imagined a small, cramped attic.  Instead I found a cozy two-story (plus an attic) apartment.  The bedroom that Anne shared with another was about the size of my college dorm room, and much larger than my Amsterdam hotel room.  Okay, sure there were 8 people in this apartment, and of course, they couldn't leave, so all in all, it wasn't any fun.  For over two years, the families hid in this apartment before finally being discovered by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps.  Anne died in March 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen camp, just over a month before the Allies liberated that camp.  Of course, no one would know or care about Anne had her diary not survived and become a best seller.  Of Anne's family, only her father survived the war, published the diary, and actually survived until 1980.

The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, is a major art center and has been home to some of the world's famous artists, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh.  The main art museum is the Rijksmuseum - a huge building on par with the Louvre.  However, the building was undergoing renovation.  This at first was disappointing, but I learned that while the majority of the museum was closed, they kept open one wing and moved all the major pieces to this section.  So, instead of spending hours and hours wandering around, I was able to catch anything I would've been interested in, all in less than two hours - sort of a Cliff's Notes version of the museum.  The museum has large collection of Rembrandts, Vermeers (but not "Girl with a Pearl Earring"), and other Dutch masters but no Van Goghs.  That's because the Van Goghs are all in the Van Gogh Museum just down the road (Van Gogh apparently has a bit of an ego - he's too good to be with the other "average" Dutch masters).  This has many of his masterpieces, including several sunflower paintings and self-portraits.

Amsterdam is a pretty city with numerous canals and elegant row houses.  The Royal Palace sits on the main city square, but it too was closed for renovation, and it looked rather incongruous next to a carnival in the square.  As is typical for European cities, Amsterdam has its share of historic churches.  The first one I came across was the Nieuwe Kerk, or "new church".  I thought about going in, but they were charging admission (and actually there was an art exhibit inside).  Why would I pay for a lame "new church", when I could instead visit the Oude Kerk, or "old church".  I want to see a classic historic church - not some new, johnny-come-lately church.  Of course, these things are relative.  The "new church" was built around 1380, almost like new compared to the "old church", which idates all the way back to 1308!

The Oude Kerk was also undergoing renovation, but it was open, so I checked it out.  The church is notable for a couple of things.  First, it has one of the world's great organs and attracts the world's great organists, such as...well I'm not really up on my list of great organists, but whoever they are, they've probably played the Oude Kerk organ.  The other thing the church is notable for is its location in the middle of the red light district.  And I mean right in the middle of the red light district.  (The Christian Youth Hostel is, inexplicably, also in the middle of the red light district, which must be quite shocking to arriving guests). 

The red light district, from what I was able to ascertain, is much like any other red light district except for two things:  (1) scantily-clad, but somewhat depressing, women standing in windows (not sure why, but I was too afraid to ask), and (2) coffeeshops.  Now, these aren't really coffeeshops, but rather "coffeeshops" because in these "coffeeshops", while one can often get a decent cup of coffee, most customers are there to order another mind-altering substance.

As you may know, Amsterdam has one of the more lax marijuana laws in the world and it has basically been legal since 1976 to purchase and smoke pot in "coffeeshops".  As Vincent from "Pulp Fiction" explained, "It breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and, if you're the proprietor of a hash bar [or a "coffeeshop"], it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but that doesn't really matter 'cause - get a load of this - if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you. I mean, that's a right the cops in Amsterdam don't have."  I didn't bother going in, not even for free samples, and I won't make any comment on their existence except to mention that marijuana use by Americans is about twice as high (no pun intended) as it is for the Dutch.

From my perspective, the most distinctive feature of Amsterdam though is the huge number of bicycles.  The bikes are nothing fancy, just basic one-speed bikes - as I said, it's flat, so who needs gears.  The city is really made for bikes, not cars.  This is makes things a bit dangerous for pedestrians such as myself.  While most roads are one-way for cars, they actually have bike lanes in both directions.  So, being used to crossing with auto traffic, I would look only in the direction of auto traffic and not think to check for bikes coming the other way.  I almost got knocked off my feet a couple times.  But in this, I had a revelation.  The design of Amsterdam is the best solution for reducing oil consumption that I've ever come across.  They don't need regulations such as fuel efficiency standards, gas taxes, hybrids, etc.  The Dutch just built a city in which one would have to be a complete idiot to drive a car.  The roads are narrow, often one-way, there is very little parking; bikes, walking, and public transportation are far more convenient and efficient.  Many European cities have similar features, but Amsterdam takes it to the extreme.  As a result, while there was some auto traffic, the streets never felt congested, there was no roar of engines, the air was clean.

So, the Netherlands is home to surprising beaches, closed art museums and palaces, old and new churches that are both old, lax moral laws, and streets more fit for bikes than for cars.  And somehow, it all works out in the end.