What I remember aboit Holland?

Medieval architecture in the neon advertising, windmills and wooden shoes, red-light streets or crowded motley people and smoke clouds? Dutch cheese with holes, beer, sad violin and singing in the twilight of a warm rain, and maybe a bouquet of tulips in the hands of fair-haired old ladies?

Netherlands - picturesque little piece of north-western Europe, situated on the North Sea coast. A wonderful green country beyond the horizon which hides the most beautiful meadows, fields and poplar groves and flower plantations. The old mill is still on a par with modern windmills come to grips with the wind. The air is filled with fresh sea breeze, and friendly small towns and villages with neat little colored houses amaze with his obese Dutch cows that graze on «polders» - drained bay.

The land is crossed by dikes and canals. Netherlands - officially the Kingdom of the Netherlands (low land) - flat country, made by human hands. Many centuries ago, when this land came the ancestors of the Dutch, it was a lace of bays, creeks and swamps, and the water rose only a low island. People fought for the land: build a dam, with the help of windmills drained lakes and swamps. Today, Holland can be called a country Melo «Water», whose people cherish their past. Each of them is ready to tell many stories about the customs of his native town. In this small country that neither the village - then your way of life, their traditional costumes and their dialect.

A small Dutch fishing village: a succession of houses along the wharf, the harbor filled with boats and schooners, which are still a daily basis go to sea to fish. On shore, long-legged herons wandering, begging for a piece of fish with tourists. Involuntary smile causes funny, good-natured Dealers-barkers numerous shops. In the funny jackets and trousers with a vast buckle for large buttons and a round hat, they look like little "tremendous growth. Workshops, where the famous wooden shoes - Klomp, attract colorful signs. Shoes, what the soul wishes - large and tiny, painted, carved! Locals insist that klompenah much warmer and drier than in rubber boots.

Many restaurants to grumble, but the good Dutch housewives attract all sorts of delicious smells of sea delicacies. This salmon, and smoked eel, fried calamari, steamed mussels, and, of course, «Maches» - tender fillet fatty herring, which has been taken to send in your mouth completely, raising his fingers in a ponytail. As consumption of seafood country ranks first in the world! But this pride of the country is a great Dutch cheese. Dozens of varieties: young, old, with cumin, and pepper, dill, nuts ... In the country several hundred years thereafter, cheese auctions at which trade takes place according to the ancient ritual. Cheesemaker in folk costumes drag their works on special skids by ancient music, and the buyer and the seller during the auction beat each other's hand, offering a price for the cheese.

most scenic value of the Netherlands - the flowers!

They are everywhere: on the streets, the windows, in the hands of people! Most incredible: tulips, lilies, gladioli, daffodils, irises, hyacinths and crocuses - black, pale-green, fluffy, terry ... Raises them not for the beautiful flowers, but for the precious bulbs. Plantations flowering bulbs extending along the entire Dutch coast - multicolored carpet area of more than 17 thousand hectares. And almost half of the flowering surface occupied Dutch tulips.

The first tulips in Europe, appeared at the court of the Emperor of Austria in 1554. His botanist, Karolyus Klyusiyus, for religious reasons, had fled to the Netherlands, where it was found that along the coast on a rich sandy soil is excellent growing these flowers. It quickly became a popular tulip and expensive commodity. One of the flower bulb was worth as much as a mansion in Amsterdam. Today, as before, the Netherlands is the largest exporter of flower bulbs in the world.

Whatever the quiet and comfortable country life, the Dutch prefer the city. Famous Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht - masterpieces of medieval architecture, with magnificent cathedrals, picturesque canals and old houses.

picturesque Amsterdam

( «dam on the Amstel River»), capital of contrasts - a city of hundreds of channels through which, nowadays there are more than 600 scenic bridges, the city Gothic buildings and the ancient cobbled streets. The beautiful red brick building with a clock - Central Station (XIX century).. From him a fan scatter the streets and «grahty» - canals of Amsterdam, including the main street of the city - Damrak. On it you can get into the historic city center - «quarter for more channels» - this is the famous Dam Square, Royal Palace with a great museum, a church-Nieuwe Kerk (the place of the coronation of monarchs of the Netherlands) and the famous Madame Tussauds.

Amsterdam can be called a museum center of the world. Here is the Museum of Art - Reyksmyuzeu, one of the best in Europe, the Van Gogh Museum with the world's largest collection of his works, the Museum of the Tropics, the Cabinet of cats, Europe's only Museum of hashish, marijuana and hemp, as well as tattoos Museum, the Museum of Sex and the set other, no less than the original. Wandering musicians, «informal people», Red Light District, flower markets, streetcar and bicycle calls (the number of bicycles in the country exceeds the number of its inhabitants!), Without all that hard to imagine the real Amsterdam.

Rotterdam - the largest port in Europe and second largest city in the country. Here is the first «Skyscraper» Europe - Het Witte Hayes (45 m, 1898), the largest in the country Town Hall (1920), and a monument to Peter I. The Hague - seat of government, parliament and the royal court, the third largest and one of the oldest cities in the country. This city officials, diplomats and retired. There's the Peace Palace, built by Andrew Carnegie, which operates the International Court of Justice. The sights of the city is the park Madurodam, a unique outdoor museum, where a 1:25 scale represented virtually the entire country and all its monuments.

Multi-ethnic Netherlands, where the official languages are Dutch and Frisian, can be proud of their population, which communicates more in at least two foreign languages. Open culture of Holland made it a popular destination for people all over the world.

The streets of exotics: negros and Asians speak confidently on the Dutch port of slang. In a word - Europe! Free Europe, attracting tourists, idlers and adventurers. It is no coincidence, because honest and thrifty Dutch, winners of water, which never in no way show their superiority, have something to brag!


And not only first-class doctors and excellent roads, the longest swing bridge in the world or the greatest density of population in Europe, there is something more interesting! Free love, legal prostitution, with the famous brothels, the sale of soft drugs to all adults and the world's only monument to homosexuals - that's not all that is capable of Holland!

Katherine Balabanova
http://traveldin.blogspot.com/