A Flock of Tourists

Easter holidays are approaching. Hundreds of thousands of tourists are coming to the Netherlands this time of year. Most of them are Germans; the amount of French visitors seems to be on the upswing. And then there are lots of Americans, Japanese and Spanish visitors as well. None of them is coming here to enjoy the weather. Summer resorts are not something for which the Netherlands are famous. A lot of visitors are coming to see the cities, the museums and the tulips. Their ideas represent a somewhat quaint, picturesque idea of Dutch society. One untarnished by modern things like the multicultural society and overpopulation just to name a few. The Netherlands are slowly turning into something like an oversized HongKong kind of town. I'd be really interested to know how all these visitors feel about the Netherlands when they have returned home safe and sound.

Deprived?

Suppose you are a young African, living somewhere in central Africa. No job, the constant threat in famine, drought. One day your satellite dish gets confused. All of a sudden you're confronted with news about deprived Dutch neighborhoods. What would you think? I wouldn't know and I just thought that up because the phrasing in it self struck me as kind of odd. There are neighborhoods in the Netherlands, where people are living in poverty and the inhabitants are more or less denied equal access to what's happening in society, to a job, to a prosperous life. I just tried to imagine what it would be like having to explain to a young African that I am living in a deprived neighborhood.

Frog in the City

An amazing thing happened. Our frog is back. We already noticed last week but she's showing herself quite frequently now. I guess she's female. What other explanation could there possibly be for the big lump of frog-eggs hanging on the papyrus? All of a sudden I feel responsible for this new life. I spent my morning reading about frogs in the city. Our frog possibly is a brown frog; that's about the only subspecies not threatened with extinction. Frogs used to ubiquitous in the Netherlands, but not anymore. All of them are protected. I must say it almost makes me feel flattered. The frog is an amphiby, hundreds of millions of years old, going way back before the dawn of mankind. Something like Jurassic park in the backyard. I feel really good about that.