Travel
A Holiday in Holland
HOLLAND to-day is a land of canals and windmills and broad green fields ; of kerkes, triple avenues, bicycles, barges, black and white cows, green and red shutters, picture galleries, stathuises, cafes, orchards, sailing-boats, windmills, canals, and broad green fields. The Dutch like whitewashed churches, smoking cigars, and eating thin slices of cheese. In Holland to-day everyone smokes cigars, just as everyone drinks Pilsner beer and travels by tram or bicycle. Every other shop—if it isn't a eafi—advertises " sigaren " • and they are mild and very excellent and quite cheap. As for bicycles, you find them everywhere. In most places, special paths are provided for cyclists, separated from the main road by an avenue of lime trees. Motorists, too, may be interested to know that the surface of the roads in Holland is excellent ; they come as a welcome relief from the rough pave of Belgium.
There are two ways of reaching Holland from England. You can either go to Flushing by day, or cross to the Hook by night. In either case the journey takes rather less than six hours. Or, if you prefer, you can fly to Rotterdam, and reach your destination in two hours and a quarter. Once in Holland you discover to your satisfaction that no two places are more than three and a half hours or so apart by rail. This is one of the many reasons why Holland is such an excellent country in which to spend a short holiday ; time spent in travelling from place to place is reduced to the minimum. The Dutch trains are both punctual and comfort- able ; and to travel second-class in Holland is at least the equivalent of going first-class in England.
Therefore, what you choose to make your centre is of little consequence ; and Amsterdam is as good as anywhere else. Its hotels are clean, and, though the cost of living is neces- sarily higher than in this country, prices are not exorbitant ; the cooking, like all Dutch cooking, is good and the people charming. But, happily, civilization, as represented by cleanliness and comfort, has not been served at the expense of character and, of all Dutch towns, Amsterdam is perhaps the most typical.
Amsterdam has been described as the Venice of the North ; but the description is not altogether a good one. In per- sonality, it is an Eastern rather than a Southern city. Perhaps
It is the minaret-hire spires of the kerkes, with their curious small domes, that give the place a strangely Oriental appearance, Whatever the reason Amsterdam is essentially a city of trade; and its long narrow streets are thronged, till long past sunset, with clanging tramcars, high-pitched motor home, lines of fruit stalls, and an ever jabbering, jostling, bustling crowd, But Amsterdam is a place to linger in ; and the best way of seeing it is; to pay 1.25 gulden, jump into a water-taxi, and glide about the myriad waterways which intersect the town like a spiders-web. The sudden peace and quiet of the green, grave waters after the hustle and bustle of the streets is unutterable.
Of all Amsterdam, the noisiest, most crowded quarter is that of the Jews. Many of these Jews are engaged in the diamond industry and you should not fail to visit a diamond. cutting factory. Close by, in the Jodenbreestraat, is the house in which Rembrandt lived and worked for seventeen years. This also can be inspected ; a guide, who speaks broken English shows you round. Everything, he explains at the outset, is " just as the Master left it " ; you follow him into Rembrandt's printing-room, reverently. The room is very dark. But soon, all too soon, the room is flooded with electric light.. . . And the panelling, you observe, is modern. Disillusion follows. However, there are some nice etchings. But to see Rembrandt at the height of his greatness you must go to the Ryks Museum, where a magnificent Exhibition of his works has been staged. The Exhibition remains open until about the middle of September.
From Amsterdam it is easy to make a number of excursions to the surrounding towns. Haarlem, Leiden, Utrecht, and the Hague are all within an hour's run of the capital. Haarlem is the nearest ; and it can be reached either by car, tram, train, or boat. Since the intervening country is unexciting, I suggest you get it over as soon as possible and go by train, which is a matter of only twenty minutes. Haarlem is famous for its pictures and its tulips ; to see the latter, the proper time to visit the place is the spring—but Haarlem is lovely indeed at any season. Hals' masterpieces are housed in what was once an alms-house, overlooking the most perfect Dutch garden imaginable, complete with sundial and bright red geraniums— an ideal background to Hals' dashing Arquebusiers with their Cavalier hats, ruffles, black coats, and pale blue and golden satin sashes.
Leiden is twenty-five minutes distant from Haarlem. It is famous for its University, of which Goldsmith was once a student. The history of its foundation is illuminating ; William of Orange, it is said, offered the inhabitants of the town the choice of two things as a reward for their heroism in the siege of the town by the Spaniards—exemption from the payment of taxes or the establishment of a university. And they chose the latter. Leiden is a dignified, almost stately, old place. Like its sister University city, Utrecht, it is quiet and secluded and very leafy—a city of canals, cobbled streets and students. Time, progress, civilisation itself—all seem to nod when one is in Leiden. The very water of the grachts seems hardly to murmur ; it is only disturbed by the movement of the swans.
Geographically speaking, the Hague is only twenty minutes distant from Leiden by rail, but, temperamentally, how infi- nitely remote are the two cities ! The Hague, or Den Haag as it is known to the Dutch, is the centre of the Court, of whatever Society there may exist in Holland, and of the Parliament. But it is the least typical of all Dutch towns. Indeed, it is not really Dutch at all ; it is cosmopolitan. It is the home of the Peace Palace, the seat of the Permanent Court of International Justice, the Mecca of every kind of internatic nal conference under the sun. When I was there it was the turn of the Boy Scouts ; they were holding some kind of cosmo-jamboree and the town was bristling with scouts of every conceivable colour and country. As this was Holland, they were all careering about on bicycles. Nevertheless, you must visit the Hague, if only to see the pictures at the Mauritshuis. There you will find Rembrandts in all their grandeur and Vermeers that almost melt with loveliness.
Broad green fields, black and white cows, canals without end, cafes, windmills, porters wearing white coats like umpires at a cricket match, parsons puffing away at cigars, and every- body on bicycles—such is the Holland of to-.day. But when you,get out into the country beyond Utrecht a geographical revolution occurs. All of a sudden the broad flat fields of the north have vanished and in their place you have forests of pine and heather; avenues of elm and beech ; mediaeval châteaux with ouble moats and drawbridges, such as the Bentinek chitteau of Middachten ; and fir-clad hills which rise precipitously above the banks of the silver -Rhine. But every now and again you will come across a villa with red and black shutters ; a wayside advertisement for " Amstel Bieren " or " Sigaren " ; a gaily painted barge puffing along a canal ; a boat with white sails ; a herd of Friesians ; a peasant in a blue smock and black hilt sitting on a gate ; an orchard ; more Friesians ; more red and black shutters ; or the odour of a cigar—which will remind you that, after all, you are, still
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