Netherlands Off the beaten track
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Johan Kruseman
Updated on 15 November 2024
Updated on 15 November 2024
As you may or may not know, I like to travel to some of the more unknown countries in the world. This time my eye fell on this little undiscovered gem, easily overlooked due to its impossibly small size.
They don’t have supermarkets here: cheese is sold in portions of 11kg at a time by haggling about 2 cents more or less in an outdoor market, they forget to fry the fish and slide it into their throat by holding it by its tail (supposedly because they wanna avoid the taste since they must know that fish should be fried), they peddle-bike around the city to save less than a euro for the all-around public transport, they seem to have missed the industrial revolution as they still use windmills to grind all kind of food instead of with electricity driven machines, they missed out the base class of architecture that floors and roofs should be horizontal and walls vertical, they build bridges in the middle of highways causing large traffic jams when one sailboat wants to cross, they throw raw vegetables into boiled potatoes, stamp it, and then proudly call it their national dish, they are so homophobic that I heard they put all gays on boats which are dragged through the city so all straights can yell at them (weird but interesting middle age habit still to be witnessed).
All together it has been an incredible interesting experience, located between neighbouring countries which haven’t missed to join the 21st century. For sure i will come back to explore more of this country and meet the interesting locals.
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Traveled route: Amsterdam, Gestapelde Zaanse Huisjes, Zaanse Schans, Gouda, Rotterdam, Harlingen, Terschelling, Loosdrechtse Plassen
Off the beaten track
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Photographed by: Johan Kruseman
next country: North Korea
How a smelly towel does the trick to smuggle anything into North Korea
North Korea! Or should I say just Korea, since, as I learned, Korea is actually one country where the southern part still needs to be “liberated”. It’s an interesting way of looking at the world, for sure.
As we reached the last Chinese town,
Netherlands
Did this story inspire you to go to Netherlands? Read more on what Netherlands has to offer, what the best months are for visiting and check the handy links for backpacking there.