Can I Count Holland?

We spent seven hours on a bus today. Thankfully we drove through the beautiful Dutch countryside and could stare out the windows and appreciate Holland's windmills, parts of the North Sea, some of the Delta Works, and the myriad cows and sheep that graze all over the fertile land. We got to stop and get out at a Delta Works bridge with a series of dams and barriers that protect cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam from flooding--I'll post photos of that bridge! The wind blew relentlessly with a fresh, salty tinge that blew the city sootiness away from my skin. We only spent about half an hour enjoying the bridge and the sea, and then we climbed back aboard the small van-bus-thing...which began having engine trouble and could not go fast at all on the freeway. A trip that should have taken two hours to complete took us five!

When we finally arrived in the old, beautiful Dutch city of Leiden, we went straight to Leiden University to speak with Colette van Laar, a social psychologist at the university. She welcomed us into a small lounge room, offered us fresh coffee, and spoke to us for an hour and a half about the problems different minority groups face in the Netherlands and other Western European countries. She expressed her regret that we were not in Leiden long enough to see it--and I agree! I wish we could have walked through the city and inhaled local cuisine for dinner, but we had to hop back on a fresh, well-running bus and endure a much shorter voyage back to Brussels.

The bus driver did drive through Leiden on our way out, and I saw many lovely old buildings and people riding bicycles. It seems as though three-fourths of Holland's citizens use cycles with big saddle-bags or baskets attached to them as their modes of transportation, which is wonderful to me! I have a cruiser bike with a basket attached to it at home, and I wish Southern California's streets suited biking the way Leiden (and, I'm guessing, Amsterdam and Rotterdam and other Dutch cities) do. Perhaps the next place I move to will be more like Leiden. I wonder, though--can I count Holland as a country I've been to if I only left the bus and stepped on the earth three times total? I don't know what others say, but I say that I can.