Randstad Trip

Last week we went on a trip to the Randstand, the Western part of the Netherlands (the part that it is actually Holland) where the major cities are.

We started off in a traditional fishing village, called Urk (pronounced like "urrrrrk" with a guttural Dutch sound I cannot produce). There are not that many "traditional" places left so it was pretty interesting (and wet....).

  

After that, we took a bit of an odd stop in a place called Biljemeer in Amsterdam. In the 60s, it was built as a utopian housing development...but by the 70s it had turned into a ghetto (in the words of the professor giving the tour). It was a bit odd for the professor to pretty much say "this is the ghetto where the poor immigrants live." Dutch people tend to be a little more blunt about these things than politically correct Americans... There was a terrible plane crash there in 1993 and we saw the monument on the site.

After leaving Amsterdam, we drove through what is called "The Green Heart," an undeveloped preserved area. The Netherlands is technically one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but the Green Heart is flat, open, and wet.... (Not too many pictures from a moving bus).

  

After that, we stopped briefly in The Hauge. It was raining so we just walked around a little bit, I definitely want to go back there some time. 

After that, we went on to our last stop, Rotterdam. We saw the famous port and the "Cube Houses." This city reminded me a little bit of New York (maybe because there aren't that many tall buildings around the Netherlands and there were here). All in all it was a nice trip (if a little bit random.).