My Summer Vacation

As many of you may know, I recently had the opportunity to visit the Dowell homeland. Otherwise known as The Netherlands. In an effort to promote greater understanding of our host, I would like to share with you some things I learned on My Summer Vacation.

At one time, large areas of The Netherlands were actually covered by the sea, but over the centuries the hard-working Dutch have turned these areas into dry land. How did they do this? By stealing chunks of other countries. Groups of Dutch persons, posing as tourists, would travel abroad and return with large suitcases filled with dirt, which they would use to form Netherlands (literally, ``dirt piles''). By the time the rest of the world realized what was happening, the nation of Luxembourg, which at one time was larger than Germany, had shrunk to the size of a volleyball court, which it remains to this day.

No, I'm kidding. The Dutch actually drained the water off the Netherlands by building a very clever network of canals and dikes,

which today are held firmly in place by roughly 23 million cows.

A key element of this network is the famous windmills,

which, by utilizing the wind to turn giant sails, attract tourists,

who in turn buy the cheese produced by the cows,

thus completing the ecological cycle.

The Netherlands is beautiful, and the Dutch are a friendly, funny, low-key people. As an added bonus, everybody in The Netherlands, including dogs, speaks English fluently This is a good thing, because the Dutch language has some kind of design problem, such that when Dutch people pronounce the letter ``g,'' which appears three or four times in the average Dutch word, they sound like they are hawking up a loogie the size of a cocker spaniel. Also, many Dutch words are too long to be safely pronounced by amateurs. For example, if you tried to say the Dutch word for ``youth hostel warden,''

which is ``jeugdherbergbeheerder,'' you'd run out of oxygen somewhere around the 15th syllable and fall into a canal.

The best way to see any foreign country is to get on a bus filled with other tourists and be driven to a castle, cathedral or other Famous Historic Thing, which you'll recognize by the fact that it's surrounded by a rumbling herd of tour buses

.

Then you get out of your bus, take a photo of yourself standing in front of the Famous Historic Thing, buy souvenirs, consume snacks and use the scary foreign toilets.

Also, if you have time, you should read the plaque explaining that the Historic Thing was constructed in 1158 and went through many historic events before burning to the ground in 1953, to be replaced by the Authentic Reconstruction that you are looking at now.

In The Netherlands, I joined a tour group going to see the famous cheese market in Alkmaar, a picturesque city where the Dutch market cheese in a historic and photogenic way. It was a beautiful day, and my group was joined in Alkmaar by basically every other tour group on the Eurasian continent. We had to fight our way through the crowd, trading elbow jabs with enemy tours, but we finally reached the front, where we were rewarded with a fine view of... a bunch of cheese.

We reacted as though this were the Grand Canyon. ``There's the cheese!'' we shouted as we snapped dozens of blurred photographs. I can't really explain why this was so exciting. It's a tour-group thing.

Amsterdam, is the largest city in The Netherlands with its network of picturesque canals lined with rows of quaintly gabled townhouses, is one of the prettier cities in Europe; it's also one of the most compact, which means that you can set out from your hotel on foot and, within minutes, be struck by a bicyclist going 127 miles per hour (2,038 kilometers centigrade).

This happens because Dutch people of all ages actually use their bicycles for transportation, unlike Americans, who, once they pass age 15, use their bicycles mainly as housing for spiders. The streets of Amsterdam teem with whizzing bicycles, sometimes carrying two or even three people, who often are holding packages, smoking cigarettes, talking on cell phones, applying makeup and generally behaving very much like motorists on an American interstate highway, except that the Amsterdam cyclists go much faster. I'm not saying that a Dutch woman cyclist carrying two small children and a sack of groceries would win the Indianapolis 500, but she would definitely finish in the top five.

As a thoughtful concession to pedestrians, the Dutch cyclists all have little bells on their handlebars that make a cute ``cha-CHING'' sound, which serves as a friendly warning that you are about to die. As a tourist in Amsterdam, you quickly become conditioned to react to this sound. A fun prank would be to take a bicycle bell into a crowded Amsterdam cafe and ring it; all the tourists would immediately dive to the floor.

Of course some of them might already be on the floor, because one very popular substance in the Netherlands is beer. The Dutch produce a lot of excellent beer, which natives and tourists alike consume in large quantities, in a courageous and unselfish humanitarian effort to keep this low-lying country from flooding. And beer is not the only substance that people ingest over there. The Dutch have a very open-minded, live-and-let-live philosophy about what consenting adults should be allowed to do, such that certain parts of Amsterdam make Las Vegas look like West Point. You can see businesses openly selling sex, drugs and -- most shocking of all, to Americans -- French fries with mayonnaise.

Nevertheless, you feel perfectly safe in Amsterdam (except for the bicycles). In fact, one popular tourist activity is to go to the famous Red Light District

and take ganders at the extremely friendly women who sit in little street-level rooms behind display windows, kind of like cars at an auto dealership, but with less clothing.

I was with a group of people (including, for the record, Ian’s parents and godparents)

who decided to go see the Red Light District. As we approached it, we were all looking around with great curiosity, trying to spot one of the “friendly” women. It was exactly like when you visit Yellowstone National Park, and you know that there are bears somewhere, because you keep seeing signs warning you about them, but you haven't actually seen a bear yet, so the tension keeps building up inside you.

And so when we came around a corner and suddenly found ourselves right next to an occupied display window, John, Ian’s godfather -- demonstrating the cool urbanity that certainly enhanced the reputation of American tourists for suave sophistication -- pointed and yelled ``There's one!'' At the same instant, He walked into a metal traffic barrier, hitting it so hard that I thought he fractured his kneecap.

Of course did not seek medical treatment because he didn't want to have to explain to the medical personnel how he injured himself. This is exactly why health authorities say that if you're going to be messing around in a Red Light District, you should ALWAYS wear protection, in the form of knee pads.

But other than that one incident, I had a terrific time on my trip. The Netherlands are lovely and hospitable, and Amsterdam is a lively and fun city, full of things to do. In fact, I'll confess that, while I was there, I took advantage of the permissive laws and did something that -- call me a wild counterculture explorer -- I just had to try. I am referring to French fries with mayonnaise. My advice is: Just say no.