Der Zwarter Ruiter

Again airport terminals. Apparently south Sweden is being flooded by rainwater this Sunday evening, the departure to Copenhagen has already been set back 45 minutes due to late incoming aircraft.

Delft is one of these cities where you immediately want to live. A morning excursion along the canals from Rijswijk easily persuaded me. I like the scale of the Netherlands, that it is possible to go bicycling to the next city or to take one of the double-decker trains basically anywhere else within a few hours.

My friend has now lived here for four years and has no immediate plans of moving back to Sweden. I can understand him, four years is long enough to sink through the ex-pat surface and become, if not integrated, so at least a part of the society you live in. He now speaks Dutch fluently (or so it seems to me, with that language there is no way of really knowing). If it was easy for me to live in Vienna and not learn German, the same would of course be even more the case here where everyone has an excellent command of English. Like in Sweden, people are also very keen on practicing their English. So even if you do try a few words of Dutch they will immediately switch back.

But then again, The Hague is the most international city in Holland and, I am tempted to say, in the world. With both the International Criminal Court and the European Patent Office being based here, it is not surprising that you meet so many people speaking English in the streets. In any case, we had a grand night out, first a few lagers at the beach in tongue-twisting Scheveningen, then trappist beer at the Der Zwarter Ruiter only to be rounded off by the local speciality of Orangenbitter...