At Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, I was greeted by some smiling devotees, and it was Ritam who graced me with a garland of fresh flowers (it’s Holland, you know), accompanied by Namen, wife Violeta, their two kids, and other enthusiasts of the Vaishnava genre. From there was destination Alpen aan Den Rijn, a town by a canal, by a windmill, and amidst flat, black fields of green. The greeting meal was kichari and palak panir, Indian dishes. From that I was fuelled enough to go over the canal by way of bridge to the windmill and beyond!
As is much of Europe, everything is quaint, but in the Netherlands, the special feature is the way of travel – the bicycle, which makes a lot of sense given the level terrain and everything being relatively close to all things.
We stopped by a 16th century church , denomination I didn’t quite get. Doors were closed. And as Ritam and Namen expressed, there is not much participation in God these days. What has replaced varying religious expressions? Screens of entertainment assortments. I do see that the locals here are in fairly good physical shape and they greet you.
At one point, jetlag really got the better of me and I had to bow out to ‘hit the sack’, as the expression goes.
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