Traveling in the Low Country . . .

So here it is. The definitive Dutch tourist photo. Riding bicycle, with windmill in background. I took the same photo last time I was here, in 1970.

So today I asked Maurice, "Are there any bad people in Holland?" I hate to generalize, but honestly, the people I meet in this area (Gelderland, eastern side) are just so damned NICE. Kind. Friendly. Cheerful. Hard-working. "Got any jails here?" I ask.

Maurice reminds me that in this little town where he lives (Beek), there have been two recent murders. One was a love triangle in which an unhappy policeman shot his wife and her lover. The other involved a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister. Nope -- not a religious dispute. The two lived together as lovers. Could this happen anywhere else?

And speaking of Dutch tolerance, take the feral cows and horses. This is a small country, heavily farmed. And yet it somehow tolerates the existence of roving herds of wild cows and horses in various preserves where they live off the fat . . . er, grass . . . of the land. They get into burr-and-bramble patches and come out with rastafarian hairdos:

Contradictions abound. Outside a beautiful 12th-century cathedral in Nijmegen sits a 1960s carving of a Moemen (devil). You can fit them into a single photo: 

One of the great boons of travel is to have one's own unexamined assumptions brought into question. Must do more of this!