It's been 3 posts in rapid succession 🏁🏃♂️ つぎつぎと 投稿 ...........
2022年5月5日🎏
"Fields of Barley" Mr. Sting?..........I suppose "tulips" didn't fit into the lyrics. But what you need for a girl are fields of flowers surely.......how about tulips? チューリップは大麦よりもガールフレンドに適しています (sorry, not an elegant translation)..... (and in case Sting is not your generation here's a link :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFpGkvlnIFc )
..... if red and yellow are a bit over the top then perhaps a more subtle shade.....?
より繊細な色
These flower fields were a twenty minute train ride from Den Haag. Wi-Fi included - oh I love this funny language....😂
I got off at the little town of Sassenheim (sounds German doesn't it?). The plan was to pick up a bike there and roll off into those fields of tulips.......サッセンハイムの自転車.
Except that the bike app didn't work properly. Disaster! All my plans turned to dust? Really? Actually not. OK, I had to walk a kilometer or two through the village and out the other side, but then I was rewarded. Here was farm after farm. Long slashes of pure colour. And that soil - my shoes sank into it. Light, soft and fertile. 私の靴は柔らかい地面に沈んだ.
Notices ask you to respect the farmers work and not walk into the fields. Fair enough. Imagine hordes of tourists trampling through the tulips to get that "special" selfie.....In the event I found a convenient tractor path to walk down.....look how close those big tyres get to the flowers! 注意深く運転する必要があります!
Without a bicycle I could wander and pause as much as I wanted. The small drainage ditches around the fields are full of wildlife. Geese nibble grass. Oystercatchers get mobbed by crows. Paradise is never perfect. I felt pretty happy here though!
Why they left this little tree here I don't know, but it is beautiful...この小さな木は美しいです.
.....................a field of gold in the distance.....遠くに、金の畑......
You could spend all day just looking at tulips.....見ているだけ。一日中。
But as I walked back through the villages of Teylingen and Sassenheim I made a few more discoveries.....a little castle....(why is it that my posts always seem to feature a ruined castle? Well I don't always plan it you know). 小さな発見.
....and a Dorpkerk (village church) with Romanesque blind arcades...so it must have been built sometime in the 12thc. I love this old pre-Gothic architecture. You can find it scattered all over Europe - even as far away as the north of England. I thought that these arches looked a bit tulip-shaped (Hello all you art historians, I've got a new school of architecture"Tulip Romanesque"- not allowed, sorry - the whole tulip thing only got going in Holland in the 16thc. Before that they were cultivated by the gardeners of the Ottoman Empire. 村の教会.
I was thinking lofty thoughts about civilization and looking for a coffee shop (it's possible to do this simultaneously) when I nearly walked right into this sign.....SCHOLTEN we understand tasty meat. 御免なさい,これは日本語に翻訳できません😂.
..only €6,50...and four of them.....honestly....what next.....these Dutch....
In my three days in Zuid Holland I had discovered a lot. On leaving my accommodation on Friday morning I thought I would be clever and find another route back to the station. But these canals! You never know when you are going to meet one.....デンハーグの運河.
The boats reminded my of a crazy trip I made about 30 years ago with a load of violinmakers from my college. See that wooden board on the side of the boat? There is one on each side, because the boat has no keel 竜骨(船) If it did, it could not negogiate the many sandbanks and shallow waters around the Dutch coast.
So when you are out in a stiff wind, the skipper may shout "lower the leeboard", and then you have to look sharp and get pulling some ropes. A wet business I seem to remember. But great fun. On our trip there was a professional skipper in charge, but we had to work pretty hard to keep the old boat moving. But when it did, It was an incredible feeling to stand at the tiller and feel this huge barge surging through the water. I will never forget it. 音楽制作の時間がありました.
So now I come to the end of my "Dutch Trilogy"blog. I was able to post it quite quickly as Covid has forced me to isolate😓. Strange world. However, it may also sound strange for an Englishman from Germany to meet his Japanese tutor in Holland, but why not? Japan is still barred for foreign tourists, although students, business people or family are allowed. None of which category I fall into.
But funny things happen. I ended up getting an Origami lesson before boarding my train back to Frankfurt ! What is it? A Samurai helmet of course 🤣. カフェでの折り紙レッスン
some of this Origami paper I hardly dare fold......
but now I have a little time to practise!今は練習する時間があります!
Finished your coffee break now? Well thanks for reading my ramblings..この投稿を読んでいただきありがとうございます。 新しい投稿のお知らせを受け取りたい場合は、上部の購読フォームに記入してください。 ありがとう！Thank you, Nigel.😊 and do subscribe if you want new posts automatically in your inbox. But check your spam!
Come on....let's have one more tulip photo before we go.....もう1枚のチューリップの写真!
THE END
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終わり