Holland Travel Quotes

However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries you could travel from Holland to China in a year or two, the time it has taken Voyager to travel from Earth to Jupiter.

The Netherlands, for all its faults, was happier than Britain, more efficient than France, more tolerant than America, more worldly than Norway, more modern than Belgium and more fun than Germany.

As Anne grew, so did her ambition to travel. Her dream destinations became further flung and more exotic. It did not satisfy her to leave England for a week or two; throughout her adult life she spent months at a time away from home, including periods of residence in Paris. Having also explored Italy, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in the summer of 1833 Scandinavia and the Baltics were in Anne’s sights. After months of indecision, she finally ‘determined to go north’ on 17th July that year, resolving to end her journey in Denmark.

Harlem was named after the Dutch city of Haarlem, Brooklyn after the small town of Breukelen, and Flushing after the southern Dutch city of Vlissingen. Wall Street was originally De Waal Street and Broadway was once better known as Breede Weg. Several other Dutch words also made it into the American vocabulary: cookie, waffle, noodles, brandy, coleslaw.

That strange feeling came back to Nick’s stomach, although this time it traveled upward to the vicinity of his heart. His hands stroked and soothed the mare, but all his attention centered on the woman kneeling in the straw. The haughty attitude Elizabeth sometimes displayed had vanished. Happiness lit up her face, and her eyes shone with love. Look at me that way, he silently pleaded. He knew Star didn’t appreciate her loving attention the same way he would.

POEM – MY AMAZING TRAVELS [My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures] My very first trip I still cannot believe Was planned and executed with such great ease. My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man, He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan. I got my first long vacation while working as a banker One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner. She visited my father and discussed the matter Arrangements were made without any flutter. We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany, In each of those places, there was somebody, To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places, It was a dream come true at our young ages. We even visited Holland, which was across the Border. To drive across from Germany was quite in order. Memories of great times continue to linger, I thank God for an understanding father. That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more, I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe. Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo, Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando. I was accompanied by my husband on many trips. Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit. Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah, Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla. We sailed aboard the Creole Queen On the Mississippi in New Orleans We traversed the Rockies in Colorado And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico. We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome, The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. To explore the countryside in Florence, And to sail on a Gondola in Venice. My fridge is decorated with magnets Souvenirs of all my visits London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome? Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born. CN Tower in Toronto so very high I thought the elevator would take me to the sky. Then there was El Poble and Toledo Noted for Spanish Gold We travelled on the Euro star. The scenery was beautiful to behold! I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina, Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines, Places I love to lime. Of course, I would like to make special mention, Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean. Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas Two ships which grace the Seas. Last but not least and best of all We visited Paris in the fall. Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin Amazing places, which made my head, spin. Copyright@BrendaMohammed

I was still in my twenties. And here’s what I thought would be the worst: that no one else would every know me young. I would always be this age or older, from now on, to any man I met. No one would ever sit back and remember how young and frail I was at his bedside, at eighteen, reading to him in that dark room with the piano playing downstairs, and again at twenty-one, how I held the flap of my coat against the wind and held my tongue when a handsome man called me by the wrong name. What I would miss- and it occurred to me only then, with his brown eyes on me - was the unchangeable, the irreplaceable. I would never meet another man who’d met my mother, who knew her untamable hair, her sharp Kentucky accent, cracked with fury. She was dead now, and no man could ever know her again. That would be missing. I’d never know anyone, anywhere, who’d watched me weeping with rage and lack of sleep in those first few months after Sonny was born, or seen his first steps, or listened to him tell his non-sense stories. He was a boy now. No one could ever know him again as a baby. That would be missing, too. I wouldn’t just be alone in the present; I would be alone in my past as well, in my memories. Because they were a part of him, of Holland, of my husband. And in an hour that part of me would be cut off like a tail. From that night on, I would be like a traveler from a distant country that no one had ever been to, nor ever heard of, an immigrant from that vanished land: my youth. - The Story of a Marriage

Tim Tigner began his career in Soviet Counterintelligence with the US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. That was back in the Cold War days when, “We learned Russian so you didn't have to,” something he did at the Presidio of Monterey alongside Recon Marines and Navy SEALs. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tim switched from espionage to arbitrage. Armed with a Wharton MBA rather than a Colt M16, he moved to Moscow in the midst of Perestroika. There, he led prominent multinational medical companies, worked with cosmonauts on the MIR Space Station (from Earth, alas), chaired the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and helped write Russia’s first law on healthcare. Moving to Brussels during the formation of the EU, Tim ran Europe, Middle East, and Africa for a Johnson & Johnson company and traveled like a character in a Robert Ludlum novel. He eventually landed in Silicon Valley, where he launched new medical technologies as a startup CEO. In his free time, Tim has climbed the peaks of Mount Olympus, hang glided from the cliffs of Rio de Janeiro, and ballooned over Belgium. He earned scuba certification in Turkey, learned to ski in Slovenia, and ran the Serengeti with a Maasai warrior. He acted on stage in Portugal, taught negotiations in Germany, and chaired a healthcare conference in Holland. Tim studied psychology in France, radiology in England, and philosophy in Greece. He has enjoyed ballet at the Bolshoi, the opera on Lake Como, and the symphony in Vienna. He’s been a marathoner, paratrooper, triathlete, and yogi.  Intent on combining his creativity with his experience, Tim began writing thrillers in 1996 from an apartment overlooking Moscow’s Gorky Park. Decades later, his passion for creative writing continues to grow every day. His home office now overlooks a vineyard in Northern California, where he lives with his wife Elena and their two daughters. Tim grew up in the Midwest, and graduated from Hanover College with a BA in Philosophy and Mathematics. After military service and work as a financial analyst and foreign-exchange trader, he earned an MBA in Finance and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton and Lauder Schools.  Thank you for taking the time to read about the author. Tim is most grateful for his loyal fans, and loves to correspond with readers like you. You are welcome to reach him directly at tim@timtigner.com.

LINCKLAEN, JOHN. (Agent of the Holland Land Company.) Journals of Travels into Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont (1791-1792). Translated from French by Helen Lincklaen Fairchild. With biographical sketch and notes. New York, Putnams: 1897.

James Holland, editor of gadgets website electricpig.co.uk, said: “You’d buy a desk that charged any gadget placed on it. You’d never need to hunt for the right charger again.” Also, in 2007, a team from MIT's Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute

Every member of every tribe was entitled to his vote, but since this had to be delivered in person at the Ovile the practical effect was to ensure that only the wealthiest out-of-towner could afford to travel to Rome to exercise his right. Inevitably, this served to skew the voting in favor of the rich.

It was only when he was in his sixties that he set about turning his youthful walk across Europe into a book. The first volume of the consequent work, A Time of Gifts, was published in 1977 and instantly recognised as a classic. This second volume, Between the Woods and the Water, appeared in 1986, and by then Leigh Fermor was seventy-one years old. So half a century separates the experience from the book, and the author is looking back at himself across a great gulf of experience and of history. The Second World War has changed Europe forever since Paddy hoisted his rucksack at the Hook of Holland, and his alter ego too has been weathered by a lifetime of travel and accomplishment. It really is almost as though Between the Woods and the Water is the work of two separate writers, coming to the task from opposite directions, but blending their talents in a display of intergenerational collaboration. And it is a triumph of this book that we, the readers, understand them both. We know what goes through both their minds, because the artistry of its author makes the boyish enthusiasm of the young man as immediate as the tempered experience of the old.

As often as not, a man who sticks at home knows next to nothing about his guest.

They had now travelled 250 miles in nine days – including an entire day off, 2 September, for maintenance. This was further and faster than the Germans had advanced during their lightning march through France back in May 1940.

These were staggering gains; the Guards Armoured Division, for example, had travelled some 330 miles from the Noireau area in Normandy in just over four days to enter Brussels

As a people, the Dutch were healthy, creative, curious, friendly, worldly, always willing to chat with strangers or help out a friend. The mythical ‘work–life balance’ for which others strived in vain seemed to come naturally to them. Compared to citizens of almost every other country, they worked fewer hours, took longer holidays, spent more time with their children, but enjoyed a higher standard of living. In an era when much of the world was cynical and pessimistic, most Dutch remained tolerant, internationalist and open-minded. Challenges like immigration and economic stagnation meant that some freedoms were being trimmed, but I couldn’t help thinking that if the Dutch could preserve even a fraction of their distinctive, happy-go-lucky outlook in the coming years, then the future of orange looked very bright indeed.

Theo van Gogh was well known in the Netherlands, both as a descendant of the famous painter who shared his surname and as a critic of Islam even more provocative than Fortuyn.

The Dutch ruled over an empire stretching from the Caribbean to East Asia, founded the city of New York, discovered Australia, played the world’s best football and produced some of the finest art and architecture in Europe. Everywhere one goes in the world, one can always find Dutch people. A country half the size of Scotland, with a population of just seventeen million or so, claims to have invented the DVD, the dialysis machine, the tape recorder, the CD, the energy-saving lightbulb, the pendulum clock, the speed camera, golf, the microscope, the telescope and the doughnut.

Closer to home, the Netherlands’ colonial history was evident on the country’s dining tables and restaurant menus, with Indonesian cuisine offering a rare bright spot among otherwise dire food options. It was common for family celebrations or corporate events to involve a rijsttafel (‘rice table’), a lavish banquet consisting of dozens of gelatinous Indonesian dishes displayed on a vast table. Just as no British town could be complete without an Indian curry house, most Dutch towns had at least one restaurant offering peanut soup, chicken satay and spicy noodles. Nasi goreng (fried rice) and bami goreng (fried noodles) were as well known to Dutch diners as chicken masala and naan bread were to the British. After centuries of trade with Indonesia, the Dutch had developed an abiding obsession with coffee, with an expensive coffee machine an essential feature of even the scruffiest student house. Surinamese food, which I’d never even heard of before moving to the Netherlands, was also popular. The Dutch had left their mark on the world, and the world had returned the favour.

The Dutch famine of the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944 had helped spur the creation of a beneficent welfare state that provided cradle-to-grave security for citizens, and perhaps helped shape Dutch attitudes to work and family. Even the Dutch love of bicycles was rooted partly in the planning decisions taken during post-war reconstruction. To understand the Netherlands, then, one had to understand the war.

One Dutch MEP even once proposed that the government introduce a ban on banning things.

It underscores the thought I heard many years ago that surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don’t expect it and often feel they don’t deserve it. I do not know who may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable, but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of the Atonement of Jesus Christ shines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tim Tigner began his career in Soviet Counterintelligence with the US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. That was back in the Cold War days when, “We learned Russian so you didn't have to,” something he did at the Presidio of Monterey alongside Recon Marines and Navy SEALs. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tim switched from espionage to arbitrage. Armed with a Wharton MBA rather than a Colt M16, he moved to Moscow in the midst of Perestroika. There, he led prominent multinational medical companies, worked with cosmonauts on the MIR Space Station (from Earth, alas), chaired the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and helped write Russia’s first law on healthcare. Moving to Brussels during the formation of the EU, Tim ran Europe, Middle East and Africa for a Johnson & Johnson company and traveled like a character in a Robert Ludlum novel. He eventually landed in Silicon Valley, where he launched new medical technologies as a startup CEO. In his free time, Tim has climbed the peaks of Mount Olympus, hang glided from the cliffs of Rio de Janeiro, and ballooned over Belgium. He earned scuba certification in Turkey, learned to ski in Slovenia, and ran the Serengeti with a Maasai warrior. He acted on stage in Portugal, taught negotiations in Germany, and chaired a healthcare conference in Holland. Tim studied psychology in France, radiology in England, and philosophy in Greece. He has enjoyed ballet at the Bolshoi, the opera on Lake Como, and the symphony in Vienna. He’s been a marathoner, paratrooper, triathlete, and yogi.

Not since the age of Constantine and his heirs had any one man exercised an authority over so wide a sweep of Europe as did the bishop of the ancient capital of the world. His open claim was to the ‘rights of heavenly and earthly empire’;24 his legates travelled to barbarous lands and expected to be heard; his court, in an echo of the building where the Roman Senate had once met, was known as the ‘Curia’. Yet the pope was no Caesar. His assertion of supremacy was not founded on force of arms, nor the rank of his ministers on their lineage or their wealth. The Church that had emerged from the Gregorian reformatio was instead an institution of a kind never before witnessed: one that had not merely come to think of itself as sovereign, but had willed itself into becoming so.

An English traveler, James H. Juke, was aghast that a day’s sail could take him from a well-fed nation to an island of the wretched and dying. He saw Irish trying to exist on sand eels, turnip tops and seaweed—“a diet which no one in England would consider fit for the meanest animal which he kept.” The potato blight had not spared England, nor Holland, parts of France and Germany. Their crops also failed. But only in Ireland were people dying en masse. The cause had been planted in the land—not the potato, but English rule that had driven a majority of Irish from ground their ancestors had owned. “The terrifying exactitude of memory,” in Tocqueville’s phrase. Famines had come before, epochs of hunger that killed upwards of 70,000 in the worst case. But this starvation reached across the island—it was now the Great Hunger, an Gorta Mór, with a fatal toll ten times that of the Great Plague of London in 1665. And here was the tragedy: there was plenty of food in Ireland while the people starved. Irish rains produced a prodigious amount of Irish grains. Almost three fourths of the country’s cultivable land was in corn, wheat, oats and barley. The food came from Irish land and Irish labor. But it didn’t go into Irish mouths. About 1.5 billion pounds of grain and other foodstuffs were exported. The natives were hired hands and witnesses to these money crops, grown by Anglo landlords. Same with cattle, sheep and hogs raised within eyesight of the hollow-bellied. Famine-ravaged Ireland exported more beef than any other part of the British Empire.

The arrangement fell to pieces at the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the disastrous hetmanate of that most un-Cossack of Cossacks – Ivan Mazeppa. Suave and subtle, famous for his love affairs and his deft hand at political intrigue, Mazeppa was an even unlikelier rebel than Khmelnytsky. Born into a noble Orthodox family in Polish-ruled ‘right-bank’ Ukraine, he was schooled at a Jesuit college in Warsaw before entering the court of King Jan Kazimierz as a gentleman-in-waiting. Keen to create a cadre of Ruthenian nobles loyal to the crown, Kazimierz sent him to study in Holland before putting him to work on diplomatic errands to the left-bank hetmanate. In 1663 the promising young favourite suddenly left Cracow and joined the Polish-ruled Cossacks on the western bank of the Dnieper. Legend – as embroidered by everyone from Byron to Tchaikovsky – has it that he had been discovered in bed with the wife of a neighbour, who stripped him naked and sent him galloping off into the steppe on the back of a wild horse. Whatever the truth, Mazeppa spent the next few years travelling back and forth to the Crimean khanate as the Polish Cossacks’ envoy. In 1674, journeying home from one of these missions, he was captured by the Zaporozhians and turned over to the rival left-bank hetmanate as a spy. At this

Thus I am in Holland, the kingdom of things, great principality of objects. In Dutch, schoen means beautiful and at the same time clean, as if neatness was raised to the dignity of a virtue.

A dark road traveled is not a dark road lost when light turns dark into a path. Labor on, oh weary one, for the end has come now that the journey’s begun.