Holland No More

This weekend will be the last time I'm in Holland for some time, and possibly the last time ever depending on what the future holds in terms of travel.

I leave my current job in a few days, on to pastures new in every area of my life, but I take with me some very good memories of my times in Holland.

Yesterday, when I arrived in Eindhoven, I dumped my bags at the hotel and went for a stroll into town to find something to eat and drink. As I walked I noticed several people dressed in orange shirts, but initially though nothing of it. Before long, however, the town began to fill up with hundreds, and then thousands of people - men, women and children alike - all dressed in orange. Some wore hats, some overalls, some sarongs, but everywhere was bathed in the orange glow that reflected from the acres of clothes that were packed into the town square and beyond.

It turned out that the Netherlands were playing Denmark just down the road at the PSV Eindhoven stadium, so we watched in the hotel bar while sinking a few cold ones.

I have fond memories of nights in two different, but virtually identical, rock bars - one in Rotterdam, the other in Amsterdam, and both times ending up deep in conversation with locals about this, that and the other. Tomorrow night I intend to revisit the one in Amsterdam, for one last goodbye to the city that I've become very familiar with over the last couple of years. It'll never top London or Paris, of course, but I've walked its streets enough to have discovered the real city beneath the public image of red lights and stag weekends, and it's a beautiful place.

I'll miss the trains, too - clean, fast, on time, and passing through beautiful countryside on the journey between Schiphol and Eindhoven. I remember accidentally getting off at the wrong stop the first time I took the train, and wandering around a pretty little town called 's-Hertogenbosch (or Den Bosch) for an hour before conceding that I was in the wrong place and that I would need to return to the train station and resume my journey. I've been meaning to go back on purpose but sadly the opportunity hasn't arisen. Oh well, been there once at least.

Eindhoven will remain in my heart, too, for its wonderful churches which I have photographed extensively and despite not being at all religious have stood inside and felt an undeniable calm that is absent from many of the churches I have been in.

So, I sit in the warehouse near Eersel, waiting as the clock moves ever nearer to midnight and the end of my final working day here. Outside it's dark and the neon signs that punctuate the industrial park are shining brightly. Ninety minutes to go and despite the slight feeling of contemplation that comes when something draws to an end, I feel energised and ready to leave this phase of my life behind and stride confidently into the future.....