The banging and yelling began while I was in the shower. It was a lazy morning at my friend Dick's place in Utrecht where I'm quietly hanging out while he’s away on vacation. Lazy, at least, until I heard muted thumping and shouting through the bathroom door.

I assumed it was the neighbor horsing around with friends until someone started beating on the bathroom door and shouting in Dutch. Since it hasn't been that long since I left the third world, I figured there was only one explanation: masked bandits had broken into the apartment. Hands shaking, I turned off the water and went to the door where the guy was still yelling unintelligibly. I’m not sure a native Dutch speaker would have understood him.

"I don't speak Dutch," I said, expecting even in English-friendly Holland the robbers probably won’t speak English.

"Turn off the water!"

"The same guy kinda growled at me."
Dick had told me workers were redoing a bathroom in an apartment downstairs. I guess I completely flooded the first floor, though it hadn’t been a problem when I showered the day before. The same guy kinda growled at me when I walked out the front door later, which was the same moment that I locked myself out of the apartment.

This apartment, by the way, overlooks the oldest canal in Utrecht, the fourth-largest city in Holland and about 30 miles from Amsterdam. It's a perfect place to relax for a couple of weeks. Big enough to have everything you need, small enough that you can walk around the whole of downtown in an hour. I'll be here till around the 20th of February.

A Windmill at Kinderdijk

"Unlike wooden shoes, they really have windmills."
Another big plus for Utrecht is its proximity to Amsterdam. Dick and I drove there last Saturday. On the way we stopped at a amazing conglomeration of old windmills. Yes, unlike wooden shoes, they really have windmills. There were about twenty of these things spread across the countryside. They were actually houses at one time and some of them still are. It was a terribly windy day, which made for an impressive sight as some of them whirled around at amazing speeds.

We also stopped in The Hague, which literally translates as "The Hedge." It's the seat of Holland’s government and a beautiful but unexciting city. In stark contrast to post-September 11th America, we walked through the courtyard inside the legislative building, where we shared a typically Dutch raw, salted Herring. By mid-afternoon it was on to Amsterdam.

Since it was already sunset when we arrived we knew it wouldn't be a proper tour of the world's most liberal city. We'd hit maybe one or two of the most important highlights. We went straight for the red light district.

"The place is clean, well lit and full of tourists."
I never understood the origin of the phrase. I always figured it referred to all the red neon signs you see in a seedy part of a city. But in Holland there's an actual red light in the window of brothels. And here, true to the

Herring Down the Hatch

stories, the ladies really sit right in the window on review. The video and "novelty" stores have signs with words and photos that make Janet look like a nun. But it's not seedy, really. The place is clean, well lit and full of tourists. In fact the red light district is almost all tourists. Old people and young people walk unembarrassed down the streets. It makes you think about the prudishness with which such material is viewed in other countries. They're just words and it's just sex. "Get over yourselves," Amsterdam seems to be saying.

But think of the children!!!" Tom Delay might say. The Dutch and the tourists simply have the sense not to take "the children" to the red light district. I read a great column by an American sports writer regarding the Janet Jackson thing. He said his family occasionally vacations on the French Riviera, where the kids play among topless sunbathers. And in a development sure to shock Dr. Charles Dobson, the children are still alive, law-abiding and getting good grades.

"What Ms. Jackson’s nipple knew."
And a political aside here that you should feel free to skip. Are there really gonna be congressional hearings into the Janet thing? Are they serious? Grown men are actually gonna summon witnesses, sit self-righteously behind their desks and expect us not to laugh when they ask what Ms. Jackson's nipple knew and when did it know it?

These are the same telecommunications committees that could be talking about the "information divide," the inability of the poor, particularly the rural poor, to access the internet. They could be talking about concentration of media ownership, leading to a handful of people controlling what you see on every channel. This is particularly topical today with the Comcast / Disney thing. How absurd that they're summoning to Washington Mel Karmazin, president of Viacom, whom they could grill about the homoginization of the huge chunk of American media his company owns. But no; old men in suits are gonna spend the day talking about a televised flashing. Just for fun at the end of this entry I'll list what Viacom owns, besides at least one of Janet Jackson's breasts.

With the exception of the guy fixing the bathroom downstairs, the Dutch must be the coolest people in the world. It seems everyone goes everywhere by bicycle.

Sampling the Wares

I’d heard this but you can’t fully appreciate it until you see specially constructed bike lanes jammed with traffic and oceans of bicycles outside big buildings. Even little old ladies pedal away down Utrecht’s historic streets. There’s no novelty in it. This is just how it’s done… how it’s always been done.

I’ve mentioned this before but the Dutch also happen to speak English better than many people who grew up speaking English. At first glance this appears to be because their television and films are almost never dubbed. Everything, even English news interviews, is subtitled. Spend your childhood with everything in a foreign language, subtitled in your own, and you’ll be quite bilingual very soon.

“I imagine many are so fluent that they don’t even realize they’ve switched.”
But I don’t think that’s the base reason so many speak such good English here. I think the answer is hinted at in the fact that the Dutch are not just fluent in English, they’re also quite willing to speak it. Where many other countries are either unable or unwilling to speak English, the Dutch happily switch over as soon as they discover you don’t speak their language. I imagine many are so fluent that they don’t even realize they’ve switched.

I think the reason for this is that somehow the Dutch have a confidence in the durability of their culture that’s missing in some other parts of Europe. I think certain other countries would be horrified to find most films and television channels in English. “Our culture is evaporating,” they would think. But I think being such a small country, Holland has been there and done that. Foreign infiltration of their culture has always been inevitable. But they’ve discovered that afterward they’re still speaking Dutch, riding bicycles and floating down canals. Think about the passion with which some oppose the proliferation of Spanish in the U.S. and you can appreciate the laid-back attitude of the Dutch.

"I love walking by people who are taller than me."
I suppose my affinity for the people here comes from the fact that I feel at home here. I'm a typical American mutt, but I recall being told that there's a lot of Dutch in my family's history. It seems to fit. People generally have no idea I'm a tourist until I open my mouth. I've been asked for directions twice. The Dutch are often thin, blond and they're on average the tallest people in the world. I fit right in. I love walking by people who are taller than me.

They even have a sense of humor. In the center of Utrecht is a large statue overlooking a plaza. It's a bunny with big ears, posing as Rodin's "The Thinker." I'll take a photo.

I’m not entirely sure where I go from here, but I have plenty of time to decide. Doing nothing isn’t very exciting for you to read about, but it’s just what I need at the moment. I hope that when I leave here I’ll be rested enough for one more push. Another three or four months through Eastern Europe, Russia and ending in either China or India. That’s the plan at the moment, subject as always to change without prior notice.

Viacom owns:

• The CBS television network
• 39 local television stations across the country, including at least one station in nearly every major city
• 16 cable networks, including MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Showtime
• Spelling Television, Big Ticket Television and King World Productions. These are the guys who make, among other things, Oprah, Dr. Phil, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Judge Judy, and a ton of what you see on the WB network.
• Paramount Pictures. You may have heard of Titanic, Forrest Gump or Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 180 radio stations across 22 states and the biggest cities.
• Simon and Schuster Publishing and its eight subsidiaries
• Blockbuster Video stores
• Paramount amusement parks like King's Dominion in Virginia
• Two roadside billboard companies

And we wonder why every radio station sounds the same and there's never anything on TV.