Notes From Hell

I am in the Netherlands for a conference for the next couple of days. A few notes:

• About 2x the size of New Jersey, The Netherlands has about the same population density (higher than Haiti or Japan).
  
• I penciled in 2-3 hours to clear customs and get from the airport to central Amsterdam, where I could make my way to the central train station and then board a train to Maastricht, at the other end of the country. This all turned out to be unnecessary because - get this - they have a big train station right at the airport! You walk out of customs, buy a ticket from the machine, go to Platform 3, and Bob's your uncle.
• The trains, which run constantly, are modern, clean, and quiet. My seat had a reading light, which actually worked.
• I had to change trains at Utrecht, which delayed me for another ten minutes. Change trains at Utrecht? Do they have any idea how silly that sounds when this is all I know about Utrecht?
  
• Apparently unaware of the Marxist yolk under which they labor, the population seems mildly cheerful.
  
• The countryside, much of which lies below sea level, is mostly flat, agricultural, and wet until you get well inland. Here in Maastricht we are really on dry land, right on the German and Belgian borders. Maastricht claims to be the longest continuously-occupied settlement in the Netherlands. Those bitches in Nijmegen can talk about their Roman charter, but there's no evidence anyone lived there in the early Middle Ages.
  
• Coffee is available.
• Modernism is big here. The whole country seems to have made a commitment to a national architectural fabric of steel, glass, and colorfully painted concrete. In Maastricht they have done a very nice job of preserving the town center while putting a lot of modern infrastructure and office space in and around it.
• Everyone has cool glasses and nice hair.

I will be out in the field today, mingling unobtrusively with the locals, trying to learn more about the crude and misguided socialism that has made the Netherlands one of the ten richest countries in the world (GDP per capita).