Differences

Spent much of yesterday admiring the fine windmills out at Zaanse Schans. The place speaks much of Dutch ingenuity allying itself to an appreciation for crafting a decent way of life from the various possibilities of the landscape.

I suppose that's why it's easy to feel almost at home in Amsterdam. For all of its beautiful buildings and sense of the aspirational, you're never too far from the pragmatically ordinary. So much a contrast to the desire for the monumental in Rome.

And another striking difference. We have yet to see a single rough sleeper on the streets here in Holland. In Rome there were plenty (though nothing compared to what we saw late night in Manchester on our last trip there.) I don't know if the Dutch have solved the problem of homelessness, or have hidden it somehow, but they've achieved some kind of much-needed success, at least on the surface (and, hopefully, a lot deeper than that.)