I Discover a Beach and Dragons
My last post wasn’t very long despite my warning to hold onto your underpants. For those of you still holding onto them, please continue. For those of you who lost faith and withdrew them from your clenching fists, shame on you, resume your death grip.
Despite popular belief, there is no nude beach in the Netherlands. All we have is a beach, a normal one, with sand and shells and water. Fascinating I know, but hey, the Ocean is still better than Lake Michigan. My roommates and I picked up our bikes and made the trek to see this mythical body of water. Riding there we discovered where all the parks had been hiding, and where all the suburbans had hidden themselves.
It was a gloomy day, most days here tend to be. The locals promise me it gets better, but that does not stop them from saying the Sun is a legend and we should stop asking about it.
My travel companions proceeded to go into Instagram mode and started documenting everything by blurring the truth of their images with filters and color schemes. I myself wandered. I took a picture here or there, but I wanted to see what this beach had to offer. I walked down the coast a ways before hiking up a nearby hill. Erosion is apparently a large problem here. All the grassy areas were barred off with barbwire, a local warned me there was a fine for taking shortcuts, but I reassured him I was here to walk the long path.
I would like to talk more about the beach, but at this point I feel I’d just be drolling on and would bore you. Instead I’ll tell you about all the dragons I found!
Chinese New Year fell on February 1st. Chinatown was the place to be, brimming with flags, dragons, and fireworks, it was a wonderful day to celebrate something I knew so little about.
Tourists were lining up and down the streets in wait for the promised New Years parade. I and a friend joined the fray as well before realizing that it wasn’t like any parade you’d see in the States.
Moving from shop to shop, Chinese dancers wearing dragon costumes performed, dancing to steel drums and setting off huge chains of fireworks. Each shop would put out a cabbage over their door and the dragon would proceed to do a ceremonial dance in front before devouring (reaching out a hand and grabbing) the cabbage, at which point they would move to the next shop.
It was a fun festival overall. A strange bit of color to a city I thought I had been close to figuring out.