Venray

I started this post sitting in a hotel room in a town called Venray in the Netherlands. Why was I there you may ask? Good question. I took a plane to Dusseldorf airport to go to a conference. I used ryanair, and the Dusseldorf/Weeze airport turns out to be 70 km from Dusseldorf. I stayed in Venray because it was closer to the airport. When I got off the plane last Sunday I noticed that there were many people actually sleeping in the airport. Venray is a nice town. I arrived there in the afternoon and went for a walk in the city center. There were lots of nice cafes with seats outside. Cafe culture, so sweet. Later in the evening I went for a walk. Many of the street cafes were closed, so I walked into the outer edges of the town's centre. There I found a kebab shop where I feasted on another Donner kebab. Although I like to think of myself as an outlaw, I am not so wild. At the edge of the town there were some cafes where you smoke dope. I just stared in at the window and watched the cool young things get mellow. I did go to a bar. No one there spoke English, but I did hear a conversation, that involved the words Stella and Heineken. Yes, isn't it wonderfull how travelling broadens the mind. There was some kind of rave/dance party at the edge of the town center. The drive to the airport was mostly through the country. Even the countryside seems ordered and designed in the Netherlands. The forests in Germany always strike me as very ancient and full of wild fury. The German forests have not been designed, but seem to have been there since the birth of mankind. Of course in the Netherlands, everytime I passed a big greenhouse. I winked to myself and wondered what they could be growing.