This is our second trip to the small city of Apledoorn in Holland and we already feel like home there. Every time we walk those lands, a strange feeling of peace, joy and steadiness of heart invades us. We know by now that there are no better words to describe this lovely little country than words that appeal to its vast teritory of woods, rivers, green lands, beautiful houses, old farms and amazing scenery. But it seems like we're not the only ones to feel this way.

MEMORIES OF HOLLAND

Thinking of Holland
I see broad rivers
slowly chuntering
through endless lowlands,
rows of implausibly
airy poplars
standing like tall plumes
against the horizon;
and sunk in the unbounded
vastness of space
homesteads and boweries
dotted across the land,
copses, villages,
couchant towers,
churches and elm-trees,
bound in one great unity.
There the sky hangs low,
and steadily the sun
is smothered in a greyly
iridescent smirr,
and in every province
the voice of water
with its lapping disasters
is feared and hearkened.


HENDRIK MARSMAN (dutch poet)