Tour to Netherland with a 14 member group:

Together Everyone Achieves More

Yaam petra inbum ivvayagamum peruga

Perfect example for the above remarks is our Italy cum Amsterdam Trip

After putting lot of efforts with few people - losing their night sleep and getting visa - wasting their precious work schedule in booking hotels - making International Calls to hotels - doing Airline booking - collecting Recommendation letters - calling Embassies/consulates, we made this trip.

Some of them paid extra money to join this excellent group. Now coming to our trip, We left by Office bus (free ride) to City Centre at 4.15pm. Ramaswamy’s Travellers Cheque and money conversion of more than £200 helped us in getting Netherland Gilders without commission. Our bus left at 6pm from Bristol Malborough Station with 14 people (Naresh, Krishna, Senthil, Karthik, Manikandan, Me, Sampath, Subbulakshmi, Anupama, Anand, Sharat, Aniruddha, Ranjith, Ramaswamy and Shaik). Some bus passengers really got wild not able to tolerate our conversations (shoutings) across seats. An old English lady, who sat near Ramaswamy desperately wanted to switch seats for some reason. Later, it looked like she targeted the window seat. We reached London at 8.20pm. Traffic inside London is as usual worst and it can be compared with Arcot Road, Chennai traffic. We took dinner in McDonalds and joined the long queue waiting to check in Euroline bus. Passport verifying lady raised her eyebrow on receiving 14 Indian passports together. Euroline bus is not as comfortable as National Express bus. Bus started at 10.30pm from London. We reached Dover around 12.30am. From Dover, we took a mega-ferry. It started at 1am. 90 minutes ferry ride here is not as pleasant as our ferry ride in Isle of Wight. Sampath got inspiration on seeing a probable long term friend. We got down at Calais, France around 2.30pm. Time needs to be resetted one hour forward as we are in a different time zone now. Around 9am local time, we reached the Amsterdam bus station.

Bus station doesn’t look good. With the help of some Amsterdam experienced friends like Shaik, we took a zone1 Train ticket and reached Amsterdam Centraal Station (Amstel) without much problem. The colour of the railway building, the number of cycles outside, the beautiful stagnated river outside, posh buildings and the crowd remembered the beautiful city of Chennai, India. First place we visited is the Anne Frank House, the place where few Jewish people hid inside a single house for 3 years to escape from Nazi nuts. As the queue is too long, we just took photo from outside. The road in which we went from Central Station to Anne Frank House is really an excellent one and those who didn’t see that needs to really feel sorry for it (Just kidding).

Naresh and Ranjith took video of some places using my Camcorder and the quality of photography seems to be exceptional. Aniruddha seem to be loaded with plenty of information about Holland, so we heard more information from him compared to the guide. Infact, Guide’s commentary took many people in the bus to sleep.

Holland is called the country of flowers, however flower show doesn’t seem to be open in August, so we thought of going to some alternative place. Some one suggested Sex Museum as a best place. We went there and it doesn’t impress us. We took morning breakfast in McDonalds. Netherland people doesn’t seem to be courteous at all. We didn’t hear the word “Please/Sorry” for 2 full days. Next we went in the City Bus tour. The commentary was in English and Spanish alternatively. Native language however seem to be Deutsch. From the Bus tour, we saw a beautiful hotel built with ship look, a beautiful looking Chinese restaurant in a Chinese style building, an old huge Windmill, Diamond factory (Some rich colleagues like Anupama and Subbulakshmi bought few diamond ornaments) and Kodambakkam or Grant Road type area. In the evening, we took Canal boat ride. Amsterdam is almost filled with small bridges, so our boat ride lasted around 1 ½ hours and covered almost many good places. The restaurants are pretty costly there. I took Dulhan Thali for around 30 NGL (10 Pounds). We reached Moonvick hotel, Hague next after travelling 50 minutes from Amsterdam Den Hague Voorburg. It is a 3 start hotel and the facilities are really excellent.

Next day we took the Great Holland tour, which almost cover all places in Holland. Holland and Netherland seem to be used alternatively to represent the country name. First we were taken to a shoe house. Here they do shoe in almost all colours. The material used is fully wood. Shoes are impressive, but the place just looked like a small Bata shop. Rotterdam is next. It is a new city with very tall buildings. A bridge with latest and modern construction stunned us. Next we were taken to a place where they do Porcelain plates, cups etc. After coming out of the place, we got a doubt whether the moulding used is Injection moulding or something else. Next is, lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I took Vegetable Chopsey with Cashew nuts. After a long lunch, We reached International Court of Justice in Hague and took few photoes. On the way to Maduradam, there was a beautiful beach, however the bus guide thought, it is not a worthy one to have a stop. Maduradam has a park, where they have put the entire Netherland in miniature. It looked amazing. Later we went to some more entertaining places. Enthusiasm shown by Krishna and Anand in showing these places (as they have seen earlier) is worth mentionable. After visiting these entertaining places, we took the 8pm Euroline bus. We had to a stop at Belgium to accommodate some more passengers. This time, instead of coming by ferry, the bus went inside a Euro rail. Euro rail travelled in the Euro tunnel from France to Dover, UK. We reached London around 6am in the morning. As the first bus from London to Bristol starts around 8am, we had a 2 hour wait there. Some of the colleagues who need to return early, paid some extra £35 and came by train. I reached Bristol at 10.20am and I was in office at 11am to start the usual boring stuff.

The calmest people in the group seem to be Manikandan, Senthil, Sharat and Karthik.

Everyone who contributed to this trip deserve a thanks.

We should feel sorry for Anne not joining us. She is one of the people, who took early lead in moving things like writing to Louise on recommendation letters. She also deserve a big thanks from all of us.