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All I remember about Holland was the seaside dikes as high mounds of dirt that kept the sea at bay. I remember flatness and flowers, big and real windmills, and people actually wore wooden shoes often painted in bright colors. Of course I got to see the real Holland dikes, in which the little boy stuck his finger to save the nation. It is what first struck me. This is not the dike I imagined. It is one hundred feet thick. A boy saved a nation from nature. That was a big story when I was a kid. I could save a nation. If only we had dikes. None around where I grew up. That was the problem with it. It was so glorious and all, but since I had no dikes, it was never going to happen to me. But still if I were him. Imagine - all night with your finger, and then your hand, and then your arm, all wet and cold stuck in a sticky hole, and not knowing at any minute, whether the whole thing is going to come gushing through and carry you away to oblivion. Well this is how I imagined it when I was little, plugging the hole.
Amsterdam was the thing. I first recollect rats at the campsite - big ones. Well I saw - one-anyway. We stayed probably at an Amsterdam city campsite. I remember we set down on a wide swath of grass next to a huge hedge, which may have had a canal on the back side. Canals, canals and more canals, with bridges having side-walks and benches. I remember a guy at one of these bridge benches, eating smoked herring and French bread, drinking wine and throwing bread to the fish below in the canal.
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