in an oil painting we travel

We travel through the German countryside. Even if I had been blindfolded and on a magical mystery tour only to wake up on this train I believe I would have known I was travelling through the German countryside. Tall alpine forests, green fields, grey skies, a light drizzle of rain. It is however the brown brick houses with white window frames and steeply slanted tiled roofs that give it away. A child jumping on a trampoline out the front of one of these cottage homes reminds me that this is real and I am not travelling through a landscape painting.

But the painting continues as I order some snacks on the train only to be served by a man in a red pin-striped shirt with shoulder length artificially waved hair and a bushy moustache. I buy Pringles; the Germans buy trays of currywurst and huge pints of beer.

Then out the window the bicycles give it away. Hundreds of them. Bicycle parking lots. Every second person on a bike.

With nostalgia in my heart I like to think we have arrived home for the first time.

We are in Holland.