I’ve been to Der Nederlands on a road trip. Literally decided I needed to see Europe so jumped in my car and drove to Dover for the ferry.

Exited France as quickly as possible and spent lots of time in Belgium (Bruges) and Amsterdam. I partook of your cannabis, truffles and gawped at your red light women. I’m gay so I wasn’t interested in them but holy shit they looked FAR too attractive to be standing in windows. They could have easily been models. Quite stunned how good looking they were.

Wrong equipment though - I wish you had a ‘twink red light district’ with guys in windows but I didn’t see any. Was too busy being a ‘dutchaboo’.

I parked in Rotterdam and went to see if I could catch the tube - I got there and everything was in Dutch!! I got confused and left scared. My journey from Utrecht was interesting. I drove down the motorway high on truffles thinking I needed the dashed line in the middle of the road had to merge with my car bonnet. I came to my senses and realised I was speeding in the middle of the motorway at 5am and should probs pull over.

That’s when my car broke down in a service station and my phone battery was dying. I managed to call for recovery JUST before my battery died (for some reason the services refused to let me use their phone - I may have looked like a lunatic).

When the recovery guy came and restarted my car I was overcome with gratitude and started crying. Trying to give him a pile of Euros as a “tip” (we Brits don’t do tips) and he just kept saying “no, no, no” and almost ran off. But oh my god that Dutchman was an angel! He saved my life. Can you imagine being in a foreign country with no phone, no car, no help. That Dutch angel is out there somewhere. I hope he’s having his best life.

I did briefly try learning Dutch but it’s a lot like English while being JUST different enough that it fucks your head up. I can see a Dutch sentence and it almost reads like silly English except the odd word that’s FULL German! But you know what - Norwegian is even stranger! Cos it has the cadence and accent of English with some words even sounding English - but it’s all nonsense. So Norwegian is like you’re having a stroke and Dutch is like a drunk German speaking English.

I’d love to go back some time and experience the more calm, grown-up side of Der Nederlands some time. See some historical sites, visit museums, etc. Rather than the typical touristy drug and sex stuff that people do.

Oh and my apologies for going the wrong way round a roundabout that one time. All the cycle lanes and habit confused me.