Europe is in full bloom in April. In this beautiful spring season, I was fortunate enough to come to the Netherlands, the "Kingdom of Tulips".
I have long heard that the Netherlands is rich in tulips, but without being there, you can never imagine how magnificent the tulip fields are!
From the plane landing at Amsterdam International Airport, and then transfer to the bus of the travel agency to the hotel where you are staying, you will pass by on the way. Tulip production on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In the afterglow of the setting sun, the bus turned several times and suddenly entered a colorful world. Looking around, the tulip field outside the car window is endless, and what is even more eye-catching is that the tulips here are planted separately according to different colors: yellow, white, red, and purple, one by one. This is also enough to show the "artistic skill" of Dutch flower farmers in planting flowers. If it is all yellow or red, it looks spectacular, but it is a bit monotonous. Today, colorful tulips like this are arranged in a patchwork pattern, like a boundless oil painting spread on the field, which is both spectacular and gorgeous. The bus floats like a cruise ship on the sea of flowers, and the villages near and far, like small islands in the ocean, slowly disappear from sight. Eyes full of flowers, full of colors, dazzling.
According to legend, there was a beautiful girl in ancient Holland who lived in a majestic castle. Three warriors fell in love with her at the same time, one gave her a crown, one gave her a sword, and the other gave her a gold nugget. But she didn't love anyone, so she had to pray to the flower god. The flower god deeply felt that love could not be forced, so he turned the crown into flowers, the sword into green leaves, and the gold nuggets into bulbs, which together became a tulip.
In fact, the Netherlands did not grow tulips originally. Tulips were introduced from Austria, but the smart Dutch people foresaw the value of tulips and planted them widely in China as an industry. Now the Netherlands is not only the world's largest producer of tulips, but also the world's largest flower distribution center. Every day, hundreds of tons of flowers are sent from Amsterdam to all over the world. Tulips have become not only the national flower of the Netherlands, but also the source of wealth for the Netherlands. I think it is very rare in the world that a flower can become an important economic pillar of a country.
According to reports, the history of Dutch tulips began with a horticulturalist named Clusius. In the 16th century, Clusius, who was a gardener in the Vienna Royal Garden, did everything possible to get the beautiful tulips native to Asia from the Austrian ambassador to Turkey, and brought the tulips to the Netherlands, so that this flower quickly spread. All over the Netherlands, there was a tulip craze. At first, the value of tulips increased exponentially, many people planted tulips like crazy, and some even traded a villa with a garden for a precious variety.
Now, every spring, when the tulips bloom, tourists from all over the world come to the Netherlands to flock to the Keukenhof Park, the largest bulb garden in the world. Of course, I was no exception to visit. The Keukenhof Park covers an area of 32 hectares. From March to May every year, more than 7 million tulips and other bulbs bloom here. Every year, the Keukenhof Tulip Park takes this product as its biggest highlight. The Dutch combine the theme of the flower season with the classic elements of the Netherlands, such as nature, humanities, art, and pastoral fields, so that tourists can experience the characteristics of different fields of the Netherlands in one trip.
The next day, I drove from downtown Amsterdam into the picturesque Dutch countryside. According to the tour guide, the Netherlands is a small country bordering the North Sea. With a land area of only 40,000 square kilometers and a population of 15 million, the terrain is low-lying, with an average altitude of about one meter. Not only are there no mountains, but even hills are rare. The bus traveled more than 300 kilometers on this vast plain, allowing me to enjoy the idyllic scenery of the Netherlands along the way.
The Dutch countryside is more like an oil painting. White clouds floated in the azure blue sky, and beneath the white clouds lay endless green fields. There were several villages scattered on the fields, and the pointed red roofs were particularly eye-catching under the sunlight. Around the village, there are black and white cows, jujube red horses, and white sheep, lying or standing on the grass freely, grazing leisurely, and occasionally there are geese and wild ducks mixed with cattle and sheep, a peaceful scene. In the Dutch countryside, there are no big towns, no high-rise buildings and factories, no roar of machines, no noise of carriages and horses, and people feel warmth and tranquility when they are in it.
Giethoorn is located in the De Wieden Nature Reserve in the province of Overijssel in the northwest of the Netherlands. During the Ice Age, De Wieden was located between two moraine belts, so the terrain was lower than the surrounding area, resulting in poor soil and peat swamps. Except for reeds and sedges, other plants were not easy to grow, and the only resource was land. peat underneath. In order to dig out more peat blocks and sell them to make money, the locals continue to dig the land to form narrow ditches. Later, people widened the ditches in order to allow ships to pass through and transport materials, thus forming the beauty of the interweaving of canals and lakes today.
Giethoorn is also known as "Green Venice", and also known as "Netherlands Venice", because the reflections of green houses are reflected on the water. The roofs of the houses here are made of reeds, which are more durable than any building materials, and are warm in winter and cool in summer, rain-proof and sun-resistant. It is said that in the past, reeds were a substitute for bricks and tiles that poor people could not afford, but now reeds are building materials that only rich people can afford, and the price is dozens of times that of bricks and tiles. And the land price here has already risen, so most of the residents are mostly doctors, lawyers and other high-income professionals.
The Netherlands enjoys the reputation of "Europe's back garden". Spring in the Netherlands is indeed "the most beautiful spring on earth". Every spring, the Netherlands is "submerged" by flowers. , the majestic windmills form a unique and beautiful scenery in the Netherlands.
While visiting the pleasant beauty of the Netherlands in spring, tourists kept sighing, and some even joked that "God is so unfair, why did you give Europe the good mountains, water, heaven and earth." In fact, God is fair. Every country has its own unique mountains and rivers, but if people don't cherish and protect them, they will be punished sooner or later. Being in a picturesque foreign country, I have been thinking, we seem to really need to do something, for the sky, for the earth, for our beautiful home...
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