During my first week in Belgium, I never make my mind to stop at Leiden, which is well known by the university located there. While my friend suggests me to stop for a short morning there, just walk around and to see whether I would like it. The result turns to be a big surprise to me, and maybe it's the last weekend right before Easter Holiday, I encountered a crowd and noisy market there surrounded by slim canals, quiet stone lanes and beautiful blocks.
When I walked out the train station, the light grey sky with strong cold wind makes me chili for a second, even the stone streets are wet to be dark grey. The first image of Leiden is quite plain, clean but a little boring. While, when I walked over the modern foot-bridge, the sun went out finally, and even the sky turned blue and white; close to the noon time, the strong sun shine even makes you take out sun glasses. Only the slightly flooded canals told the truth of overnight rain last night.
There are more locals and students than tourists like me. I feel the peaceful atmosphere everywhere, it seems the person riding the bike surpass you are smiling to you.
For sure, you cannot expect a gorgeous/fancy looking cathedral showing up in the little city; however, you do have chance to look into local European's pre-holiday market, which makes me so excited and impulsive to buy everything I see!
The market is the sea of fresh, colors, and crowd. The scale is unexpected big, it crawls along the main canal, cross-connected by several footbridges which are occupied by bicycles. You can always get off the bargaining 'war' in the market and hide into the quiet lanes just one or two steps far, have a deep breath and check what you have got, then come back to the market again. Clothes (even the second-hand ones), house-keeping tools, metals, hand crafts and even little electronic devices are always at the most outside locations. As you walked in, the theme changed to fresh food (vegetables, breads, nuts, candy & chocolate, cheese, steaks & ham, cheeses & olives, sauces, sausages, I try to list all I remember, but I'm sure something still missing from my memory).
Well, I have to introduce this classic snakes popular in Holland, and already come to other countries of Western Europe like Austria and Germany. Broodje Paling, Dutch-style raw fish sandwich and I still remember my friend told me that, Dutch might be the other civilization having passion about raw fish dishes, except Japanese. This shop (and the only one throughout the whole market in Leiden) is just located at the corner of one footbridge, which is almost at the bottom of the whole market. It attracts a big crowd, whatever locals or visitors, people who are open-minded to raw stuff would be always happy to try. Several handsome guys were hosting the table, pealing the skin of fish which is soooooo fresh. You can buy a sandwich like me; they will put one fish inside with fresh onion cubes, and that's it! But a lot locals buy a box of (just) raw fish, 6 pieces per box! and then they just standing 5 steps away, using fingers to send raw fish into mouth. Woooooo
What does it taste? A little sticky but not disgusting, and even quite soft in your mouth; very strong seafood flavor but very fresh and semi-sweet. With sweet juicy onion and soft bread, it tastes so nice!
More steps, I found some flower booths. It is nearly the perfect season for tulips in Holland, so undoubtedly, they are the main role. The color is never too sharp, which feeds my camera so well. I like those orange tulips with a warmer feeling but also those pure white ones. Even the green flowers are so cute that you want to have them home. The flowers are much more expensive than the foods in the market, poor me, I was just standing and looking at those beautiful colors.
I was not only hanging around in the market, sometimes I turned into little lanes suddenly and walked into the backyard of the city. There are much less flows, even in the daytime, it is so quiet that you would think all is sleeping (but maybe because all are out for the market). The flowers crawling on the stone walls, a little cute mail box in front of someone's door, a line of green trees in the middle of street, they are just normal but beautiful and interesting in my eyes. And I like to watch that young father being 'tortured' by his little boy on his shoulders, and that naughty dog playing so happy in the sands.
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