For a peaceful heart. (posted a day late)

It’s been a long day not helped by the fact that due to a slight misunderstanding between me and… the concept of time zones, I ended up waking up twenty minutes before I was due to leave the hotel. So many dilemmas, so little brain power: should I shower or eat breakfast? Eat breakfast: should I pack neatly or should I pack badly and eat breakfast? Eat breakfast: should I get up or stay in bed a little longer? EAT BREAKFAST. Duly breakfasted I leapt on the coach to discover that somebody else had done the same thing, how I laughed when he got on the bus late but it was really relief that my internal body clock had woken me up, just in time.
On the coach then to Utrecht to be put in a group that was going to look around the town hall whilst everyone else looked at exciting new buildings… seemed a bit unfair until we saw the town hall which had been designed by the man who made the New Scottish Parliament building. He sounded let’s say a bit eccentric, my favourite bit of eccentricity was that he used to come and talk to the building which he thought of as a person to ask how it was feeling. It made me think, eccentricity apart that it was a nice idea that we have a continuing relationship with the things we make, that we should come back from time to time to see how it is doing. The building was fantastic, hopefully I will be able to get the pictures on Facebook for people to see, full of wonderful wacky features but the best thing of all was that he had left the old building pretty much intact inside the new one. Literally the new embracing the old.
Utrecht was beautiful so it was a bit of a shock to go to Amsterdam, which was busy, noisy and full of people looking for drugs. Not many Dutch people in this pursuit but plenty of Dutch people making money out of them. We visited a number of innovative housing projects including one on a man made island where in a row of standard sized terraces each one had been built by a different architect, it looked fun but you were desperate to find out what it was like to live there and they weren’t telling.
One last thing: as we wandered and Amsterdam and I despaired a bit of the place we suddenly saw a gate and through the gate we came into what appeared to be a village green with a little church in the middle: “The English Reformed Church.” It was lovely, though we weren’t able to stay long, it was like an injection of peace. Was this because it was surprising to find it? Was it because it contrasted so completely with the world which surrounded it? Whatever the case we all decided that regenerating an area we had to find a way to incorporate these oasis of peace.