The countryside of Holland was much like a description of a fairy-tale. Rolling pastures were flanked with graveyards with neat dark stones, carved with names and phrases in Dutch, which often gave the impression of being somewhere between French and German with its own special flare thrown in. The sky drizzled persistently, and gave the lush foliage curled around the striking stones a green gleam. The paths were winding and long, making their way through fields and dales, cows and sheep and even geese all grazing at their leisure on green, rain fed grasses.
The air was clear, if humid, and was a good contrast between cool rain and hot air. A good walking weather that made the scenery as it went by pop more. As one drew further and further away from the moderate bustle of the city, the fields begin to change. Slowly, structures of concrete covered in mosses poked from the countryside, old and weathered, nestled in between rolling, emerald hills and patchy cows and sheep. They were silent, dark, and tomb like, and more forbidding than the grave stones in the yard closer to the city. They were slanted up, out of the ground, then laid almost flat at the top, bearing only a slight tilt opposite of the former arch, before falling sheer into the earth again. They had great plunging holes in their faces, digging away into the cool earth beneath the pastures. They were slowly being reclaimed by moss and wind wear, but they bore a solemn reminder to times long past.
Other than the looming sentinels that arced from the earth, the countryside was pleasant, lively, and calm. Some of the buildings even had thatched roofs on white plaster walls, the only sign that they were not straight from the distant past were satellite dishes poking out from their eves, cutting into the thatch, just slightly. The bikes and the cars both became fewer and farther between, and the railway faded into the distance. Gradually, the farmland gave way into soft wooded area, gentle and cool in its soft shadows. The trees were mostly leaved, green and tall, with no branches near their roots. Some of the trees seemed bark-less, their tall trunks were white and slightly mottled, their leaves were lobed and yellow green. They were the most common type of tree on the winding dirt road that stretched beneath their protective reaches. The deeper into the woods one walked, the more common the ghostly monuments were, as if they were growing from the ground like mournful fungi.
Upon crossing a drawbridge, the old monuments were quickly forgotten, instead the graceful arc of a stone building suspended upon two pillars in a murksome canal became the focus of thought. It too, was overgrown with moss and presented a loom of warning bidding enemies not cross. But one portion of the building, connected to land by a deck, had been transformed into a lively pub, and warm light glinted inside. This building had once been the drawbridge to the great Castle Rijnauwen, the body of which was located further back into the wood. Upon crossing the bridge through the stone tunnel, the wood thickened and darkened, and many paths branched off from their origin. The canals narrowed until they were small tributaries choked with duckweed so thickly that they appeared to be strips of solid green in the soft, dark earth. Herons dipped into their waters, disturbing the lily pads, with blooms cream and yellow, searching for small, brown frogs.
The castle itself was small and created from brickwork, more of an estate than a castle, truly, but still proud in bearing and history. It was cordoned off by a gate with spikes and barbed wire at the top, and it was then that it became clear that the looming structures in the fields were connected to this castle… relics from a wartime tunnel system that ran for kilometers under the picturesque farmland. The sentinels that were brushed past so lightly by livestock were in fact ports to the surface meant to dispense gunfire, and were part of the western line. The Germans had taken the castle in The Second (fact check!!) World War, and had used it as a base for their military goals. The weight of history was in jarring contrast to the sleep canals and bountiful land, and the deaths of years past could be felt, a whisper of a ghost, on the cool woodland breezes.
