The 94th Episode : Where's the border?
[June, 1997 Antwerp, Belgium => Amsterdam, Netherlands]
I visited the distributor’s customers, i.e. end users, to hear their live voices on our products. As mentioned Belgium is a small country, so we had them deal in the Netherlands as well.
To the Netherlands we ran on the expressway. There was a border on the way, where was a place like a service area. I wanted to get a stamp and got into a building. The officer wouldn’t stamp because people had already been able to pass freely.
It was quite flat from Antwerp to Rotterdam, Netherlands as the expressway was located along the sea. The highest place in Belgium is 1,056 ft in Belgium and 2,273 ft in the Netherlands, those points are located close to Germany in the south. No mountains were around us at all. Only flat lands spread in my eyes. If I didn’t mind I couldn’t recognise the border line.
We got on the expressway again after our visit of the users. I could see Rotterdam port, that is the biggest port in the world. So many cranes were loading and discharging containers. The scale was quite different from that of Kobe or Osaka. The cargoes I arranged in Japan were discharged here.
I was to fly to Manchester, England from Amsterdam in the afternoon. He sent me to Rotterdam station and I would take a train to the airport. He said it was available to the airport but it was a little far and I wanted to enjoy railway trip.
Bicycles were very popular in the Netherlands, so they can carry them into trains. Of course the equipment is well arranged. Such a train carried me to the Schiphol station (now Schiphol Airport station).
