Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, the small southwestern part of Holland along the Belgian border where I was born and grew up, is done away with by Lonely Planet as an irrelevant region of farmland and chemical plants.
Now this is not true. There are some interesting old buildings in the towns of Hulst, Sluis, Aardenburg. There are characteristic tree-lined ‘polder’ dikes. In the half submerged conservation area of Saeftinghe over 200 types of birds have been spotted.
But íf it were true, what’s wrong with farms and factories? A TRAVELLER is curious. He first and foremost wonders what a place is like. Beautiful or not, that matters less. Whether there is ‘something to see’ is a worry of tourists.
And then: a TRAVELLER is open to everything. A cloud in the sky. Furrows in a field. The daily life of the one hundred thousand people living in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen.
At Lonely Planet they don’t understand this essence of TRAVEL.