We went to the Herleen Musuem of Roman Baths. We had a cast of speakers talking to us about crime, planning, and art in the community. In one of our conversations we discovered that the President of the Netherlands will not meet with the Dali Lama (spell checker is in Dutch so I apologize for all the misspellings). He will not meet with him because of fear of retaliation from the Chinese Government. The Netherlands is such a small country that they can not gamble with China and all of the exporting. In fact the Netherlands is soo dependent on other countries because it is so small. The Dutch are very upset about this. I can understand.
We then traveled to Vaals (population 10,000) which is on the border of Germany. The town has 50 nationalities and 40% are German. In Aachen, a German town with a population of 270,000, the university is expanding and it will generate 10,000 jobs. Vaals is trying to partner with Aachen to build a vision for the future.
We briefly discussed the drug and sex policy of the Netherlands. The government looked at the drugs and prositution similiar to our sex education debate. They could have prohibited both and created more of a problem because it was never discussed or make it more open so that it wasn't a big deal.......they chose the open angle. The Dutch do not participate as much in the drugs and sex it is more of the other countries coming over for a "good time" and then leaving. So far our conversations with the Dutch people has indicated a great frustration with this issue.
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