Today I thought I would walk around the Airport area itself. I am staying at the Sheraton which is bang opposite the airport - not even a 5 minute walk. So, I take off after lunch, sticking to the cycle / pedestrian lanes, slowly leaving the Hotel behind. I see a rabbit (or is it a hare) scamper and get inside a burrow, like the prairie dogs I saw at Denver. Waited for some time for it to come out, with no luck.
Anyway I continue walking and I should be like 2kms away the hotel when I come to a junction with big buildings - one of them being the Microsoft office. I click few snaps and wait there thinking whether to return back to the hotel or continue forward.
That is when I see a hunky blue SUV cross by. I think I have seen the same one earlier and glance back to look at it. There is something written in dutch on it, which I assume (wrongly, as I learn later) to be the name of the company it belongs to (that part was correct). As I glance at it, the occupants (2 males) in the front seat look back at me.
And then I see them slow down and take an illegal U-turn on the road itself, which surprises me because folks don't drive like that here. And what the driver does next zaps me. After coming over to my side of the road, he just drives the SUV over the grassy stretch separating the road and the pavement I am standing on, gets onto the cycling track and stops near me.
Now, this is not an offroading range for someone to try such driving. So, realization immediately dawns on me. It is the local cops. Well....
As I stand there, the Jeep parks a little away from me. While I am wondering what it is that I did wrong, the cop in the passenger seat jumps out and comes towards me, saying, "Hello". I wish him back and ask him if there is any problem.
He asks me a series of questions, "Why am I walking around here?", "Am I alone?", "Where do I stay?", "What am I in Netherlands for?" etc etc. I tell him that I am here on work, am staying at the Sheraton nearby and I am alone. He asks for an ID and I show him my passport. He wants a business card - I hand over one. He takes these to the guy driving the SUV - they talk for a couple of minutes and then he returns the documents to me.
He tells me that everything is OK. I ask him if it is not right to walk around. He says it is perfectly OK to walk around, but with the threat of terrorists, they have to be careful and thus the quick check. He adds. "It is nothing personal".
Throughout the conversation, he was polite in his conversation. And thank God he knew English (pretty fluent too), else I would have had a tough time explaining myself.
Note to self : Blue is not just KLM's colour. But also that of the local police and their uniforms. :-)
