> Now, it's been over half my life since I've been there. I'm sure my memory of the experience is skewed and incomplete, and a lot may have changed in the last 17 years. Still, we were never able to make such extensive use of public transport anywhere else.
>

As another former expatriate who hasn't been back to where I used to live abroad (the Netherlands) for pretty much half my life, I... uh... have no decent conclusion to this sentence. But I can say that when I was there, the Dutch public transportation seemed pretty good. We took the Spoorwegen (trains) a lot, and the buses a lot as well. Gas is incredibly expensive there, and we only had one car that my dad used for work (company car), so we either used the trains and buses or we biked. If we were going somewhere close, like to the village for fresh bread or something, we biked. Anywhere further it was usually train.

Seeing as I am going back there again this summer for the first time in... hmm... 7 years, it will be interesting to see what has happened. Almost scary, in a way, since I know it will have changed a lot, either an actual change or a change in my own perception, and I don't want that to happen. But I know it will. And since we won't be renting a car (gas prices again, meh) and we won't have our bikes, we'll be using public transportation completely. So it had better still be good. :)

Sosi"gotta remember more of my Dutch. De bloemen zijn op de tafel. Kikkers zeg kwak."qui