Europe Travel Guides

Geography

Although the Dutch have the cute habit of calling anything higher than a speed bump a mountain, the Netherlands is largely a flat and soggy bog. Vast amounts of land has been reclaimed from the sea over the centuries, and the drained polders are protected by dykes, very few of which are plugged by little boys' fingers. More than half of the country lies below sea level and only in the southeast Limburg province will you find hills. The Netherlands is bordered by the North Sea, Belgium and Germany. The Rhine is the major river, slurping up run-off from the proper mountains in Germany and Switzerland and slopping it out all over the flatlands.

Forget about wilderness in the Netherlands. This is Europe's most densely populated country, but it also feels like the most organised place in the world. The western hoop of cities including Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam is one of the most densely populated conurbations on earth, and even out of this area it doesn't get exactly isolated. Towns often blur from one to the next, linked by highways and bicycle paths. Neat, flat, muddy fields and tame and pleasant woodlands act as buffers; there are even places where you can hear the twittering of birds above the constant traffic drone.