The old nursery rhyme tells of the fair lady on the white horse, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes making music wherever she goes. A bronze sculpture of her stands at the centre of Banbury village, near the new version of the famous Banbury Cross which the Puritans pulled down in the 1600s. The words to her nursery rhyme surround her, running round the platform on which she and her horse stand:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fair lady upon a white horse.
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She will have music wherever she goes.

The identity of the lady remains a subject of much speculation. Was it Queen Elizabeth herself? The reference to rings on her fingers and bells on her toes denotes nobility but is itself a vestige from the Plantagenet era, several generations before Elizabeth. And so the speculation continues. But to me she is a traveller, always joyful, surrounded by constant music; and so she is an impossible traveller, because all travellers bring troubles with them as much as they bring music.

********

My last day in the Netherlands is a beautiful one. My friends and I spend the morning on their balcony, looking out over Groningen’s rooftops, eating pancakes and drinking coffee. But the conversation is not so joyful; somehow our minds turn to our friends who are not going well and to the disappointments of the last few years. Phil and I have been friends for nearly 10 years, and in those years many things have gone unexpectedly. This failure of expectations can, I think, be one of the hardest aspects to the early years of adult life. We enter with so much hope, and, if our hope emerges in tact, it is in a very different form to where it began, and the moment at which our hopes change into something more sustainable can be in itself a frightening process.

What should be a straightforward journey on the train from Groningen to Amsterdam Schipol proves challenging when the train I am on stops at Amersfoort and refuses to take anyone further. What follows is a thirty minute wait, with much confusion on my part, until a hoard of similarly displaced commuters board a train to Amsterdam Central, where we change for a densely packed train to Schipol; I manage to find a seat, but I must sit with my suitcase squeezed in front of me, making my legs go numb, squashed between the suitcase and the seat. As I watch the time disappear before check-in for my flight is over, I pray constantly, aware that I have control over almost nothing in my situation except for how I react to it. If I end up stranded in Amsterdam, I pray, then that will be okay. I can trust in God’s goodness in spite of everything not turning out how I had planned…

Mercifully, I am still able to check in for my flight, with a bit of time to spare, to grab a quick dinner at the terminal. And then, after a few delays at the gate for my flight, we are off. The flight from Amsterdam to Heathrow is an absurdly short one, the kind of distance Australians associate with short domestic flights – Sydney to Canberra perhaps, or Melbourne to Devonport. Unbelievably, several countries and the English Channel are crossed in the little more than an hour it takes from take-off to landing.

And then I am at Heathrow again, met by my friends James and Christie, who take me in their car up to Banbury, Oxfordshire, where I will be staying for the remaining week.

It is difficult to see how beautiful the countryside is in the dark, but on my first morning here I awake to lush green gardens and an overcast sky without rain. The sun comes out at some point during my journey out to Oxford, and though it is not warm I am comfortable without my coat – a perfect day for exploring. And so I set off first into the township of Banbury, where I wander around looking at the many historic buildings which sit so incidentally within the town (the oldest building in Banbury, for instance, a Tudor-era construction, is now a wine shop). I also visit the famous Banbury Cross, a newer version of it built during Victoria’s reign in honour of her daughter’s marriage to the King of Prussia, or the Prince of Prussia, or something along those lines. It is difficult to get a good view of the Cross because it sits in the middle of a rather busy roundabout. But the fair lady is easily visible, off the road and carrying a plaque nearby with information on the Cross and the nursery rhyme. For much of the morning, I have the rhyme playing over in my head, set to a tune of my own making. It makes a pleasant soundtrack to my wanderings.

But by the time I am in Oxford, my mind has become cluttered and unsettled. This has been the norm for most days of my trip, for reasons that I am unsure of: a combination, I suspect, of the change in time zones and the effect this has had on medication I am taking, and the challenges of being in an unfamiliar place where the simple stuff of the day – getting a bus into town; finding s place to eat lunch – becomes complicated. Whatever it is, it troubles me, and disrupts what I expect of my travels.

There is also, I realise later, a degree of disappointment that comes with being in Oxford. You see, there is probably not a place in the world I have more built-up expectation around than Oxford. When I was an early teenager, my ambition was to study at Oxford – History, Literature; the major varied. But I knew that it was Oxford where I wanted to go. The ambition itself became more “realistic” (read: it fizzled), but came to be replaced with another association: my love of C.S. Lewis and, more recently, Tolkien. A few years ago I read Sheldon Vanauken’s memoir, A Severe Mercy, and was absorbed in his love of the place and his intense associations with the development of his own Christian faith, as well as his friendship with Lewis. Around that time I had a dream that I found myself in Oxford, at night. I was walking a quiet street in fog, surrounded by lamps and old English buildings. I think there was a pub nearby. I remember feeling quite intense joy at being in Oxford, and woke up longing to go.

Oxford itself is only partially like my dream. The buildings are the same but the streetscape is denser, busier, than I had expected. What I had notices in Banbury I see even more intensively here – Saxon and Norman buildings are surrounded by modern commerce. The oldest church tower in Oxford is in the city centre and has a cafe beneath it. A Tudor building is the home of a Pret a Manger outlet. The colleges are buzzing – with new students and tourists. The students are impeccably dressed and beautifully spoken. They swear fashionably and talk about Chekhov as I pass them along the Thames.

Reaching a quiet spot where there are some boats sitting beneath a bridge – just the sort of boats you see in pictures of people punting at Oxford – I stop to take some photographs. Walking back up to the footpath I see a man standing at the garbage bins – is he taking the rubbish out or looking though it? – who starts a conversation about photography. What level am I up to, he asks? Are there levels, I wonder? Not very high, I say. Just for fun. Can he teach me something about photography, he asks? Yes, I say. There is a wartime photographer called Ken McClelland, he says. Look him up when you get home. Alright, I say. And another one, he says. An Oxford photographer called Henry Taunt. Look him up. You won’t regret it. Okay, I say. Do you promise me you will do that? I ask. Yes, I say. As I walk off again down the path, I hear him say, You probably think I’m crazy. Perhaps, but what does it mean to be crazy? My mind is hardly settled as I walk along the Thames.

It takes me a long time to realise what is happening to me. I am struggling with the reality of being in Oxford, a place I have longed to see and am now seeing, only finding it to be not entirely what I had expected. It is, in truth, a very busy city with multitudes of wealthy, privileged students who have been born to a life I may never have. C.S. Lewis is not here; I cannot enter Magdalen College (it is closed for the day) and I am shocked at how hard it is to buy his books here, save for a few copies of Narnia and, wedged incidentally amongst the literary criticism in Blackwells, a couple of his critical works. I find a copy of An Experiment in Criticism and go on my way.

I meet James and Christie at the Eagle and Child, the popular haunt where the Inklings famously met. It is a pleasant pub and the food is nice, but I am uncomfortable, I must admit, at two beloved writers being turned into marketing exercises. I feel that somehow my journey to Oxford is different to everyone else’s. In truth it is not. This place belongs no more to me than it does to anyone else; in fact, it belongs to me less.

Over dinner, we talk about Oxford – our mutual likes and dislikes of the place. Cambridge, they tell me, is more beautiful, more like we think Oxford should be. Perhaps Lewis felt the same thing, in the end, finishing his career at Cambridge. Perhaps I should go there. But in the end I would bring the same false expectations to that place too. The secret to travel, I suspect, is to take each place on their own terms. Expectations may need to be shattered in order for this to happen, but false expectations cannot last long anyway.

Coming home, we plan my movements for the remainder of the week. Tomorrow I will go on a drive through the Cotswolds and revisit Magdalen College to see if it is open this time. I will need this time to go with fewer expectations, or at least a readiness to have my expectations challenged. That, however, may be easier said than done.

The weather in Groningen being slightly better on my second full day there, we take the opportunity to climb the tower of the Martinikerk, a tower which was first built in the 1200s but has been rebuilt a number of times since then. Nevertheless, it is a formidable structure, notwithstanding the mechanised revolving door that lets us through to the entrance. The steps are many and it is icily windy as we climb; but mercifully there is no rain and so we can step out at a few points and survey the magnificent view the tower affords of Groningen. Eventually we find ourselves at the top, looking out over the city through the hands of the church clock. I notice the hands move, moments before the bells start sounding for the half hour, a surprising din that lasts a minute or so and leaves us both shocked and exhilarated when it is over. And then we take the stairs again, a little dizzy from the ascent and the tightness of the spiral beneath us. The air is fresh when we set out again and there is light drizzle, but this passes, and we are able to enjoy the more historic side of Groningen without the worst extremes of the autumn weather.

In the afternoon we set off towards the main canal running through Groningen. There is found the Groninger Museum, an intriguing, rectangular building covered in a mosaic of tiles, sitting within the canal with much of the museum’s exhibits half-below, half-above the waterline. It is a striking building and its exhibits are equally striking, including a permanent exhibition of 20th century Dutch Impressionist works – Dijkstra and others of his vintage – and a fascinating collection of Chinese ceramics dating to the high period of Dutch exploration and trade throughout Asia. Then there are the two special exhibitions: a collection of sculptures by a modern Chinese artist, Yin ???, who uses old clothes and other found objects to make large, intriguing representations of life, culture and emotion; and a collection of 19th and 20th century Canadian landscape painters. Both collections, in their very different ways, reflect their changing societies – China under urbanisation and Canada at a time of change in its northern rural areas. The collection is surprising and beautiful, and at times it is nice just to stand at one of the windows and look out onto the canal, the surface of which stands at chest level. It is a peaceful outlook, and a work of art in itself.

****

The next day takes us to two quite different places, though united surprisingly by one thing: the period of the German occupation of the Netherlands during the 1940s.

First we go to Haarlem, the place I know best as the home of Corrie Ten Boom, the spinster and watchmaker’s daughter who made her home a “hiding place” for both Jews and young men who refused to join the German forces during the war. Her house, still above a jeweller’s store, has now become a free Museum. Tours are run, in English and Dutch, on alternate half hours. The group on my tour is unexpectedly large and as a result we struggle all to fit in the space, but even this makes the experience an interesting one: it gives us a sense of how remarkable the Ten Boom’s generosity was in opening up a house that was quite humble and not especially large. We do not try to fit in the “hiding place” itself – a cavity behind a fake wall – where famously six adults hid for three days when the Ten Booms were arrested; but we can see for ourselves how extraordinary it was that they all stayed there as long as they did. One small boy is allowed to enter through the secret passage to give us a sense of how it was done; it is easy for him, but we can imagine who much harder it would be for an adult to do it, let alone six. The tour is moving and deeply memorable; I have read the story before, but it is another thing to look myself at the very place where the fugitives hid, to see Corrie’s Bible opened to the Psalm from which her most famous book took its name. I have had several experiences this week of standing in a place that has seen so much history; this gas been one of the most powerful of those moments.

In the afternoon, we take another train to den Haag, the seat of the Netherlands’ parliament and home to a number of other international and diplomatic bodies. It is also the home to the MC Escher Museum, a permanent exhibition of the Dutch lithographer and graphic artist’s work, situated in the old palace, a building simultaneously gloomy and beautiful and full of the kinds of mirrors and staircases that inhabit Escher’s work. Escher was undoubtedly a genius; a cursory glance at his most famous work can tell you that, but a closer look at the tiny, intricate details of his work, the near-perfection of its construction, reveals it in even deeper ways. Yet what is interesting to note, in contrast to the Ten Boom house, is the silent period in Escher’s work – a deacde-and-a-half missing from his body of work, the time of the German Occupation during which Escher had to focus on providing for his family, but finding quiet inspiration and clarification through reading Lewis Carroll and listening to Bach, creative kindred spirits for him. Escher, we are told, nearly went crazy from the boredom and tedium of his life at this time; Corrie Ten Boom nearly died in Ravensbruck.

It is an unfortunate comparison to make. Escher was a truly extraordinary artist and undoubtedly one of the Netherlands’ most significant cultural contributors of the modern age. It might be unfair to say he was complicit in the evils of Nazism, but there is no evidence in his work that he did anying to engage with the crisis that beset his nation and the people in it. Corrie Ten Boom is less famous; her books are not accomplished; her life was humble. Escher is remembered as a great artist and many know his work even if they do not know his name or that he was Dutch; Corrie Ten Boom is quite unknown to most people who are not Christian. It is a reminder that human greatness is often not bestowed for the right reasons, a reminder that loving and forgiving are more important than genius, however history may remember us.

The Netherlands now is an extraordinarily peaceful country. It is difficult to believe the pain it endured only 70 years ago. I will leave with these memories of it: its beauty, its culture, its efficiency and its peace. But times can come to all of us, unexpectedly, when all of these things are taken away. When that happens, what next? How will we respond when we find ourselves, like Escher, like the Ten Booms, like the artists in the Groninger Museum, losing the world we know well? I hope that this question too can stay with me; I can never tell when I will need to answer it.

I first began to consider coming across to Europe late last year when good friends of mine moved to Holland. “Of course I’ll come and visit you over there,” I said, and made noises about September 2012 being the time to do it. It quickly began to seem to me a ridiculous thing to do – so much money; such a long way to go; besides, I do too much international travel; maybe some other time…And yet, to cut a long story short, here I am, somehow at exactly the time of year I first said I would come. First two days in London, then a glide across the Channel in a cramped Air France craft then a train ride up north, and by mid-afternoon yesterday I stepped out at Groningen Station to the sight of my friend Phil waiting for my arrival.

The first thing that struck me about Holland (and I can use that name, Groningen actually falling in the northern region of the Netherlands to which the name accurately applies), once my train had made its way out of the greater Amsterdam region and into the countryside, was that it was all a striking, deep green – the grass, the hills, the trees, all astonishingly green. Then there were the canals – somehow just as you would expect them to be, yet startling for that very reason. When I first saw a field of black and white cows beside a canal, I was instantly transported to a picture book from my childhood, a Dutch story, I recall, about a cow falling into a canal. (It was, I think, appropriately and simply titled something like The Cow That Fell Into the Canal. There seems to me now to be something so very Dutch about such a straightforward and direct title. What else would you call a book about a cow falling into a canal?) What arrested me as I peered occasionally from my book and out the window of the train was how this place could look simultaneously just how I expected it to and also nothing like it. I expected it to be flat, and it was. I expected it to be bland, and it was not. Somehow flatness here does not equate to blandness; how unlike those long, sweeping plains from home.

It is approaching winter here, and I am told that Holland gains Britain’s weather about three days later; having arrived in England three days ago, I knew what that meant – grey sky and constant rain. Sure enough, today the rain came; not heavy rain, but persistent. Phil and I were undeterred, hitting the streets of Groningen in the late morning, visiting the University where his wife Erin works, scouring an impressive record store called Plato, where I buy a cheap copy of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, passing the obligatory red-light district (a girl in alarmingly skimpy lingerie steps out into the street and walked over to a pausing car; why am I alarmed? Surely not by the thought that such things exist but that they can be seen so simply, so unobtrusively, in the middle of a cobble-stoned street on a rainy autumn day?). And then, after lunch – a trendily healthy meal at a place called Puur – one of those Dutch words that look so different yet sound so remarkably just like English – we took refuge from the rain inside the Martinikerk – St Martin’s Church, a medieval structure once Catholic then, when the Reformation hit Europe, Protestant; a fascinating witness to many periods of history, its ceilings bearing frescoes from the 13th, 15th and 16th centuries, sections of the building carrying signs of expansion and redevelopment. The man who sold us our tickets strikes up a conversation with us about the fake brickwork in parts of the church and the quirks of Northern European church architecture – why the choir has thirteen pillars, an unusual number found only in two other churches in Europe, one in northern Germany, the other in northern Italy; the strange fact that while the church building is owned by the church itself, the tower is owned by the government, a vestige apparently from the Napoleonic era. Then, once we have taken in as many frescoes as we can, we head out again into the rain in search of coffee and shelter.

When we set off for home in the early evening, Groningen’s streets shine from the steady downpour and the town is full of cyclists weaving in every direction, expertly managing the wet cobblestones and the cars and pedestrians competing for the space (Phil tells me that here the order of priority on the roads is bicycles, then pedestrians, then cars). The rain eases off as we walk home but sets in again for the last few minutes. The apartment is comfortable and warm when we get back; we put on the Coltrane CD and talk religion and politics while the rooftops and streets outside sparkle in the rain.