Long Weekend

It's a public holiday today. It's called the Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter. In Christian this is the day when Jesus ascended to Heaven. Almost the whole of Europe is closed but not UK.

It is also the start of a 4-day weekend as Friday is declared as a bridge day, meaning an extra day given off work to make an extended weekend break for workers.

We headed for a day trip to Roermond in the southernmost tip end of Holland. But the traffic jam was quite bad. Took us an extra hour to what was supposed to be a 2-hour drive. It seemed everybody want to go somewhere, with their bikes hanging from behind their cars, to probably the forested part of Belgium or France. The place we went to was crowded. With cars haphazardly parked everywhere, it's definitely not a bad day to do business.

One of the reason for the huge traffic jam is the ongoing construction on the motorways. Along the route nearly a hundred kilometres of the motorways was being upgraded and reconfigured. Most of them are being expanded to 3 or 4 lanes motorway, new and smoother interchanges and endless number of flyovers. The work along a stretch around the city of Eindhoven has been going on for a couple of years now but once finished will be a huge relief to road users.

It is not hard to imagine the impact of these investments on the economy. By allowing even better flow of goods and business and smoother flow of people, the country is keeping herself ahead of the competitions. The work no doubt cost billions, especially more costly here as the motorways have to be built on elevated ground because of the lowland and delta landscape of Holland. On top of that are the stringent ruling on noise polution which require sound barriers to be installed when close to settlement areas.