Open garden

Every year, the third weekend of June, the people living in the district of Jordan in Amsterdam open their private gardens to public.
(Look at this link )
Although I had heard about this nice tradition before, I had not got the opportunity to go there. However this year having company of a couple of friends I got the chance to visit some of the gardens. The houses for the public visit had been decorated with green balloons on the entrance to welcome the visitors.
The gardens were fascinating. They were very diverse ranging from very little gardens in the balcony to big gardens shared among several families. One of the interesting gardens that we visited was a garden on the roof of a house. It was amazing. The owners had turned the roof into a pleasant place. You could sit there and enjoy the flowers plus the nice view of the city.
It was amusing to see how much people paid attention to their gardens and how kindly and patiently they were explaining us the details of the special plants in their gardens and were sharing with us their joys and beauty of their gardens.

What impressed me more than the gardens was the enjoyable experience of interacting with different people. In the very beginning of our tour we ran into an Iranian woman serving fresh Iranian tea made traditionally on Samovar. Although I do not drink tea usually, I tried her tea and enjoyed it. Another nice experience was to see an activist. I enjoyed talking to her, albeit she was a bit talkative. I could see the enthusiasm of living life in her eyes. She had inserting personality, trying different things in her life. She had studied public health and interestingly she had performed her master’s project in Iran during the period that Shah was governing in Iran. She was a painter as well and I liked some of her paintings. One of her words which I impressed me was that: those people who want to remain student all their life do not experience life, at some point you should stop learning and start using your knowledge. That is my story, I am somehow afraid of being involved in the society directly, although I enjoy interacting with people.
Another interesting case was the guy who was teaching Dutch to foreigners voluntarily and he provided us with the information about it. We saw another old lady that we tried to use our broken Dutch for communicating to her, assuming that she is too old to know English. She was helping us to finish our sentences. But when she saw that our Dutch is too poor, she switched to English. So she amazed us in two ways: first knowing English so well despite being so old. Second, she was giving us the chance to practice our Dutch. Often this opportunity is not given to foreigners, since on the average Dutch people are very good at English.
We had a lot of fun that day and if I will be in Netherlands another year, I will definitely repeat this unforgettable experience.