Observations of a City

Amsterdam is an amazing city. It's funny that the reasons I loved the city so much were all the things that I never knew about before visiting there. Where to start

Bikes

I read in our "Lets Go Europe" book (Thanks Beck!) a few days before we left that you must "hire" a bike in Amsterdam. I didn't realize to what extent biking differed in this place until we got there. Oxford is a pretty bike-friendly city and I rode all the time when I was there, but its nothing compared to Amsterdam (and probably the rest of the Netherlands, though I've never been).

Bikes are different there. You know when you go to Cuba or the Carribean and you see a bunch of vintage VW Bugs on the roads? Amsterdam is similar with Bikes -- they all look like they've been time warped outta the 40s or 50s. They've got super comfy seats and most only have 1 gear, but the point is not to be fast or light, it is to provide an efficient mode of transportation around the city. Even people who are well off and have cars will still ride bikes around the city simply cause its faster and easier. The bikes themselves are made outta heavy steel and would easily last a few decades -- there are bike repair shops around town just like you would see mechanics for our car culture. Bikes are pricy too -- averaging about 500€ new (which I was completely shocked by!). They come in weird shapes where you can put a kid on the front in a basket, the front in this big wooden box thingy, or on the back. In fact, I saw one bike which could seat a family of four -- 2 kiddies seats behind the mom, and 1 seat in front of the handle bars so the kid faces the mom. Most bikes have a rack thing on the back for carrying groceries or boxes... it is not uncommon to see someone riding with an adult sitting sideways on the back. The chains are completely covered and enclosed, so there is no chance of catching your pant legs -- people ride around on these things in suits and full formal attire.

Apparently there are 2 bikes in the Netherlands for every person. If people have to take a train to work, they will keep one bike for the trip from home to the station, and another for from the station to work. As such, there is a massive bike parkade at the station -- it must hold 50,000 bikes or more (its 4 floors high).

Riding is easy and not scary like other cities -- mostly due to the fact that you have your own bike lane. Typically this lane is one-way only (ie there are 2 bike lanes on a road, one on each side), and has parked cars on the left and the sidewalk on the right... so the only real danger is stupid tourists walking in the bike lane instead of on the sidewalk because they think its just a really wide sidewalk (like we did at first!). The bike lane is pavement and sunk a few inches lower, whereas the sidewalk is square cement slabs -- so it is fairly easy to tell where one ends and the other begins. Its funny to see a normal sized street that effectively has 8 lanes of transportation on it. First a sidewalk, then a bike lane, then a car lane, then a tram lane (this is dedicated, like the street car tracks on Spadina/Queens Quay in Toronto), then you have a 2nd tram lane, 2nd car lane, 2nd bike lane, and 2nd sidewalk. All the cars go fairly slow as do the bikers, so intersections are often just slow down, look both ways, and keep trucking. Oh, and the bike lanes have an informal rule where slower rides right on the ride so faster riders can pass in the left "lane"... when a biker behind you is coming up to overtake you, he rings his bell so you know (since bikes don't have mirrors). It got annoying for everyone when Mark & I would overuse our bells just cuz we were screwing around :)

Canals

Riding around the city is all that more interesting with the canals. In the center, there is basically a canal between every 2 streets or so. The canal "bridges" are low specifically for bikers to be able to easily ride over them... so on your bike you only have to climb 2-3 of vertical. The boats there are therefore very low profile... the average bridge is maybe 6 feet from the water surface. There is apparently 1000 bridges over the canals in Amsterdam, and the canals total more than 100km in length. They have a large lock at the mouth of the sea which protects the canals from the tides. Apparently they open the locks for a few weeks during the year to "clean them out". Oh, and since there is an overall housing shortage in Amsterdam, there are a tonne of house boats. Some of these don't even pretend -- they are basically brick houses build on a concrete pad that looks like it is tied to the water's wall, but in reality is probably just sitting on the mud bottom.

Architecture & Houses

Amsterdam is a little weird in that the entire city is essentially 5 stories tall. Most buildings are row-houses that are all connected. Apparently the city has a law which says you need an elevator in anything over 5 stories... and for some reason the dutch decided this law would dictate the development of their city:) In reality, I think it also relates to the fact the ground is soft and can't really handle large buildings. There are a few, but they are certainly rare. London is an overall "short" city... but Amsterdam is definitely shorter.

This is pretty lengthy so I will sign off now. This is the first post written on my new computer -- more on that in another post.

Syd.