By Barbara Rice (of Shasta County)
A page from her travels, on request from A News Cafe
I think all the old two-wheeled clunkers of my youth – the old Schwinn bikes that weigh about 30 pounds and have tires like balloons – have been reincarnated as public transportation in the Netherlands. While riding the train yesterday I saw miles and miles and miles of bike lanes in the midst of fields, running parallel to the tracks. When you walk out of Central Station, to the right is a four-story bicycle parking lot, and it is packed.
Bicycles rule in Amsterdam. They have the right of way and will run over you, so don’t get cocky and think you’re all that, ’cause you’re just a big speed bump to them. It’s not unusual to see two people sharing a bike for one, or a bike with a sort of wooden barrow in front holding as many children as will fit, or a woman pedaling along while holding a child, eating an ice cream cone, talking on a cell phone and carrying a bouquet of flowers. I have no idea why you’d own a car here. There’s nowhere to park it and your progress through the city is much slower than a bike’s.
I’m always amazed at how many really tall Dutch women there are – I mean considerably over 6 feet tall and wearing platform shoes. By American standards I’m moderately tall, but here I’m just a wannabe.
Grocery shopping in Europe is a can’t-miss activity. It’s quite interesting to go into a store and try to find a random item like toothpaste or tomato soup, especially if your command of the language isn’t even advanced enough to be tenuous. I read almost no Dutch whatsoever, so last night I took a wild guess at which of several small jars might contain horseradish (I wasn’t certain that any of them were). The gods smiled on me: the picture on the label indicated the product was sauce for salmon, but when we opened the jar there was no mistaking that pungent smell. I didn’t feel that I could ask anyone, since “horseradish” wouldn’t translate well, and the correct word in Dutch (I’ve forgotten what it was) didn’t resemble horse or radish at all.
Stairs: they’re everywhere, they’ve very, very steep, and the steps are very, very tiny: (about half the length of your foot). There are hooks attached to the exterior of the top floor of every house: that’s to haul furniture up. There’s no way you could move any but the tiniest items up the stairs. We thoughtfully consider whether a trip downstairs is really worth it.
On a trip to Haarlem yesterday it appeared the recession has hit that charming little town fairly hard. I remember it from years ago as bustling, pretty, full of life. Now it seemed that about a quarter of storefronts were closed, even those around St. Bavo’s (the main attraction). The Ten Boom Horlogerie windows were papered over (although I believe The Hiding Place itself is still open for tours). We stopped outside Haarlem at IKEA and it was virtually empty; a clerk told us business was way down.
But in The Hague, prosperity seems alive and well. High-end stores are well-lighted and the diamond trade is bustling. Perhaps that’s because Den Haag is the seat of government in the Netherlands.
One thing I find charming: walking along in Amsterdam in the evening, I find myself gazing into the windows of street-level apartments, my view unobscured by curtains. I don’t know why, but Amsterdammers very often leave their homes open to view. People cooking, having dinner, helping their children with schoolwork, watching TV – I feel like A Spy in the House of Voyeurism… and I like it.
Barbara Rice is a native Igonian. Upon discovering the Beatles at age 9, she picked up an atlas and figured out how far England was and how long it would take to get there (5371 miles, 12 hours). Though gainfully employed, she regards work as a necessary evil to finance vacations. In her spare time she looks up cheap airfares and daydreams about her next trip. She never did meet Sir Paul but she knows where his office is.
