Amsterdam - III

Sept. 15

A standard farewell at home is “watch out for the deer.” Here it’s “watch out for bikes.” They’re everywhere, inches from each other and from us, silent and menacing. It will be a miracle if we don’t get hit or at least witness a smashup. 

The cab driver from the airport said everyone owns two bikes; they keep a good one inside and ride a shabby one in case it’s stolen .. and they are (he blamed the Moroccans). We’ve seen every imaginable kind of bike, even some with a circular battery and electric motor in the front hub. You charge it at home, and it regenerates more charge when you coast. Pretty cool. One guy said it helps him ride 25mph with ease, but his friend kidded him, saying electric bikes "are only for old guys like him." Even a wheelchair had the same hubs. 

Mom or dad often has one kid in front and one behind. Guys may have their gal atop the rear fender. One dad lets his son stand upright behind him, and another fellow pulled a wheeled suitcase like a trailer. 

All European elevators are small, but ours is doubly long so as to accept a bike or two. There are four bikes parked in the hallway on our floor for the other two apartments. Some cargo bikes have a greatly extended front “basket.” One came by with eight blond tots in it. But one woman in our building got cargo bike into our elevator anyway .. it was a new model which separated into two parts.

There are parking ramps here just for bikes. One at the Delft train station must hold thousands. Closer to home, on a canal near a busy square, there’s an immense barge offering paid reserved parking only for bikes. Uffda. The city looks rather unkempt with bikes everywhere.

Surprisingly, our cab from the airport was a Tesla. Since then we've seen dozens more of them plus a great many other electric cars not sold in America. 

One cab firm is actually called the Electric Taxi Company. It's government policy greatly to encourage electric cars and soon to permit only electric boats on the canals. There are auto charging stations all over, and they look free. Serious environmentalism here.

But we never understood how to tell which cabs are occupied, nor did we see many taxi stands. Rick Steves may be right; he finds cabs unnecessary in compact Amsterdam. Still, in the evening, of the few cars on the quiet street below our windows, nearly all are cabs.

Street food is big here. Tried a raw herring sandwich in Haarlem. After you order one, they do at least cut off the head and tail and gut and fillet the 7-inch herring. Actually it was pretty edible, especially the pickles and onions.

Got a much tastier one later at our nearby street market. We’ve also had french fries served in a cone with mayonnaise and a certainly-not-Dutch focaccia pita stuffed with hummus, garlic tapenade, olives and red peppers. Yum. And bitterballen (deep-fried croquettes), little waffle sandwiches stuffed with syrup, beef tartare, thick-as-pudding pea soup, and thin pancakes a foot across and laden with apples, bacon and eggs or whatever, like crepes.

And poffertjes, fluffy little pancake bits drenched in butter and powdered sugar. While waiting for some at the street market we met lovely Anneke, age 97, and shared with her our first order of 10. 

Because the Dutch were world-wide traders for so long, especially in the East Indies, all sorts of cuisine are available here. My favorite is that Indian restaurant just below us; we smell their curry every time we come and go. There's also food from Thailand, Japan, Korea, Greece, Turkey, Argentina, Suriname, Morocco, Spain, Iran and, from Indonesia, this elaborate rijsttafel (rice table) with 29 separate little dishes.

How about some smoked salmon on scrambled eggs for lunch, or some bakery goodies, or that thick apple pie, as dense as fruit cake?

It was so unexpectedly sunny one morning that we impulsively took a canal cruise and luckily choose the perfect one .. only three of us and Bo, our guide/pilot, for 75 minutes in a small open electric boat.

Bo was born in the Red Light district and grew up boating and skating the canals, so she knows them better than the streets. She's a proud alternative to the long impersonal tourist boats holding dozens; she says they can’t get into the smaller canals, are covered, are piloted by people who don’t live in or know the city, and play only a recorded tourist narrative. Ours was very much a private tour. 

She said the locals don’t like the city being defined by the Anne Frank house, just as people in Salzburg ridiculed the #1 American tourist attraction there, the Sound Of Music Tour. (They called it the "Sound of Fiction" Tour.) In the winter Bo hangs out in the same village on the Mediterranean coast of Spain where we spent the winter of 2007; she and us may be the only people in Amsterdam who’ve ever heard of it. The last two winters have been so mild, however, that she's planning to give boat tours through this coming winter. Global warming, anyone?

One weekend Holland celebrated “open door days” when people could enter interesting buildings normally closed to the public. In Paris that meant we visited major government ministries like the Defense Department or even the Elysees Palace where President Sarkozy lived, plus elegant foreign embassies. Here the places were more modest though more numerous: schools, offices, churches and private homes, often with some architectural interest. At the Old Church, where admission normally costs €7.50, various artists were performing non-stop on the great organ so I went to listen. 

But what did I see there? A shockingly incongruous display of world-wide-award-winning Gay Pride photos intended to shed a more humane light on the travails of the GLTB world. OMG.

On the way there, the tram made a wrong turn (oh oh) as a stern voice issued an incomprehensible Dutch explanation. Many blocks in the wrong direction, the driver stopped, shooed everyone off and ignored my questions. He must be the only person here who can't understand English. In a panic and leaving my shoulder bag behind (luckily it contained only an umbrella), I finally found a Metro station and for the only time rode the homely new Metro to the main square, discovering there a noisy festival of (get this) fancy little circus calliope wagons!!! Dozens of them. Everywhere. Much hooting and tooting, drinking and dancing. Nonstop. That’s why my tram was re-routed .. it couldn’t get through all this revelry. 

And in front of the Royal Palace there was a singing group in folk costumes noisily introduced by an outrageous gent wearing a frilly skirt and an enormous platinum-colored afro wig. OMG again.

Well, that’s the “advantage” of visiting a place long-term. You do experience the real thing, including the unexpected.