Goodbye, Amsterdam!

My trusty steed.  Sold to a young guy from Montreal.

Its almost time to go home.  We fly to Indiana on Saturday.

Things I will miss about Amsterdam

The freedom of not having a car and getting around by bike or by good public transport.

Running in the Vondelpark.

The tolerance of Amsterdammers for wide variations in thought and behavior-- as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.

Pretty women riding bikes.  (Note to Patty: This is a spectator sport only.)

Beautiful old houses on the canals.

Boats everywhere.

The textured feeling of walking and riding my bike over cobbles and bricks.

Cool breezy sunny days.

Fathers and mothers riding their little children on the bike, talking with them, singing to them, holding their hand.

Wine and conversations with my friend Louis.

Weekend bike rides in the green countryside.

Things I will not miss about Amsterdam

Four cold, rainy days in a row in late June.

Bromfietsen! (motor scooters)

Noisy drunken boys hollering at 2 AM on the street or in the apartment below.

The acceptance of mostly segregated “white” and “black” schools.

The high cost of everything when your income is in deflated US dollars.

Summer in Vondelpark

It's June, and Patty and I are aware that our time in Europe is running short. She arrives soon to spend the last few weeks with me in Amsterdam.  I think it will be a packed month, doing things we want to do in NL before we leave, spending time with our friends here, finishing work projects we need to get done.  But I find myself already getting reflective about my time here.  One important place for me, as you know if you read my first blogs, is the Vondelpark, Amsterdam's "Central Park."  I live just a few blocks away, so it's easy to run, walk, or bike there.  It has been a great place for me to think, exercise, feel peaceful, and get healthy. 

Also a place to observe the natives at play!  I took a walk through the park today, snapping photos so I could remember how it is.  My early blogs were in February and March.  Now it's really summer!  The park is beautiful, and many Amsterdamers migrate there when they have an hour, or an afternoon.  See more photos, take a walk with me from my house to the Vondelpark and back!

Netherlands-- It's a Part-Time World

Taking a break in a busy week

I've noticed that a LOT of people here have part time jobs, especially women.  The Netherlands may be unique in this respect.  A high proportion of women work, about 75%, but more than half of those who work do it less than full time.  And this seems to be mostly by choice.  "In the Netherlands, we women like to work part time!" say the college students I've talked with about this.  In the U.S., by comparison about 75% of working women are going at it full time.  The ideal here seems to be 2 or 3 days a week.  Handy for mothers with young children, but even women with no children seem to think part time is swell.  It is swell!  Imagine what that would be like.  Although, from another perspective, I suspect that sometimes it takes a while to get some things done.  ("Well, I don't work Wednesday or Thursday, and Friday is a holiday, so maybe we can talk about it next week...") And though most men work full time, often even they seem to have 2 or 3 part time jobs.  It's not unusual for me to meet a professor at the University here who says something like, "Well, I work here two days, and at University B two days, and I do consulting one day."  I am not quite sure how all of this part time work provides benefits-- but there is national health care, and everyone seems to have plenty of paid holidays and vacation!  And here's the kicker-- Dutch women, according to one study, have significantly lower rates of depression than women in France or Japan.  See the NYT article about it!

Learning Dutch

I have been taking an introductory Dutch language class at the University for the past few weeks.  It's been challenging for me-- I would not describe myself as a "natural" second language learner.  But it's been fun.  Partly because I'm the oldest student in the class-- by about 35 years!  It's just a kick being in a room with a bunch of lively 20-somethings from all over the world. (Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Vietnam, Nigeria, Brazil, Israel, Norway, China, Algeria!)  Some might ask, "Why learn Dutch when everyone in the country speaks perfect English?" One reason is that it gives me more insight into Dutch culture. Part of it is being able to understand a little more when people are speaking .  But also reading language examples in the text book, watching the video examples, and conversing with the course teacher about various topics all give fresh glimpses of the culture that I might not otherwise get.  And I think my Dutch friends do appreciate the effort-- it's a sign of respect for the Dutch and their culture.  Even if I don't progress very far right now! See this video for an example of me grappling with those famous Dutch gutturals!  (Amsterdam heeft achtentachtig prachtige grachten.  =  Amsterdam has 88 beautiful canals!)

More about the benefits of biking...

Okay, I don't want to bore everyone by making the same point over and over again, but I keep finding reasons that a good system of biking/walking trails is a great idea. Yesterday I was coming home from my daily run and passed two mothers, riding their bikes next to each other, gabbing away, while their two 4 year old daughters, riding in the child seats on the back of their mothers' bikes were riding along gabbing with each other at the same time.  A lot of Amsterdamers get around on bikes.  It's easy with the trail system, it's cheap (parking and gas prices are very high), and it's simply part of the Dutch culture.  I keep seeing people talking as they travel this way, with their kids, spouses, co-workers, friends, etc.  It strikes me that in addition to the ecological, economic, and health benefits, biking and walking trails offer more opportunities for people to be "in contact" with each other as they go about their daily business.  Some of us worry about the loss of a sense of community in the U.S.A.  So many people don't know their neighbors, stay inside their houses when not at school or at work.  Would bikeways be a way to regain that sense of connection with others, even others in our own families?  Take a look at these two photos. Which child/parent would you rather be?

Freedom



Freedom is never given, but always taken!


The Netherlands celebrated Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag) about a week ago, on May 5-- a national holiday.   This is an annual commenoration of the day the country was liberated from Nazi occupation by the Allied troops in 1945. The evening before, May 4, at precisely 8:00 PM, there were two minutes of silence observed throughout the country, in a "Remembrance of the Dead."  All stores closed early, all public transport stopped, and things pretty much halted everywhere for those two minutes.  At the Dam square in Amsterdam, the Queen laid a wreath at the national monument while thousands of people stood silently. I watched the ceremonies on TV. Sometimes it is easy to get the impression that the Dutch don't go in for ceremony, or that they are not patriotic, because they do tend to be laid back, tolerant and anti-authoritarian.  But I saw a great deal of respect by young and old being paid to both those who died during WWII and more recent wars, and also to the royal family.  The Netherlands was occupied by the Germans for 5 years, during which the majority of the nation's Jews were deported and killed.  Most of the remaining Dutch population suffered through those years of occupation, culminating in the "Winter of Hunger" in 1944-45, when the Nazis cut off food supplies to the western provinces, many starved, and 18,000 died.  There were interviews on TV with old people who lived through those hard time.  Though it's not something people speak of often, there does seem to be a national memory of this loss of freedom, a gratitude for its return, and a modern sense that freedom needs to be guarded.  Back in 1969 when I first visited Amsterdam as a 19-year-old U.S. Navy midshipman in uniform, I did not get a very warm reception from people my own age.  (This was during the Vietnam War.)  But some of the older folks, those who lived through WWII, gave me a warm and friendly reception on the street-- perhaps still expressing their gratitude for our assistance in liberating them in 1945.

The Queen's Day, April 30th

We were fortunate to be in Amsterdam on the Queen's birthday this year, April 30th.  Actually, it's not the current Queen Beatrix's BD, but her mother Juliana's.  Someone told me, "Well, we could have changed it for Queen B., but hers is in January-- and the weather is not so nice!  So we kept it on April 30."  Beatrix does not seem to mind. In Amsterdam, this is the most amazing street (and canal) party I have ever seen! Everyone was out, partying from Friday evening through the wee hours Saturday night.  Vondelpark was packed with kids and adults on Saturday; it seems to be the special place for kids on this special day. All over the city, including along the roads and paths in Vondelpark, many people brought their old household things to spread out on a blanket on the ground to sell.  Music stages with live music or DJs were set up in the streets all over the city. In the park, kids were performing with their musical instruments, doing acrobatics, singing, selling cookies, or running homemade games you could play for 50 cents or 1 euro. In the canals, it seemed everyone who owns a boat, large or small, was cruising around, singing, playing loud music, and partying. It is one gigantic flea market/beer garden!  Everyone wears orange-- shirts, crowns, leis, suits, and we even saw a bachelor party with two guys dressed as giant orange penises!  Follow these links to see more:  Queen's Day photos.  Video of canal boat parties.

Tulpen!

Yesterday my friend Louis and I took our bikes to North Holland and spent the day tooling around the vast tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth fields out there.  This cultivation area is near the beach of the North Sea, so we also had lunch and dinner stops at beach restaurants.  Of course, I had heard before about the bulb fields and seen pictures-- but being out there in the middle of them in mid April was quite another experience!  I have never been in the Netherlands at this time of year before.  Photographs cannot convey the intensity of the colors in some of these patches of flowers.  And the smells!  When we rode by large fields of flowers, especially the hyacinths, the perfume was almost overpowering. Imagine the smell of 100,000 flowers coming right at you! The whole day was a sensory experience-- sights, sounds, smells, and oh yes, sore muscles.  We did get lost for a while.  Well, not really lost.  As Daniel Boone, the legendary American frontiersman is reported to have said, "I can't say I've ever been lost. But I was bewildered once for 3 days!"  We finally did get back to where we had parked the car.  To see more flower photos, go to my Picasa site.

What's the deal with helmets?

Commuters riding through the Vondelpark

The Dutch ride bikes more miles per person per year than any other country.  According to one Dutch safety expert, they have the lowest injury-accident rate on bikes than any other country.  With all the people riding, you hardly EVER see someone  wearing a helmet.  They DO crash, sometimes (rarely)-- I have seen it.  They ARE skillful riders.  (When you see the 3 year olds scooting along on two wheel bikes, you understand why!) Yet the safety expert estimates that if all Dutch riders wore helmets, there would be 1,000 fewer head injuries in the Netherlands each year!  So why don't they wear them?  I've heard a number of explanations-- vanity (messes up the hair), doesn't look cool, it's uncomfortable, too hard to manage carrying a helmet around all day when bike is your basic mode of transportation, and "we don't need them because we know how to avoid a serious fall."  The notion of a helmet law has actually been discussed in Parliment.  But I think the politicians are afraid to pass what would be an immensely unpopular and difficult to enforce law!  Maybe what it comes down to is people's sense of individual freedom and not wanting anyone to tell them what they SHOULD do! Part of the Dutch "live and let live" (or in rare cases die!) attitude?

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