Cycling update
Here are the latest additions to our family:
Latest additions to our family
The one on the left (Limit) belongs to the wife. She picked it up on Craigslist for a song. The one on right (b-fold) was purchased first-hand yesterday. It’s a very basic folding bike with no gears, no pedal brake, no carrier and no chain guard. And it’s this very minimalism that I loved about it. The more complicated a thing is, the more likely it is to go bad in a way that you can’t fix it yourself. The other factors that influenced the purchase:
I’d like my bike to be a backup bike for my wife. The non-folding men’s bikes here are just too high for her to be comfortable. The Dutch are amongst the tallest people in the world and the bicycle designs merely reflect that. Besides, I learned cycling just a month ago on a very similar bike so it just feels safer.
The brands that are considered decent here can cost a lot (upwards of € 400). A bicycle here is probably something you invest in once in 10 years. I don’t quite know where I and cycling stand. This is perhaps a good bridge between the bicycle I started on (second-hand, and after 2 months of use involving at least one hard fall, road unworthy) and something more serious.
We do hope to carry these bikes with us to other places - at least to other cities and towns in the Netherlands. The folding bikes go for free on National Rail, the big ones need a € 6 day ticket.
PS - Did some serious cycling on the road today. Cycling is bringing a fresh perspective on distances. Like that breakfast place which is a 20 minutes’ brisk walk away from home, is now a 5-minute ride on the bicycle and barely requires any consideration.
PPS - Theres something all mushy and romantic about parking your bikes thus:
Cho chweet?
The old and the new
Just two of the hundreds of things that drift past our window every day:
A Sloop
A Cruise Ship
A huge building was coming up on our left when we moved in here in April. From a crane that was unceremoniously parked in front of the river yesterday, it looks like that new construction is about to start on the other side as well. That would leave me with only a tiny window to compose and click these things from. In the race to the waterfont, our building must’ve ruined many views as well. In that regard, even the Amsterdam Centraal Station wasn’t very well received (courtesy Wikipedia):
Almost all of Amsterdam’s own experts and others involved in thought this to be a catastrophic plan, ‘the most disgusting possible attack on the beauty and glory of the capital’. Nevertheless, the building of the Central Station in front of the open harbour was forced through by the railway department of the Ministry of Transport in The Hague, and the Home Secretary, Thorbecke. Finally, the plan made its way through the Amsterdam municipal council by a narrow majority.
I’ll just add this event to my list of reasons to rent over buying.
Across the IJ
The satellite map on the tiny screens on our plane’s screen didn’t show the river IJ. Our house faces it. In less than 4 months we’ve come from not knowing about the very existance of this large body of flowing water to loving it. While returning from work, I had seen blue GVB ferries cross the IJ and spew people on foot, people on bicycles and motorbikes and even people in tiny electric cars, near the north exit of Centraal station. I knew I had to get on one.
Across the IJ 1
Across the IJ 2
Me and my wife did some research online and on an idle weekend, boarded the ferry with the longest route. We kept looking for a place to swipe in our transport cards and didn’t find any. Once on the ferry, we tried to locate someone from whom we could buy the tickets. We eventually realized that the ferries are free - and for a good reason too - the longest ride lasts just 10-15 minutes.
Our first ferry ride was to NDSM Werf. While we knew that nothing that would interest tourists exists there, we found the reality starker than what we had expected. There were a few large (decidedly ugly) office buildings and this being a weekend they were all eerily quiet. The geek in me did get a little carried away looking at this map…
Across the IJ 3
…but we found no sprawling shops selling any of these things.
We also ran into these houses made entirely out of shipping containers and wondered what it must be like to live in one:
Across the IJ 4
We’d like to think ourselves as minimalists, but this is pushing it a bit too far even by our standards.
If you want a longer and faster ride in the water, you can take a ride to IJ Muiden in Connexion’s (the other public transport company here) Flying Fast Ferry. Unlike the GVB ferries it’s not free and costs about € 8.25 for a day return trip. The 60-80 Km/h ride takes about 40 minutes. Right next to the ferry’s docking station is a bus stop from where you can catch a Connexion bus to the beach. Unfortunately, we were there on a day when the strong winds kept blasting sand into our eyes and made it impossible for us to reach the beach. Having traveled this far, we weren’t to give up so easily. A few meters away from the beach, we ran into lake Kennemermeer. The tiny lake with its tiny waves looked like a miniature sea:
Nearby, at a mooring spot, hundreds of sailboats and yatchs were parked. They shook and creaked in the strong wind.
Across the IJ 5
The tattered flag of a certain casino, ironically called Fair Play, fluttered violently in the wind - as if warning people of the ills of gambling.
Across the IJ 6
Our next ferry trip - again in the free GVB Ferry - lasted barely 5 minutes and got us to IJplien. A short walk from here is the Noordwall (north wall?) - a low wall where you can sit with your feet dangling a few feet above the water and watch ducks, ships and other interesting thing pass you by. It’s very windy here on most days and the combination of wind and large ships works up waves that make quite some racket when they hit this wall. Not a bad use of your time on a warm, sunny, Sunday.
The drama in the sky
The days are beginning to get shorter here 3-4 minutes at a time. If your notion of an early riser is tied to sunrise, then you can start counting me as one within a few weeks. This also means that when I step out of bed, I will always be in time for the drama unfolding in the sky.
The drama in the sky
Boredom? What’s that?
This recent article by Scott Adams rang a bell (rather loudly at that). Then this picture happened while waiting for the train back to Amsterdam at Brussels Centraal. Everyone these days is fiddling with their smartphones or iPods to fill time that should probably be left unfilled.
Boredom? What’s that?
The magic of train stations
Train stations in Europe are magical places. Amsterdam Centraal station might not be as grand as some of the others in Europe, but it’s home. For me, it represents the thrill of starting a journey to a new place and the happiness of coming back home.
The tangle of wires outside the platform is actually a tablature score which only the trains know to play.
The magic of train stations 1
The stations in Belgium evoke Hades. Your train leaves daylight and enters a dark tunnel that eventually leads you to a platform where florescent lighting makes night out of day and day out of night.
Still I’ll remember Antwerp Centraal somewhat favourably for the beautiful architecture you encounter once you’ve taken long rides up the escalators.
The magic of train stations 2
Brussels Centraal unfortunately only reminds me of the 4-coloured dustbins all over the station.
The magic of train stations 3
Paris Gare Du Nord is a station that was meant to be a station. It isn’t there to make a statement, or for you to linger about - it is there for you to board a train. It probably exudes the same indifference with which the Parisians look at the world outside. Besides, the metro stations are the real magical domains in Paris.
The magic of train stations 4