Dusseldorf to Amsterdam

From Dusseldorf we biked to Stokkum, Netherlands. It was exciting crossing our first border, although there was no actual demarcation of the border. We were just sort of like, oh shit, we're in Netherlands now and everyone is speaking Dutch. We had a false start because there is a city in Germany near Netherlands with the same name as a city in Netherlands that's near the border. Anyways, we stopped at a couple of small towns, most notably Stokkum and an area outside of Scherpenzeel where we camped on a farm that was converted into a campground. Stokkum had this cool Dutch castle with a moat, drawbridge, and the whole works. It inspired me to look up renaissance fairs in Europe. I didn't really find any good ones (if you know of one or can find one please let me know) but there is a cool reenactment of the Battle of Agincourt that I may go to in July. It's in France, obviously, where a bunch of English and French people get together and reenact the battle. There are also craft demonstrations from the time period. Appropriately, there's also an archery competition.

Anyways, we stopped in Stokkum and Scherpenzeel and ended up in Amsterdam. The bike through Utrecht was cool. The city seems pretty neat and I'm going to head there next. Liz and I part was today (or possibly tomorrow) but she'll be back in Amsterdam on the 16th for about a week, so my plan is to visit Utrecth and Rotterdam and then bike back to Amsterdam. Her mom may be renting an appartment and I can probably stay on the floor for free. I have a bunch of couches lined up for Utrecth already. I got TONS of responses from people. They're all really cool people too. Musicians, artists, students, teachers. These are the people I like to hang out with.

I haven't kept a great record of the things that have happened to me on this trip, other than photographs. It takes a long time to upload photos, so I haven't actually caught up with the present. I think all the pictures I've posted so far are of Germany still. The last few I posted were in Dusseldorf and include some Frank Gehry buildings. Since then, we did some wild camping, saw tons of farm animals, ate delicious food, drank intoxicating wine and beer. I did almost get run over by a truck. People here drive pretty crazy, but they are pretty good at it which is basically the reason I'm not in the hospital right now. We were biking in Dusseldorf and a truck was parked in the bike lane so we had to swerve around it. I didn't notice that there were tram line tracks in the passing lane and my front tire got caught in it, which through me off balance and sent me crashing into the parked truck I was passing. Behind me was a really big truck that slammed on its brakes just in time to avoid crushing me. I was grateful. I also fell down some stairs in Dusseldorf and thought that I broke my arm. I still can't believe that I didn't. Basically, my whole body weight landed on my forearm on the edge of a stair. It was numb for like an hour and then it started hurting really badly and had a bump that felt like it might have been the ridge of a broken bone. The next day when I woke up, there was a tiny bruise, the bump was gone, and it pretty much felt fine. I think I'm too clumsy for someone who doesn't have health insurance.

Amsterdam is pretty amazing. Biking here is so much fun. Everyone rides bikes. I have some pictures but I don't think they really capture it very well. Most of the roads are really narrow, so it's very difficult to drive a car, and most people don't. Germany had a lot of cyclists, and I was surprised that so many old people rode their bikes everywhere. I'm talking about people in their 60s-70s. But Amsterdam and the Netherlands in general is so much different because it has a much higher level of organization for their cycling network. There are maps and long distance paths everywhere. Germany had long distance paths, but there were few maps associated with them and often the signs were confusing or vandalized. There are bikes everywhere in Amsterdam, it's pretty much my favorite thing about the city.

The central area of the city is kind of lame. It's really pretty, but a lot of it is designed to appeal to American and British tourists who come the Amsterdam with a "spring break" party mentality. Some of the coffeeshops here sell pot (and you can get other drugs like mushrooms as well at various stores). But you don't really want to go to any of the ones in the center of the city. They have this douchebaggy hot-topic kind of feel to them. It's not the real culture, it's what business people expect tourists to want. But if you bike outside of the city center, there are some really cool places that seem really authentic. Most of the clients are Dutch or Jamacain or various immigrants who live in the city. You don't see many tourists there. The best parts of our stay in the city have been when we biked out of the city center and got lost in the real parts of Amsterdam, where the people who live here hang out and you don't have to deal with drunk/stoned frat dudes.

It's weird how Amsterdam is very socially liberal with prostitution, drugs, etc. but it's also very structured. There are traffic lights for bicyclists and lane demarcations in the bike paths. Businesses are very strictly regulated, according to the people we talked too. There is also the sense that people here don't really like the commercialization of their liberal culture, where people come here to get stoned because it's legal, but that they make so much off of tourism that they're willing to put up with it. It's like, a bunch of foreigners are taking advantage of the fact that the Dutch aren't puritanical about drugs to use their city as their party town.

I could definitely see myself living in the Netherlands, though.