Bicycle culture in HaarlemToday I hit my first pedestrian. I’ve had numerous close calls, but this marks my
real induction into Dutch society.
Poor timing placed me at a rising canal drawbridge just fifteen minutes prior to class. Pedaling my rusty bicycle over cobblestone streets, I raced against the clock to reach the lab, print out my paper, and get to the lecture hall in time to avoid scrutiny from our ornery German lecturer, who has glared meaningfully at every student who dares to arrive even a minute late (and in a class with many Asians and Africans, he’s glaring an awful lot these days).
Since returning from my trip to New York, the weather has transformed from April showers to sunny summer days. Pale Dutch people—like all denizens of suboptimal climates—never take good weather for granted; they flood the parks in droves, leaving nary a patch of visible grass at Vondelpark or Westerpark. It makes me wonder where they were all hiding when the weather was bad (as it often is).
But my beef is not with regular Amsterdammers. It’s with the tourists. Damrak and the Red Light District, the rough equivalent of Times Square in New York, have become infested with wide-eyed, fannypacked photographers, drunken, blustery Brits peering into windows—any windows—and hippies eager to part with their euros at central smart shops. They ignore the wide, demarcated lanes with painted white marks forming the shape of a bicycle. They find the narrow, cobblestone streets so irresistibly quaint that they walk smack dab down the center—their own Yellow Brick Road to a customizable-to-one debauchery.
Well, as I mentioned before: I hit one of these suckers earlier today. Actually, it was a she. I rang my bell. She walked in the center of the street, even though the sidewalks were clear. And lest you think me unduly impatient, consider that my bicycle makes noise—lots of it. It squeaks.
Or maybe it squawks. Daniel, one of my football mates, once suddenly started scanning the horizon as we strolled from the park one day after practice. He pondered the whereabouts of an “annoying goose.” As I walked my bicycle along the canal, I stopped to listen. The “goose” went silent. “That explains why the goose was both annoying
and so bloody consistent,” Daniel said with a smirk.
Between the bell and the squawks, I figured this clueless pedestrian would just keep walking straight. But no, she exhibited that maddening aspect of slow pedestrians: shifting paths without any regard to surroundings. You know what I’m talking about: the laggard you try to overtake (be it on the freeway or Fifth Avenue, the result is the same) who constantly drifts into your path in a zigzag fashion. You alter your path to avoid her, and she also lamely matches your move, as if engaged in slow dance for dunces.
That’s what happened. To make matters worse, we were right in front of a large café area, full of tourists enjoying
kroketten,
bitterballen, and
vlaamse frites in the sun. As the moment began to unravel in slow motion, I could hear a collective gasp from the crowd as my front wheel collided with her ankle. I braked suddenly, the goose crying a desperate plea. I hopped off my bike. She looked shocked. No damage was done, but a nasty look registered on her face. I shot one right back and resisted my New York urge to flip her the bird and shout obscenities.
I shook my head visibly in disgust and biked quickly to class, where another glare awaited me.
Labels: Amsterdam, bicycling
