Crash

Bicycle culture in Haarlem

Today 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.

Penn(itentiary) State

April has been a rough month, with back-to-back academic papers, a crash course on statistics and research methodology (I can now perform a simple regression analysis along with other helpful functions), and writing/reporting for my favorite local Amsterdam newspaper.

Last week, the editor in chief entrusted me to interview a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and investigative reporter for The New Yorker. Unfortunately, his schedule and our weekly deadline could not agree, and I worked on another piece instead. It's been a great learning experience, copyediting features in the British style, whilst getting some clips under the belt.

The gig is not without its fun moments. Listen to this amusing clip from an interview I had with a local professor about a Dutch social engineering project (I was giving him my email address). I should send it to Penn State's admissions/recruiting office.

Welcome to Amsterdam

Drugs: Use of soft drugs is only allowed in your room, as long as your roommate or unit mate does not object. Use or possession of hard drugs in the buildings is forbidden. Your contract will immediately be terminated if you are caught possessing hard drugs.

That’s an excerpt from my housing contract here in the Netherlands (no definition of “hard” or “soft” drugs is provided).

One of my main goals this spring is to learn multimedia equipment, recording, and software. To that end, I bring you my first project that I created today. Tot ziens!



For a larger version, click here.

Curious Orange

This past Christmas, I received gifts with a similar theme:

Because I get thirsty during yoga

Because I want to know how many Robins there are in NYC

Because I'm raw, like sushi

I think I’ve got orange in my blood after reading the chapter on the Netherlands in The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup. Dutch “total football” (totaalvoetbal), epitomized by legendary chain-smoking striker Johan Cruyff, promotes spatial awareness: creating and managing space through a dynamic system of interchanging players and positions. It makes for a much more exciting game than the defensive catennacio.

The book describes a few “very Dutch” characteristics:

• Bicycle culture
• Politeness and frankness
• Novel solutions to social and environmental problems
• Well-traveled and jocular
• Not getting particularly worked up about things

These traits, the writer argues, set up a different system in which total football could thrive. It makes sense, then, that I would be attracted to both the culture and football style of a country. The “world’s tallest people living on the world’s flattest land” have produced the likes of Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben, two of my current favorite football namesakes. And to this day, a certain timbre of bicycle bell will take me back instantly to Amsterdam and put a smile on my face.

My football books have given me a nice survey of the history, philosophy, style, culture, and fans of many teams and nations. So far, I’ve settled on Ajax Amsterdam and FC Barcelona. In the EPL, it’s Arsenal.

But stay tuned. I’m only up to the letter “P.”