Fietsen

"Fietsen" is Dutch for "bikes."  Dutch people ride bikes all over the place.  A lot of people have two or more bikes.  If they commute by train they will have one bike that they ride from home to the train station and another that they ride from the train station to work (this is economical because you have to pay to take your bike on the train).  Other people have their regular bike that they use around town--and that is old so no one will want to steal it--and then they have their good bike for riding distances.  There are actually more bikes than people in the Netherlands.


Not that having a bike is without its dangers.  In Amsterdam alone, 80,000 bikes per year are stolen.  Even having a lock doesn't keep you safe--They just leave the front tire and take the bike.

You can buy bikes very cheaply at the train station.  But apparently these are usually stolen.  My Dutch teacher said that, if you bought a bike at the train station, you ought to watch out carefully and, if you saw a police officer, you ought to come back later or you could get in trouble for receipt of stolen property.







People have all kinds of ways for getting the kids and groceries home.  There are little pull-behind carts and fancy, big carts for the front, plus all kinds of baskets.

You can also put a kid seat on the front of your bike along with a little wind screen to keep the bugs off.





My Dutch teacher told us a  story (all in Dutch) about how, when her two daughters were little, she used to carry one on the back of her bike and one on the front, and how one time she turned too quickly and, with the wonky center of gravity, ended up crashing.  She said that everybody was fine but pretty unhappy.





Dutch infrastructure is made to make getting around with a bike easy.  They have special ridges on the sides of almost all of the stairs around town so that you can easily take your bike up and down the stairs.

You can usually take your bike on public transportation as well, although sometimes they charge extra and sometimes they restrict the number of bikes during rush hour.







They make special folding bikes, too, and those fold up to the size of a briefcase.  You can take those onto the bus or the train any time and for free.

It seems like you have to pay for that convenience though.  Pedaling those tiny little wheels can't be that energy efficient.







They have special dedicated bike lanes on almost every road, which makes driving (or even crossing the street) quite complicated.  Bicyclists have the right of way wherever they go.  I think that this is more a result of attitude than of the actual traffic law, but they are kind of dangerous and they beep their little bike horns at you if you get in the way.

They even have special little bike signal lights with little bikes on them so everyone knows who they are for.  They also have little tram lights like this, but I don't have a picture of one of those.









There are also lots of parks and national recreation areas where you can borrow their white bikes for free, just to ride around on.  I haven't been to one of those yet, so this is a picture from Wikipedia.






I keep vacillating on whether or not I ought to buy a bike.  On the one hand, it could be a lot of fun, as well as being quite cheap.  On the other hand, and it is a very convincing hand, it would be difficult to ride over the top of the Erasmusbrug in the winter when the wind is going.

If I did get a bike, though, I would get an "omafiets".  "Omafiets" means, literally, "grandma bike".  It is the old -fashioned kind of bike, on which you sit up really straight to ride.

But, what I am really holding out for is one of these:

Isn't it cute?  It has a little wind-screen and a little roof and a little wind-shield wiper.  I think that this would be really, really fun to ride around on.  This is a Wikipedia picture but one of the shops on my way to school has got a one that is just like this but with a kind of retro pale pink, cream, and tan color scheme.
And all for only 999 euros.