We met with Marjolein from Fietsersbond, the Dutch Bikers Union on another hot morning in the Netherlands. Just like the hotel where we were staying, the office was cramped and hot, but that didn’t bother me. We learned of the history of bikes in Amsterdam and how the Dutch engineered a city around the bicycle. The 1960s were a big turning point for Amsterdam as urban planners had mega plans for urban highways and huge parking garages. This would certainly solidify car culture in Amsterdam and take away housing to make room for massive thoroughfares. The protests of “Stop de kindermoord” in 1972 along with the oil crisis of 1973 were huge motivators in shifting transportation use over to bikes. From then on, Amsterdam has become one of the best places to bike in the world and it has cut down congestion, vehicle deaths, and carbon usage. Infrastructure can make a huge difference and solve more than one problem at once.
Marjolein mentioned something that resonated with me; bikes run on fat and save you money, while cars run on money and make you fat. It is simple, yet true and plays to the economic and health downfall of driving a car. A big reason people are generally in better shape in the cities we have visited is because they bike everywhere. There is less of feeling the need to go to a gym when people are constantly exercising to get around. After the presentation, we biked around as a group and Marjolein showed us Amsterdam in the heat. This ride included going by the Rijks Museum as well as the old Olympic stadium that held the Olympics in 1928.
The afternoon meant getting out of the heat and finding an air conditioned hotel to blog and stop sweating. The hotel advertised that it was 38°C outside and 24°C inside. Sean, Mikah, Eric and I got some work done until it finally cooled off enough to head back to the Bicycle Hotel later that evening. We got really great pizza from a place called Dope and then headed over to Sarphatipark where the grass was hard to see because there was so many people sitting on it. Maybe we weren’t the only ones with the idea to go to a big park at dusk to get out of non-air conditioned homes.
When it got dark and it was still too hot to go hang out at the hotel, we biked around Amsterdam without looking at any maps. This was the first time we had gotten lost in Amsterdam and boy did we get lost. We were first just going wherever, making random turns and seeing the city in the dark. Then, we were getting fairly tired and decided that if we could figure out easily how to get back then we would go. We couldn’t quite figure it out and eventually got hungry, so at this point we were just looking for food. Just before finding a kebab place to get our favorite late night 3 euro Turkish pizza, it dawned upon us that we had come to the same roundabout for the fourth or fifth time. We also kept passing the huge Heineken sign and so we figured that we just had to commit to a direction and stick with it after eating. We guessed right this time, heading south and eventually finding some streets we recognized. This experience was the most in which I had felt completely clueless, but nonetheless it was an experience well worth having.