An aside for bicycles

Amsterdam is a beautiful, fascinating, and incredibly dangerous city. We wandered through idyllic avenues and wide canals. We sat under the greenest trees, saw some of the most incredible artwork, ate copious amounts of cheese, and had a near death experience about once every half hour. I will explain.

As Christine will surely attest to, the roads here are a little different. First of all, there are the trams. If you've ever been to San Francisco than you understand the unique pressures that trams add to the process of crossing roads. They travel fast, don't follow the same paths as cars, pop up where you don't expect them, and can be very... quiet isn't really the right word so much as they are sneaky.  Fortunately, they are big and easy to spot once you get some practice. 

 Second, street crossing isn't at all the same as in the States. There are crosswalks, but their use is purely optional. People cross at any point in the road that they think they can get across before getting flattened. The roads and sidewalks are also set up so that you can cross a third of the road or half of the road at a time and then have a safe stretch of raised land about two feet across to stand in the middle of the flowing traffic.  This is also relatively easy to get the hang of. 

The hard part is coming to terms with the idea of a city built around bicycles.

As you can see, there are more bicycles than people in Amsterdam. As you walk down any stretch of road you will see many many bikes propped against all surfaces. On the first day it was explained to us that any collision with a bicycle, be it by tram, car, or person, is never the fault of the bicyclist. There are more roads for bicycles than there are for anything else, and they aren't particularly well advertised. 

 As Christine exclaimed after almost being run down one afternoon, “they should really paint these a different color from the roads and sidewalks.” While cars and trams are at least big, bikes are slim and very hard to judge speed with. They don't just ride down the road, but in and out of parks, on and off the sidewalks, in and out of doorways, and sometimes it feels like they drop straight from the sky.

Simply put, Amsterdam has a bike culture in much the same way that Los Angeles has a car culture.  It's not that people make a conscious decision to ride their bikes everyday, its really just what you do and what has been done for as long as anybody is aware.  Bikes are even family vehicles

We never did get hit, but if you are in the neighborhood make sure you look both ways before crossing the street. And the sidewalk. And parks. And open doors. When you hear that characteristic “ring ring” its time to dodge and weave because in Amsterdam, any collision with a bicycle is your fault.  I think that just looking at us the Amsterdamers knew that we would never understand their bicycle culture.