New Year’s Eve Day in Amsterdam—a brilliant idea! We arrived on December 28, put some bags in an airport locker, and took the train to the HEM Hotel at 7 am—it was still dark! In exploring the city we enjoyed amazingly dark and steamy coffee, South Indian and Indonesia dining, vegeterian grub at a place called Green Planet. Thanks to P’s suggestion, we saw both familiar and lesser known Van Gogh works at his museum (favorite painting being Le Zouave) which this French teacher-fan appreciated). Amsterdamers have fine tuned the art of biking with accessible and safe 2-way lanes, and urban biking apparati: bells, paniers, lights, mudguards, etc. The bikes themselves are not too fancy, but they have all the right gadgets to make urban life liveable & sustainable. Favorite exotic sight: bundled-up baby plopped into seat, held in securely by seat belt, in the front of the bike. We wondered how much this changes a child’s perception of the world, to see the city zooming by on a bike from such a young age. It reminded me of Stephen Colbert’s bike helmet anecdote at the Knox Commencement ceremony 2006. This generation of US college grads, he blasted, have been coddled like never before—take, for example, the bike helmet (an invention he used little when he was growing up), now a requisite for American riders. Everywhere you go, you have something to buffer your experience and catch you when you fall. I wondered whether American children wouldn’t benefit from the more direct, unfiltered, Amsterdam biking experience.
Have arrived in Dar & settled in. Still catching up on sleep, more to come.
