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8 August 2005 13:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abilouiseI am finally writing up my trip to Holland. This is an incoherent and non-linear first draft. But it's weird, I'm having trouble knowing what to say about it. I flew on a plane and then spent a week somewhere that reminded me of a home that I've never lived in. Which is to say that I think I could live in Holland, though probably not Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I kept looking for the neighborhood where the cool people that I would find interesting would live, and I couldn't find them anywhere. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I went to Utrecht first. As an aside, I should mention that I took these homeopathic anti-jet-lag pills and I had little to no jet lag compared to my trip to France last year.
Utrecht was cute but not in an oppressive way. It also felt functional, and not like it only continued to exist for my tourist dollars. In Utrecht I spent an inordinate amount of time walking through the largest mall in Holland, which is bigger than either Quakerbridge Mall or the Cambridgeside Galleria but smaller than the Bridgewater Mall and bigger than the Bridgewater-Raritan High School marching band. Anyway, it was attached to the train station and the city center was on the other side of it. While inside one day killing time I tried on a 200 euro sweater and had a glimpse of how fabulous I'd look if I had that kind of money to spend on clothing. But no, I did not spend very much of my vacation shopping in a mall. I did things like climb the cathedral tower and crap like that too. Sat in cafes on canals etc. Most of my time in Utrecht was one day while Jake was at his conference and I wandered around amusing myself and trying to see how much Dutch I could parse based on my scanty German. By the end of my trip my reading comprehension was high enough that I could handle a menu with grace and ease but couldn't understand most of what people said and was still too embarrassed to try to pronounce anything myself. That trip to France last year? The emotional scars run deeper.
The best thing about Holland was renting bikes and biking through the countryside with Jake. Biking in Holland is not all about having a skillion gears and huffing up a hill and coasting down it the way it is here. It is also not all about having your road face on and smashing car windows with your bike lock when they cut you off, or standing in the street yelling at a car that you had a green light. Biking in Holland for me at least was biking on a heavy one-speed with backpedal brakes that freaked me out at first because I hadn't used them for so long and I couldn't freely rotate the pedals at traffic lights to be in an optimal position. The bikes did have nice racks (nice rack!) on them so that I could take off my bag and smush it under rubber bungee cords and not have a sweaty back (bonus!). It took me a while to get used to the pedal-slowly-to-and-fro rhythm that was appropriate, and also to let my road face melt away. I discovered that not only did I have a road face, but I also have road shoulders and road arms and that road = tense and pissed off. It was a very specific and personal heaven to be biking long distances on flat dedicated bike paths through beautiful farmland and national parkland and suburbs and along highways that are by American standards quaint. Jake was riding next to me and we were talking. We averaged about 40 km a day biking (of the 3 days we biked) and it was just awesome and made me feel physically robust and got me back into riding my bike here now that I'm back. We alternately daydreamed about coming back for a longer trip and just biking around Holland and seeing the country and reminded ourselves that we were doing that right then and should just pay attention and stop thinking so hard. Pedal pedal pedal. The rest of the trip was Amsterdam.
I wanted to like Amsterdam, I really did. But I have to say that my favorite part of the stay was the magnificent breakfasts our hotelier provided for us every morning we were there that were unspeakably good. I also dug the canals and was frustrated that I didn't get to either the VanGogh museum or the Anne Frank house.
Utrecht was cute but not in an oppressive way. It also felt functional, and not like it only continued to exist for my tourist dollars. In Utrecht I spent an inordinate amount of time walking through the largest mall in Holland, which is bigger than either Quakerbridge Mall or the Cambridgeside Galleria but smaller than the Bridgewater Mall and bigger than the Bridgewater-Raritan High School marching band. Anyway, it was attached to the train station and the city center was on the other side of it. While inside one day killing time I tried on a 200 euro sweater and had a glimpse of how fabulous I'd look if I had that kind of money to spend on clothing. But no, I did not spend very much of my vacation shopping in a mall. I did things like climb the cathedral tower and crap like that too. Sat in cafes on canals etc. Most of my time in Utrecht was one day while Jake was at his conference and I wandered around amusing myself and trying to see how much Dutch I could parse based on my scanty German. By the end of my trip my reading comprehension was high enough that I could handle a menu with grace and ease but couldn't understand most of what people said and was still too embarrassed to try to pronounce anything myself. That trip to France last year? The emotional scars run deeper.
The best thing about Holland was renting bikes and biking through the countryside with Jake. Biking in Holland is not all about having a skillion gears and huffing up a hill and coasting down it the way it is here. It is also not all about having your road face on and smashing car windows with your bike lock when they cut you off, or standing in the street yelling at a car that you had a green light. Biking in Holland for me at least was biking on a heavy one-speed with backpedal brakes that freaked me out at first because I hadn't used them for so long and I couldn't freely rotate the pedals at traffic lights to be in an optimal position. The bikes did have nice racks (nice rack!) on them so that I could take off my bag and smush it under rubber bungee cords and not have a sweaty back (bonus!). It took me a while to get used to the pedal-slowly-to-and-fro rhythm that was appropriate, and also to let my road face melt away. I discovered that not only did I have a road face, but I also have road shoulders and road arms and that road = tense and pissed off. It was a very specific and personal heaven to be biking long distances on flat dedicated bike paths through beautiful farmland and national parkland and suburbs and along highways that are by American standards quaint. Jake was riding next to me and we were talking. We averaged about 40 km a day biking (of the 3 days we biked) and it was just awesome and made me feel physically robust and got me back into riding my bike here now that I'm back. We alternately daydreamed about coming back for a longer trip and just biking around Holland and seeing the country and reminded ourselves that we were doing that right then and should just pay attention and stop thinking so hard. Pedal pedal pedal. The rest of the trip was Amsterdam.
I wanted to like Amsterdam, I really did. But I have to say that my favorite part of the stay was the magnificent breakfasts our hotelier provided for us every morning we were there that were unspeakably good. I also dug the canals and was frustrated that I didn't get to either the VanGogh museum or the Anne Frank house.
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Date: 8 Aug 2005 21:23 (UTC)