The Dutch Take Their Bike Safety Very Seriously

Sir, have you been drinking?

This is the story of my first encounter with Dutch police. Unfortunately, it would not be my last.

I had just gotten back from a weekend trip to London, where I had gotten my Eurotrash on, when I stopped by my office to pick up my bike and ride it home. So after a train ride to the airport, 2 hours of waiting including delays, a one hour flight, a half-hour train ride to town, and a 10 minute bus ride to the office, I was only minutes away from heading home. I climbed aboard my bike, careful to balance the giant weight of my backpack that had carried my supplies for the weekend, including my laptop, and slowly made the journey back to my apartment as dusk began to settle in.


Now my office is located on a triangle of land that makes no sense any way you slice it for a bicycle to go anywhere. Any way you really want to go, you're going to cut across traffic at some point and risk getting your ass Canyonero'd to the curb. So I head to the stoplight and contemplate whether I should risk going the wrong way down a one-way street, because it cut off about half a kilometer from my route. I see that the traffic signal perpendicular to me had gone from green to red, and since no cars were coming I made a careful turn into the street. About halfway through the maneuver I had second thoughts, and I decided to instead take the long way home.

Ah, but that would be my fatal error. A police vehicle (to call it a car would be too generous) had pulled in behind me without my knowledge. They saw the totality of this maneuver, and decided to pull me over. Of course, since I was heading down a narrow street, I initially thought the officers were just advising me to ride my bike on the sidewalk, but soon enough I found out their actual intent.

After some cheerful chirping on my part (Good evening officer, what exactly do you want me to do sir), the officer began in a roundabout way to get to the heart of the matter.

I need some ID. Do you need a passport, or will my driver's license be fine? The license is fine. [ ]. Did you see the stop light? Yes I did, but I saw the light was changiYou did not stop at the stop light. [ ]. Your lights are not on. Yes I know, I tried to turn them on, I couldn't get them on. Do you know how to do it? Yes of course. [ ]. See I told you it was broken. Sir, have you been drinking?. What? No, I haven't had anything today. It's just the first time I've ridden a bike in over 10 years and I'm carrying this heavy backpaSo you don't have the skills. I guess not. I do not smell alcohol. [ ]. Alright, it's 60 Euros for the missed stoplight, 30 Euros for the broken lights. If you hadn't done the stoplight, we wouldn't have had any of this. [ ]. Alright, my partner here is in a good mood. No fine. Just don't ride the bike. Just here, or when I get back into regular traffic. No, you walk the bike home. Thank you officer.



And I walked my bike the five kilometers to my apartment. And so there's the story of how I nearly got busted for a DUI on a 3-speed bike.

Nic Ouzo's Wild European Adventure: My First Night in The Hague

I've already discussed the details of my initial travels, but have yet to give much of an account of what's happened since I've been on the Continent itself. Today, that changes as I tell you the story of my first night in the Netherlands.

I came to Holland without any place to stay lined up, based on the advice of an intern that had done this same gig in the previous year. They had the misfortune of agreeing to an apartment sight unseen that was, shall we say, "below standard." Having an open shower in the middle of the kitchen is understandably disappointing for a lot of people. So the logic was to get on the ground in The Hague, get a hotel for a couple of nights, and then look for more permanent lodging while you're there, so you can get a better view of what's available and what's convenient. Sound strategy if you ask me.



Of course, I come in without even making a hotel reservation. I literally show up to work with all my suitcases, coming straight from the airport/train station/taxi stand. Fuck it, there's gotta be something like a Holiday Inn where I can crash. This shouldn't be an issue--I'll just go online, make a phone call, and boom, I'll be done.

Except that it was a holiday weekend coming up in the Netherlands. And that means the Dutch were heading to the beach en masse, and whaddyaknow, The Hague has a beach. So finding a room was a bit more of a problem than I thought. I finally locate a reasonably priced place and set a reservation in some random part of the city. So my co-workers get me all set up on the bus to this area, and I set out to stay the night.

So I head out into what appears to be a nice little neighborhood, very pleasant, very green, very friendly. As I'm walking, I'm thinking, this isn't the kind of place where you would find a hotel. And you know, this thinking was right. Because this is the kind of place where you once found a hotel, and now instead have condominiums. That's right, the address that I had for the hotel was for its old location. And considering most American cell phones don't work in Europe, and I had no internet access, well, I was proper fucked as they say.

So, recap: I am in the middle of a foreign country where I don't speak the language. I have three suitcases and a backpack I have to carry everywhere. I have no place to stay for the night. I am proper fucked.



Alright, time to regroup. You know only one address in the city, and that's your work. Head back there, figure things out from there. Maybe somebody is still at the office...nope. No good. Well, there's gotta be a hotel somewhere nearby...how about here?...no, nothing here...Can I use the phone? No?...

Finally I randomly find a taxi, and direct him to just drive me to any hotel. Any hotel. This of course is still difficult, since most hotels are booked, but the driver is generous enough to park at each place and inquire within whether rooms are available. After 4 tries, we finally get to a craptastic place by the beach, whose view is blocked...by another hotel. All for the low price of something like 80 dollars for the night! At least I didn't stay in Badhotel, which was literally across the street. Clearly the only reason why my hotel wasn't named that was because it was beaten to the punch.



Inauspicious beginnings and all that.

Notes ON Travel: Trans-Atlantic Tomfoolery

Hey, it's the return of that recurring series no on really pays attention to! This is surely the best way to recommence the blogging habit and pulling in the audience.


1. If you're going to be stuck in the middle seat, it might as well be on a Trans-Atlantic flight. You may think I'm kidding, but you'd be wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Wrong. That's because those trans-Atlantic flights use non-shitty planes, that have such concepts foreign to your average commuter traveler as "legroom". And given the added convenience of free TV and movies, I was able to watch "30 Rock" and "How I Met Your Mother" episodes along with a neat Bollywood movie. This allowed me to only watch "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" as a final attempt to put me to sleep.

Plus, it didn't hurt that I was stuck between two beautiful ladies...that I didn't say a word to the entire flight.

2. If you're going to be stuck in an airport for a five-hour layover, make sure it's not the Frankfurt airport. Those goddamn Germans and their Teutonic efficiency--they made this aiport into a giant hallway, with only a couple of half-assed newsstands and duty-free shops that take up about 5 square feet. Their food choices are: random prepared-sandwiches, and other random prepared-sandwiches. At least I ended up finding the one set of benches without armrests to sleep for two and a half painful hours, but this was after traveling 2.3 miles in that godforsaken hellhole.


3. There is no scarier feeling than realizing you may have gotten on the wrong train in the middle of a foreign country. Luckily, this feeling only lasted 25 minutes--I randomly ended up on the correct train. But goddamn would I have been fucked with my limited knowledge of Dutch and my 10 weeks-worth of luggage.

4. Don't take a taxi in The Hague. I'm used to New York cabs being pretty cheap, never really having to pay more than a few dollars unless I'm headed to the airport. LA is different, since you're stuck in traffic for 2 hours and have to travel 30 miles to do anything. But taxi service in Den Haag is insane--the starting price is 7.50 euros, which is, if you're scoring at home, 10 dollars. STARTING PRICE. And then once that meter starts ticking, you're going to be paying top dollar. At least their cabbies are dressed in suits. Good to see my money being put to good use.

Nic Ouzo's Wild European Adventure

With Hijinx sure to ensue!

As Zhuang-o mentioned in his post, I'm spending the summer doing the whole Europe thing. Granted, I'll be doing a lot of work for my fancy-pants internship in the Netherlands, but there will be lots of traveling and and general no-goodery on the weekends. As Zhuang said, we may find that my summer ends up looking like the one good scene from Rules of Attraction.


I apologize for taking so long to write this post, but it's been a bitch getting internet wherever I'm staying. And I'm not going to risk alienating my employers by spending my work hours finding inappropriate pictures for this series. But lo and behold, the two weeks between my touchdown here in Holland and today I've had a wealth of stories suitable for mass consumption through this here blog. You'll hear about the strange cuisine available (Bacardi and Cola pre-mixed!), the strangeness of television here (late-night text-sex commercials!), and the stupidity of the Flemish language, among other things. It's going to fucking rock.

I've been knocking around ideas about using a "Freaky-Deaky" scale to document my experiences. Yes, Holland is just about as weird as you could imagine, so the scale is apropos. I'm just not sure what the measure should be--Gouda slices? Van Nistlerooys? Bacardi Colas? If you have an idea, mention it in the comments.