Getting from the plane to the customs area was complicated. We boarded a shuttle, which went weaving around for a while and dropped us at a building, then we went upstairs and around a bunch of roped corners like mice running a maze where the cheese at the end was Amsterdam. Along the way I spotted this:
Once we got to the line for biometric scanning and other digital shenanigans, an employee came by with a bag full of stroopwafels and handed them out indiscriminately.
For a while we were all trapped in tiny glass boxes where we had to hold our passports up to a machine and then grip a fingerprint reader while gazing into a lens. The feeling of being a laboratory mouse was really intense. Then we were released to find our bags.
I walked a couple miles of carpet and ramps, and managed to find my stuff by following the Airtags. The suitcases were where the displays said they would be, but the bicycle was at the wrong oversize station. I would have searched for hours without the Airtag. Whew!
I hooked everything together and pulled my long tail of luggage over to a relatively traffic-free spot, just inside the big revolving doors. For the next two hours I slowly, methodically re-assembled the bicycle, and unpacked the suitcases of gear onto it.
As I was doing that, a couple of security people wandered up, wearing all-black combat gear and carrying really enormous rifles partially strapped to their chests. (Can they even run with those things?) One of them asked me what was inside the box, which I had just finished closing up with straps.
“Nothing,” I said. “There used to be a bicycle inside, but I put it together.” I pointed at the bike. “Now I’m folding up the box for transport. My friend will take it when he arrives.”
“And what about those suitcases?” said one of them, indicating with a tilt of his head.
Drat. My plan had been to just abandon those at the airport, with a little hand-lettered sign saying “FREE!” I couldn’t tell the guard that.
“Oh, my friend is taking those too,” I said.
They nodded, and moved away to a different part of the enormous room.
Zach arrived just at the right moment, and after some big hugs we chatted about transportation. I could ride the bike to his apartment, but in the meantime, could he bring the big box there, in his car? He said he would. What about the suitcases? If he didn’t want them I could find some way to dispose of them later…
He said he would take those too. My hero!
And thus unburdened thanks to my friend, I emerged into the wild wilderness of the greater Amsterdam area. In less than a minute I found the first of many bicycle paths, all separated from the cars. Lovely!
A few minutes after that, I went through my first bicycle tunnel. A guy on a moped went farting past me at a startling speed, but still it was way better than being harassed by cars.
A first bit of Dutch graffiti. No idea what it means.
I had to add and remove my jacket, as the clouds obscured and then revealed the sun. My first of many “layer management” experiences, no doubt. It wasn’t long before the thrill of being outdoors on the ground again overwhelmed my sleep deprivation and I felt a bit hungry, so I chomped the free stroopwafel.
As I passed around the edge of the airport, I stopped and took some cool photos of the runway. Then I followed the OpenCycle map in the direction of Zach’s place, which took me on a nice series of bike paths, mostly through parkland.
If this was on a different continent, I’d call it a Burning Man bike.
Before I knew it, I was at the apartment. Zach helped me maneuver the bike into the back yard, and shortly after saying hello, I brought my things up to the spare room and went SPLAT.
Once I was indoors again, the exhaustion of a night without sleep hit me like a wave. Would going to bed in the early afternoon help with the jet-lag? Maybe; maybe not. Either way, it’s happening.
When we were going along the Moselle river back in Germany, Nick and I spent a while talking back and forth in badly accented English of various flavors, complaining about how awful Americans are, and how badly Americans do everything. I played the Frenchman, saying stuff like, “Look at zese passenger trains. Zey are so much better than ze stupid American ones. Zey are on time, and zey don’t smell of piss and hotdogs.”
Nick came back with, “Yah, in Austria de trains have actual room, you know? You can put your feet up. But we don’t; ya? Because ve are not de tasteless savages like de Americans. In der flip-flops und baseball hats.”
Well, this morning we boarded our first French train, out of Luxembourg.
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Nick managed to get about half an hour of napping, until a German man wandered into the train car talking loudly on his phone. The man paced the aisle and ranted, getting more and more upset, then disconnected the call and left through the sliding door with a murderous expression.
It’s so gauche to complain on vacation. But from a bike tourist perspective, I do have a few minor complaints to air about the French trains. For one, they sold me tickets with a six-minute transfer time, to get between two trains that arrived at opposite ends of a massive station, and our train pulled in late. Even without two loaded bicycles, we would have needed to move at a dead run, threading through crowds.
When we missed that connection, the ticket counter attendant said that missing the train was “our fault” and that the best they could do was put %15 of the ticket price towards later tickets. So I had to pay another $140 for failing to get across the platform at unsafe speed.
(The elevators were so small we had to stand the bikes vertically and go one at a time. The elevators were also very slow. This is a concern mostly for bicycle tourists like us, but also, woe betide you if you’re in a wheelchair and the person pushing it isn’t willing to sit on your lap for the ride to the platform.)
When I asked them which platform the next train would arrive on so I could be prepared, they said they did not know, and had no way of knowing until 20 minutes before the train was due to depart. Not when it arrived … when it departed.
When that time comes due, they start flashing the name and platform of the train on the big electronic signs, including the one in the lobby. At that moment, several hundred people suddenly stand up and begin shoving themselves and their luggage down the hall. The only reason I can think of for doing it this way is so people waiting for a train don’t wait “too close” to the designated platform and interfere with people catching trains before them. … But if they knew the time and platform in advance, with enough confidence that they could time their walk to the platform, most people wouldn’t do that. They’d sit in the waiting area where there are comfortable benches.
The train was ten minutes late, cutting ten minutes off the time it would linger before departure. Nick and I had to wait with our loaded bikes in the main hall, staring at the departure screen, waiting for it to update and show the platform, so we could dash for the correct elevators and ride them up.
When we got to the train we had to run the bikes to the far end of it, to a car with no external labeling indicating it conveyed bikes. The bike area inside was up two steps, around a sharp bend, behind a completely useless sliding door that kept closing on the bikes as we were moving them … and then up two more steps. And again, at the same time, if you’re in a wheelchair or not entirely able in some other way, the French train system says, screw you.
Traveling on the Belgian trains was alright; traveling on the German trains was a pleasure. The French train system is a dumpster fire. Not the trains; the train system. Even the lowly American train stations back home – and the subways, and the bus terminals – can tell you what platform each one will be arriving at, with near-realtime accuracy.
Aaaaanyway…
When Nick and I emerged from the train station with our bikes, we were in Paris, and it was instant chaos. We dropped into the nearest bike lane and zig-zagged through city streets, tumbling in the chaos of cars and people and bikes and scooters all fighting for gaps. It was pretty intense, after polite Luxembourg. Nick performed quite well in it, saying “my rides in Oakland prepared me for this.” We got lots of interested looks and comments from even the jaded Parisians about the bikes we were riding.
This is the face you make when you’ve survived your first ride through Paris bicycle lanes.
We had to pass through two security gates and open an apartment door that was built stronger than the door to any other apartment I’d ever stayed in. It was like entering a vault. We pulled the bags off both bikes to fit them through doorway.
I settled in with the computer, working mostly on photos, and Nick laid down for a few minutes. Then we got up and went searching for food.
We passed several restaurants and cafes, jam-packed with talking people, almost all of them smoking with one hand and drinking with the other. The noise of conversation even outdoors was jarring.
We arrived at a little cafe I’d picked randomly on the map, and the head waiter took our orders. He debated with his companion, who was from Argentina, what the definition of “Argentina spiciness” was, but couldn’t find an English translation. We rolled the dice.
First French meal, at a restaurant a few blocks away.
The meal was tasty but not quite filling. I suggested that we get right up and go looking for another, and Nick readily agreed.
He led the way, picking streets at random. I vetoed a couple of spots that looked too expensive or too boring. We eventually wandered into a restaurant facing an extremely busy traffic loop running around a square, and went inside because it was a little bit chilly in our cycling clothes. The big windows gave an easy view of all the passing cyclists, and I schemed about coming back some later day with the camera to make an anonymous gallery of them.
I ordered a bolognese and ate about half of it. It was very heavy. Nick ordered honey-glazed salmon which was cooked perfectly, and I stole some.
After that we went on a stroll, generally in the direction of the apartment.
Inside, Nick laid down for a while again, then got up and exploded his luggage and re-configured it into a smaller version, using one of my stripped-down bike bags as a carry-on for the plane flight he was going to be taking soon.
We were both up until about 2:00am, with him organizing luggage and me sorting photos. There were a lot of them to sort… About 1500.
