More travel!

After spending the weekend in Madrid, I left Monday afternoon for another trip – this time to the Netherlands. I’ve initiated a work collaboration with a colleague there, and we decided to get together for a few days for an intensive work session. In addition, I was invited to give a talk at a university there that is home to one of the world’s leading institutes for research in mathematics education.

I am writing this entry while on the plane back from the Netherlands. I really like the Netherlands. There is so much to appreciate – the country is socially liberal, environmentally responsible, amazingly bike friendly, and full of sincere and generous people speak English! I had a really great time. I tried to ‘go Dutch’ as much as possible, in that even though the weather wasn’t great (rain sprinkles most of the time), I borrowed a bike from the hotel and biked to/from the university from the hotel and to/from where we ate dinner each night. 

Although I have spent time in Amsterdam (which I like), this time I was in Utrecht. It was relatively small, full of canals and beautiful old brownstone-type homes. And of course, bikes. It is difficult to accurate estimate the number of bikes that are on the bike roads and locked in bike racks everywhere – there are just so many. In front of the one university building where I was working, there were easily 200 bikes parked. And at the central train station in Utrecht, I would estimate that there were easily 2,000 bikes parked – no kidding. The Dutch have invented new technologies for biking that seem to be unrivaled elsewhere. All bikes have a built in rear-wheel lock – you stick the key in and turn it, and the rear wheel is locked in position. (Most people also use a secondary lock that is more like US bike locks.) There are amazing bike racks – double and triple decker to hold lots of bikes. (At the train station, the bike racks were sort of like airport parking garages – with different levels and labels so that you could remember where you parked your bike.) There are bikes that hold people or children in front and/or in back. There are dedicated roads, bridges, and traffic lights for bikes. Each day as I biked to the university, I would see all sorts of people arrangements on bikes – college students riding two to a bike, a parent biking his kids to school – somehow squeezing 3 small kids on his bike. There are lots more bikes than there are cars, so the cars basically yield to the bikes. As a result (and also because the countryside is completely flat), no one where bike helmets. I didn’t see any car vs. bike confrontations; the biggest danger is bike vs. bike. When you cross the street on foot, you have to look both ways to cross the bike road, then look again for the car road – and the bike crossing is much more hazardous.

I also did my usual grocery store tourism, which I like to do everywhere. I enjoy walking through grocery stores in other countries to see what people buy and eat. My favorite new food from the Netherlands was stoopwaffles, which are sort of like waffle caramel cookies - they are really great. Of course I saw and ate lots of great cheese. I learned that Gouda, Edam, etc. are just cities in the Netherlands, so there really isn’t a such thing as “Gouda cheese” in the Netherlands (because lots of different kinds of cheese would be called Gouda cheese, since they are all from the town of Gouda.) I also learned that apparently what we call “Smoked Gouda” cheese (which is one of our favorites) is actually not smoked cheese at all but just “old” Gouda. Apparently smoked cheese is a completely different thing – the grocery store that I was in did not have it. But “old” Gouda cheese is great and is exactly what we tend to buy under the label of “smoked” Gouda.

And last but not least, the main airport in the Netherlands (Schiphol) is also one of my favorites. As shopping goes, there is a great variety (as opposed to the same duty free store and the same bookstore, just repeated every few gates). There are also several good food-court-type restaurants. It is well signed and easy to get around. And there is free Internet for an hour or so. It is easy to get in and out of the airport – a main and huge train station is connected to the airport, with even more shops near the train platforms.

Overall, it was a wonderful and quite full 3 days in Utrecht – the Netherlands is right up there on my list of favorite places in Europe. Now I’m home in Madrid with no travels for about 1.5 weeks, and then I’m going to the north coast of Spain to give a talk at a university up there and hopefully to explore a bit.