9 posts tagged “amsterdam”
How far from your last home do you live? Why did you move and are you glad you did?
Submitted by Matthew 25.
I now live in Brussels which is about about 209km (~130m) south of Amsterdam. It's about two hours by car or three hours by train. Taking the train lets you watch movies and read books, though, so I think that's the winner.
I lived in Amsterdam for about seven years but moved in August last year. I moved for a bunch of administrative reasons associated with my job but I don't regret the change as Amsterdam is still close by and I get to see more people at work now.
When I lived in the Netherlands I was a little dismissive of its beer. There's nothing particularly pleasant about Heineken, Oranjeboom or Dommelsch and while Grolsch is drinkable it's hardly great. But these are all mass market beers made by huge international corporations and so there's no surprise that they are all pretty bad. But there are some truly great Dutch beers and like the best beers in other countries they tend to come from smaller, independent breweries.
It's now autumn and so when I went out to the Wildeman last night I thought a bock beer was appropriate. The Texels Bock on the tap menu was full flavoured, well balanced and very, very welcome.
I decided to walk in the other direction and go to a smaller supermarket with less choice. But as I approached I remembered that there was a superb cheese shop two doors further down the street. I'm a big cheese fan so I went inside to see if they had anything that I fancied and my eye was caught by the Sicilian sheep's cheese rolled in Provençal herbs. I bought half of a cheese and got on with the rest of my grocery shopping.
After packing away my groceries when I got home I cut a small piece of the cheese. It is absolutely fantastic. And to think I would have missed it if my bike didn't have a flat tyre!
Several of these things go by every hour.
So I got back to Amsterdam and found that Joost would work for me. I tried to run it in KL but got an error message about upgrading and didn't have the time to download a newer version of the software.
After I had upgraded I found that I would actually watch content. Not great content, admittedly, but there were moving pictures on the screen and sound coming out of the speakers. I managed to watch my 'toons. Yes, Joost will happily show me poorly animated, 30 year old cartoons.
And once I'd watched nearly 40 seconds of that I tried looking for something... interesting, recent and local. I found material from BoomChicago, who are based in Amsterdam like me. It seems that their vlogs from the 2006 world cup are available through Joost. And here's the problem - topical comedy doesn't age well. Rocky & Bullwinkle might be watchable after 30 years but topical comedy is rarely good after a month. However good the content was at the time (and BoomChicago are often very funny) it was wasn't topical any more.
The other problem is that while the content was local, albeit outdated, the advertising was not. Despite only watching a couple of show and for a couple of minutes I was advertised at three times. The advertising was inserted into the programming at what seemed like random monets, rather than at natural breaks and the advertising was irrelevant to me as the products advertised are not available in this country.
Show us something pink.
This is Alex the day after he won the Amsterdam's Pretty in Pink title for 2006.
Since I bought a fabby new bike about three months ago I have started cycling in to work and rarely take the tram any more. But this morning I needed to go to Utrecht, so it was a great opportunity to take my bike to the bike shop for its free, three month service.
As I walked to the tram stop, I noticed a bicycle that was parked in such an egregiously selfish way I would have gone home for my camera if I hadn't had it with me, anyway. From time to time I've seen selfish drivers park a car on the line between two parking bays. This, however, takes the biscuit. The owner of the bike in the picture has managed to block access to seven (count them) spots on the cycle rack.
Welcome to Amsterdam, folks. Feel free to act like a selfish shit.
Show us something steep.
When I first moved to Amsterdam I was expecting things to be different. That's what I wanted and why I decided to move abroad. I wanted to be surprised at the way the same species had solved the same problems in different ways and how unique problems had changed the way people thought.
Water is very important in the Netherlands. It's very important in other countries, too, of course. Australia regularly has droughts, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and other countries are still reconstructing from the 2004 tsunami and the Pacific Islands are worrying about the oceans rising.
I expect the Dutch government pays close attention to the warnings of global warming and rising sea levels. After all, large parts of the Netherlands were built by reclaiming land from the sea and protecting it with dikes. This is obviously very expensive, and that makes the land itself very expensive. As a consequence of this, buildings are often narrow and multistory, rather than show and wide.
My first weeks in a proper Amsterdam house (not an apartment building in Diemen) were a reminder to my student days. In my second and third years at university I lived in a large house in a prosperous neighbourhood in Birmingham. The house had been converted into several dozen bedsits for students and mine was in the former servants' quarters. The servants' quarters staircase was steep and narrow. Carrying a score of boxes, cases and microwave cookers up it was difficult, tiring and painful. I paid people to help me move house in Amsterdam for that very reason.
Dutch houses typically have very steep staircases because shallower stairwells would be significantly more expensive. The staircase in my apartment building (there's no elevator) is much steeper than the stairs in most houses in London, San Francisco or Brisbane. I have seen buildings where the stairs are more like a ladder than a stairwell, though.
Last night I went to Rumy's birthday party cum housewarming. It was great. There were loads of people and I had a good time and took some photos. Almost none of them came out. In particular, there were none of Rumy :-( At first I thought it was a problem with the CF card in the camera. I know that CF cards can only be read from and written to a certain number of times. I've taken at least 8000 pictures on that card, and I thought it might be going home.
So I swapped out the card and used a different one that's smaller and had much less use. I went and took a bunch of photos as I was wandering around, earlier today. I'm now seeing the same problems with those pictures as I am with the ones on the other card. I think the problem might be with the camera not writing the files properly. I think that after about three years of trusty service I may need to buy a replacement.
These are the only two pictures I managed to salvage so far. As you can see, other than the camera hassles, it's a pretty nice day, today.
