Getting lost

It didn't take long to crack my fear of biking in Amsterdam. The secret is in the planning. The first few times out I pored over the map beforehand to find the most direct route to where I was going, with a secondary goal of staying off the busiest streets, but I've now learned that I was operating on the wrong principles. Most direct is not necessarily better, and busy does not necessarily mean dangerous. The important thing is to find a route that offers a good bike lane, and there are lots of them here. Some of the busiest streets have the best bike lanes, sometimes even a separate lane with a divider buffering it from car traffic. Better yet, Amsterdam has some veritable bike highways, with two-way bike traffic and no cars. Some of these routes even pass under the main thoroughfares, so there's no stopping at intersections. It's worth taking a slightly longer route to where you're going to take advantage of these.

Isn't it interesting that in the US, where everything is big and spread out, most of our cities can't get it together to create rights-of-way for bikes, whereas in the tiny, cramped, entirely built-out environment of Amsterdam, there's room for bike lanes just about everywhere?

I'm pleased to report that I've mapped out a 15- or 20-minute bike route from our home in De Pijp to the kids' school that only requires us to stop twice at intersections, and that includes a bikes-only section along a canal and a passage through the lovely Beatrixpark. I think I can go ahead and purchase a bike for Zander now (Clara already has one, a purple-pink beauty) and proceed with the bike-to-school plan without my parental anxiety meter going off the chart.

Anyway, back to the part about getting lost. I love maps, and am pretty adept at using them to get around, but the streets here are small, with long names that change every few blocks. The kids' school, for instance, is on Prinsesirenestraat; go a couple of blocks and it's called Fredroeskestraat, then quickly changes to Usbaanpad. To capture all this information, the maps use very tiny print, presenting quite a challenge to my never-mind-how-old-they-are eyes. So I get lost.

The good news, though, is getting lost is one of the best ways to see a place. As you slow down and cast about for landmarks, you begin to notice more details. The edge of anxiety that comes from being lost -- in a foreign country, no less! -- adds excitement. And not knowing where you are going means you don't know what you will find.

This morning after dropping off the kids, I decided to ride my bike to the Mac repair store to check on the status of my beloved laptop, which crashed last week (hence the lack of photos to date on this blog; luckily, I backed up a few days before the crash, so I hope soon to be reunited with both my computer and my photo archive). It was an arrogant move -- the trip would take me through totally uncharted (to me) neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. So of course I got lost.

And I'm so glad I did! I rode for a while on a kind of bicycle beltway -- the tweewieler I-270 (or Rte. 128) of Amsterdam, with commuters in business attire whizzing along in both directions, messenger bags strapped across their shoulders and jaunty, oh-so-European scarves flying. Then, suddenly, I was meandering through a neighborhood of small suburban homes. Something about the houses drew my attention -- it took me a moment, though, to realize that they were all houseboats! It was a houseboat suburb. And unlike the houseboats along the canals in the central city, which while their fixtures often give them an air of permanence, still generally look like floating boxes, these houses seemed as much a part of the land as the water: they had yards, with trees and other plantings. And they were built of -- stone? and brick? Maybe they were less houseboats and more built-in-the-water houses. I'll go back another day with my camera and investigate further. In any event, it was quite exotic, as suburban developments go.

It took me a while to get my bearings, but I discovered another principle for navigating Amsterdam: use the waterways to orient yourself. The web of canals is easier to follow on the map than the web of streets; once you can find a body of water, and figure out what it's called, the rest is easy.

Let's hope it doesn't get too easy; I'd prefer to continue getting lost.