A Nation on Two Wheels

One night in Copenhagen, as the two of us were riding our rented bicycles to dinner, a policeman stopped us on a bridge.  At first, I assumed that he was motioning to a passing car, his stance was so official.  But he was making eye contact, and I noticed that a few other cyclists were also stopped there on the sidewalk, talking to other officers.
"Where are you from? How long have you been in Denmark? Do you live here?" he asked, once we'd pulled over.  We were smiling and almost laughing at him - it didn't seem like we could be in any trouble. Our passports are in fine order, we hadn't broken any laws. Turns out, he wasn't worried about our immigration status, and we were doing something illegal.
"I can take you to the bank right now," he said.  "Seven hundred kroner fine for you" - sticking his finger in my chest - "seven hundred kroner for you" - pointing at Rebecca. "Payment immediate, or I arrest you."  He put his hands together, miming handcuffs.  Uh… what?
It turns out that bike lights are required at night in Denmark.  It's a national law.  As soon as the streetlights are illuminated, every cyclist needs a white light in the front and a red light in the back - this being one of the most bicycle friendly places on earth, riding un-lit is a bit like driving a car without working brake lights.  The policeman very sanctimoniously let us go - walking our bikes - because we were foreigners.  "Buy lights at a seven-eleven," he grunted.
Yes sir.

About half of Copenhagen's citizens bike to work or school every day.  In a flat, mostly temperate metropolis like this, it's hard not to see the benefits of taking a bicycle instead of a car - it's faster, easier and maybe even safer.  During the three days that we had our rentals, we fell in love with the capital's terrific double transportation system - one set of lanes and traffic signals for cars and a separate one for those of us on two wheels.  It's orderly and well set-up, and almost everyone plays by the rules.  Cars are very careful of bicycles and every rider stops at the miniature traffic lights.  Most main roads have good bike lanes, and on smaller streets the smaller vehicles have the right of way.
This reliable bike is a postal trike, for delivering the mail.

Like in Holland - another flat, much cycled country - the wealth of different cycle options is really outstanding.  Ingenious, front-mounted platforms and crates allow people to carry heavy loads - we saw one man riding with a set of four dining room chairs.  Children are whisked around in a similar way, in the front bucket.  There's a multitude of different companies making vehicles like this - from Copenhagen's own Christiania Bikes to the hipper Bullitt Cargobikes. There are mail bikes and delivery bikes, street vendor bicycles and cycles with pizza-boxes built in.  Sometimes the cargo is carried behind the seat, but usually between the handlebars and the front wheel.

The best part about getting around by bike is that you never have to look for parking - just pull over, flip down the kickstand, lock the back wheel and walk away.  The woman we rented our apartment from told us not to worry too much about bike theft.  "Sure, it happens," she said.  "But not like in New York, for example."
One reason why is that there are so, so many bicycles parked out on the street.  Huge masses of them - like shoals of shining fish - congregate around train stations and supermarkets.  In crowds like that, the nicest bikes are usually the only ones fastened to something sturdy.  Most - like our rentals - just had a locking bar that clicked through the spokes and prevented the bikes from being ridden away.  We didn't worry too much.  Someone might have picked up our rickety old things for scrap, but that would have been a lot of work.

It's not just the city streets of Copenhagen that are full of cyclists.  All through Denmark, people are enthusiastic about riding.  On Funen island and in Kolding it was about as common as in the capital, if a little less organized.  Local governments have been banding together to create "superhighways" for two-wheeled commuters, complete with air-pump stations and winter plowing.  Several of these mega-paths already service Copenhagen's suburbs, and the government is planning on adding more soon.
An initiative (curiously) named "karma" has also been started, to reward cyclists for following the rules of the road.  Supposedly, volunteers on the street hand out chocolates to riders who obey traffic lights and use the proper signals.  I'm not sure why this is really necessary.  Barely anyone breaks the law.

In recent years, there's been a wave of public bike rental plans - or bike "sharing" - in European cities.  Most of them work with some kind of easy, credit-card based system.  The idea is, you have a charge card that's billed for the amount of time the bike is used - or, maybe, a payment is made that's good for a full day.  Special bike racks are set up at different points so that it's possible to pick up a ride on one side of town and "return" it on the other.  Some version of this exists in 165 cities worldwide, with notable examples in Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam and soon in New York.
Copenhagen has one-upped the other cities though, with free "borrow" bikes.  A twenty kroner coin is all it takes to unlock your ride.  You get the money back when you re-chain the lock - much like the  deposit mechanisms on supermarket carts or airport baggage dollies.  They're not the greatest vehicles - heavily built, with airless, hard tires and balky gears - but they're dependable.  They also come with handy maps mounted to the handlebars.  We didn't use them - they're not always easy to find - but did see plenty of them around town.

The night we were stopped by the police, we did end up buying lights (dinky, flashing, plastic things) and making it to the restaurant we were heading to.  There, when we were talking to the American chef, he congratulated us for arriving "like the locals."  He laughed when we told him about getting pulled over.  "I always play the tourist card," he said.  "I've been in Copenhagen for four years, and I still haven't gotten the lights. Never got a ticket."

Paris By Bike - a Reintroduction

I've never been on a bicycle in Paris, but plenty of other people have. Despite the paucity of bike lanes and awful traffic, this is a city of biking; a new observation, made today as the streets and boulevards reordered themselves in my memory.
A sensory recollection struck me a few days ago in Liechtenstein. Connected somehow to a map of the Paris metro, a ghost scent of the subway seemed to gather in the little gasthaus room. It's a peculiar smell - there's the sweet scent of urine, of course, but also a battery acid note, and an older tinge of dead leaves and autumn. Years ago, I spent parts of a winter and spring in Paris, and my laziness and the cold made the metro seem appealing in a way that's hard to forget.
Arriving here this time, the heat was striking. It's the hottest that the city has ever seemed, and the difference from the remembered weather has made Paris feel new. It's something like cleaning the glass that covers an old photograph and finding the image brighter and less nostalgic than imagined. It may be that Paris is partly imagined anyway, as a set for movies and stories, and as the backdrop to so much that we believe to be French. There is an immediacy in the heat that's less agreeable to one's fantasies.
September is like that too - hotter at first than remembered, not quite possessing the dusky clarity of autumn days. It's still summer for much of the month, we forget, and the sun still climbs nearly straight up into the sky. Maybe it's October that we're really thinking of, when the leaves are done falling and grimness has taken hold. Maybe Paris is more a solid assemblage of paintings and structures than a dreamscape. Of course it is - people go about their lives and buy bread and carry around packages every day. Their existence probably doesn't feel like a fairytale.
But there is something exciting about the city that's hard to pinpoint - the smell of the metro didn't so much bring back memories for me as it conjured up a concept that's bigger than the reality. Every time I come back, that feeling has been there. It has never seemed to grow duller. There is room here for reminiscences and exploration, which is not always the case in a place. Walking around is like wandering through a childhood home; it feels familiar even the first time, perhaps like visiting a home lived in as a toddler. Some things are always a little different than remembered, many things have changed, but there are smells and corners that leap into the consciousness of a stroll and make you remember, immediately, why Paris really is remarkable in some strange way.

A Prelude to Castle Hunting

Our Lonely Planet said that there was a fine castle a little ways away that you couldn’t really find “without a good map and a set of wheels.” We visited the tourist office to do some research and found that getting to the castle was a) feasible on just two wheels each and b) would take not one, but two maps. Ever since our Dutch bicycle exploring, we’ve been excited to get back on the saddle and left the office with the two maps and a scrap of paper with bike rental information.

Four days later, we finally got up enough gusto to open the darn things, rent the bikes and get on the road. The bike trail system here in Belgium is pretty amazing and we kept a jotted down list of our route in my pocket for easy reference while we rode: Take 99 to 57 to 64 to 73 to 22 to 24 to 23 to 25 to 71 to 67 to 92 to 10 to 62 to 63 to 65. Simple, right?I managed to take a few pictures while I pedaled. Which is really impressive being as I also managed to fall and flatten some corn stalks and roll down a hill full of thistle, both from a complete stand still. If you don't know what thistle is, it's a green plant that looks really soft but feels like a thousand tiny little needles that itch.

It was amazing how throughout the trip we seemed to be right in people’s backyards, gardens and farmland. Sometimes we’d see people working in the distance and sometimes we were literally a few inches and a wire fence away from someone watering their tomato patch.
Here’s Merlin riding next to a huge pile of harvested turnips.
And here he is riding in a cornfield.
When we started off, the bike route was mainly a wide, paved road like this:
But on our journey it took different shapes.
Sometimes it was two dirt lines in the grass, sometimes all gravel, sometimes cobblestone lanes next to cars. All the while, we would be looking out for tiny green signs with the bike path number on it.
For a little while, we found ourselves biking through some serious mud ditches. We kept looking for a number sign, but there had been long stretched without them before, so we figured this was just another one of them. It was really narrow and steep and I finally had to walk my bike for a little bit to get through.

At our hungriest and muddiest, Merlin found some wild blackberries in the shrubs beside the road, which raised our spirits quite a bit. Then, we biked a little further and found ourselves right alongside an apple orchard! We stole two apples and put them in our backpack in case the hunger situation got dire. Speeding away, delinquents, we got a second wind and we made it through – discovering at the end that we were riding parallel to an actual, paved bike path the whole time.

About three and a half hours after we left Mechelen, we reached the castle. Then, it was time to stalk our prey.

Strandhuisje and Sea

We biked to a beach near our little place in Santpoort and were struck by the utterly straight lines of the landscape. Looking down from the dunes, the shore and the horizon were exactly parallel for miles in either direction.

There were hundreds of these little beach houses - "strandhuisje," in Dutch. Most of them are made from old shipping containers, and we were fascinated by them.

We met Fritz (shown above, eating a sandwich), outside his girlfriend's (that's her inside, cooking) strandhuis. He said that it's really the end of the season, and that everyone is packing up their cottages for winter. They are apparently picked up by big tractors and taken somewhere in the dunes where they're more protected. Below, you can see a few that have been prepared and left - notice how the decks in front of them are hinged so that they can be lifted up and fastened over the front windows.

They're very cozy looking, and Fritz was very nice. He told us that he had been coming down from Amsterdam every weekend this summer.

The beach was pretty empty at this end, but a mile or so south of here, there were some major party preparations going on. Hordes of young people were getting ready for a big clubbing party at one of the discos.

We stood outside this little stand to have lunch - bakkevis, below, and some new herring, in the bottom picture. Both were delicious, especially the herring.

Boatwatching and Biking

Last night, we stayed at Lukas and Judy’s houseboat again. We were originally planning on going to Harlaam, but couldn’t find a hostel with room on just a day’s notice. Some beginning rowers and what looked like a sailing school whizzed by as we sat outside for a drink before dinner.


Lukas suggested we all bike to dinner. I have to say, Merlin and I were as giddy as can be at the prospect of joining all of the Amsterdamians (I’m sure that’s not a real word) on two wheels. I also have to say that I was more than a little freaked out about getting on a fiets (Dutch for “bicycle”) for the first time in years and navigating my way through the city. It was amazing and I wish we had pictures, but we were a little too busy keeping up with Lukas and Judy (who sat on the back of his bike, as I was riding hers and Merlin was using the third they owned) and trying not to hit or get hit by any other bicyclists, cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists or scooterers (again, probably not a real word).