Hallo! I’ve just wrapped up my third week in Amsterdam, and I have loved every minute of my time here. I have begun to feel more at home in Amsterdam, finding my favorite parks and cafes, creating a “mental map” with my personal routes and landmarks, and biking throughout the city without the help of GPS.
The biggest difference between Amsterdam and my communities in the US is multimodal transportation. While I have found Pittsburgh to be quite walkable, and I often take the bus or metro in my hometown of Montgomery County, Maryland, the US (and my lifestyle in it) is highly dependent on cars. Amsterdam, on the other hand, is dominated by bikes. Almost all roads have spacious bike lanes, and shared lanes feel more like roads for bikes. The dominance of cars seen in the US is flipped; in Amsterdam, cars yield to bikes and respect them as an equal form of traffic. While moving throughout the city, I see all kinds of bikes; regular bicycles, motor bikes, mothers with attachments for their babies, Uber Eats and Doordash workers with delivery bikes, people shipping larger loads with cargo bikes, and more. I have found that being able to see individual people as they ride, rather than looking out at streams of cars, makes the city feel much more human. On my first bike riding experience in Amsterdam, I felt a combination of anxiety and overwhelming joy. It was intimidating navigating city traffic, but I soon grew more comfortable and realized that biking is a liberating, wonderful way to see the city. Some of my peers were hesitant to ride bikes at first, but eventually, almost my entire cohort rented bikes, and now we ride to class together every morning! While Amsterdam is designed to make biking the easiest option, it is sometimes inconvenient. Awkward. Physically tiring. But the comforts and convenience of cars have been sacrificed for sustainability and human well-being, making Amsterdam a model for the rest of the world as we face the pressures of climate change.
After our morning commute via bike and ferry, my friends and I attend class, discussing sustainability topics such as ecology, waste management, and urban design. We then eat our packed lunches (meal prep has been a secondary skill I’ve picked up while abroad), sometimes at a nearby park, other times opting to sit along the canals. Then, we spend our afternoons and evenings exploring the city via museums, parks, restaurants, flea markets, and (my personal favorite) live music venues. While exploring, I hear the chimes of bicycle bells, chatter from passersby in all sorts of languages, and the calmness of streets without the constant honks of car traffic. I smell the sweet aroma of tulips at the floating Flower Market, the freshness of the greenery at Vondelpark, the odor of fresh fish on display at the daily Waterlooplein market. I see complex, lush greenery that has grown without the meticulous trimming so common in the US, streets dense with slightly slanted buildings along the canals, and always so many people.
I have grown so much throughout my time in Amsterdam, and I am thankful for everything that has brought me here. I am looking forward to enjoying my final week in the city, starting my research on citizen participation in urban planning, and bringing home plenty of stories and souvenirs to my family and friends next week!
