Thigh of Relief

Since I got here I've been biking for an average of an hour a day, so my legs have become very strong. So strong that I thought "surely I can bike all the way across this tiny country and be back by dinner time."

And essentially, I was right.

Last Sunday I biked with five other international students to Bloemendaal-aan-Zee, a beach on Holland's west coast. Bloemendaal means "blooming dales"; that's how easy Dutch is. We didn't have a map more detailed than a Google printout, and our printout was useless anyway because it highlighted the route one would take from Amsterdam to B-a-Z if one were driving in a car. We were on six bikes of various degrees of ricketeyness, some of us armed with cameras, some weighed down by towels and bathing suits and hopes of warm water, one of us toting the tacky Map-of-Amsterdam shoulder bag we each got during orientation, and one of us protected from the sun by a Pittsburgh Pirates hat.

The one in the hat, who was also covered in sunscreen except for on one inexplicably forgotten stripe on the side of her neck, was me.

We set out from Leidseplein at 11am, following helpful waysigns toward Haarlem. The countryside was like a moister, ditchier, corn-free Nebraska, or like a flatter Ireland. I didn't take any pictures of it.

By 2pm we were in Haarlem, some 25km from where we had started, and a half hour later the rollingness of the landscape and prevalence of dune grass told us we were nearing the coast. We stopped to eat at a portable food-truck (what are those things actually called?) where every option on the menu was fried and we were hungry enough to find it delicious. Here is a picture I took of the others four minutes after we got our food:
From left: Kasia (Canada/Poland), Ben (Germany-Konstanz), Jacob (Oregon/Switzerland), Heike (Germany-Heidelberg), Dominik (Germany-Berlin).

About a half hour of biking uphill and directly into the wind later, we were at the beach, which was not really at all different from beaches in Southern California, except that people seemed to be enjoying it more. Also there are portable fish stands right on the sand:

There was a sideways-flowing current of foot-deep water, then a sort of wide sandbar to cross before you got to the waves. I took this next picture looking back toward shore from the sandbar. Behind the Fish Specialties truck you can see the dune, on top of which are a bunch of cafes. Please don't ask why I thought it would be cool to tilt the camera.

This one is also taken from the sandbar. It took everyone else a little while to decide to follow me across the shallow area, possibly because they were taking off their shoes and rolling up their pantlegs, or possibly because they were afraid of very tiny sharks.

I would have liked this sign better if it lacked text, actually, but it's still pretty good as far as strange European warning signs go. It makes me think that the sandbar situation isn't always the case at this beach; it says "Warning! narrow beach during high water!"
It's strange that they're warning you about something pretty obvious, because the Dutch aren't nearly as worried about covering all their bases as Americans are. For example, there are numerous places where it would be very, very easy to ride or drive right into a canal, if you weren't paying attention (probably 60% of canal banks have no rails or other obstacles next to them). And, most buildings (including many restaurants) in central Amsterdam have retained their super-steep staircases, so places like the sports bar where I can watch NFL games are human avalanches waiting to happen.

I'm going to that bar tonight, actually, to watch five NFL games at once. This soccer-loving nation will never get the better of me.