Dutch culture and Den Bosch

Watch out for bikes. No, really. Cars, don't worry about. But be very afraid of bikers. They have priority at least 90% of the time in the Netherlands. Every road and every sidewalk has a corresponding bike path. Even highways. You are supposed to tell it apart from where you're walking, 'cause it's in clear, red bricks, contrasting with the grey of the sidewalk or pavement. *Supposed to.* Often, in older parts of cities, the bricks are the same color, you don't realize you're in a bike zone, and you have to run out of the way of a little bell. 'Cause they are not used to clueless people that stand in their way. They do not stop. They are the masters of transportation in this country.

Then there is credit cards. They are nearly useless here. Do *not* depend on them. The Netherlands work on debit. Not even supermarkets take credit cards. *Some* restaurants will, but they might charge you a fee for using it (and it's expensive)! My debit card didn't work here, so not sure if it's just a different system or what... And most vending machines (the train ticket ones, for example) will not take bills. So you either need lotsa coins, or you have to buy a chip card. Which is basically a pre-paid debit card. For Dutch people, it's linked to their local banck account. Not sure how tourists buy one... Do you go to an ATM, get money out, and give it to a vendor just so they can charge the cash onto the card? A bit redundant... but if you are spending any long amount of time here, you'll find yourself needing it.

On to the new places I visited: Wed, May 10, we went to Den Bosch, which is short for 's-Hertogenbosch [link to wiki]. The girls have been very cool and always ready to go places, no matter how far. With less than 9 months of age, I was very impressed on how agreeable both baby and mother have been to travel!

's-Hertogenbosch is a small but very pretty town, with a small system of water channels. (This, by the way, seems to be a regular setup for cities here. Amsterdam is designed around water, a detail I didn't know about before... but more on that later.) We didn't get to go on a boat tour, missing the last one 'cause it was sold out... nor did we get inside the cathedral, which is only open 1-3:30pm... Instead, we bought a walking tour of the town, and started to follow it. About half-way through we finally realized why we kept getting lost. The thing was 1) written in bad English, and 2) was meant for retarded people with no initiative. We kept walking further, thinking we were supposed to go a while to find the next turn... and always had to walk back to the last spot, 'cause the next step was only 3 meters away. :P

Cool thing about this town: it's the home town to Hieronymus Bosch, one of my favorite painters. He basically did what Dali did, surrealism... but in the Middle Ages! Cool stuff. We visited the local museum, which was aaight. And I made the effort of trying another fried Dutch food thing, the "bear claw". *Almost* managed to finish it... :P