Bikes gets stolen constantly and noone gives a shit. Check it.

I'm down three bikes so far, in two years. Starting with this one. I also had another bike vandalized once.

In two years in Holland I've been to a doctor twice. That's probably even a bit above average compared to the numbers over the last decade or so. As I'm now cracking the two year mark I went again today. Over the holidays I caught this nasty flu that's been pestering me for a week, with lots of coughing, not much sleep, and a general feeling of sluggishness.

I ended up going to this all night clinic after I went to the wrong location and got bounced around a little. I would have gone to the same place as the last two visits, but it's across town and with my bike being stolen yet again, it's just too far away. There is this place where they have a bunch of barracks (like at a construction site) and for some reason the all night clinic is located there. Odd place for a clinic. As I walk in I immediately get this strange sensation of having entered another dimension. There is a big plate of glass between me and the receptionist, with no holes and nothing that opens up. Only that little slot in the counter for passing stuff back and forth. It's like I'm in a recording booth, because she has to press in a button while she's talking to me for me to hear. In the back there are about 6 women sitting behind computers talking into headsets. Like people are calling in to order taxis and pizzas or something. This solid booth is the landing for anyone who enters the clinic. There is another solid door between it and the waiting room, with a lock on it. So if you don't have an appointment or you can't get along with the receptionist, she's gonna keep you from getting in there.

The receptionist I got (out of the 6 who were in the room) wasn't the most accommodating. She would ask questions in Dutch, I would answer in English, she would talk in Dutch again. When I didn't understand, she would bite the bullet and speak English, and then immediately go Dutch again. Most people when faced with this situation decide to have it in just one language. I don't have Dutch medical insurance, so I would "be paying". Okay, how much? 77 euro. That is... for one visit? Yes. (Not for a coupon of a dozen tickets or something.) And it absolutely had to be in cash. You would think for a place that isolates its staff behind bomb proof glass they would be more comfortable with electronic transfers and not having any hard money on site. Okay, but I don't have that kind of money on me. I haven't carried around sums like that since... well, ever. The nearest ATM is pretty far away too. Utrecht is very densely populated, but it is mostly suburbia-like, not city. So I get an appointment made and I step on it to get back in 30 minutes.

My appointment was.. short, but brief (like an English teacher of mine once quipped about a presentation I'd given). It was only as long as it needed to be: 6 minutes. 77 bucks for 6 minutes, so that means I paid 988 euro/hour to see my doctor. Am I crazy or is that rather high? Then again, if I had renewed my Dutch medical insurance, that goes for 300/year. I'd rather pay 77 once or even twice a year.

So I get out of there, past the waiting room, and into the tiny-but-freezing all night pharmacy. This room isn't even heated. There's only one guy working there and he's not especially fast, so just waiting for him to process one customer ahead of me took 10 minutes. Here too the sheet of glass. I was amazed by how small the place is. This is the pharmacy attached to the all night/weekends/holidays clinic, so whatever drugs you'd need at a regular pharmacy, you might need them here too, it's the one place in town that stays open. And he's only got one room with a bunch of shelves and filing cabinets.

I saw this note glued on the atm machine in the supermarket and it freaked me out. "Small amounts are also processed without charge." If they just glued that on *now* wtf was the case until now??? :wth:

Isn't that a contradiction in terms, though? "Now you pay for free." As opposed to "Until now you've been paying us for the privilege of paying us"? :wallbang:

Dutch people like to have things sent to their house. The concept of a post office isn't very strong, in the sense of a place where you do your business. I'm used to the post office, at times I've gone there so much I practically know the people who work there. The post office is where I would pick up computer hardware (and with the amount of bad hardware I've seen there would be plenty of returns too), merchandise, ebay purchases, the whole shebang. I'm not saying it's ideal, I certainly don't feel much like running that errand at times. But it's sort of *safe*. If you get a package that doesn't fit in your mailbox they store it at the post office for you, and drop off a note saying they have it. You know where it is, you can go and get it.

But it's a brave new world here down south. There is a post office, but they apparently don't get much business. Instead, any shipment with your name on it is supposedly delivered to your house. The post office does this, and all the commercial package delivery companies do this. Now, I have no problem with home package delivery in principle. But in practice it just doesn't effin work. And it's been so many years that it's time for someone to friggin realize that already.

Here in Holland the delivery people supposedly deliver it to your house. What this actually means is that they give it to the neighbor. Now, why the hell would I want my neighbor to have my package? Why not give it to whoever is on the street closest to my door just as well? The package is for _me_, not some other person. If your head is spinning right now, that's normal. If *I* order a shipment, then *I'm* supposed to get it, not my bus driver, my gardener or some random person in my neighborhood.

So now people get packages that aren't for them. Talk about a problem I never saw coming. Housing in the cities is so dense that if all you know is that "your neighbor" has your package, that could easily be anyone in about 50 addresses. And in each one of those there may or may not be some person who knows something about your package. What a fantastic system.

A long time ago I walked in to see a package in the corridor in our house. That was like a month ago. Everyday I open the front door and the package is still there. It's not for us, it's for the neighbor. It's been there all this time and no one has come to claim it. The packaging was also fairly crap so it started actually falling apart from being moved out of the way a bunch of times. Inside there was some shampoo bottles or something. Finally I got sick of looking at it and I put it outside the door of the address written on the box. They open the front door, they see it, problem solved. The following day the neighbor (apparently) comes knocking, looking for the package.

When I say I put it outside their door that's not what she wanted to hear. Apparently despite the location they didn't get it, and most likely someone made away with it. And for some reason now I'm the bad guy. "Why didn't you come and get it?" "I didn't know where it was." "So why didn't you find out until now, it's been there a month." "Not a month! Three weeks." Yeah, huge difference. "There was 100 euro in there."

I am not the post office. I am not responsible for storing or delivering packages. Least of all on behalf of people I don't know, never seen, don't even know the existence of. The package was kept for 3 weeks, or a month, whatever. That's friggin ample time to claim a package you care about. I have no idea who this person is, whether they even live at that address or it's misaddressed, when they might show up or if they ever will. I might as well have kept it there for a year, what's the difference? From the looks of the content, it might as well be some kind of promotional gift that someone ordered and forgot about, useless junk. If it were something valuable then yes I would have more patience. In Norway if you don't claim your package from the post office within 3 weeks, they send it back to the sender. I have never had a problem with this, and with all the packages I've received I've never lost one because I took too long to claim it.

This is friggin ridiculous. If my package gets delivered to the wrong place I don't expect a strange person to store it in perpetuity on the chance that I may one day show up. It's not their responsibility. If my package is misplaced, that's *my* problem. And it has been, I've gotten packages here while I wasn't home. I claimed them immediately.

"It isn't very social." What the hell does social have to do with anything? I have never seen this woman before. I have never even seen that door open. Not even once. In 18 months. I have no idea who does or doesn't live there. So if I decline to serve as a safety deposit box without a time limit, that makes me "not social". So be it.

My other neighbor came calling a couple of weeks ago looking for a package. I said I haven't seen it. She looked very concerned about it. I sympathized with her, I wouldn't want my package lost. I wrote a note to the people in this house to inform them of the situation. Later on she dropped off a note herself, asking us to please give her the package if we have it. This is how you go about finding your valuables. Pro-actively. If I had a package addressed to her I would be "social", because I know who she is. But that's rather different from expecting favors from a person you've never even met. You expect me to be "social" after leaving your package here for weeks on end and all this time it doesn't even occur to you to ask the next door neighbor? Well excuse me for thinking you don't care about it. And if you don't care about it, I definitely don't.

"That's not how we do things in Holland." Maybe it isn't. Or maybe it's more like the other neighbor did.

I had a rather unfortunate happening today. I was leaving the supermarket, which is on this narrow, but busy street (too narrow for its needs, as the case often is here). I had reclaimed my bicycle from the over crowded bike stand and I was about to get on it. I had a loaf of bread in my left hand which wouldn't fit in my backpack, so my movements were a bit impaired.

Now this street is only wide enough to allow one motor vehicle to drive, so if there is a car coming in the opposite direction, you have to basically look for a space to squeeze in so you can pass each other. And there's normally quite a few cars on the street. On both sides you have these concrete poles every 2m to draw out a narrow sidewalk for pedestrians (but which is level with the street).

As I was making my way out, there was a van parked right up against the bike stand, which blocked my view in the direction I was going. On this street that's quite common. So just as I mount my bike and push off, I see around the van and there are two bikers coming at me at 3m away. Oops. I was too far out to pull back in behind the van, and it was too late to speed off as well, so basically I was stuck. Terrible timing. A woman rode the first bike, probably 40ish, the other biker was a bit behind. She hit the brakes and stopped just so her front tyre lightly bumped into my front wheel. An inexcusable traffic blunder on my part.

She came to a full stop, I was relieved. The other bike just behind her also stopped. I look up at her. She gives me a stern, but somewhat understanding glance. Says nothing. I say "sorry" and take off. This is the way people are here. Calm. Patient. They've figured out that getting mad doesn't do you any good. I forced her to come to a complete stop. Very annoying. But ultimately harmless, and nothing to get all riled up over.

But these are the kinds of blind spots we have. On my bike I maneuver just fine. Two minutes after the incident I caused a kid a bit of mild panic when he thought I was making a turn just in front of him and he was going straight. Of course I could see I would make my turn well before he could crash into me, so there was no risk. But these are the things we don't think about. On the bike, fine. But while getting on the bike with a heavy backpack and one hand not fully available, reaction time increases.