Walking the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to The Hague
Reaping the benefits of wanting to be good citizens
(The route of my walk has been from Amsterdam, to Haarlem, to Lisse, to Leiden, then to The Hague)1
Twenty minutes after my flight touched down in Amsterdam I was already on a bus headed toward my hotel in the western outskirts, and when I took off my glasses to clean them a young woman across from me whipped out her washing kit and handed it to me. It was a small gesture, but after Phoenix, one that meant a lot.
It also fits what I’ve seen in the rest of my week here, which is a thoughtfulness, friendliness, and helpfulness of the Dutch that’s so intense it triggers my cynical American side to wonder, “What game are they playing? They must want something from me.”
But they don’t seem to want anything from me, other than a polite thank you, and the game they seem to be playing is being a good citizen, and if that means momentarily helping out the ragged looking stranger, then by all means, help him out.
That emphasis on good citizenship is why the Netherlands is so remarkably clean and functional. Like Japan, it’s the eptiome of a high-trust society, and because of that it has nice things without worrying they’ll be trashed for fun, profit, or whatever selfish reasons people abuse public spaces.
The most obvious nice thing to a newcomer is the public transportation which is one of the best I’ve experienced. A network of busses, trams, and trains that run so frequently you can use them to get almost anywhere as fast, or faster, than you can by car.
Or by bike, because the Netherlands has famously chosen to place bikes at its transportation mountain summit, a dethroning that’s fundamentally changed the landscape, infrastructure, and ethos of its cities2.
Simply put, focusing on the priorities of cyclists and pedestrians first, rather than cars, has made Dutch cities more livable, in the quaint way American tourists fall in love with, then get confused about when it doesn’t work in the US the way it works in Netherlands.