When madness reigns

After weeks of being in a state of gray, boring sleepiness, the country (or at least the Amsterdam area) feels like it's suddenly burst into a manic craziness the past few days. For those of you who live here, this is old news, but I thought I'd share for anyone else who may be reading.

The week got off to a bad start when an intercity train derailed just before Amsterdam Central Station. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but it's the third time in about 6 months that a train has derailed near the station, though this is the first time it was a passenger train. With all of the tracks leading into the station, it would have been no problem, except that the crash brought down the wires above the tracks that power the trains. So for two days, no trains could go past that area, and I think it's partially fixed now, but there are still big delays. The derailment was in the direction of station Sloterdijk, to the west, which is what my work is near. They've been bussing people from Sloterdijk to CS, which has made for some interesting biking for me on the way to work because the bus stops near the bike lane and then there are like a million people waiting to get on the bus and they pile up into the bike lane and people are walking toward the buses with nothing on their mind but "BUS. MUST GET THE BUS" and nothing about minding the bike lane they're crossing so I end up well off the bike path, trying just to find the path of least resistance through the sea of mad commuters. It does provide me with some good moments like yesterday when I rang my bell at some guy who had his back to me and was obviously not going to check whether a bike was coming as he wandered into the path and the ring from my bell scared the absolute shit out of him and he seriously jumped his ass off of the bike path. Heh. Though I kinda felt bad, I didn't mean to give him a heart attack, I just didn't want to run into him.

So, right, train crash. Which never comes at a good time, but this is a particularly bad time because Amsterdam is expecting thousands and thousands and thousands of visitors for Sail 2005, a once-in-5-years boating event that goes from today through Sunday. Not good when your plan changes from "just take the train to CS and walk from there" to "take a couple of trains and a bus and get stuck in traffic and get there 2 hours later and walk from there." The traffic just around Sloterdijk was nuts as O and I were biking home today. O said the street his work is on was jammed with cars and usually it's just a quiet industrial area. It felt like a sunny Friday when everyone's trying to get to the beach, but it's only Wednesday.

As if all that weren't enough, the garbage collectors decided to take the week off go on strike so mini-landfills have been sprouting up all over the city. Though I've heard that they are cleaning the Dam and the area where Sail is, but that doesn't help the average neighbourhood. We are lucky though to have large underground containers to put our garbage in; in some parts of the city you just put your garbage on the sidewalk, so I imagine it's particularly bad there. Our container has quite the pile around it already, mid-week, though most of it isn't garbage bags, but big stuff like a mattress, old toys and boxes. I was proud though to have jammed up the container with the bag I threw in, thinking there might be a bit more space in there.

We've now been blessed with about 2 days of warm weather to remind us it's August and everyone rushing to head outside just seems to add to the insanity. I'd like to head out into it myself tomorrow night - enjoy a warm evening, see the boats in Sail, and catch the fireworks show at 10 (my third in 2 months!) For tonight though I'm playing European and watching the Nederland vs Duitsland football game while drinking Belgian beer. Go Oranje!