Wednesday, August 9, 2006

How To Piss Off the Dutch

The Dutch people that I've met so far have been pretty nice people, although I still maintain that they are cheap. Yesterday, though, I had a very unpleasant experience of getting yelled at by a Dutch person. And this is not the first time either. In the last 2 or 3 weeks, I got yelled at 3 times by a Dutch person while I was on my bicycle. The first time, I was riding on a sidewalk since I had just come out of my house. I went past a guy that was walking out of his house and I guess he wasn't happy that I nearly ran over him so he yelled something along the line of "garble garble garble fietspad!!!". At another time, this idiot stopped at a corner so I went to go around him to turn on to that street and I guess he was unhappy since he was just about to get going again and I was in his way. So, he yelled at me. Finally, yesterday, I thought I was doing everything right. I was on the bicycle path, or fietspad as they call it, going straight. Then a guy comes from the opposite direction and yells something to the line of "garble garble garble fietspad!!!" The only thing I could possibly think that I was doing wrong was riding on the wrong side of the street. However, some bicycle paths are two-way, and this one had plenty of room for such traffic. I saw no signs to indicate it was a one-way bike path. Unfortunately, since I have no way of verifying these people were being assholes. For all I know, they could have been saying, "Hey! I hope you are having a pleasant day and enjoying your bike ride on our wonderful fietspad!" Highly unlikely, but I restrained from telling them to fuck off. Anyways, if you are going to cycle around in Holland, it's best to learn the rules of the road... which I obviously haven't done yet. (Someone wanna help me out here?) If you do want to piss of the Dutch people though, cycle only on the sidewalks and try to come within inches of every person walking by. Or cycle going only in the wrong direction. Better yet, just set up a road block on their precious fietspad.

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