Nijmegen

My first stop in the Netherlands was on June 18th in Nijmegen (pronounced 'NAY-MEGEN', with a very throaty Dutch 'G'). I stayed for only a day on my way to Amsterdam. There I met up with Herman, a friend of AJ's, and later also with Herman's girlfriend, Loes. They showed me around the city and told me a bit about Dutch life and history. Herman pointed out some Dutch influence in the US, notably that New York used to be New Amsterdam before it was traded to the British (and there is a Dutch city named Haarlem). They taught me a little bit of the Dutch language, which is sort of a mix between German and English but the pronunciation is quite distinct.

Herman and I

Bike racks outside the train station

In the Netherlands, everyone rides a bike, which is awesome. It helps that the country is so dense. As a result, everybody bikes to the train station and locks them up in one of the thousands of stops in double-decker bike racks.

Nijmegen city square

There also happened to be a street circus going on by the canal. It was really random and hardly supervised; one could get way too close to the giraffes and tigers. I joked that I would go away with the impression that giraffes are quite common to find on the streets here.

I felt bad for this guy; he was pacing around in the heat in a space barely wider than his body length. He could easily have stepped out, too.

Herman was very generous and offered to host me for the night, which saved me the trouble of travelling to Amsterdam and finding a hostel at night. It was great to meet up with locals instead of just being isolated as a tourist.