Well, seems like Dutch winter is over. Now we are having 5-7°C again, but for almost two weeks it was -10°C during the day and there was an astonishing -19°c low on one night. As if this would have not been causing enough uncomfortable moments in our everyday lives (especially the biking part, which is quite essential), Nederlandse Spoorwegen, abbreviated as NS, which is the Dutch railway company, introduced an "angepaste dienstriegling". This "adjusted schedule" was a nice euphemism for the actual act of halving the number and/or frequency of trains. So instead of 15 minutes I had to wait 30 minutes everyday for my connection, which in both ways adds up to 1 nice hour, spent in the -10°c.

Yet again, I LOVE NS, I love the yellow-blue design and the trains and the ticket inspectors, the marketing and the efficieny and the quality of the service provided by the whole company is awesome, but I have to admit, I was on the verge of losing faith in their awesomeness during the first few days of this suffering. On one of these grey mornings, when I was freezing on the central station of Utrecht, waiting for my connection, the loud-speaker announced that because of the angepaste dienstregeling, NS gives a free cup of coffee or tea to everyone. I couldn't believe my ears! And even though there were some pretty long queues, I got my hot tea within 2 minutes, for free! And this was like this for the two weeks of the changed schedule! How awesome is that? NS FTW!
 

My second little story for this blogpost is going to be about two interesting bike incidents I had lately. One time, this is how I found my bike:

My front bike lamp was open, with the battery container part hanging out, with one battery missing. Apparently, somebody was really in need of a battey, but didn't dare to take them all. Or maybe he just needed one. He didn't leave a note, so I will never find out the mysterious urge that made somebody steal a battery from my bike frontlamp.

In the other bike story it is me who committed a serious biking error: because the thing that makes it stand on its own is not to stable, I usually just put it in a place where it can lean onto something. At the station there is a nice wall, which is perfect for this purpose. But, the majority of bikes does not have this problem, so they all stand in a nice row, perpendicular to the wall. This way, my bike can nicely be locked in, which happened on this fateful day once more. As I was pushing my way through, cautiously, to get my bike out, my bag got caught in one bike which lost its balance and started falling towards the bike next to it. I was standing there, witnessing this first bike lean slowly, slowly, and hit the next bike, which also started slowly to fall over.. I couldn't do anything but watch the bicycle domino happen. It was like an awful scene of a clumsy character in a sitcom: I was standing there, without being able to do anything, and all these bikes were falling over with a horrible sound. It was a sight of a ridiculous battelfield. 

Ironically, the last one was put to a bigger distance from the others and remained standing, staring into my face from across above the dozen of bicycle cadavers, as it was pointing at me: "YOU did this!"

I was laughing out loud and looking around for advice: how would a Dutch person react? What's the right thing to do? I tried to pick up the first one but the pedal was caught up and I couldnt move it... So I just biked home and was pouring my apologies into the air all the way.

Sorry!

:)