Walkies!

What would Charles Darwin say if he had to walk from Centraal Station to Dam Square in under half an hour? My guess is "well - that theory of evolution stuff turned out to be a bunch of crap". The Dutch seem to suffer from arrested development. The evidence is abundant: language, clothes, hairstyles, food. But the most obvious area of shortcoming is in movement; specifically, walking.

Here's a challenge. Try to walk 10 blocks in Amsterdam either (1) with fewer than 20 people walking into you; or (2) in under half an hour. To paraphrase many a Dutch person - "that is not posssshiboll!!" Dutch people have absolutely no sense of personal space, or spatial awareness. They will amble straight into you, meandering, plodding. Or else they will walk in nano-steps directly in front of you, verrrrry, verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry, sloooooooooooooooooooooowly.

Some Dutchies say this is a function of how crowded Amsterdam is. They speak about the city as if it were a pulsating metropolis, like Lower Manhattan or Kowloon. Look - it's a town of around 700,000 people, like Swindon or Leicester. Just with canals. But with fewer shops, fewer amenities and fewer restaurants.

Contrast this lackadaisical approach to walking with cycling and the torrent of self-righteous bell-ringing that awaits you if you even look at a cycle path, even if the aggrieved cyclist is still 100 metres away. They can't even get cycling right, which is something the Dutch boast they're good at. Everyone knows it's popular only because they're too cheap to buy cars.