Weekend in Amsterdam

This weekend my friends and me were on trip In Amsterdam. I have to admit that it was really interesting and full of adventure visit. I won’t tell about everything but I want to share about two totally different image of Dutch people I’ve learned during this short stay.

Firstly, the Dutch drivers are worse than Polish (and I’ve thought it’s impossible :p). We’ve just left the railway station and a tram has almost hit us. The driver saw us but he didn’t slow down. He even didn’t honk! Maybe 2 m further, there was a cycle way where cyclist has also almost hit us. That’s true that we didn’t see if something is coming but we were on pedestrian line. After some time I remarked that 50% or even more drivers honked us, and only 5% let us pass the street. The drivers  in Netherlands were very unkind. In my opinion the passers-by are situated the lowest in hierarchy of objects using the streets :/ In Gent is totally different. The drivers are nice, they almost always put a passing-by in first place. I feel safe when I’m walking through the streets. I’ve never heard the honk behind my back since arrival. But…

At the end of a day there happened something that has changed my negative view. When we were searching our hostel, we got lost. It was getting darker and darker and there wasn’t anyone to ask for a help. Finally, we found one person who explained us the way. We were very far from the hostel because we took our metro stop too early. After about 10 minutes of walking a car stopped near us. It tourned out that an old man, who had shown us the direction, was worrying about our group and he offered us a ride. I was really surprised. There were eight of us so he had to make two rounds! We had no words to thank him. I don’t even know his name… That was extraordinary for me that he cared of strange people so much. 

Summing up, I think that maybe the Dutch drivers aren’t so bad. I mean, for them, cyclists and passers-by their behaviour is clear and accepted. Everyone knows his role in this traffic system. They are carefull passing the streets. And for strangers, for us it was totally different than attitude of drivers from Gent. Amsterdam is worth seeing and I think I’ll come back there one day.