Without a Traceroute

Last night was pretty cool. I hung out with this guy Koen (pronounced “Koon”) who’s a physics student at Utrecht U. He just finished his bachelor’s degree and is starting on his master’s this year. In the Netherlands, they usually do a bachelor’s degree in three years and then immediately start on a master’s, it’s just sort of automatic and the bachelor’s degree is not even a big deal at all. At dinner, he and his classmate were surprised to hear that we have a whole graduation ceremony to recieve a bachelor’s degree. They’re supposed to go over to an office next week to pick up their diplomas.

Anyway, we went to dinner at this place called “Stairway to Heaven” which was essentally a Hard Rock Cafe-knockoff. They had all kinds of signed guitars and memorabilia on the walls. They had a “Shagadelic Burger” on the menu that looked pretty good, but I got a chicken kabob instead because I tend to be dissapointed by burgers in Europe. Later, we went to this club Tivoli where Koen and a bunch of his friends work so we got in free. It was a really cool club, it’s too bad I didn’t have my camera with me. I saw a guy there wearing an American Apparel Legalize LA shirt, and another one wearing a Cubs jersey. Both struck me as kind of random choices for wear in the Netherlands.

I did get my bike tire fixed by paying a bike shop (€12.50). They were kind of dicks about it. They told me that I needed a new tire, refused to put on a used-but-better tire I had (“It’s against policy”), but were willing to put the original tire back on. Whatever.

Koen’s bike had been stolen last week, so to get from his place into the city center and back, we doubled up on my bike. This is a VERY common practice in the Netherlands. The passenger will sit side-saddle on the cargo rack on the back of the bike. When I was driving the bike, it was mostly fine. It just felt like I was riding with a very heavy, unbalanced load on the back. However, when we switched with me riding on the back, I found it really terrifying. We were moving pretty quickly and I kept feeling like I was going to slip and fall off the back, or topple sideways off the bike (backwards from the way I was sitting) if we banked too much on a turn. It was fine though.