France Wins!!

The results:

1st place: France

2nd place: Germany

3rd place: Netherlands

4th place: Belgium

What's this? World Cup? No way, it's the motorway challenge, my subjective ranking of national highways, freeways, motorways, autoroutes, autobahnen, autosnelwegs, whatever you want to call them... I've driven all of these multiple times in the past year, and let me tell you why they're quite different.

Bringing up the rear, in 4th place, is Belgium. Belgium takes fourth because there are only four contenders in the contest -- Belgian roads are actually in a different league, a horribly underfunded and frustrating league. They're potholey, trafficky, and worst of all, terribly marked. Even with a TomTom telling you where and when to turn, you can still pick the wrong exit ramp, sub-exit ramp, left-exit, unmarked split, whatever. Horrible. Belgian autosnelwegs kind of redeem themselves at night, however, when their abundance of lighting really makes them shine. I've heard it's because they have so much nuclear energy to burn, and that's the best thing they can think of to do with it. Maybe Google should build a server farm there (actually, that would help me a ton, because Google Maps is excruciatingly slow here!).

Next up, in 3rd place, is my current home, Nederland. The roads themselves are fabulous, so smooth and quiet, at least when they're not under construction. The trouble is, they're almost always under construction. Between the road work and the traffic, which is what you'd expect it to be in the most densely populated country in Europe, driving just takes unreasonably long around here. When you have extra time on your hands for delays, however, they're a pleasure, with good signage, consistent traffic patterns, local & express lanes, and excellent rest stop plazas. The speed limit is the same as Belgium's, 120 kilometers per hour.

Speed, of course, is the main thing going for Germany's autobahns. Speed-hungry Americans at home with their car magazines dream of a beautiful Bavarian day in an ungoverned Porsche Carrera GT. In reality, even a Volvo can be fun to open up for a stretch of no-speed limit driving, and I enjoy doing so on occasion when, for example, I have to pick someone up across the border at Dusseldorf Airport. I've had my V40 up past 160 km/h (100 mph) a few times, and it glides pretty nice. The interesting thing is, though, in the land of Porsche and BMW, that there's always someone faster than you -- no matter how fast you go, and how white-knuckled you feel, you ALWAYS have to keep your eyes on the rear-view mirror because some red or black streak is about to whiz by you. And, famously, they're not shy about flashing headlights and horn-honking if you're in the left lane when they reach your backside. The autobahn is not all speed and roses, however: Germany is a pretty busy country, and the no-limit sections are only out in the countryside between big cities. There are plenty of 120, 90, and even 70 (in construction) km/h speed limits, and it gets quite tiring to be constantly speeding up and slowing down when you're traversing the country. Traffic can get pretty snarly, too, and there's nothing like cresting a hill at 140 km/h to discover a sea of brake lights and hazard lights three lanes wide as you slam on the brakes. The autobahn has great rest stop plazas, and the slight annoyance of having to pay 50 cents to use the toilet is mostly quenched by the fact that you get your 50 cents back in discount form when you buy a drink or anything. Between Germany and the Netherlands, the roads themselves are similar, Dutch rest stops are a little better, but the optional speed limit (official rule is "130 km/h recommended") wins by a mile. Or a kilometer.

In first place, France takes the gateau, even though its autoroutes are the only ones in the group with tolls -- expensive tolls, at that, like 14 Euro for 2 hours of driving! French speed limits are 130 km/h, marginally higher than Dutch and Belgian, rest stops are fine, similar to Dutch ones, and the roads themselves are generally in good shape without many construction delays. This all sounds fine, though not outstanding, but somehow everything comes together to make a very pleasant driving experience. I've driven all the way out to Bretagne, and the near-constant 130 km/h just feels more productive than the start-stop annoyance of the autobhn. Traffic somehow is rarely a problem, except right around Paris -- maybe it's the abundance of lanes (3 lanes each way most of the Autoroute du Nord from Lille to Paris), maybe there are fewer trucks, or maybe the lack of tailgating Audis makes it seem more relaxed. It would be easy to argue either side of all-out speed vs. average speed & convenience in the Germany/France contest. But, on my last trip to France, they truly frosted their own cake. Surely you know how infamous the French are for their propensity to go on strike: "GREVE" signs, farm fields on Paris streets, walkouts in the Metro, etc. Well, it turns out when the toll collectors strike, there's nobody to collect the toll! They just wave you right through. Viva la France!

Funkadelic Philatelic

A collection of interesting stamps, all on one envelope, which by the way was the vessel for the Master's thesis that a student I supervised mailed me. Cool, eh? Click the pic for the big version!

Gotta be In It to Win It

Lottery! Everyone loves lotteries, right? Tonight's the drawing for the big jackpot of €27,500,000! At today's exchange rate, that's almost 39 MILLION DOLLARS!

Wow. Take a look at the little logo at the bottom of the Staatsloterij (State lottery) poster I saw in Maastricht this weekend:

A big fish eating a little fish. If you play the lottery, which fish do you suppose you are? The big, happy orange one or the naive little guy who's about to get chomped?

I think everyone knows -- despite the irrestistable, irrational appeal of the jackpot -- that on a rational level, lotteries are pretty much a scam. Not that they're rigged or whatever, but just that the odds are so severely against you that participating is simply throwing your money away. But most lotteries try to maintain the illusion that you're not getting hosed! They don't show you your fate in fish-pictogram form right on the advertisement!

Chalk it up to Dutch straightforward honesty.

Oh, and I didn't buy a ticket. As they say in New York, you've gotta be in it to win it. I'm out, so I'm absolutely sure I won't win. My colleague is in it, and I'm almost entirely absolutely sure he won't win. However, on the off chance that he does win, let me just put it here for the record that he's my best friend. Good luck, little fishy!

Why Biking to Work is Better Than Driving

There are a whole pile of reasons why biking to work is better than driving. Here are some visual reminders of some of them...

Traffic sucks. Sitting in stop-and-go traffic makes me crazy. Having to drive to and from work during rush hour is like a punch in the mouth. However, passing cars in the wide-open bike lane makes me quite happy.


Gas is expensive. Below is the sign at the local BP. Don't shrug off the seemingly-low price for Euro 95 (standard unleaded) -- that's in Euros per liter. Today, a Euro is worth about $1.30, and there are 3.8 liters in a gallon. Factor those conversions in, and gas here costs just over $6 per gallon. No wonder this is the land of the Smart car. What's that 51-cent price, you ask, for "Autogas?" Autogas is LPG, liquified petroleum gas, some sort of mix of methane, propane, and similar stuff. Apparently many cars here have been retrofitted to burn LPG rather than gasoline (benzine, in Dutch). I looked into it when I bought my car, but I guess that while LPG is ubiquitous within the Netherlands, elsewhere in Europe it is tougher to find. But, luckily, I don't need any of this nonsense to bike to work!


Biking puts a smile on my face because it's simply pleasant! Check out the bike paths I get to use every day, which are way nicer than even the quaintest European roads:



Nice, eh? Of course, it's not always sunshine and roses... Sometimes other "traffic" in the bike lane leaves its mark:

Learning the Meaning of Snelheid

Despite his appearance in our driveway every day on his bike with bright orange "TNT Post" panniers, the mailman still receives a savage set of warning barks from my watchful and cute doodle dog. Yesterday, however, he brought something worth barking at: a Beschikking, or judgement, from the Centraal Justitieel Incasso Bureau, which is essentially the Judicial Collection Bureau. And guess what, they judged that I owe them money! Let me explain, and please mind the tangents...

Turns out I got a speeding ticket, via mail, from one of the ubiquitous traffic cameras (known elsewhere in the world as Lazy Policemen -- I'm not sure if there's an equivalent Dutch epithet). Dutch speed cameras (flitscameras) look something like this (not my photo: thanks to Gebba1). Note that the Christmas decoration is strictly seasonal:



The beschikking found me guilty of "overschrijding maximum snelheid:" exceeding maximum speed. By 4 km/h.

Tangent 1: FOUR KM PER HOUR!?? I did 54 km/h in a 50. In American terms, I got a ticket for going 33 1/2 in a 31! No wonder they mailed me a ticket, because what self-respecting policeman would pull me over and look me in the eye for such a minor infraction?? Come to think of it, I've seen more cop cars on a single drive down the New York State Thruway than I have in three months of living in the Netherlands. Cops really don't make a big presence here, on the roads or anywhere else... so I suppose that's why I've heard lots of warnings about traffic cameras. This is my first real encounter with one.

And yes, I verified that it was me who earned the ticket, not my wife; based on the date and time, I was heading north through town, alone, on a quiet Sunday morning on the way to IKEA. The quietness of that Sunday morning is actually crucial to the ticket, because the normal volume of traffic here quite effectively prevents speeding. I got the ticket on the Aalsterweg, which is the artery joining my town (Aalst) with the bigger portion of Eindhoven. During rush-hour, it can be bumper-to-bumper for several kilometers and take 25 minutes to get through. On a normal afternoon, practical speed is something like 20 km/h, and there are plenty of stoplights, buses, and left-turners to keep everyone from driving a reasonable pace. I suppose I've never had to actually pay attention to speed on that stretch... until now.

Tangent 2: Why so quiet? Sundays, in general, mean absolutely everything is closed, including grocery stores, drug stores, any-kind-of-store, etc. This fact is a real blow to the American "open 24 hours" ethic that, while if I stop and think about it, is kind of silly, but nonetheless is dang convenient. Fact is, here you HAVE to stop and think about it, plan ahead for your weekend groceries, and not run out of toilet paper on a Sunday. Lest you think the Netherlands is universally anti-Sunday, there is a thing here called Koopzondag, or "shopping sunday," during which stores are open. Apparently there's a council somewhere that doles out Koopzondagen to all the locales of the Netherlands, and it's so unpredictable and autocratic that there's even a website to bring word to the masses about where and when you can shop your Sunday socks off: http://www.koopzondagen.net Typically, the Eindhoven city center is open for business on the first Sunday of the month. Occasionally, a big business like IKEA manages to get a Koopzondag waiver, and that was indeed the case this particular Sunday.

Anyway, the beschikking I received explained my infraction, where and when, and even listed the "fotofilmnummer," which I have to believe is a relic of older times. Mmmm, the heydey of Kodak -- wasn't it nice? The letter is of course in Dutch, and unfortunately my Dutch skills have not kept up with my driving skills.

Tangent 3: I finally got my scanner configured to scan a given letter in Dutch (of which we get several per week that require action of some kind) and do optical character recognition (OCR) in Dutch. I then pipe that through Google Translate, and voila, no unpaid speeding tickets! I have a Canon MP540 all-in-one, which I think is a Europe-only model, but it works pretty well. I'm using Canon's MPNavigator software for the text recognition, which is not flawless, but gets me 90% of the way there...

I learned some sweet new Dutch words with this beschikking:
verkeersvoorschrift = traffic regulation
waarschuwing = warning
sanctie = penalty
beroep = appeal
verhoging = increase

Tangent 4: Snelheid means "speed" in Dutch. It's related to snel, which means fast. I see a pattern here with the word gezond, which means healthy, and gezondheid, which means health. I translate the "heid" as something like "-ness," so fastness means speed, and healthiness means health. Funny that in English we start with a noun (health or speed) and make it an adjective with the addition of "y" (healthy or speedy). In Dutch it's the opposite, at least for these examples...

So how big is the fine for 33 1/2 in a 31? €19. First reaction: not too steep. Finally! Something that's cheaper in the Netherlands than in the US (besides tulips). Second thought: wait a minute, that's more than €10/ kilometer per hour! And for a ticket that you would never ever get in USA! Dang it again!

Thank you, Mr. TNT Postman... this was a real hit! I know, I'll pay the fine online and -- HA! -- no letter for you to deliver!

€8,50 in Amsterdam

What can eight and a half Euro buy you in Amsterdam? Nevermind what it might get you in the red light district; at the Bloemenmarkt (flower market), in December, it will buy you 50 fresh tulips:


The bloemenmarkt sits on a series of boats in the Singel canal, and despite being an unabashed tourist trap, it boasts an amazing array of fresh flowers and ready-to-plant bulbs. It's open zeven dagen per week, even in the middle of winter. Here is a typical scene from one of the vendors' boats:


By the way, eight and a half Euro, or acht Euro vijftig, is written €8,50 (not €8.50). When writing numbers, these clever Europeans swap the comma and the dot compared to Americans. Convenient, eh? Luckily, it's rarely ambiguous, as you probably wouldn't mistake €8,50 and €8.500,00. Though eighty-five hundred Euro would buy you a whole lot of tulips. Veel tulpen!

When you then bring home 50 tulips to your smiling wife, stuff them into the largest vase you own, then wait a day for them to relax and open their little faces, you get something like this:


Not bad for December flowers, bought outdoors in the cold, carried halfway across town, and then home under a seat on the train, eh? And yes, they were purple to begin with, not red like the ones in the top photo!