This afternoon we went to Rotterdam which is a 15
minute train ride away. Weve gone there before occasionally to
shop, to a book fair, or the change trains to somewhere else. Its
nice there but if a visitor came, I dont know what I would
recommend to see. Rotterdam was severely damaged during World War II
and is much newer than other Dutch cities. It is, I suppose,
unremarkable like, say, Kansas City. I have passed through Kansas
City twice which is my authority for saying that and my apologies to
anyone Ive offended who just loves that terrific mid-west burg. Go
Chiefs.
So today we were wandering around Rotterdam when
we saw a vehicle approaching us from down the street. It appeared to
be a truck with a lot of people hanging on to the sides making a lot
of noise by singing very out of tune. When it got closer we saw that
it was not exactly a truck. This will be hard to describe. Imagine
youre at a bar where the bartender is in the middle between two
rows of counters with stools. Both rows have five or six seats and
at the end is a big keg of beer. So far so good. Now imagine that
this whole thing is mounted on a frame with wheels and that ten of
the people sitting around the bar have bicycle pedals at their feet
while sitting on the stools. These are not ornamental; thats how
this vehicle moves. Theres a guy in the front steering, presumably
not drinking beer, and handling the braking function, and the
contraption moves on beer power. The people sitting at the bar are
facing perpendicular to the direction of the vehicle and the gears
and chains are set up so that the energy is transferred to the
desired direction.
Im not making this up. The Dutch word for
bicycle is fiets and the word for cafe is cafe. You can now guess
what a fietscafe is. (Click
the Union Jack for English.)
On the menu at the left, click on "fotos", then
VIP-Fietscafe in the drop-down. Under the picture youll see "verder".
Click on this to see about four more pictures.
Then on the menu on the left click "Trouwfiets",
then click "Laat U trappen" in the drop-down. This is the one we
saw. The people on this thing were having a world of fun and getting
rid of their calories while consuming them. There is, though, one
facility that seemed to be missing.
Excuse me. I gotta go.
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