Saying that the Dutch love their bikes may be an egregious understatement. One Dutch man that I met said that he personally owned four bikes. He also quoted some figure, one I have since forgotten, regarding the ratio of bikes to people that made me furrow a brow and clean my ears to make sure I heard correctly. Why is there a need for so many bikes? Maybe there are additional reasons, but one reason is that you need a different bike for every segment of your regular trips. For example, if you take the train to work, you may need a bike to ride from your house to the train station. You need another bike to get from the arrival station to your actual office. I guess anyplace else that needs to be traveled to with any regularity would require similar accommodations. Maybe there is the Sunday, going-to-church bike. I have not interviewed the residents of Holland to get the full picture (or why their country has so many names), but in short, the Netherlands is a place where there is no shortage of bikes (as can be seen below in the numerous bike parking lots that exist).
Besides the sheer volume, which at some moments can appear like something out of a scary movie, the bikes are used by everyone; men in suits, women with skirts and heels, mothers with several children in tow and even the aged. What helps is that there are well-laid out bike paths everywhere. If you are walking and dare to meander into a bike path, a kind, understanding soul will be sure to alert you of your error with bells and perhaps a verbal rebuke.
What I did find interesting, especially once I rented a bike, is that the overwhelming majority of the bikes are not fancy, upscale (if a bike can be such a thing), they don’t have many gears (Amsterdam and Utrecht are quite flat, I guess) or seemingly have enough air in the tires. Most bikes seem to be for the purposes of function only. I would think, and maybe this is the capitalist American speaking, that if you were going to spend so much time on a bike their quality would be of the highest degree possible. Maybe they are reliable, and maybe the rides are short enough so that it does not matter, but that did not seem to be the case. I was, and I remain, baffled.
WHYSOBLUE 