I recently found an English-language Dutch news website, so now I actually have some idea what is happening here. Here is a selection of interesting stories.
Fourth free paper launched today (May 8): Now why one needs four free morning papers, I don’t know. I read Metro (which I’m familiar with from Sweden) and the new DAG. (And, of course, read is an interesting concept. Look at pictures and understand occasional words is more accurate.)
Fewer people pay for papers (May 15): Yes, that’s because they’re getting newspapers for free. I certainly haven’t even considered buying a paper since I arrived here. In Australia I only buy the paper once a week, purely to get a TV guide. Here I get Veronica magazine (like TV Week) delivered for free (one of the “benefits” of student housing).
The Netherlands has 18 million bikes (May 21): There’s only 16.5 million people in the country, so that’s a lot of bikes. I seriously can’t believe the number of bikes I see in Europe.
2 Comments
May 28, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Hi, nice news. I used to live in Enschede, NL. It was really nice biking there. Obviously, the Netherlands is the best country if you wanna ride bicycle safely and comfortably.
May 30, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Hi, Saut. I might do some more of these posts. As you can see, I’m more interested in trivia than “real” news.
The Netherlands certainly is a biking nation. I tried to find some data on bike ownership in Australia, but couldn’t really find useful data. It’s certainly nowhere near one per person though.
I wasn’t planning to get a bike in the near future, as I can walk to uni and the shops. But I would like to go exploring, so now I’m thinking of getting one. Maybe when I start getting paid …