week 20 - victimless

The right of way in Amsterdam traffic, from lowest to highest:

Pedestrians – watch where you’re walking; everything out there is trying to kill you

Cars – they’re just not liked, by anyone

Trams – The tracks are EVERYWHERE. Streets, sidewalks, crosswalks, bridges, probably through some of the smoke shops

People on bicycles – Even a scheduled tram will come to a screeching halt to let a single person on a bike mosey their way across a four-lane street. There are 420 gazillion registered bicycles in Amsterdam

Beautiful women on bicycles – Everything stops for them

Thus I found myself wishing I were driving back in Afghanistan rather than this Charlie Foxtrot of a traffic system in A-dam. TomTom got me through rush hour at Brussels and Antwerp, but he completely gave up once the bikes came into the picture, forcing me onto tram tracks, sidewalks, almost the canal a few times… not that it mattered. All the other cars were driving wherever they needed to as well, running lights, flooring their pedals to make tight timings. NO RULES. Wait, that honk behind me, it sounds very sustained and multi-tonal, and loud… what is that?   F**k there’s a TRAIN in my rearview!!! Things only got truly awkward when I had to skip the curb because I didn’t anticipate driving on the CORRECT pedestrian walkway before the escape ramps disappeared. Holy moly.

And the folks on the bicycles, they have more receptors on their bums than the common housefly. They sense you coming from behind and before you can blink they’ve teleported to another lane or step, or end up behind you before you can scream "SHENANIGANS!”  I found the only way to make one mad is to drive the wrong way on a one-way and face him head-on. Still, the most you get is a quick angry fist and he warps behind you and keeps riding in his direction, and you keep driving the wrong way along with the three cars behind you breaking the same non-existent rules.

The intention here was to "veer" towards the subject of victimless crimes, which, like traffic laws, do not seemingly matter in Amsterdam.  Sex and drugs. I have never seen such a more open and homely environment for these two very interesting outlets of humanity. And a low crime rate all around. How do they pull it off? Well, as I began to type, I realized that the victimless crime discussion is not an easy one to even toss out talking points on. Maybe better left for a coffee talk.

After driving back to camp wanawana from the airport in an armored car which, in the ‘stan, has right of way over people on bicycles, I figure tossing billions of dollars into a country with a corrupt government that's not geared to handle that type of money might create more victims than a little law-less city in the Netherlands where people, for the most part, are always happy.