A Week in The Hague

Bussing into The Hague from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, I realize that I have no idea what people from The Hague call themselves. I know that there is a city in Oregon called "The Dalles," but I do not know what those people call themselves either. So much for comparison being able to help a brother out. As we step off the bus and into the World Forum Novatel, I decide that people from The Hague must be called "Den Haagians" because that sounds much cooler than "The Hagueians." Den Haagians it is, then.

I am in The Hague this week, attending a conference. In some ways The Hague feels familiar, but in other ways, it is another planet compared to Cairo, the city in which I now live.

For starters, thousands and thousands of people cycle here. I like this. Doesn't matter that it is colder than a witch's tittie in a brass bra and pissing rain, Den Haagians cycle everywhere; to work, to yoga, to the organic grocery store, to pick the kids up from school ... everywhere. I like this, too. I also like that Den Haagians do not wear spandex when they ride, nor do they wear helmets, or knee pads, or elbow pads. They ride to get from point A to point B. They do not ride a million miles an hour, so they are not too worried about the catastrophic accidents that obsess us pansy-ass Americans. And they don't worry about what their bikes look like, either. They ride around, sitting way up high on these great, curly-Q monstrosities that weigh a ton. Some of them have giant wicker baskets hanging from the front handle bars. A lot of them have hard-tails and side satchels suspended off of the backs. Some of the bikes have front, plastic windscreens, making their riders look a little like Dutch versions of CHiPS officers. I like all of this, except the plastic windscreens. I could do without them and the accompanying CHiPS look.

Another related aspect that makes me feel at home in The Hague is that almost every major street throughout the city has been retrofitted to include dedicated bike lanes both coming and going. I cycled in Memphis in the days before the Green Line, and I have to say that combat cycling, sharing narrow streets with two-ton automobiles, is an experience that is very much overrated. I see no combat cycling in The Hague, unless you consider two people racing one another to get to the bike parking post first as fitting into the defintion of combat cycling. 

So The Hague is a city seemingly built by cyclers for cyclers. Old people cycle here and so so young people. Kids cycle, too. I feel at home in this regard, a fellow cycler in a city of cyclers. I am among my people.

But I am not; not really. 

In some ways The Hague is a different planet for me. First off, I am not cool and stylish. I am not even from Europe. I don't have a job in a design firm or in an organic grocery store, like everyone else seems to have here. And I am not nine feet tall. As a people, the Dutch strike me as being very tall. They are tall people riding tall bikes and living in tall houses. When they marry one another, they have tall babies who grow up to be even taller. This is how I feel anyways. Like I am the shortest man in all of Holland. Or a man from Planet Short-Male visiting Planet Den Haag.

There is no garbage on the streets here, either, and this makes me feel like I am on another planet, albeit a wonderfully clean planet. During the past several years, I have lived in both Egypt and China. Cairo is cleaner than almost any city in China, but Cairo is still a massive, polluted city amidst a nation that is developing. Walking down trash strewn streets is sadly a part of life in Cairo as it was in China. But here, not so much. It's like a bunch of Den Haagians gathered together after an Earth Day party one day and decided that with such limited space, land is actually worth something and should be respected and kept clean. And maybe they also decided that they did not want to float around in a sea of rubbish. Maybe they did that, too. Whatever the means, the ends are justifiably clean streets and recycling kiosks 'round every other corner. Different planet.

And the clocks! All of the clocks work here, even the ginormous ones built into most of the city's ancient cathedrals. Even those clocks work, keeping accurate time! I remember living in Faribault, Minnesota years ago. Every shitty little bank in Faribault had more or less the same signage out in front of the bank. And part of this signage was a digital clock that never kept accurate time. One would think, as I did at the time, that it cannot be all that difficult to have a digital clock keep accurate time. Not so, apparently. But in The Hague, these ancient clocks set in these ancient towers keep the correct time. Totally different planet.

And then the are the trams. The Hague has these narrow trams that tens of thousands of people use every day. The trams are electric powered, fed by a series of above-ground cables that appear everywhere throughout the city. So instead of the unbiquitous six-lane highways that we have in our great, American cities, The Hague has two lanes for autos, two lanes for bicycles and two lanes for the trams. This is cool, but this is a way different planet than the ones with which I have become accustomed. Planet Hometown USA did not have these kinds of things. Planet Cairo doesn't either, although Planet Cairo does have a lane for donkey carts, which is kind of cool.

So you have a city of tall cyclers living in their tall homes and cycling to and from their cool design jobs every day. Add to that, a city constructed with a cycle-friendly, recycling conscious ethos in mind and with public clocks that work. Tall people that do not want to cycle to and from work can always take the trams. On top of this, every nation on the planet has a nice embassy here, so The Hague also has this groovy, multi-cultural, pluralistic political vibe to it (side note: none of the embassies in The Hague are surrounded by barricades, which makes The Hague very much a different planet).

The Hague is a city that simply works. And by that, I do not mean that it is a city full of employed people, although it seems to be. No, what I mean is that things work in The Hague. All of the things that have fallen apart in other places in which I have lived and worked - things like clean air and clean streets, organic farming that is the rule rather than the exception, sensible urban planning complete with huge tracts of green spaces, quality and reliable public transportation, etc. - all of those things work here in The Hague.

And that makes for a delightful place to visit and presumably a delightful place in which to live.