Last summer in Haarlem (The Netherlands) I attended a concert of a group that back then was named Mayday. Since I loved their music I even bought their CD and now I believe I have the one and only copy in the whole Italy! Recently I visited their website and discovered they changed their name in Fifth Lane, apparently because they had a trademark conflict. The problem is, Fifth Lane was taken as well! I sincerely hope they won’t be forced to change name again. Guys good luck! See you in Firenze for your next European tour

In the global village of Internet days choosing a good name for a product, a band name or a blog site is very hard. There is an good chance you hit somebody who chose the same before you. I think in a few years trademarks contextualized in hierarchies (such as internet TLDs) will become commonplace. At that point will be completely normal to call a group mayday.nl and that will not collide with mayday.us. Basically I’m theorizing the merge of trademarks and DNS system, but maybe to get there first we have to make DNS more fair and trustworthy, e.g. by removing any ties to US Administration and to local governments in general.

Eastern of Amsterdam used to be the Zuiderzee, a shallow inlet of the North Sea, like a gigantic bay 50 Km wide and 100 Km long. This used to be a danger for The Netherlands and in fact flooded several time in the past centuries. After the last flood in 1916, the Dutch decided to build a huge dike and close the Zuiderzee. In 1932 thirty kilometers of dike running through the water were completed, closing off the North Sea and forming the IJsselmeer lake, that then turned into fresh water. During the 20th century wide chunks of IJsselmeer were transformed in polders and reclaimed to the sea, transformed in land. Moreover the IJsselmeer has been split by an additional dike, forming the Markermeer.

There is a popular saying that God created the world but the Dutch created the Netherlands, and when you traverse IJsselmeer on the dike and drive through Flevoland you really understand what this means. Reclaiming land from the sea, fighting to keep water out of the land, is an impressive endevour and makes you think about the never ending challenge between mankind and the forces of nature. There, where land, water and sky merge in a total whole, you finally feel that Planet Earth is a very big place to live.

While driving you can see people a lot of cyclers (by the way: even dikes and roads lost in the middle of nowhere have at least one lane reserved to bicycles), birds, gigantic wind power farms, fisher villages, windmills. Did you know windmills are pumps? They were used to pump water out of the polders and pushing to the sea, to reclaim land. Weren’t for the strong constant wind flowing in this place, bug chunks of Netherland would be under water. This in another impressive engineering achievement, especially if you think they began to use windmills six centuries ago. Of course nowadays they use electrical pumps.

When you tell your friends you’ve been to Amsterdam they immediately start jokes about hemp and prostitutes in the red light district. It is unfortunate this city built up such a bad reputation, because actually there are better reasons to visit it. Nowadays the red light district is more a tourist attraction than a dangerous place. At night you can see families walk there with babies and strollers, as well as crowds of Japanese elders following the guide with the flag in her hand while looking at the ladies behind windows. You immediately lose any lust or transgression will.
Amsterdam is built on canals, not so different than Venice, except that bridges in Amsterdam have no staircases and houses always have a little street between the canal and their facade. This allows Amsterdammers to easily move on a bicycle. The whole city has been developed as a series of concentric semicircular canals. While Manhattan is a Cartesian city (you identify places by street, avenue pairs, that actually work the same as x,y coordinates), Amsterdam uses a polar system (ρ,θ).  You know, I’m a geek so be patient   Put in easier words you have to think in terms of which angle you have to rotate around the Dam, and how far you are from there. By the way, New York used to be a Dutch colony and was called New Amsterdam, before being sold to the English. And moreover Harlem and Brooklyn both inherited their name from cities in The Netherlands.

The thing immediately shocks you in Amsterdam is the lack of car traffic. Everyone moves on foot, by bicycle or with public transportation. Cars are extremely rare, maybe because parking in the city centre is almost impossible. We had to park our car under the Olympic stadium, a few kilometers outside.

If you visit the city there are a few things you mustn’t miss:

• The Van Gogh Museum is impressive. You can see hundreds of original paintings ordered chronologically and accurately commented by both written and audio guides. Some of those pieces is astonishing. Close to this museum you could also visit the Rijksmuseum, that holds some of the best masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer, but unfortunately it’s currently under restoration.
• You haven’t really tasted a Dutch beer until you enter a Dutch brown cafè. Imagine an old pub, where walls got brown by centuries of thick smoke and warm conversation and nobody cared to dust off the bottles. You will find sand on the floor, the barman will be very chatty and ritual while drawing your glass of beer and you will definitely feel like a travel back in time, when sailors used to meet in these places.
• You should also try a white cafè, modern stylish architecture spaces where the light dominates and elegant people have a coffee or a salad while they read a book, take the sun on the terrace, or do some business on their laptop.
• Of course you should take a look at the old buildings with their narrow and tall facade crowned by the typical gables. Most of them are built on wooden foundations and have a forward leaning facades with large windows. The best way to look at buildings is from a boat, e.g. with a canal tour.
• Try a glass of Genever, the typical local liquor, similar to gin.

And remember, the weather changes dramatically every ten minutes, so in the same day you often find yourself changing several times from t-shirt to sweater to water-proof raincoat and back.

Four thousands kilometers in thirteen days, across Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. It’s been a long and amazing trip, visiting wonderful cities, looking at breathtaking landscapes, having great meals and unfortunately a lot of rain showers. We mostly followed the path of two major central European rivers: Rhine and Meuse. Rhine (Rijn in NL) springs up in Switzerland and flows in the North Sea, traversing Germany and forming a large delta in The Netherlands after a long path of 1320 kilometers. Meuse (Maas in NL) springs up in France and runs 925 kilometers across Luxembourg and Belgium before finally draining in the same delta.

A great deal of history happened along these two rivers and in particular they have big symbolic value for Europe: they delimit the field where France and Germany fought for centuries (including two world wars) but they also merge in The Netherlands thus keeping Europe together. No wonder most of the European and international institutions are in this valley: Strasbourg, Brussels, The Hague. This is also the place where bishops used to be rulers and the Protestant Reformation developed, and the place where many renowned beers are produced.

To complete our tour we visited Geneva (again on a river, this time the Rhone) and the United Nations palace!

I’m posting more pictures and details, stay tuned!

UPDATE: here is the photoalbum

I love traveling. I love traveling without a detailed plan, without booking rooms, just wandering around and following the flow of my mind. The perfect travel is driving with a Lonely Planet guide in your pocket, a friend to chat with and just a vague idea of where you’re heading to. When you see something interesting you stop. There’s no hurry, no pressure to reach the next target, you can just sleep anywhere there is a room to rent, including places in the middle of nowhere that you didn’t even knew they existed.

This year we’re heading to The Netherlands, but that’s just a vague idea. We can be there in a couple of days, or more if we like to stop somewhere in the middle. And then we could explore the tulip fields in the countryside, the big dams, or just feel tired of that place and continue in Germany, or in France… we’ll see. We leave in one week, but the fun already began, just by looking at maps, reading articles about interesting places and so on. Above you can see a roadmap forecast for the 1st two days.