Abcde BLOG

"Dutch employees travel 50 minutes on average per day. That's more than five minutes longer than the Hungarians and the British " It is striking that in the Netherlands more than 20% of the workers, spent more than one hour on commuting every day. as stated by dutchdailynews.com

 
 If you were on Twitter this morning, you will have witnessed my very angry post, relating to Dutch buses. Once I have taken the train, and got my first bus to Funky Monkey's nursery, I have 11 minutes precisely to walk the 3 min walk to the nursery, take her in, do the usual goodbyes, 3 mins walk back to bus stop and 1 min to spare to change into Super Yummy Business lecturer mummy. This, I have down to a tee, it is worked out to the minute and never fails, making me in time for work.

BUT! It does fail if the stupid dammed bus comes 4 minutes early!!! I have argued about this countless times with numerous bus drivers and got the same answer. "We don't have a set time to arrive, the time on the bus stop is a guidanc,e we will be at that bus stop round about that time!"  "Why?" I asked, "beacause we do this in the rural areas, so when we get to the city we can avoid any traffic and not be late at our final destination.!"Argggggh?!

You may be thinking ok, so get at the bus stop 4 mins earlier every day. I told one bus driver this and he said "oh but I could come 6 mins earlier or 5 mins late!!"! So it is just another Dutch thing that I will never comprehend or fathom.

As for boarding a bus or a train? Well, forget everything you were ever taught about courtesy or waiting for your turn. You must join the pushing throng, all trying to occupy that one space at once and position yourself, so that as soon as the doors slide open you can move forward and fight your way in. Points are given for the number of people you can step in front of or elbow out of the way as you fight for that position. And, by all means please begin  to get ona train/bus before allowing passengers on the vehicle to disembark. Allowing others to “uitstappen” (exit) before you make your move to get on may just lose you your seat.

As Funky Monkey and I await our bus in the mornings, I make sure she is nicely positioned on my hips taking up all the space possible. The worst, are the students at rush hour, they really have no manners. Whereas a young Spanish youngester would always let a mother and baby in front or even give them a seat on the bus. I have to push my way in and if there are no seats I have to ask if someone can let me sit down as I really can't stand with a two year old!!! A problem is that, I have taken to callling them silly students to Funky Monkey and she now embarrassingly shouts in a loud voice every morning,  "Mummy watch the silly students!"oops


Yup, we're pretty much Dutch when it comes to travelling with communters in the morning except for the bit about getting there in time for the bus.



I've shared this you tube video that I found  on Dutch Commuting.