A Few Observations

Steve remarked, while we were at the Rijksmuseum, that it was the first time in ages that he was in a room with three other people as tall as he is. There are many very tall people in Amsterdam. I believe I have read that the Dutch are now the tallest population in the world. At 6'4" Steve does not stand out and is harder for me to pick out of a crowd, e.g., in the next room at the museum.

Everyone in the small country of the Netherlands speaks other languages, chiefly English but also frequently French and others. Almost nobody other than the Dutch speaks Dutch. At the airport, almost every sign was only in English--direction signs, instructions and prohibitions, many of the advertisements. Away from the airport, the frequent use of English signs underlines that many visitors don't understand Dutch at all and that English is the de facto second language for almost everyone from all over the world, while Dutch-only signs are a real obstacle to comprehension and obedience.

Dutch is, however, enough like German that I could frequently figure out what a sign said, given a little time to think about it. This No Entry sign says, "Except Bicycles." By the second day of museum-going, instead of dropping my eye immediately to the English text, I sometimes found myself unconsciously starting with the Dutch, then realizing that I really couldn't get more than a few words, and only then moving on to the English translation.