A slight variation of my image of Venice: canals, quaintness, lightposts. Plus bikes. The postcard image of Holland.

And don’t get me wrong. That’s charming, and I love that the picture I took was just an average day in Haarlem, nothing special. There is a beauty to the Dutch way of life that’s undeniable.

But when I talk about loving the Dutch design aesthetic, what I mean is a spectrum that includes the crazy modern stuff like the kind Droog creates. I actually have a set of these bikes straps to use in your house. I have no idea what I’ll use them for, mind you, but I just love the idea of taking something so practical and making it a design element on the wall. Plus, hello novelty!

One of the things that I think makes Dutch design unique is that it has to be understandable by so many types of people from so many other lands. This started during the Golden Age of trading, but Amsterdam today reflects their multicultural past in so many tiny ways, like this crossing sign designed so that absolutely anyone can understand what the hell that button is for:

In the U.S., when I think about spaces that have to be used by every kind of person, the word beige comes to mind: Beige hotel rooms. Beige walls. I’m partly design obsessed right now because I’m looking for a new house, and the common denominator seems to be to take everything down to a nice taupe. Think of the redesign of the Oval Office–bland, beige, non-threatening. What’s the point?

I try to imagine Americans picking these orange striped blinds for their house, and I just can’t.

When I was in the Netherlands, I made a commitment to do what I saw so often there–put a little table and chairs, or better yet, a bench, in the front of my house. It’s so friendly and so cheerful. I think, like the way the Dutch embrace color, it signifies something larger–a willingness to engage with the street, with passers-by.

Not always of course, but the Dutch seem to be to be often brave in their design choices–with color, with functionality, and with the ability for people to interact with each other and with the daily life that hums along on the street.

If you read my previous post (How Zen Is Citizen M?), you probably want to know the answer to the following question:

OK, how was it staying in a hotel room with a toilet in the middle of the room?

But hold on a second–there’s more to the story of the Citizen M.

When I checked in to the Amsterdam branch of the hotel, it wasn’t a good first start. I had made a reservation for the previous week, but had to cancel it. Unfortunately, they canceled BOTH reservations, and had no record of me in their system when I showed up for second reservation. Things were shaping up to be a fail.

In that way that sometimes happens, where computers actually make things less convenient, the front desk staff (who have no front desk, so actually seem like they’re just hanging out in the front), told me to go on the free computers, make an online reservation, and then come back. By the time all of this got straightened out and I made it upstairs, I was overheated and grumpy.

Then I encountered the hallway, which seemed to be a width of about six feet:

It actually made me feel both nauseous and claustrophobic. I realized those doors were frighteningly close together. Oh, my god. What the hell is this?

And note: This is all before I encountered the toilet-room.

When I arrived in the room, the shades were drawn. Because they were automatic (and run by the in-room computer), I couldn’t figure out how to open them. I was trapped in an airless, artificially-lit six-foot-wide box.

Out of a little bit of panic, I started playing with the remote control below, which was strapped to the wall. I freed it, and started button-mashing.

After having the room change color six times, I finally got the hang of it and opened the blinds. It felt a little ridiculous to have to wade through four screens of information as if I was setting up an Xbox in order to get my hotel room to work. Hotel rooms probably shouldn’t require a technical manual.

But then I stumbled on the intro video at the top of this blog post, and was won over. The light was pouring in (at last), the giant room-sized bed was comfortable, and I was charmed by the simplicity of the layout. Everything in the small space was right where it should be: The side table for the bed was at the right height. In short, the room was gezellig (cozy) and downright fantastic, and not at all like other hotels that try too hard to be cool and fail to be comfortable.

And since I know you’re dying to know, as it turns out, the toilet thing is pretty darn weird, but since I was staying there by myself, perfectly fine:

Here’s the deal with the toilet. I would totally stay at this hotel again with someone else, because the room itself is great and the hotel is hyper-convenient to the south train station (it’s literally a three-block walk and 10 minute ride to Schiphol Airport). But during bio breaks, we’d take turns enjoying the luxurious, wi-fi-full downstairs lobby. Just keeping it real.

And that claustrophobic hallway turned out to be one of my favorite features. As someone who requires quiet for a hotel to be successful, this was a huge win. Because people have to walk single-file, it was quiet out there. No one giggling and partying their way from the elevator to their room, kicking over last night’s room service. Tight spaces–like fences–make for good neighbors.

You got to give it to the Citizen M: It’s definitely the most novelty-filled hotel room in existence. It might not be great if you’re craving familiarity. But now that I’ve read the manual and am a power-user, I can heartily endorse (and will visit again).

But I did look over at one point, as the room was changing colors, and thought that it looks like I was getting ready to be beamed up (and, no, the only thing I might have been high on is the cold medicine I was taking at the time):

That’s the shower stall in the foreground, and the toilet in the back. Yes, the toilet has its own lighting, too.

From within the shower stall, I stared up at the rain-water shower head and figured it out:

The M in Citizen M stands for mothership. As in, beam me up, please.

What the hell am I doing? Who studies Dutch…for fun?

And did I also mention it cost thousands of dollars?

I had plotted out the route to the school the night before, winding my way through a series of wrong turns and construction zones until I found a reasonable path and knew that it would take me roughly thirty minutes to get there.

But the bigger question remained: Why wasn’t I on a beach somewhere, rather than heading to a classroom at 8 in the morning?

The night before, lying in bed, I thought: Maybe I’ve hit my novelty wall. Maybe going to a town you’ve never been to, to speak a language in the most intensive immersion environment possible, is actually beyond the pale. Maybe it was actually a bad idea.

Flipping through Facebook to distract myself from a rising tide of panic, I clicked on a piece posted by a friend. She liked this fascinating article on how rough it is to parent from New York magazine. It spoke to my exact thoughts about this adventure I was about to start the next day: Maybe doing something only for fun isn’t the point. Maybe it’s actually possible to have a difficult thing bring you happiness, or at least contentment.

Consider this excerpt:

But for many of us, purpose is happiness—particularly those of us who find moment-to-moment happiness a bit elusive to begin with. Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has always taken the view that happiness is best defined in the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end, isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it.

People ask me how it went at language school, and I struggle to give a simple answer. It was 11 hours of mental bootcamp. My brain got mushy around the edges. I’m still working out how to talk about it on this blog. And yet it was experience I will remember for my whole life, and it made my life the better for it.

So another article about happiness in today’s New York Times was especially relevant to me as I sort all this out. The piece by Stephanie Rosenbloom, titled “But Will It Make You Happy?” talks about what kind of purchases add to our longer-term happiness:

“One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)

Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs, population, health and economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recently published research examining nine major categories of consumption. He discovered that the only category to be positively related to happiness was leisure: vacations, entertainment, sports and equipment like golf clubs and fishing poles.

Using data from a study by the National Institute on Aging, Professor DeLeire compared the happiness derived from different levels of spending to the happiness people get from being married. (Studies have shown that marriage increases happiness.)

“A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage,” he said, adding that spending on leisure activities appeared to make people less lonely and increased their interactions with others.

That said–and not to put too fine a point on it–but these happiness studies often seem to recommend a life spent living in a yurt, not enjoying Prada’s 2010 orange lipstick, for example. As someone who continues to find happiness in a yellow hard-sided suitcase, I was glad to see the point made, that it doesn’t have to be either-or, as well:

Spending money on an event, like camping or a wine tasting with friends, leaves people less likely to compare their experiences with those of others — and, therefore, happier.

Of course, some fashion lovers beg to differ. For many people, clothes will never be more than utilitarian. But for a certain segment of the population, clothes are an art form, a means of self-expression, a way for families to pass down memories through generations. For them, studies concluding that people eventually stop deriving pleasure from material things don’t ring true.

“No way,” says Hayley Corwick, who writes the popular fashion blog Madison Avenue Spy. “I could pull out things from my closet that I bought when I was 17 that I still love.”

She rejects the idea that happiness has to be an either-or proposition. Some days, you want a trip, she says; other days, you want a Tom Ford handbag.

Interesting stuff, especially for the travel-minded, I think.

But sometimes things get lost in translation, and not everything is as cute as this photo of cupcakes and cookies in the signature orange:

It’s actually impossible to overstate how much orange was visible during this time. For every game, fully 50 percent of the folks on the street were decked out in the soccer team’s color of choice. Check out this bikes + fans scene during the semifinals:

The Dutch have a great word, gezellig, which basically means both coziness (in your home) and a sense of conviviality in your gatherings. If America were in the World Cup finals, I’d expect a lot of folks to invite friends over to watch in our big-screen home theaters. In Holland, people connected their TVs to an extension cord, pulled out a rug (or even astroturf) and sat down in the streets and squares to watch together.

Check out this scene of girls in a bar, risking falling into the canal below. That’s dedication.

By the time the finals got here, though, I can admit that I was over the whole thing. There’s just something about seeing anyone with shaved heads waving a giant flag and roaring through the streets, shouting. Hmm. Not so charming.

And then there’s this:

…

Um, WTF is that all about?

So, to summarize: World Cup fun can be cute and charming, weird, slighly scary, and/or all of the above at once.

It seemed like it had to be possible. After all, this is a place that includes bikes in every layer of their daily lives–check out this super-cute bike garage in Delft, complete with a painted tile. (Delft is world-famous for its blue-and-white ceramic Delftware):

Still, it’s not the most natural thing for a non-fixie, non-hard-core American cycling enthusiast to figure out. How does it all work? I had read about the bicyclist-only road signs. Would I miss them? Be unable to decipher their directions?

I shouldn’t have worried. If there’s one thing the Dutch excel at, it’s organization.

In Holland, which–strictly speaking–is a province in the north part of the Netherlands, three main cities make up the heart of the “randstad“: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague, which abuts Delft (home to the bike garage pictured above).

Got all that?

No matter–the point is that the clever Dutchies, seeing their industrial, crowded cities spreading together like the cities of China’s Pearl River Delta decided to preserve the lush meadowland that lies between all the cities of the randstad.

To see how easy it was to get around by bike, we headed into the Groene Hart.

Here’s your road through the Groene Hart, a.k.a. the “green heart”:

In between moments of quiet solitude, you’ll come across sheep. Or cows. Or bridges. Or high schoolers taking their horses out for a little run. Here’s a little shot of rush hour in the Groene Hart:

Oh, and those street signs I was worried I might miss, or not be able to interpret? They’re easy peasy, and include nearby towns, landmarks, and the mileage in kilometers:

Stay tuned to find out how it actually went when I needed to bicycle between towns to language school. Eep!

I realized that when you’re being paid to do something, it’s work. Period. It might not be anything as difficult as working in a coal mine, but it still is work. When I was in the Netherlands, rocketing from place to place, I would sit on the train, noticing the neat bicycle lanes that ran out across the flat fields into infinity. Where were people biking to on those paths?

I finally got to find out. The red bike below is mine. This photo is from the top of a dike, with the sea at my back:

It’s incredibly satisfying to finally know where people are heading on those mysterious bike paths, heading out seemingly to infinity, because of the flat Dutch sky.

In this case, they’re biking out of the city centers, into the wide-open spaces of the Dutch countryside. This scene below is about five miles from central Amsterdam:

The town is named Durgerdam, and as you can see from this very brief wikipedia entry, it’s not a destination. But a lovely harbor town is a special thing wherever you are–and even more so incredibly when it’s just in the backyard of Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

These houses, with their nautical touches, embody so much of what I love about Dutch design:

Look for more on the off-the-beaten-track Netherlands soon, as well as an entry on why the heck everything is in orange in that country.

And in case you’d like to see where this other Amsterdam lies, point A below is the approximate location of the first photo above:

They’re not precious about biking. Everyone bikes. Including this gentleman, who took the passenger ferry across the river IJ with us, from Amsterdam’s central train station to the other side:

How wonderfully elegant is he?

I’m excited to report on my recent Dutch adventures, including being there during the World Cup. As regular readers know, I’m obsessed with the Dutch, and have plenty of posts in mind for this week and next, including quite a few on Dutch biking. Betty and I will be doing our best to publish a piece every weekday, so please keep checking back!

Evidently, according to this tile, the Dutch had vuvuzelas back in the time of Vermeer.

Photo above taken in Amsterdam earlier this week. You’ve got to admire the dedication.

And speaking of which, the shops have been selling “2010 World Cup champion” t-shirts for weeks. Fingers crossed for them!

Admittedly, it’s a hard sell for those of us who don’t have a year to spend traveling around the world. A friend I talked to today had an itinerary that involved one day in Paris, two days in London, and two days in Scotland. There’s not a lot of breathing room in that plan for an afternoon spent in a swimsuit.

But here’s why it’s a good idea, and not just if you’re the kind of person who enjoys Hawaii. A trip to the beach in Europe is just as valid a sightseeing day as one spent at a museum. And if you need more rationale, here are five solid reasons:

1. Because if you ever went to the beach as a kid, this beach trip will be nothing like that.

Whenever I’ve visited a European beach, my novelty-meter is completely full by the time I leave. As a kid, I spent time in Ocean City, New Jersey, where boardwalks and hoagies were the big deal of the day.

It’s a little different to spend time on La Grand Plage of Biarritz, France, where elegant striped cabanas line the sidewalk:  

When I first saw them, I thought: These people know how to live. It just seemed so…James Bond-y, circa 1966.

2. Because every vacation needs a break in the action.

Personally, I don’t have any interest in taking a cruise. I’m snobby about all-inclusive vacations. I like to strike out on my own, figuring out bus and train schedules, and booking my own hotels.

But let’s be honest: That’s a lot of variables, and a lot of work. Experienced travelers enjoy building in some slack into their itineraries, and I agree with them. Even if it’s an overcast day at the beach, there’s still something interesting to see.

In a few short days, I’ll be on the beachy island of Texel (pronounced “tessel”), part of the same trip that includes a week-long Dutch language immersion at Dutch Princess School. A juxtaposition of intense cultural experience and laid-back beachtime seems like a nice balance. Plus, the cultural exchange doesn’t stop just because it’s a beach town: The hotel website offered to reserve bikes for me during my stay. How very, very Dutch.

3. Because the natural world is worth the time as much as the human-made world.

Appreciating natural beauty doesn’t come easy to me. I’m a city girl. But a windswept coastline with a rickety bridge is a charming, memorable site. I didn’t need the explanation to enjoy it, or to know the connection to the Eiffel Tower.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve had to adjust my idea of what a beach day is. Oftentimes, it doesn’t involve baking in the sun, but appreciating grey skies like the kind you see above, or in this photo I took in Mull, Scotland, as incredible to me as any cathedral or medieval castle I’ve ever been to.

4. Because you might be there for Bastille Day or another happenstance celebration–the kind where everyone else is on vacation, too.

I love museums, and have done the art slog, trying to scrape 10 hours out of quality art absorption out of a timed all-day pass. On my last visit to Versailles–number three, mind you, which might have taught me a lesson about the sheer size of the estate–a sightseeing stroll turned into a full-on death march in 90 degree heat.

In Biarritz, I was lucky enough to be there for Bastille Day. Everyone around me was enjoying the fireworks and the time off work. It was cheerful in the way that national holidays, summer festivals, and other relaxed, warm-weather nights can be. No one was carrying a map, a guidebook, or an agenda. Instead, an entire town of people settled in to watch the fireworks:

That travel memory means more to me than rooms full of Dutch Masters I saw at the Louvre.

5. Because wherever they are in the world, beaches are some of the most beautiful, fun places on earth.

The hotel might smell of smoke or be too loud for your liking. The lines at the museum might keep you standing in the hot sun for an hour longer than you liked. The other museum you meant to see might be on the far side of town, and closed on Tuesdays. The restaurant might put too much salt on your food, overcharge you, or never bring you that drink you ordered.

But it’s hard to imagine a day like this one (on the Côte des Basques in Biarritz) disappointing anyone.

Hooray for the weekend! I have big plans. They include a three-day getaway to the Oregon Coast (whose virtues we’ve already discussed) and not wasting two hours at Sex and the City (which Betty and I expressed doubt and concern about, just based on the trailer). I’ll be trip planning for my upcoming adventure at Dutch language school.

Trip planning used to stress me out. Now, I love it, because let’s face it–when novelty is a key reason for why you like to travel, there are no wrong answers. Take, for example, the Dutch national park, which I may or may not include in this trip. It’s famous for its free white bikes, shown above. (Notice how they’re not locked to anything?)

But the first time I went, on assignment for the Travel Company That Shall Not Be Named, I wasn’t quite so sanguine.

I wasn’t sure to expect. The Netherlands is a tiny country, so I knew that it wouldn’t be Yellowstone.

I took the bus to Otterlo, the closest town to the national park, which didn’t seem all that remarkable at first glance.

Then I noticed this sign.

Except–hello, my fellow Americans–it dates from 1150. Eleven. Fifty. And that’s not even a big honking deal.

Anyway. When you’re paid to travel for a living, it can be easy to feel like a big shot. Look at me! I’m livin’ the dream!

This is absurd, of course. The downside of novelty-seeking is that everything is actually new to you. Which means, by default, you don’t know anything about it.

I had read about the famous white bikes of Holland’s national park. Walking from Otterlo in the general direction of the park, feeling a little uneasy, I decided that this place was probably where the white bikes could be found, since “fiets” is the Dutch word for bicycle:

Um, no. I hadn’t walked far enough. I didn’t want a sketchy little garage.

I wanted this:

Slightly different, no?

The park itself was amazing. What started out seeming like a forest became sand dunes, and then–even in the middle of summer–because something like the tundras and vistas I associate with Betty’s incredible photos of South Africa.

Does that look like northern Europe to you?

One of the best parts of the Hoge Veluwe national park is that it’s like a Kinder Surprise: Awesome candy shell with a shiny toy in the middle.

In this case, it’s the Kröller-Müller Museum, a temple to modern art dropped there by two Germans (hence the umlauts in the name).

Inside were stacks of incredible art, including the second biggest collection of Van Goghs (second only to the…you guessed it…Van Gogh Museum).

Sure, why not? Just another day at the park in the Netherlands.

Dappled sunlight, a bike ride or two, and a maybe a snack. Oh, and masterpieces keeping you company on your way out.

The Dutch really do have this quality-of-life stuff figured out.

I still haven’t decided whether to go back or not. It’s an incredible place, but the search for novelty might push me in new directions, rather than returning to the park. Stay tuned.