Fab Four (days)

 Oddly enough, I had never been to the United Kingdom before. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to go, it’s just that I always thought I’d save it for later on in life-- when I’m older and would appreciate the ease of traveling through a country where I know the language.

My UK friends frequently told me everything that I was missing – the rugged beauty of Scotland, the quaint countryside of Wales, the urban sophistication of London. Funny, but none of them had ever mentioned Liverpool as a “must see” UK destination, which is where I found myself this past week on a business trip. I think my friends would be appalled, but I actually liked it.

Rebuilt from the ashes of massive German bombing during the war, then rebuilt again after post-war industrial failure and dreadful urban blight, Liverpool is in the process of reinventing itself yet again. I snuck away from work one sunny afternoon to see what the city was all about.

A new multi-tiered city center serves as an anchoring hub between the older, eclectic shopping streets, the historic financial district, and the high-rises along the wharfs.

Bold Street - one of those eclectic ones with funky bars and shops.  The church in the background...

 ...was destroyed during the bombing.  They left the shell as a monument.

 Liverpool also used to have the largest Chinese population in Europe.  But again, the district was destroyed during the bombing and never rebuilt.  All that's left is the gate, and one block of shops.

Crowd control at a street car rally?    That's one tough crowd!

 

Rally car getting ready to rumble.

 A view from the famous Albert Docks - the place where the latest reinvention started.

And of course, the reason for the trip - The University of Liverpool.

Creative Commuting

 As the tram slowed down and rolled into the Amstel station, I stood at the door on the north side of the carriage and leaned into the window, straining my eyes across the platform to read the overhead display to see if the NS train to Uitgeest was coming into the same station. My monthly pass on the NS doesn’t cover the tram, so I was riding illegally. But because I had missed my own NS connection back at the Bijlmer Station, I knew that I could hop the tram to the Amstel Station where-- if I was lucky, I could dash across platform and catch the Uitgeest train the rest of the way into Amsterdam Centraal without paying the tram fee. However, if I missed the train connection here (Amstel), then I had to still jump off the tram, swipe my OV-Chipcart across the payment post in the middle of the platform and then jump back into the same tram to continue on to Central Station. If I didn’t pay here, then it could get ugly once the tram went underground after Duivendrecht and the line no longer paralleled the NS line. I learned this lesson the hard way the first time that I tried this maneuver and got stuck in the underground at Central Station with an OV-Chipcart that hadn’t paid for the tram ride and I couldn’t get out of the gates. I had to wait for the next tram to unload and squeeze through the gates on the heels of a paying customer-- which still set off the alarm bells, but it was so crowded that the “GVB Cops” didn’t see who had jumped the gate.

Today I was lucky. The fast train to Uitgeest was just pulling into the station and I was able to make the switch without paying. The connection to Haarlem in Central station would be easy. It’s on the main line and there are always trains between the two cities. 

And so it goes. It took me a few months this time around, but I have now solved the dilemma with commuting by public transport to my new job on the other side of Amsterdam – How to come and go whenever I want without being a slave to the public transport schedules.

And the solution doesn’t stop with the trains. I have similar options with the bus system. There is an express bus to Schiphol Airport (300) that stops just outside my office building. That bus happens to stop at Amstelveen Station where I can make the mad dash across the road and jump onto the bus to Haarlem (175). These busses run in a staggered 8 minute pattern, so the maximum wait is 4 minutes (during rush hours). 

With a combination of all of these options, I can leave the office whenever I please and know how to make it back to my bike in Haarlem within 50 minutes with never more than a 9 minute wait on any platform or bus stop. Cool! So now I only use the excuse “Sorry. I have to leave to catch the train!” when I want to avoid that particularly nasty recurring meeting late on Monday afternoon.