I am back from my trip to Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was as good as I expected and sometimes even better. I really enjoyed my time over there, met a quite a few interesting people, established a few useful relationships, saw some interesting technologies, photographed a beautiful city, tasted some nice beers, and more.
I brought back a few hundred photos, which took me a few hours to sort through. Now that I am done there are just over a hundred pictures which I hope you will enjoy once they are all uploaded. I also have quite a few posts backlogged. They are mostly in a form of notes right now, so I’ll need to expand them a bit and will publish in the next few days.
Just to give you a few highlights:
- Amsterdam is a beautiful city. I hope I will have a chance to visit it again.
- I didn’t manage to visit a coffee shop, red lights district, or any of the recommended restaurants. I was having enough fun without following any of recommendations. Probably will do so next time.
- People over there are tall indeed. Very tall.
- People over there ride bicycles even when it is cold and raining. The city infrastructure is very supportive of cyclists, but I need to read some more about their traditions and history, because current bicycle penetration in the population is much deeper than just city infrastructure.
- I haven’t seen any cops on the streets. Not even traffic police.
- There is lots of fighting with tobacco smoking. Many places (like my hotel for example) completely ban smoking and don’t even have places for smoking. Very nice.
- I’ll need to write a separate post about trains.
- It was interesting to see canals and so much water transport in operation.
- The conference was a success. I met a few interesting people, saw some useful technologies, and brought back a few thoughts on how things should move on.
As you can see, there is a lot to post about. Stay tuned.