Dmitry Kudryavtsev

Three months of nomading

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 20:00:00 GMT

It’s been 3 months of #nomading the world and #solopreneuring. Here is what I learned.

1. Communities are hard to build

Communities rely on a mass of people in order to operate well. Websites like Reddit, are useless if you have 2 users. Focus on building a product you can sell to one person.

2. Build it, and they will come — is a lie

There are endless amounts of tools out there. Chances are you never heard about them. Building a profitable product, requires you to either do ads (which I don’t like), or have a brand/following (newsletter, LinkedIn, twitter, mastodon).

3. Solopreneurship is not only coding

It’s design, marketing, promotion, customer support, and sales. If you don’t want to do all that, don’t become a solopreneur.

4. Consistency wins

If you keep going, you will eventually win. Failures are inevitable, but they are temporary as long as you keep going. You only fail when you quit.

I’m sitting in an airport once again, this time it’s a domestic flight to see Mayan ruins. And I have plans to keep on going no matter how hard it is. I really don’t want to come back to a traditional workplace anymore.

Me at an Airport in Guatemala

Digital Nomading in Antigua, Guatemala

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 23:30:00 GMT

After leaving Costa Rica, I arrived at my next destination — Guatemala. But not the capital. Instead, I went straight to Antigua Guatemala.

Antigua Guatemala and Agua Volcano

The capital of Guatemala, Guatemala City, is considered dangerous, and many recommend you go straight to Antigua. Antigua is a small city built in a Spanish colonial style. It’s located about 1-hour drive from Guatemala City, and it’s a very vibrant city. The moment I arrived, I fell in-love with. Why?

Antigua ❤️

The 10-minute city

Firstly — it’s very walkable. I really appreciate small and compact cities. I call such cities: the 10-minute cities. Why 10-minute? Because everything you need is located 10-minute away by feet. Gym, grocery store, restaurants, yoga studios. All 10-minute away.

In addition to that, Antigua is built in squares. All streets cross each other at a 90-degree angle. This means that navigating the city becomes very easy. Third left, second right, and you got where you need.

I really like this style of urban planning.

Nomad friendly

Secondly, Antigua is very nomad friendly. It has a big community of digital nomads, and a good amount of cool places to work from (see #Recommendations). And the coffee, oh the coffee! It’s so great!

The scenery

Antigua is located between 4 volcanoes: Agua (my favorite), Pacaya, Acatenango and Fuego. You walk in this small and compact city, and on the horizon you see these amazing volcanoes. I don’t know about you, but living surrounded by volcanoes — is something special.

Travels

However, my stay in Antigua wasn’t limited to the city itself. Throughout the month I lived there, my wife and I traveled to some cool places.

Cerro de La Cruz

It’s a small viewing point, located about 25-minutes walk from the center. From there you get an amazing view on Antigua as well as all the volcanoes.

Hiking Pacaya

Pacaya is a volcano not far from Antigua. It’s considered active, however there is no lava, and according to our guide it’s safe. The hike itself is not hard, and you climb to around 2300m. If you are in Antigua, I highly recommend you do this hike.

Hobbitenango

Hobbitenango is a small resort built in the style of Lord of the Rings. It’s located about 45 minutes drives from Antigua, and they have daily shuttles. I’ve been to Hobbiton in New Zealand — which is the original shooting location of The Shire from LOTR — but I must admit I liked Hobbitenango way more. It has more LOTR vibe, as it contains a restaurant, a brewery, and a lot of activities such as arrow shooting. Also, the fact that you explore it on your own — and not with a guide as in Hobbiton — means you can spend more time there, and enjoy the scenery. Highly recommended!

Hiking Acatenango

There is a different post Hiking Acatenango which you can check for the full experience, but in few words — I highly recommend you do it. It’s a very challenging hike, but worth it.

Recommendations

Artista de Cafe - My absolute favorite coffee place and working location. They have amazing coffee, and are usually filled with digital nomads. A bit on the expensive side.
Serve Hope Cafe - A really cool café and working location. They have a nice rooftop. You can either work in the public café area, or rent a dedicated co-working table / meeting room.
Union Cafe - A hipstery café for breakfast and/or lunch. I also saw some people working from there.
La Bodegona - A huge supermarket with everything you need. I usually bought all my groceries there.
Orgánica - A small organic food store.
Antiguas Gym - The gym I went to. Very good, has all the equipment and free weights. If you are into boxing, there is a Japanese guy named Cazu who does personal boxing sessions there. Reach out to the gym and ask for Cazu.
Shakti Shala Yoga Studio - If you are into yoga, my wife highly recommends this yoga studio.

Summary

I never heard about Antigua, but I’m glad I went there. It’s easily one of my favorite cities, and I’ll definitely come back there. The small buildings in Spanish style; the local population with their traditional outfits; the volcanoes — all this makes Antigua very special.

Right now I’m on Lake Atitlan (I’ll post about it as well, maybe, so stay tuned), and will be back to Antigua for a few more days. But I’m glad I stayed a month there.

Costa Rica as Digital Nomad

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 01:00:00 GMT

As some of you might know, I've burnt out. My wife and I took our dog, and bought one way ticket to Costa Rica. The plan? Slow travel, combined with building a sustainable business, and working on my mind, and body. Why Costa Rica? Don’t know. I think we discussed it as possible next travel destination, before the decision to nomad.

Finding accommodation, and settling in San José

Finding accommodation was tricky. We wanted a few things:

Safe and comfortable house
A good place for day-to-day life: good kitchen, washing machine
Preferably a place with comfortable working environment
Dog friendly

Most of the accommodations outside the capital, were, how to say it… Not suitable for long term (at least a month) rental. I don’t know how to describe these accommodations, but I felt that I couldn’t stay there for long period, and we didn’t want to move every week. Finding a pet friendly place was also a challenge that reduced the amount of options drastically. Lastly, budget might have played a role. So YMMV.

And so, after a brief discussion, we changed plan. Stay in a modern apartment in San José, and travel from there. I know that many people would not recommend staying in the capital, but considering our options, this was the best decision.

We found a perfect apartment in Guachipelin neighborhood. It had an amazing kitchen, very safe and secure. A co-working space was adjacent to the condominium. All looked good, except for one fact — it was a gated community.

Living like the rich

The first thing that our taxi driver told us upon arriving at our Airbnb is: “Ohh, very nice area. Rich people live here.” We’ve heard this phrase multiple times from Uber drivers throughout our trip. And it did feel rich. Secure condominiums, like small gated communities. We’ve never been in Central, or South, America, so this sense of security was important to us.

But with this sense of security, also came a sense of inability. There was nowhere to go. We’ve mainly ordered groceries through Uber Eats. Going to our activities, or the city center, required an Uber. I guess it’s fine if you rent a car, but we didn’t. And so we felt like we were stuck there, and were very dependent on Uber.

Battling the Jet Lag

The first 4–5 days were tough. I’ve experienced the biggest jet-lag ever: 9 hours. I would go to sleep at midday; wake-up in the middle of the night. We did try to go and explore the city, but found it to be boring, and unattractive. And I barely did any work during that period.

Mini-vacations

The idea was to live a “normal” life: work on my business, cook at home, do boxing, but also take mini-vacations once in a while. The first mini-vacation we took was the Poás Volcano. It’s a day trip from the capital, and you get to see the most acidic lake in the world. I saw many volcanoes in my life (hello Iceland, and New-Zealand), so it’s hard to impress me, but Poás is a very nice volcano, due to the fact it has an acidic lake in the crater. It’s also considered active, with last eruption in September 2019.

Poás Acidic Lake

The second mini-vacation was longer. We’ve rented a car and went around to La Fortuna, and Monteverde. In La Fortune we visited the hot springs, which is a must-do. Night walk was also amazing, you see different animals and inspects at night. Hiking the Arenal Volcano was also a good reconnection with nature. The weather in La Fortuna was hotter than in central valley.

Monteverde, on the other side, was colder in terms of weather. We hiked the cloud forest, which is a unique experience. And also did the zip-line, which I recommend (especially the Tarzan swing, if you like adrenaline). I’ve heard that the city itself is also very nice, but we didn’t really have time to experience it, and mostly enjoyed the nature around the city, and the hot tub in Selina Hotel.

The third and final mini-vacation, was a day trip from the capital to a coffee plantation which was organized by Britt — a local coffee producer. I really like coffee, and I enjoyed this tour very much. If you are a coffee lover, I highly recommend it.

After one month in San José, we left it, and moved to a different region.

Nosara - a “heaven” on earth

I’m always skeptical when I hear the phrases “heaven on earth”, or “paradise on earth”. The last time I was in such “heaven”, was on one of the Gili Islands in Indonesia. It was a bizarre experience: luxury accommodations for tourists, alongside destroyed local community who live in complete poverty. If this is heaven, I’m not sure if I want to get there after death.

Anyway, Nosara. Considered a blue zone, and a very popular destination among surfers, people who look for spirituality, and digital nomads. In three words: I disliked it. It’s completely unwalkable, and when it rains (which is very often), it’s covered in mud. The main transportation is ATV or a motorbike. It’s extremely overpriced for what it offers. It clearly caters to “rich” Americans, as the prices are in US Dollars rather than Costa Rican Colóns. Our first accommodation was pretty far from the center, however the second one was closer to the main restaurants and activities. I didn’t find many opportunities to work from cafés, and worked mainly from my Airbnb.

The drive there was also hard. It took us 5 hours to get to Nosara, and around 7 hours to get back to San José due to car accident on the road, and insane traffic. Unless you are surfing, or like yoga (I’ve heard it a good place for yoga), I’d avoid Nosara.

Back to San José

After two weeks in Nosara, we were back to San José for our final days, before leaving Costa Rica, and flying to our next destination. This time we rented an Airbnb in La Sabana area, which is a nice, central area. The condo was smaller than the one in Guachipelin, but it’s fine, as the main purpose of those days was to unwind, relax, and prepare to our next destination. We also took a one-day trip to Manuel Antonio national park. It’s nice park, you can see some animals, but the road is though. You wake up at 5 am, and back by 6-8 pm, depending on the traffic.

Conclusion

How would I sum up Costa Rica? Bear in mind that I’m judging it from a perspective of a digital nomad, a very fresh digital nomad. I don’t regret going there. I think it was a good decision as a first Central American country, but I didn’t find anything memorable from this trip. Yes the nature is nice. The weather is comfortable, but mostly in the capital. We felt safe there most of the time.

I didn’t find many places to work from. Maybe it’s because I stayed mainly in the capital. Selina Hotel in Monteverde was nice, and I think there is a Selina in La Fortuna, and one in Nosara. So maybe if you do Selina hopping your experience will be different. My wife and I, were focusing more on comfortable day-to-day living.

Lastly, Costa Rica is expensive. Very expensive. Some places would be close to Iceland prices, and Iceland is one of the most expensive countries I’ve travelled to.

So unless you combine your nomading with activities such as surfing, or yoga; or you are comfortable with Selina, or travel without a dog — I’d skip Costa Rica.

General recommendations

Internet

I found the internet in Costa Rica to be very reliable. No matter where we’ve been, the internet was stable. One exception was Nosara, where they had occasional power outages, which according to our Airbnb hosts where caused by the massive construction on the Peninsula. The power would immediately come back though.

Car rental

I’ve read a lot of scary stories online, ranging from “bad roads”, all the way to “cops are targeting tourists”, and “rental companies are scamming tourists”.

We’ve rented a car 3 times, and had a good experience. The roads are bad once you get outside the central valley, but are tolerable. I recommend getting an SUV, as opposed to a small car, or sedan. You will appreciate the higher clearance. The price difference is a couple of dollars anyway.

For our travel in La Fortuna, and Monteverde we used Adobe. The process was smooth, and painless.

For our trip to Nosara, and back, Adobe was not available as they don’t have an office in Nosara. To Nosara we used Alamo, however on the way back Alamo was not available (no idea why), so we used National which to my understanding is exactly the same as Alamo — they are located in the same office, and are handled by the same staff. Again, the process was smooth and easy.

Co-working and cafés

As I briefly mentioned, I didn’t have much opportunity to work from other places. Most of the work was done in the Airbnb, and in case of the first Airbnb, in the adjacent co-working space.

I can’t give recommendations for San José, but if you do find yourself in Nosara, here are some good places to work from:

Sunrise Coffee — A nice cafe, with tasty food. Saw some nomads there.
Bodhi Tree Yoga Resort — A big resort, with many activities, which include a juice bar where you can eat, and work.
Norte Hotel — I worked from there, sitting by the pool. Cool vibes, and a nice bar.
Roota Mercado — An organic grocery store, that also sells food, and drinks. Saw some nomads working from there.

General recommendations

Some general recommendations:

If you are into boxing, I highly recommend Striking Performance Center. It’s a great martial arts school, and Rafael — who is the owner — is an awesome coach. I really enjoyed training with him.
If you want to stay fit, and find yourself in Nosara — I can recommend Bodhi Tree Community Gym. There are two gyms at the Bodhi Resort. One is a fancy-shmancy, hotel-like gym, and the second is the community gym. I found the community gym to be better equipped, and it is cheaper (still expensive, because it’s Nosara).
If you are into yoga, my wife says that the teachers at Bodhi Tree Yoga Resort, are very good.

What’s next?

We left Costa Rica almost two weeks ago, and are now in Guatemala. Stay tuned for trip report of Guatemala, I feel it’s going to be more interesting than Costa Rica. Happy nomading!

Two months of nomading

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 22:00:00 GMT

Me at my San Jose AirBnb

About two months ago, I quit my job. I sold most of my stuff, packed the rest into a suitcase and a backpack, took my wife and our dog - and flew one way to Costa Rica 🇨🇷.

My plan was simple — slow traveling combined with building a sustainable business. Month and a half had passed, and I’m sitting right now at Juan Santamaria International Airport — waiting for a flight to my next destination.

How would I sum up this period? Two words — I failed. But as it’s written in one of the books my manager at Forter gave me, as a goodbye present, this was an intelligent failure.

What does it mean? It means that I’ve learned a lot. How to (not) start a business. What works and what does not work. What are my strong traits, and what I should focus on next. Failure is an inevitable part of eventually succeeding. The people who succeed, are not the ones who never failed. The people who succeed, are those that keep going — despite their failures.

And I intend to keep going.

Pictured: me at my San Jose Airbnb, finishing some stuff before packing up for my next destination.

📍 Juan Santamaria International Airport

Remote Work in The Netherlands - Part 2

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 19:30:00 GMT

Part 1

Affected badly by the planned NS strike, with no place to go, we’ve mobilized ourselves to find a fast solution for our situation. We tried to find a car rental service, but being located in Nunspeet, there were no car rental services nearby. Public transport was not a solution as it would take too much time. Our option was to find accommodation.

No Airbnb were available nearby, but luckily for us, we found a hotel located 20 minutes away by walking, which is also pet friendly, and so we booked it. NH Veluwe Sparrenhorst is part of the NH Hotel Group and is located right on the border of the Veluwe forest, which I told you about in my previous post. We’ve booked the hotel for one night and went to sleep.

Our room in the NH Hotel Sparrenhorst

Some of you might wonder why we did not stay one more night in our current Airbnb, and so I want to clarify this point for you. We were tired, and a little stressed, but we did WhatsApp our host and asked for a quote for one more night. He let us know that the property was available, however the price he has given us was more expensive than on Airbnb website. Our minds immediately assumed he is trying to fool us and use our situation to extract more money, so we’ve ignored this option. Later, after the hotel was already booked, we’ve realized that the price you see on Airbnb search page and the final price, are not the same. What we saw was the price on the search page, but once you try to book it, the price goes up and matches what our host offered us in WhatsApp. I guess you learn by mistakes.

After staying for one night in the hotel and working from there, we’ve hoped on a train and took the trip to our next destination.

The city of Alkmaar

Our next city, Alkmaar is almost the complete opposite of Nunspeet. It’s a big city, with around 110k population. It’s located about 30 km north of Amsterdam. We were staying in a classical, 3 stories, Dutch house in a quiet neighborhood, a couple of minutes away from a ferry that takes you to the old and beautiful city center.

In Alkmaar our life was more “normal”. We were shopping at Albert Heijn for groceries, worked and traveled around the city. We even were able to, accidentally, find our selves in Alkmaar’s cheese market. Apparently, Alkmaar is popular for its cheese.

The road home

3 days before our flight, NS once again announced a nationwide strike. We wanted to go to Delft and The Hague one day before leaving, but now with the announced strike it became a bit complicated. We were also afraid that we might not be able to get to the airport due to the possibility that the strike might extend to more than one day, or any other logistic problems due to the consequences of the strike, as our flight was leaving in the morning.

This time we’ve decided to rent a car for one day and return it in the airport. We’ve rented a car from Sixt and drove to Delft and then to The Hague to visit some friends. The next day, we’ve returned the car in the Airport and boarded our flight home.

This concludes our first experience as Digital Nomads in a beautiful country of The Netherlands.

Cost breakdown

The idea of this part is to help you understand how much you can expect to pay for common things like accommodation and groceries, therefor I’m not going to include in this section things like flight tickets (which are personal to you depending on your flight route) or any personal spending we’ve had.

Accommodation

The house in Nunspeet costed us approximately 2400 EUR. In Alkmaar, we’ve paid approximately 850 EUR. We did pay another 145 EUR for the hotel.

The total expense for accommodations were approximately: 3395 EUR.

Groceries

We bought our groceries mainly in Albert Heijn, with occasional visits to Lidl or Jumbo. We found AH to be better quality. I’m not going to include restaurants here, as this might differ from person to person and has little to do with the estimation of cost of living. I will note that 90% of the time we cooked at home, and only when we were away from home, such as in a different city or traveling, we were eating out.

Our total expense for groceries was: 774.78 EUR.

Transportation

We’ve paid 352.9 EUR for trains, 10 EUR for a taxi from the hotel to the train station, and another 5 EUR for bus tickets. A rental car for one day costed us 161 EUR and 26.77 EUR for extra kilometers range. The fuel costed 27.25 EUR. Two rental bicycles for two weeks costed us 270 EUR and another 20 EUR for one pannier.

The total cost of transportation, was 872.92 EUR.

NOTE

After the trip ended, I’ve learned that you can get an anonymous OV-chipkaart that costs 7.5 EUR. The benefit of an anonymous travel card is that every time you buy a paper ticket, in addition to the ticket price, you also pay 1 EUR for the single-use chipkaart inside the ticket. This could save you some money if you travel a lot using trains.

Misc

We’ve paid 77 EUR for dog food as well as 55 EUR for tick removal. The co-working I’ve mentioned in previous part costed us 62 EUR.

Remote Work in The Netherlands - Part 1

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 16:00:00 GMT

In the middle of August, my wife and I packed our suitcase and MacBooks, took our dog, and flew for a month to The Netherlands. Luckily — we are working in companies with remote work policies. Here’s my experience. We landed at Schiphol airport and took a train via Amersfoort Central towards Nunspeet which became our hometown for the next two and a half weeks.

Why The Netherlands?

Europe, and especially The Netherlands, is not the first choice for Digital Nomads. The country is very expensive. I’ll do a detailed cost breakdown in the next part, so stay tuned.

Why The Netherlands? We see it as a potential relocation destination, so we’ve wanted to see how it is to live a “normal” life there. Sometimes, the entire life is not enough to understand if you like your country or not, let alone one month, but we’ve decided to do it anyway.

The town of Nunspeet

When we arrived at the border control at Schiphol airport, the officer asked us about the purpose and length of our trip. When we said that we are going to stay there for a month, he was curious about where we are going to stay, so we replied: “Nunspeet”. He laughed and asked surprisingly: “Nunspeet?! Why Nunspeet?!”. This interaction summarized Nunspeet pretty well.

Nunspeet is a town in the central Netherlands with a population of 27481 people (as of Jan 2019). However, Nunspeet wasn’t our first choice. We wanted to experience this mini relocation in two ways: outside the city and inside the city. Our initial location was Zwolle — a much bigger city in the Northern Netherlands. In Zwolle, we’ve booked a house almost on the city outskirt, away from the city life. But due to unfortunate circumstances, our host had to cancel the booking. And hence with less than a month before the trip, somewhat limited by our dog (not a lot of hosts will agree for a pet) — we’ve had to search for an alternative.

And so we’ve found a lovely house in Nunspeet. Coincidently, the distance between Nunspeet and Zwolle is 30km. It’s a detached unit, in a community of around 20 similar units. Some owners use them as permanent living, others rent them out. It’s located around 10 minutes by foot from Nunspeet Train Station or about 2 minutes by bicycle. Nunspeet Outdoor Center is conveniently located just by the train station, and we’ve used it to rent our bicycles for 2 weeks.

But the coolest feature of it all is that it’s located in Veluwe — an 1100 km² forest-rich ridge of hills. And our house is located across the road from a forest in which we’ve spent many mornings and afternoons (at night it’s scary).

Squerrel outside of our home in Nunspeet

Semi-Cashless, work-life balanced society

We arrived on Saturday evening, and after unpacking and taking a shower, went to sleep. We did buy some groceries at the airport for breakfast but planned to buy food the next day — on Sunday.

In Europe, Sunday is considered to be the holy rest day but many businesses are still open and operating (albeit with a shorter opening hour). Being located in a small town, rather than a big city, we’ve realized that Sunday in Nunspeet means no shopping. Some businesses are open, like the Outdoor Center in which we’ve rented bicycles, and some restaurants, but grocery stores and other shops are closed. The closest open Albert Heijn (a local grocery store chain) was in the city of Harderwijk. Just 35 minutes by bicycle! Without a second thought, we jumped on our bicycles and cycled through the beautiful countryside of the Netherlands.

After buying some groceries and getting ready to head back, we’ve been surprised we can’t pay with a credit card. Luckily an ATM was right inside the store, so we were able to withdraw some cash. This phenomenon later haunted us through most of our stay in Nunspeet. Most small stores refused to accept credit cards and operated mainly on cash or debit cards. One business owner told us that credit card companies charge big fees, and so they refuse to support big financial institutions. Understandable I guess. However, it’s still a mystery to me why Albert Heijn, a big chain store, does not accept credit cards, even in big cities such as Utrecht.

Debit cards are accepted everywhere though. Some grocery stores such as Jumbo and Lidl, as well as almost all the restaurants — did accept credit cards though, so I still can’t figure out how they decide whether to accept credit-cards or not.

Utrecht, Amsterdam, and lots of cycling

After a week of working from suboptimal working conditions (couch for my wife and a dining table for myself), I’ve decided to explore local co-working options. Mindspace was the biggest and the only one that allowed us to pay per day as well as make an online reservation (I hate phone calls), so we booked ourselves a table and headed to Utrecht. An hour ride by train, not the closest city, and I wouldn’t like to take this ride every day. A co-working was however a fresh restart and a change. We were able to be more work-focused due to the office-like environment, as well as combine it with city exploring when we went for lunch as well as dinner afterward.

On Friday we’ve decided to bike. I think the Netherlands is the most bicycle-friendly country in the world. We were able to bike for 60 km, all on bicycle lanes, through more than 4 cities to arrive at a beautiful wildlife park. We didn’t see many wild animals there, but the bicycle ride and the park itself were amazing.

On Saturday we went to Amsterdam. I’ve been to Amsterdam 3 times: one when interviewing for Booking.com; another one when we did bicycle touring with my friends, we stayed at a campsite near Amsterdam for 3 days; and the last time I flew to my wife when she had a connection there, so we’ve stayed there for 3 days. I always loved Amsterdam. It’s such an amazing city. It’s uniquely antique but very modern and liberal.

Amsterdam - always beautiful

This time, I felt anxious in Amsterdam. There were many tourists and a clear sign of people who come here only for weed and sex. The city center was packed with people, and relatively dirty. On the other side, once you take a few steps to the adjacent street, you fall in love with Amsterdam again. I did some shopping there and spent the rest of the day in the beautiful Vondelpark.

This concludes our first week there.

Got sick and then traveled more

The second week started with me getting sick. I thought it might be COVID, but the antigen test showed negative, so I assume it was the common cold and probably exhaustion. I’ve spent most of the week in bed, sleeping, while my wife focused mainly on work.

By the end of the week, I was getting better and was able to get back to work, and during the weekend, we decided to travel some more!

Zwolle, Giethoorn, and the not-so bicycle-friendly country

Remember I told you that Nunspeet was not our first option and that we initially wanted to stay on the outskirts of Zwolle? Well, since Zwolle was 20-min ride by train, we decided to visit it. Zwolle is a beautiful, big city. It has a very cute city center. We spent there half a day just exploring and doing some shopping.

On Saturday we went to visit Giethoorn. Giethoorn is a mostly car-free village and was very long on my list of places to visit. I first heard about Giethoorn in 2015 when my friends and I did a two-week bicycle tour around The Netherlands. We were throwing points of interest on a map and that’s how I’ve heard about Giethoorn.

Giethoorn

After visiting Giethoorn I must say I have mixed feelings. While it’s advertised as a mostly car-free village, I must say that only a small part of it fits this description. Mostly, it looks the same as a regular town/village. However, the car-free part is very beautiful, and we rented a boat for 2 hours and sailed around the village and the farmlands nearby.

Getting to Giethoorn was a bit complicated. From Nunspeet you usually take a train to Zwolle and then from Zwolle a train to either Meppel or Steenwijk. From the latter two, you can take a bus. But hey! The Netherlands is a bicycle paradise so why not cycle? It’s about 40-min cycle from Meppel; about 20-min from Steenwijk. We planned to get to Steenwijk and then cycle. And while the train ride to Zwolle was pleasant, Zwolle was super packed with people as it was Saturday, and the platform with the train to Steenwijk was very crowded, so we’ve been afraid that there will be no place for bicycles, so we took an alternative train that stops in Meppel. From Meppel it took us around 1-hour cycle towards Giethoorn, which was a beautiful cycle.

Since it’s Saturday, trains are less frequent than during the work week, so on our way back, we had a train once an hour. We’ve arrived at Steenwijk and planned to take an Intercity (IC) train to Zwolle and then a sprinter train to Nunspeet. When the IC train arrived, it already had 3 bicycles inside and the train personnel told us that we can’t board the train with bicycles — even though we bought the required bicycle tickets. They’ve said leaving the bicycle in an improper place is dangerous, and we should wait for the next train. The problem is that the next IC train is in one hour, but they’ve suggested instead to board a sprinter to Meppel which will arrive in about 20 minutes then have a 30-minute transfer to a sprinter for Zwolle and finally a sprinter to Nunspeet.

It was very odd to me. A country where cycling is so engraved in people’s lifestyles, is not able to provide a good way to transport bicycles on a train. Sprinter trains are more forgiving since they are a bit more spacious than IC trains, so luckily the 3 sprinters we took had enough space for our bicycles, and after a long, long ride, we were home.

We also visited Amersfoort later on, to celebrate our anniversary in a nice restaurant there.

The happiest country is not that happy after all

The Netherlands consistently ranks in the top 5 happiest countries. The other 4 are usually Nordic countries, so it was always a mystery to me as to why the Netherlands. There are many different explanations like good social services, being closer to nature or even the fact you are physically active by cycling everywhere.

But it turned out that even the happiest countries in the world — have problems. Throughout 2 weeks there, we’ve learned that there is an ongoing farmers’ protest that started 3 years ago, in 2019! We saw many haystacks with angry faces and slogans which we couldn’t understand because they were written in Dutch, but the word “kaput” probably meant something bad. We’ve observed cars with red bandanas — a sign of people’s support for the farmers.

Unhappy farmers

And as we were sitting, on the evening of 29th of August, ready to pack our things and the next day move to Alkmaar, a city in the province of North Holland, which was supposed to become our next home for the rest of this mini-relocation, we’ve observed that on the 30th of August there will be the biggest NS strike in the Netherlands.

NS Strike

NS, or Nederlandse Spoorwegen which is Dutch for “Dutch Railways”, the biggest state-owned railway operator in the Netherlands, as well as the busiest railway in European Union, and the third largest in the world after Switzerland and Japan — said they were going on a strike.

The strike aimed to increase NS workers’ salaries as well as pension contributions, and was ongoing for a few days already, but was limited mainly to one of many of the Netherlands regions. However, the planned strike on the 30th was in Utrecht which is a major hub and operation center for NS, hence NS was not able to run any… trains… AT ALL. On previous strike days, NS was able to provide limited service outside the strike area, but this time they’ve said they were not able to find a way to provide service due to the importance of Utrecht in the railway system.

And so, without any option to leave Nunspeet, except for 6 buses that will take us anywhere between 4 and a half to 6 hours of travel time, or a taxi ride that will cost like a round trip flight ticket from the Netherlands back home, we were forced to find a solution just a few hours before going to sleep.

This concludes the first part of the article. Read the second part