In Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, there are 880,000 bikes and only 800,000 people - that means there are more bikes than people! There are wide bike lanes on both sides of the street so you don't have to bike near the cars. This makes bike riding here really safe. People even have bags that clip onto the back of their bike so they can store stuff on their bike without having to carry it - it's like a trunk in a car! So, if you ever come to The Netherlands, a good phrase to know is "Ik fiets!" (pronounced "ick feets") which means "I'm biking"!
However, besides biking people also take public transportation around. Public transportation in Dutch is openbaar veroer ("open-bar ver-over"), "OV" for short, and you have to use your OV-chipkaart to get around. The OV-chipkaart is like a credit card except it only works for bus and train tickets. You have to check in when you get on a bus or train and then check out when you get off the bus or train. It's really important to check out because if you forget to check out they do not know how far you went and may charge you a LOT! The trains can be pretty expensive if you take them every day, but luckily there is a special OV-chipkaart that locals can get for discounted fare!
The first time I took the bus I did not know that I had to press a little stop requested button before the bus got close to my stop. So I sat on the bus and watched us pass my stop and had to walk backwards to get to my destination! But now that I know how the busses and trains work it's really nice.
