The Leidseplein Bicycle Caper

So bikes are one of the most identifying  features of Holland. There are over 500,000 bicycles in Amsterdam, nearly one for every human in the city. Most people have their nice bike that they take on weekend rides through the flat Dutch countryside. They have another ‘city bike’ that is a total pile of rust, scraped paint, bent metal and creaking like an old person’s joints. I think those creaking joints are a tribute to the bicycles themselves. Here in Holland bikes are called Fietsen, but the main type of bike is an Omafiets. That literally translates to Grandma bikes. 94% of all Omafiets are all black (zwarte) and they all look the same seats, same handlebars, same bell, uniqueness is not what the Dutch search for in a fietsen.

I had bought Saviya a bike off of the internet for 40 Euro, but it was a mountain bike and she didn't really enjoy riding it. She sold it for 10 Euro profit, and we decided to buy her a brand new Zwarte Omafiets. We searched the city and finally she found one at the public market by our apartment. She had the seat adjusted to her height, and was much happier with this seat than any other that we had tried. The bike came with a built in lock, and a cable lock that looped the tire and locked to the frame.

Here is Saviya’s bike, with the stitched seat.

We took two rides through Amsterdam on her new bike. The third time we took it out was to go to Boom Chicago in the Leidseplein. This bar does comedy shows in Dutch and English, and the night we went was to see comedy in English by Europeans from Greece, Holland, and England.  Overall it was fairly funny, but nothing terribly exciting. We come outside and Saviya finds her bicycle has disappeared. My purple mountain bike stood where it was left, but hers was gone. After an hour of walking around thinking we might find it tossed in a bush, or just behind another bike, the reality that it was gone sunk in. We spoke with the police walking around the area, and they were supportive but reinforced that finding a black Omafiets in Amsterdam is not easy, and not the priority of the police. Almost 50,000 bikes a year are stolen in Amsterdam each year (though I have a theory that 35,000 of those are ‘taken’ by the city’).  We walked home, some tears were shed, but what more could be done?

I took a bike ride the next day through the area, hoping just to come across our black bike. Our hope was the very unique seat on her bike would stand out among the others as it had unique white stitching  on it that few other bikes had. More searching turned up nothing, and I promised to get her another bike.

Days later Saviya set off to buy my cake and frosting for my birthday. She came home down a different route than normal, using the Rijkmuseum as her guide. As she came down Stadhouderskade (a major street that goes past our block, and the Heineken Brewery).  She rode past a grouping of bikes and saw what looked like her bike. She pulled over and tried her key in the built in lock, but it wouldn't open. When she came home she explained what she found and we went back over to check it out. I put in the key, and jiggled it a bit and it popped right open!. The bike was the same bike, same brand new tires with the little knobbys still on them, the special seat stitching. It seemed like it was ours, but it now had another persons chain lock around its back tire. Well I picked up the bike and put it over my shoulder. I carried it down two major streets a block each, through a public square with a few hundred people watching me. True Dutch tolerance allows for things like this.

So we get back to our neighborhood and the local bar was having a small electrical fire and the police and fire department were onsite. When all was wrapping up, I approached the Police and explained the situation. They asked me to go to the police station AFTER 11pm to file a report. Bicycle theft is so unimportant that they don't want you clogging up the office during the regular hours.  I rode my bike over at 11pm and again explained the situation to the officer. I said “So the bicycle got stolen in the Leidseplein”. He pondered for 5 seconds than said “Yes, this does happen in Amsterdam”. Deadpan….Oscar winning 1000 yard stare. Anyway, he tells me, no need for a police report since we found our bike, why have a report? So he told me take the bike and the receipt down to the man whom we purchased the bike from and he will cut the lock off.

The next morning Saviya and I head to the public market with the locked up bike and the receipt. Our regular guy wasn't there, but the woman working just handed me an angle iron saw to cut through the metal lock. 30 seconds later, the bike was ours again! We bought 2 more locks for the bike that day, and never will leave it not locked up to something physical. We also typically lock my bike to the same solid object through her bike so that we have a 3 lock octopus and the built in lock (which really only 1/2 works, but when its in the locked position and 3 locks on it, who wants to fight through 4 locks?).

Everyone in town we tell the story are amazed we got the bike back. The local Dutch say “that never happens’, and we expect that it rarely does. But with a tight budget, getting the bike back was a nice birthday gift to me as well. The best part is Saviya got her bike back, loves to ride it, and we can put the great Leidseplein Bicycle Caper behind us.