News flash: there is life outside the metropolitan area
Our editorial office is located in a nice busy neighborhood of Amsterdam. It’s getting cozier here, because in the city center it’s quite cramped. The Pilotenstraat is just inside the ring, but the hipsters who populate the canals act a bit as if I’m talking about the tripoint when I say we’re close to the Hoofddorpplein. And that, that’s just annoying. Just like when the people living in the Randstad act as if (I’m just mentioning something) Zwolle is a backward area. In-te-gen-deel.
The traffic jams. The Kalverstraat where you trudge through while body-checking. Having to eat at that new place in town within two weeks. The kamikaze cyclists. The (thanks Femke) ridiculous parking fees. It ain’t perfect. But we don’t immediately shout that when someone says they live in the Randstad or the capital. No. The opposite seems to be the norm. If you accidentally tumble off the Randstad map, you’re suddenly worth a lot fewer points.
The forecast is that Amsterdam will reach a record number of inhabitants in 2019. The year 1952 was until now the leader for our capital. When I just looked at the population counter at the CBS, which jumped from 46 to 47 and then to 48 and back to 45, the Netherlands counted 17,321,545 inhabitants. That means, if we do a quick calculation, that there are about 16,539,547 living souls outside Amsterdam. A count from 2016 says that 8.2 million people lived in the Randstad at that time. If you calculate a bit further, that brings us to a nice 9,121,547 million outside of it. Outside the Randstad indeed, where sometimes a bit of snobbery is displayed.
You can guess three times where I grew up. I lived a bit in Amsterdam, a bit in Rotterdam and then I took a break from the Randstad. By the way, I did live in a city there, with a center so cozy that you almost couldn’t leave the terrace, but still: outside the Randstad. I still go there often. Unknown people say hello to you, the road is all space without frenzied driving and fuss, you have a chance of a table on a terrace by the water, it’s okay if your sneakers are from last season, you won’t be scorned if you order a steak or drink your cappuccino with regular milk. And if it’s clear, you can see far enough to count the church towers of the next village or trees along the way there.
May not be as sexy and fast as inside the ring, but believe me: it’s nice.
