maria 🍎

I’d prefer reliable but at this point I’d also take the travel planner being up to date 🙃

The new buses in Utrecht have cloth seats with seat warmers in them. Luxurious or weird? Not sure yet.

thinking about the wooden escalator I rode in rotterdam last week

Dutch train station bathrooms quietly going from 80¢ to €1.10 seems crazy to me:

Spent yesterday in my favorite Dutch city, Groningen. The winterstad in the Grote Markt had just the right amount of Christmas cozy, bright lights, and big mugs of glühwein.

I dread cleaning the exterior windows of my house because I’m awful at it. I finally realized it’s because everywhere else I’ve lived had burglar bars on the windows so of course I’m horrible at this chore.

Totally fine never driving a car again but could be convinced by a tiny car adorned with a snail decal 🚗🚙

Listening to a strangers short form video slop blast from their phone on the train at 6am is enough to make me agree that yes, it really is the damn phones.

biked 40km from utrecht to gouda, ate a solid doner kip broodje, and ended up at a beer bar full of plastic ducks with a very sleepy beagle.

walked 11 kilometers and ate mapo tofu at my favorite restaurant in leidseplein. a nice, cold day in amsterdam.

In this substack post I will defend Lombardy Kroger from the slander it’s receiving on tiktok…

I parked my bike on the sidewalk one too many times and have to walk over and free it from city bike jail today. €25, free my omafiets 👩🏻‍⚖️

One of my most annoying digital habits is commenting on Tiktoks made while driving. Please, I should just scroll, but I can’t stop myself. 🫡

Wasp update/real life nightmare description: They weren’t just in the bathroom wall. They were in the recessed lighting in the bathroom ceiling too.

There are wasps in my bathroom wall and the 1st pest guy I called suggested “just wait a month and they will go away.” 🙃

Is everywhere dealing with widespread broken escalators or is this specific to where I live?

Big news: Dark mode on the NS train information boards has begun at Utrecht Centraal! #netherlands #accessibility

Integrating by eating 1 half of a sandwich at a time in the rain as needed

Headed to The Red Line demonstration for Palestine in Amsterdam, the Amersfoort train platform is packed with people in red ♥️♥️♥️

The things you see in Amsterdam: A bike with a full sized bathtub attached to it. #urbanism

Twitch Twitch is the world

Exploring the Dutch city of Eindhoven by city bike today on Twitch. Street art, boppin’ around, looking for a sunny terrace. See you in an hour: m.twitch.tv/marianotmarie/

2 windmills from my sunday

My new series: Spotted at Albert Heijn

humbling to realize that I’m bad at washing windows as an adult because I’ve only lived in houses with burglar bars on them 🙃 photo example for my normal people:

👋 You as well!

The modern experience of having a weird problem but finding a variety of reddit threads discussing this problem with no solution.

Highly specific bike/tech issue: My iPhone compass experiences some kind of interference when mounted to my steel frame bike, which confuses all map apps and gets me immediately lost if I use them. And apparently this is just a niche but common problem?

The stereotype of American children traveling abroad to loudly scare pigeons isn’t complained about enough.

I go to the Irish pub because they have 1 TV dedicated to music videos.

A photo from a 2 hour bike ride that turned into 4 hours thanks to absolutely brutal headwind. Netherlands problems.