Those crazy Dutch… And their crazy stairs

if the first two posts were on the positive side today, my dear reader, you are going to find out about a dark place in Dutch culture – stairs. I don’t know what’s wrong with this people… Why do the stairs in most of the older buildings need to be like a corkscrew is beyond me. My own apartment is blessed with a perfect example of just that kind of stairs.

Above – The crazy stairs to my apartment

Going up and down is not that much of a challenge, when you get used to it, but God help that you don’t have to carry something upstairs. I still hear horror stories from my friends Simon and Levi about the task of carrying a couch up those same stairs and something tells me that they still have nightmares about carrying it down. Sorry guys, but it’s not my fault, I didn’t make the stairs, your crazy Dutch architects and builders did. And don’t even get me started about the time I wanted to take my bike upstairs. I almost didn’t make it…

And you know, you can find a lot of excuses for having this kind of masochistic stairs, like the land is expensive, there is not much space but, in reality, I think that there is just something wrong with the Dutch when it comes to stairs.

Above – Check out the winches on these houses in Amsterdam

Now, really, who in his right mind would build a warehouse and make such small stairs that you would need a winch to get anything in or out. Yup, an warehouse. A building built for the sole purpose of putting things in and taking them out.

And if you ever wondered what those typical winches on a lot of the houses in Amsterdam are for, now you know. Those are either old warehouses or homes with stairs so small that you can only crawl on them.

Yes, my eager minded reader, there are a lot of strange things in Holland and stairs is one of them. Read on!