Overheard in Delft… a chubby California blonde was on her iPhone describing the marvels of the city to friends back in Sacramento and San Francisco: “It’s incredibly clean, not like the cities in our country.”
This was late on a Sunday afternoon and, in fact, the streets and sidewalks were somewhat trashed by all of the weekend tourists and strolling locals. Trash cans are relatively sparse, takeout food is common, and smoking is more common than in the U.S. In fact, even before the weekend I had noticed that the city was dramatically more littered, especially with very small items, than what we’re accustomed to in the parts of Florida that we visit.
A potential source of trash (my host forced me to eat fries with mayonnaise):
Locals eating just outside the shop:
Three tourists (background left) eating/drinking outside of the old city hall:
A lot of the houses in the center are tidy:
For fans of 1980s Artificial Intelligence:
Mayonnaise on fries is possibly the worst condiment I could think of. And I remember this being offered everywhere I went in Amsterdam. Is this the official national food?
Have they not considered Ketchup, or Mustard, or Olive oil, or Pesto, or Parm cheese, or BBQ sauce, or Tikka sauce?
Really the worst idea.
Raw herrings with chopped onions or potato croquettes with mystery meat. But the most common lunch is an assortment of cold cuts and cheese slices served with seeded buns. Split pea soup with smoked eel, crayfish soup or mustard soup is not half bad, however. In Europe there is a direct correlation between Protestantism and mediocre food. The Catholic Flemish eat much better.
Don’t diss flavored mayo with fries, though. Bell pepper mayo or wasabi mayo can be quite tasty, or even a simple aioli or rouille.
Back in the late ’70s, when I was a teenager working for two pit crews for race cars at Star Speedway, Epping, NH and Lee Raceway, Lee, NH, the food trucks served fries w/vinegar. Quite delicious.
Mayo is just the best condiment for fries, with satay sauce and ketchup being second and third. All of them commonly available over here, as well as all sorts of combinations. But definitely not your typical Dutch lunch or dinner.
Populations in European cities have grown, and the prevalence of take-out food, disposable items, etc., has grown too. I was in Paris in October 2022 visiting a building where I lived in the 1980s. The concierge position had been abolished. Her closet-like apartment by the entrance had been converted into a studio, and sold about 20 years ago to someone (according to another inhabitant of the building). So there was no one to sweep & hose down the street in front of the building regularly as la concierge was doing most mornings in the 1980s. Generally, la rue Alasseur Paris 7e was littered with trash in 2022 whereas I am certain it was far cleaner in the 1980s. This is an upper middle class neighborhood near la Tour Eiffel. Walking near la Place de la Bastille, a less well-heeled “quartier,” the trash & spilled food on the sidewalks was even worse, as were the number of homeless (“sans domicile fixe”). However, the heavily-touristy areas like les jardins des Tuileries, Louvre Museum, le champs de Mars near la Tour Eiffel, etc., were relatively clean, with lots of trash cans at pedestrians’ disposal. Just since 1983, Paris metropolitan area population has grown from 8.8M to 11.2M, almost 30%. That doesn’t include influx of migrants, especially in la banlieue (suburbs), including those under OQTF (deportation orders). It was a young woman given a 30 day OQTF in August 2022 who murdered and dismembered a 12 yo girl in northeastern Paris in October 2022, almost two months after she was supposed to be back in her native Algeria. She pled insanity, so now instead of being deported to Algeria, she’s being held in a psychiatric hospital near Paris.