The Bicycle Path

There is a small country on the windswept coast of the North Sea where they have chosen people over cars. Our family lived there for two years in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Adjusting to a new culture and language was difficult, but adapting to the transportation system was not. We were astonished when we realized that the entire country had bike lanes, sidewalks, and a fully integrated bus, train, and streetcar system. It was not a fluke of the town or the region we had settled in. It took leaving to see America with new eyes. It took living somewhere else to realize that we can live differently.