Amsterdam Stories — Life, Cycling and Moving On
Thirty-four posts from the city and beyond — commuting, car-free living, and eventually leaving.
Willem lived in Amsterdam for years — cycling its streets, raising children in its neighbourhoods, running servers from its apartments. These posts are the Amsterdam chapter: how the city shaped his thinking about mobility, technology, and eventually why he left.
Amsterdam is a cycling city, and Willem is a cycling person. That overlap produced some of his most vivid writing — but the Amsterdam posts go beyond bikes. They're about what it means to live in a dense, old, complicated city, and what happens when you decide to leave one.
The Commuter
It starts with the daily ride. Commuting by bike is the foundational post — not a guide to Amsterdam cycling, but a personal account of what the daily ride through the city does to your thinking. The ultimate commuter bike and its one-year follow-up are the practical extension: building a machine specifically for Amsterdam's cobblestones, rain, and theft risk.
Car-Free
One of Willem's most personal posts: the day I sold my car. In Amsterdam, going car-free is a statement — and Willem writes about what you gain and what you lose. The cargo bike build is the practical answer to the question everyone asks: but how do you carry things?
Leaving
And then, the plot twist. Moving to the countryside — after years of urban life, the decision to leave Amsterdam for a rural setting. It's a reflective piece that ties together the mobility, technology, and lifestyle threads of the entire blog. The city shaped who Willem became; leaving it was part of the same evolution.
The City in the Background
Amsterdam appears throughout Willem's other writing — in festival posts, watch photography on canal bridges, cycling routes through the Vondelpark. It's the backdrop against which all the experiments in technology and lifestyle played out. Even the server infrastructure started in an Amsterdam apartment.
Also explore
cycling · life without a car · leaving the city · fatherhood
All Amsterdam Posts
Every post tagged with the city — from cycling to leaving.
