It’s raining in Utrecht and it’s wonderful.

The blue skies and heat of the last two weeks are gone, replaced by featureless grey clouds and it’s great. It’s nice to have a break from the heat, if I was out cycling in this weather then I wouldn’t be celebrating but when I have no pressing need to be outside I love looking out at the rain, so this morning like an excited kid gazing out at the first fall of snow, I pulled the blinds and admired.

Out on the streets the cyclists whizz by. In the sun all cyclists are equal but in the rains, things change, standing looking out my window I conducted a visual survey. What I found was that hardly anyone had raingear, not what I expected in a rainy country where everyone cycles. Instead there are two approaches adopted – the ineffective “riding very fast” and the trickier “umbrella”.

It was like being back in South-East Asia again watching people balance and steer their bicycle with one hand while holding aloft an umbrella, I’m not really sure how effective an umbrella would really be, it would probably merely protect your hairdo which is not much of a concern for me…

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Another reminder of the East are the bells, there are 5 or 6 churches in the area as well as the Cathedral, so the bells seem to be always ringing, it’s like the muslim call to prayer, except at least the call to prayer only happened 5 times a day, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when the bells toll. Naturally Sunday and the bell-ringers go beserk, it seems like almost continuous ringing for the whole of the day but it doesn’t stop there. During the week the bells will ring at any time, there’ll be different music (I’m sure I heard Jesus Christ Superstar yesterday), they’ll even ring at 1am or 4am, it all seems a bit strange…

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I learnt last night that Utrecht is the best place in The Netherlands to buy shoes, apparently every second shop is a shoe-shop. My informant was an Irish girl who’s lived here for 8 years, so I guess she’d know! Whenever she was in dire straits and couldn’t find the perfect shoes for her latest outfit, all she had to do was take the train to little old Utrecht and its multitude of shoe-shops and she’d be guaranteed shoes to die for every time!

Though in my strolls around town I can’t remember seeing any shoe shops at all….