Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [11]
Getting around | By car |
Car rental agencies
Adams Rent-a-Car www.adamsrentacar.nl.
Avis www.avis.com.
Budget www.budget.com.
Diks Autoverhuur www.diks.net.
Europcar www.europcar.com.
Hertz www.hertz.com.
Getting around | By car |
Taxis
Due to the various obstacles that Amsterdam motorists face, taxis are not as much use as they are in many other cities. They are, however, plentiful: there’s a taxi rank on Stationsplein outside Centraal Station, and other ranks are liberally distributed across the city centre; they can also be hailed on the street. If all else fails, call 020/677 7777. Fares are metered and are reasonably high, but distances are small; the trip from Centraal Station to the Leidseplein, for example, will cost around €12 (€7.50 for the first 2km, €2.20 per km after that), €2 more to Museumplein. Be warned that there are taxi drivers who will try to set a fixed price for a ride – especially late at night – usually to their own advantage. Don’t argue, but ask them to turn on the meter instead.
The media
English-speakers will find themselves quite at home in Amsterdam, as Dutch TV broadcasts a wide range of British programmes, and English-language news-papers from around the world are readily available.
The media |
Newspapers and magazines
British newspapers are on sale at most newsagents on the day of publication, for around €4. Current issues of UK and US magazines are widely available too, as is the International Herald Tribune.
Of the Dutch newspapers, NRC Handelsblad is a right-of-centre paper that has perhaps the best news coverage and a liberal stance on the arts; De Volkskrant is a progressive, leftish daily; the popular right-wing De Telegraaf boasts the highest circulation figures in the country and has a well-regarded financial section; Algemeen Dagblad is a right-wing broadsheet; while the middle-of-the-road Het Parool (“The Password”) and the news magazine Vrij Nederland (“Free Netherlands”) are the successors of underground Resistance newspapers printed during wartime occupation. The Protestant Trouw (“Trust”), another former underground paper, is centre-left in orientation with a focus on religion.
Bundled in with the weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune is The Netherlander, a small but useful business-oriented review of Dutch affairs in English. For events listings in English, see "Tourist information".
The media |
Television and radio
Dutch TV isn’t the best, but English-language programmes and films fill up a fair amount of the schedule – and they are always subtitled, never dubbed. Many bars and most hotels have at least two of the big pan-European cable and satellite channels – including MTV, CNN and Eurosport – and most cable companies also give access to a veritable raft of foreign television channels, including Britain’s BBC1 and BBC2, National Geographic, Eurosport and Discovery, and a host of Belgian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Arabic stations, some of which also show un-dubbed British and US movies. Other Dutch and Belgian TV channels – cable and non-cable – regularly run English-language movies with Dutch subtitles.
Dutch radio has numerous stations catering for every niche. Of the public service stations, Radio 1 is a news and sports channel, Radio 2 plays AOR music, Radio 3 plays chart music and Radio 4 classical, jazz and world music. Of the commercial stations, some of the main nationwide players are Radio 538, Veronica, Sky Radio and Noordzee FM, and pretty much all play chart music. The Dutch Classic FM, at 101.2FM, plays mainstream classical music, with jazz after 10pm.
There’s next to no English-language programming, apart from the overseas-targeted Radio Netherlands (www.rnw.nl), which broadcasts Dutch news in English, with articles on current affairs, lifestyle issues, science, health and so on, and the BBC World Service (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice), which broadcasts pretty much all day in English on 648kHz (AM) around Amsterdam; it also occupies