Hey hey everybody,
hope you're doing well on this magnificent day.
Well... You might've noticed that I haven't been posting for a minute.
The reason for this is I've been moving to Amsterdam for my future Master's degree.
So for the past few days, I've been (with the help of my parents, thanks for that ❤️) moving a lot of stuff back and forth and discovering the city.
As someone from a German village, I was quite fascinated by the amount of public infrastructure available.
Everyone is talking about the bike thing, but honestly, their public transit deserves a mention too in my book.
I mean. I haven't ridden a bus yet (I don't know how, considering how much I used public transit in the past few days haha), but everything else... Yeah, been there, done that.
So, I want to talk about that, how it works, and my personal thoughts on it.
Here we go, I guess...
So there are five forms of public transit inside Amsterdam.
- Busses (Which, as I said, I haven't ridden yet..)
- Tram
- Metro
- Trains
- Ferries
The trams are a type of train which run on light rail tracks which are embedded in public streets.
They mostly go either from outside the city towards the center or different city axes along streets.
Since metro stations are often times developed a bit better they also stop by around that area as well.
But they are a lot cheaper/flexible than other forms of rail transportation, which is the reason why they reach further and less spacious areas like the outer areas of Amsterdam's metropolitan area or the crowded streets of De Wallen.
Be aware though. Those things only run until midnight. Nearly made the mistake of taking the tram a bit too late. 😅
I mentioned it a bit earlier, the metro. They are also kind of light-weight trains, but in this case, they run in completely separated areas.
In Amsterdam, that is mostly in the overground but also a few selected ones in a more classic underground fashion.
When I say separated, I mean separated. Not only the trains but also the entrances, which you can only enter with a ticket or OV-chipkaart (I will talk about that one a bit later)
At least in each metro station, the separated metro lines include all of the different platforms for all lines that stop at a certain station.
Because of that, there aren't too many lines and they only run across bigger general areas where space, natural obstacles, or demand allows it.
Be aware again though... They barely run longer than the trams again.
For longer service throughout the night the different busses. Well... As I said. Haven't used one yet so I can't go into detail about the different quirks... But yeah. That's your only way without using good old drunk navigation. 😅
Well... Now there are also regional trains, which mostly run in a Netherlands-wide manner. Since Amsterdam is a pretty large city, there are a fair number of train stations inside the city. See this article for more info.
The short version of this is though, that you can still use those stations as per usual with, for example the OV-chipkaart (min. 20€ balance required) or the different other ticket variants to travel between the different stations. It is a bit more expensive (around 2,40€ for a half-city trip, I think...) but nothing too unreasonable in my book.
Those train stations are, just like the metro stations, completely separated for those without an OV-chipkaart or other valid ticket/access pass. So yeah. The same applies here.
Finally, there is a more unique method of transport. The ferry. You see, Amsterdam has a lot of rivers and canals. And especially the connection to the northern part of the city is a bit sparse. So there are ferries, which lead you to the northern parts of the city.
The most "famous" are the ones to Bilderdijksstraat and the NSDM wharf from Amsterdam Centraal.
The best part. They are free... Yea. Free. Just hop in and ride the ferry. Yes. It sounds as cool as it sounds. At least in my book. I don't know for you haha... but I guess, since you came here for my personal take on different things... well... you seem to be somewhat interested in some weird way...
So yeah... This was my little summary of Amsterdam's public transport with different anecdotes of mine.
Hope you found it interesting. At least I would have before finding all of that out... 😅
See ya