Bicycle Orphanage

The Amsterdam city council is proactive with removing old bikes from public areas- and they have to be because there are always thousands of old abandoned, stolen, broken, lost or illegally parked bikes locked on to pretty much any solid object you can find.  Every now and then they will go to an area and put bright orange warning stickers on all the bikes, and any bikes still there after the expiry date marked on the sticker will be taken away.  This time period could be hours for illegally parked bikes or a few days for public areas like central station.

These bikes are taken away to the Amsterdam Fietsdepot (Bicycle Depot).  If you find your bike missing you might be lucky enough to find it stored at the Fietsdepot.

A few weeks ago my bike was taken away- it was locked up in the bike rack outside our house, but they had a sign saying there would be council maintenance being done on a certain date and I didn't remove my bike in time.  So this weekend I made the long trek out to the Fietsdepot in Western Amsterdam.

The depot was a massive parking lot in an industrial estate that holds thousands and thousands of bicycles- the pictures don't really do it justice.  They are organised into sections and the staff were pretty efficient at taking some details of the lost bike (description, date lost, location from which it was taken) and tracking down which section of the depot it should be in.

Fortunately the people there were very nice and not at all judging towards any of the 50 or so people who were waiting in line with me to collect their bikes.  Unfortunately it was freezing cold and pouring with rain, so the hour cycle home was very uncomfortable.  But it is good to have my bike back, and I found out over the last few weeks how reliant I am on it now that I don't own a car.