[fiat_fandango]

After visiting amsterdam this summer, most of the city was honestly pretty disgusting. The architecture is beautiful as is taking a river cruise or viewing other cities around NL, however a lot of the central city just smelled like stale beer, was packed with sketchy guys trying to sell me coccaine and other illegal drugs. Prostitutes walking around was far from a "cultural element" it was just an area filled with weird euros looking for favors.

Food was generally really disappointing, however grocery stores / delivery apps were incredibly useful. The most annoying thing to me was how certain neighborhoods flat out do not accept Visa / Mastercard. Basically every other developed nation accepts Visa, I was annoyed and decided to not go back to areas where they literally couldn't take my money. That said, PUBLIC TRANSIT IN NL IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! But I don't for a second believe many ppl don't get TBI's from bike crashes without helmets.

[yladiz]

> The most annoying thing to me was how certain neighborhoods flat out do not accept Visa / Mastercard. Basically every other developed nation accepts Visa, I was annoyed and decided to not go back to areas where they literally couldn't take my money.

Not only in Netherlands - you would also experience this in Germany, for example. In many parts of Europe, even in their respective capital, you’ll find that many places don’t accept cards and you need cash. If Germany is any indication it’s becoming more common to accept cards but it’s still pretty easy to find places that either only take cash or only take cards above some minimum like 10 or 20 euros.

[cr1895]

It’s not really comparable to Germany. Almost everywhere in NL accepts Maestro cards (PIN) or whatever (sometimes not even accepting cash). It’s specifically credit cards that are sometimes less useful.

[yladiz]

Ah, interesting, and I realize now I was conflating credit cards with other kinds of cards like Maestro or Girocard (which is a German specific debit card).

In my experience some places do take either cash or debit, but I think that it's becoming more uncommon that you'll find this arrangement outside of somewhere like a government office or the post office now, and either you'll wind up with cash only or a place that takes any kind of card. A few places do not take cash but that's very rare. I can't speak for other countries as well as Germany and so you're right it does seem different in the Netherlands (although leading to the same outcome for the OP, that a credit card can't be used).

[fiat_fandango]

It was weird, because the geographic delineation was seemingly random. I could travel by train three hours outside of Amsterdam and encounter zero issues with Apple Pay or VISA. But certain neighborhoods in Amsterdam, especially De Pijp seemed to have a militant stance against non dutch payment processors.

[com]

It’s a perception about cost, no longer really true since PSD2 interchange caps.

[TomJansen]

The Dutch bicycle-network is safe enough to not have to wear bike helmets. We have a really nice system of seperation of car/bicycle/pedestrian traffic. In addition, a lot of tought is given to design roads in such a way that car traffic automatically adapts to the correct and safe speed that is needed.

[fiat_fandango]

Bikes are great, I commute on a bike in a US city with decent infrastructure. I still wear a helmet every single time I get on a bike.

Even low speed crashes or encounters with pedestrians can result in serious head injuries.

[bombcar]

People misunderstand the purpose of bike helmets; they're not so you can charge into a car and survive, they're so your head survives the fall to the ground from 7 feet up.

[bspammer]

The typical Dutch response to this is “You can fall and hit your head when walking too, but no one walks around wearing a helmet.”

[beerdoggie]

This fits with the view I have from my social circles in America of the Dutch as largely being defiant, proud, and an amazingly fun culture/people :)

[em500]

> The most annoying thing to me was how certain neighborhoods flat out do not accept Visa / Mastercard. Basically every other developed nation accepts Visa, I was annoyed and decided to not go back to areas where they literally couldn't take my money.

This is mostly legacy from earlier decades, when VISA/MasterCard would charge around 1 to 3% of the transaction value (and AMEX even higher), whereas debit card fees (processed on the Maestro network, owned by MasterCard) was around a flat €0.10 or so. Since pretty all domestic clients had a bank issued Maestro debit card, where was very little incentive to accept Visa/MasterCard, except for specific merchants (hotels, larger restaurants, car rentals). For most of the country debit cards still work fine, but in tourist-heavy Amsterdam (probably the least Dutch city in the Netherlands) this creates a lot of friction.

Nowadays Visa/MasterCard fees in the EU are capped (I believe at around 0.3% plus some minimum) so the fees are somewhat less outrageous, and acceptance is a lot higher. But on average credit card fees are still significantly higher than debit card fees, there are still many holdouts.

[Doxin]

There's also the thing where basically no one here uses credit cards at all, let alone use them at shops. Accepting them requires a bunch of infrastructure for a quite small group of people.

[gammalost]

Idk sounds like a regular large city to me.

Most of the places aren't for you as a tourist. It's for the people that actually live there. I visited and kept to the tourist parts, had a good time