🇳🇱 The Great Dutch Staircase Conspiracy: My Fitbit is on Strike!

Oh, the Netherlands. Land of bicycles, beautiful canals, and a truly magnificent array of stroopwafels and appeltaart that are doing truly glorious things to my waistline. Life here is, in a word, gezellig. The air is crisp, the autumn walks are a masterpiece of golden light, and honestly, I'm sleeping like a champion—no doubt thanks to the delightful combination of fresh air and a contented soul.

There is, however, one tiny, maddening, tech-related thorn in my otherwise perfect, clog-wearing existence: My Google Watch, linked to a certain calorie-counting leviathan named Fitbit, refuses to acknowledge the architectural Everest I climb daily.

The steps are all logged, bless its little digital heart. It knows I'm moving my feet. But the prized 'Floors Climbed' metric? The holy grail of vertical exercise? It remains perpetually, mockingly, at zero. It's an act of digital rebellion that I have come to call the Great Dutch Staircase Conspiracy. I’m giving my all, channeling the spirit of a thousand overworked movers, and my watch is just shrugging its sensors.

The Mystery of the Missing Metre (or Three!)

Fitbit’s rule, as I’ve desperately Googled at 2 AM after one too many slices of slagroom (whipped cream), is that it registers one "floor" for approximately 10 feet (or about three meters) of continuous elevation gain, usually detected by a change in barometric pressure. My Dutch stairs, the very stairs I navigate multiple times a day, must surely add up to a vertical hike equivalent to a minor North Sea swell. Yet, nada.

This leads me to the only logical conclusion: Dutch architecture is too delightfully quirky for American tech.

I mean, consider the historical evidence! Back in the 17th century, houses were taxed based on the width of their facade. What’s a savvy Dutch builder to do? Build narrow and up, of course! This led to the wonderfully slim, tall, and—let’s be honest—terrifying staircases that are now a hallmark of historic Dutch homes. They are so steep, they are essentially ladders. You don't walk up them; you ascend them with a silent prayer and the focused concentration of a seasoned mountain goat.

Quirky Stair Fact #1: These staircases are so vertically ambitious that moving furniture is a nightmare. This is why many older buildings have those famous hoisting hooks sticking out of the gables! They don't even try to carry the sofa up the stairs—they winch it through a window! This is a culture that literally built an external pulley system rather than widen a stair tread. And my watch thinks this isn’t a proper climb! The audacity!

From the Street to the 5th floor!

My question, the one that keeps me awake despite the excellent sleep metric, is this: Is it the incline, or the risers? A standard stair riser is often 6-8 inches, but the typical step-height I'm tackling feels more like 10 inches or more of pure, leg-burning lift. But the real kicker might be the depth of the tread. Because the stairs are built to take up minimal floor space, the steps themselves are often notoriously narrow—sometimes barely enough for half a foot.

Quirky Stair Fact #2: The Dutch word for stairs is "trap." Which, for an international resident grappling with a full basket of laundry, seems less like a name and more like a dire warning. A death-trap, if you will!

Perhaps the combination of the extreme steepness (some historical stairs push 70 degrees—a cliff, not a staircase!) and the short, half-foot treads is confusing the little altimeter. It detects the vertical push, hence the steps are counted, but the overall continuous elevation gain required for a "floor" isn't registering correctly. Maybe the watch needs me to walk with a more pronounced, less sideways-scuttling motion to register the full barometric change. Or maybe, just maybe, the Dutch stairs are a class of caloric expenditure so intense, it transcends the need for a digital log. It’s like a secret handshake with the universe: “You climbed that? We know. Go eat a frikandel.”

I refuse to believe I am being denied my "calorie credit" for the daily physical comedy routine that is descending these stairs backward. For now, I'll have to accept that my Fitbit is simply not advanced enough to comprehend the extreme, space-saving genius of the local architecture. It’s a tragedy, really, for my digital ego.

But at least I have those yummy pastries and the stunning autumn air. And tomorrow, I will conquer that vertical "trap" again, with or without my Fitbit’s approval. The extra calorie deficit is just a happy, unlogged bonus.