This summer was exceptionally nice by Dutch standards, encouraging people to cruise with their colorful boats on canals, leading the 1,800-or-so movable bridges to open.

I wrote in my first column how those bridges are a horror to delivering mothers on their way to the hospital because they can suddenly open in front of them.

When I first moved to Holland in 1996, I was also afraid of the huge drawbridge on my way to the advertising agency I worked for. But for me, it was more its physical appearance, rather than the fear of being late that was frightening.

After a brief alarm and a blink of traffic lights, the huge, concrete, semi highway of eight lanes suddenly opened, standing in front of me like a huge wall.

The sight was so overwhelming that my standard nightmare at the time was that I would brake just a bit too late and my car, with me inside, would dangle from its edge 10 meters above the water.

I still break out in a cold sweat when I think of it. But for the regular Dutch, bridges that open are a daily routine.

Most bridges only open about five minutes at a time. But when one is in a hurry, it feels like an eternity. Thus a standard excuse for the Dutch when they are late is: "But the bridge was open!"

The different types of movable bridges are also impressive. There are, for example, "bascule bridges" that are hinged on pins with counterweights that open them; "rolling bascule bridges" without hinges that are lifted by rolling gears; "lift bridges," the decks of which are lifted between the pillars; and "swing bridges," which have decks that rotate around a fixed point, often in the center.

Some are over small canals and are exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists. But some even open railways or let huge cruise ships pass by.

The nYe Klap drawbridge in the province of Groningen is aesthetically very beautiful while some others are actually quite funny looking.

One drawbridge close to my home displays a huge, red circle that only looks like a hinomaru (the Japanese flag) when open.

But my imagination that it was drawn by a local, radical, Japanese right-winger was soon dispelled when officials confirmed that it is meant to work as a red traffic signal to alert drivers.

Close to Amsterdam Central Station is a restaurant that used to be a movable railway bridge. With the name "Open," the former swing bridge is kept at its open position.

Slauerhoff Bridge in the city of Leeuwarden has such a strange shape that it made Edmond Huisinga, a former bridge designer and Dutch Bridge Institution staffers say in a troubled expression: "I can only say it was the taste of the architect."

In the old days when there were only small wooden bridges, boats would put coins in a classic Dutch wooden clog to ask them to be opened. But now, boat owners pay for such services by tax, which can even be paid by mobile phone. Some "bridge waiter's" houses even look like small airtraffic control towers.

But even amid such modernization, this summer, with temperatures often exceeding 30 degrees, many bridges had to be physically sprayed with water to cool them as they would otherwise expand and stop opening.

Evelieke, 25, was keeping her feet up as she cycled across the Hogesluis Bridge in Amsterdam.

"They are using canal water (known to be quite dirty) to cool it! Yuck, I can't get my feet wet!" she said.