Hi! It's been a couple of days since I got back from Amsterdam with the Boy. I'll try not to sound like a clithering idiot [omigoditwasincredible!!] so I'll go in chronological order, because I find well-organized stream-of-consciousness is the way to go.
I left Thursday morning. I had to roll out of bed at 5 to catch the bus at 6:15, but of course I didn't get any sleep. I stayed up until 2 talking to Erik about how excited we were, and then when I finally went to sleep I kept waking up every twenty minutes to make sure I didn't sleep through my alarm. Whenever I have to go somewhere I have nightmares the week before that I miss my plane, or forget my luggage, or my passport got eaten by a bear or something. My flight was set to leave at 9 with a 5 hour layover in Barcelona. Luckily Erik and I met up in the Barcelona airport. It was so nice to see him--it felt like I haven't seen him in forever, but that he'd also been gone for so long.
We got into Amsterdam and checked into our hostel, the Flying Pig. It's smack in the middle of downtown Amsterdam, sandwiched between clothing stores. It was a really nice hostel. There was a bar, a lounge, a kitchen (which is nice when you don't like spending money on food, like me), and queen-sized beds. I didn't really meet anyone at the hostel (I just basked in my boyfriend's glorious presence) but it was interesting to kind of size everyone up and wonder what their stories were. The only complaint I had about the hostel was the staff who, two of the four nights, got wasted and screamed all over the place. You'd think that if the drinking age of a country is sixteen people would at least learn volume control, but I guess not.
We rented bikes one day. We got these bright, obnoxiously yellow tourist bikes to jaunt around the city. Biking is pretty easy in Amsterdam because everyone (EVERYONE) bikes everywhere, but it's also a crowded city with huge tram lines so sometimes I felt like I was going to get smooshed by a train. It was really great to be a on a bike again. During the summer I biked pretty often and it was nice to get my legs back into the motions. We spent hours and hours on our bikes getting lost and exploring Amsterdam and oohing and aahing at the GORGEOUS architecture. Everything looked like a castle or a cathedral, even the shopping malls.
The next day we went to the Anne Frank house. With all the museums and attractions in Amsterdam, I felt the Anne Frank house was something that I needed to see. I got a little teary walking through the house, where the rooms are still bare from the Nazis taking all the furniture away, and seeing Anne's diary and reading her quotes, quotes that pleaded for the freedom to whistle and sing, and hoped for the end to a war and for intolerance of people simply based on their religion or race. I especially admired Otto Frank, who found the strength after the concentration camps and his daughters' deaths to spread a message of peace and acceptance. I didn't particularly care for Anne's diary when I read it when I was younger, but I can't deny the global impact it's had.
That night we had dinner at a Dutch family's house. I found out a program called Like-a-Local where people from different countries open up their homes for dinner or even offer some of their time for coffee. We had dinner with Peter and Marjike (mar-EYE-keh), who were in the middle of putting their kids, Jasper and Emile, to bed when we got there. Our meal included "Dutch sushi" (herring and crackers), homemade tomato soup, basil quesadillas, and an apple/wine/bleu cheese dessert, and plenty of South African white wine. I was a little afraid that dinner was going to be chewing punctuated with awkward silences, but that was not the case. Peter and Marjike seemed like very down-to-earth, genuine people who chatted with us about politics, travel, language, history, and culture. They both speak near perfect English (like most Dutch people we found; Peter and Marjike also spoke Italian, French, and German) but don't speak English to their kids because the Dutch school system is good enough to make Jasper and Emile fluent [cue grumbling about the shortcomings of the American school system and our weird bilinguaphobia]. I think the dinner was a highlight of our trip. I'm glad I got to meet Amsterdam natives one-on-one and see a common Dutch home.
We also went to the Rijksmuseum, which is the grand hall of everything Golden Age. I forgot how the Dutch were pretty much world bosses back in the day. There was some
sweet Delft pottery (that Queen Mary just ordered millions of pieces of, because, you know, the Netherlands rules the world, why not) and I saw some famous paintings that have previously only been a thing of Quiz Bowl. My favorite was
Rembrandt's "Night Watch" which was huge and intense and brilliant and made me love Rembrandt even more.
Most of our time was spent wandering and marveling. It's really exhilarating being in a new city you know nothing about and being offered something new literally every corner you turn.
We did walk through the red light district one night. It was really interesting for a couple reasons
1. The first time I walked into the RLD I was not expecting to be there. So I absentmindedly looked in store windows when I realized one underwear display was MOVING.
2. The women selling themselves are not what I would consider to be particularly attractive or gorgeous women. They are all heavily, heavily made up, and wearing tacky clothes, and look like they have a severe allergy to sandwiches. It made me think of what we consider desirable and arousing in our society.
3. I didn't find the RLD overwhelmingly negative. I think it's much better for a government to allow prostitution so that the practice may be conducted in a safer and healthier environment than conditions in other countries where the sex trade industry grows at the expense of scared, desperate, and often abused and drug-addicted young women. I don't find anything particularly immoral with the practice of prostitution--it's a woman's body and she can do what she wants with it. It just makes me sad when women think they don't have any other options or are coerced into it.
I wish I had more time and money to spend in Amsterdam. A weekend is not nearly enough time to soak in all the culture and history of a place. I hope someday I can spend more time there and see all the museums and have a bike longer than 24 hours and learn some of that happy language.
This weekend is Granada to see Boy, and I'll hopefully post more then. Sorry this is a text-heavy post; photo uploading on blogspot is a huge pain and usually doesn't work. I uploaded a measly 5 photos to my flickr because I've reached my limit for the month. It's like I live in the Stone Age, I know
Hasta luego,
Maren
