Reflections on Amsterdam

Amsterdam is positively enchanting. From the old, quaint stone buildings to the canals to the small alleyways that open into stone streets filled with shops, there is nothing about this city that isn't quirky or quaint. The Dutch people match their surroundings, too. Everyone is so friendly and laid back and I don't think it has anything to do with the marijuana use (which is mostly for the foreigners anyway). No one was hurried, except at the train station this morning, and no one ever hurried us along.

The open air markets are far larger than those in London. Getting huge hunks of bread, meat, cheese, and fruit for less than 5 Euro and having a leisurely picnic on the grass next to a canal, shared only by our new friends from the hostel and the ducks, cannot be beat. Having all that food last another day and a half was a nice bonus as well.

Street names in a foreign language add another complication to navigating the circular city. With no familiar cognates or sequences of letters, remembering them becomes much more challenging. I'm sure it will be much worse when the language doesn't resemble English at all, such as in Budapest, Krakow, and Stockholm, but we'll cross that road when we come to it.

The diversity of the places we've been even so early in the trip is staggering. In the States we seem to judge diversity only by points of past and present inequality such as skin color and gender. But after meeting and talking with people from Australia, England, Kenya, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, and Canada (among others that I'm sure I've forgotten), it has become obvious that, despite all these people being light-skinned, they are just as or more diverse than all the Americans defined as such. We used to be a melting pot, and maybe we still are, but everyone who comes to the States eventually becomes Americanized and lose a bit of the uniqueness they contributed when they first arrived. I don't think we are any longer so unique in our "diversity."

Now I sit on a train from Amsterdam to Paris with an hour stopover and transfer in Brussels, Belgium. Perhaps while I'm there I'll see if I can get a real Belgian waffle and see how close to the real thing I've had in the past. And when we get to Paris, we'll see how much the Parisians really dislike us for everything their prejudices say Americans are and stand for. Hopefully we have good luck, but I"m not holding my breath.