Amsterdam

If there is a place other than France that I would choose to live in after all of my travels through Europe Amsterdam is the clear winner.  It’s a true melting pot of cultures and seems to be the hipster capital of the world.  The personalized bikes with flowers and paint were beautiful especially when they were all parked together creating walls of bikes.  The canals rivaled those in Venice, especially because they did not smell like the ones in Venice, because once a week they move the water around to rid the city of any stale stench that might arise. 

The reason that I went to discover this wonderland was to see my friend Marryn whose time was cut short in St. Etienne due to difficulties with her job in France.  She and her parents were on there way home from the republic of Georgia where they were rooting on the under 20 Canadian national rugby team that her brother Graeme plays for.  Her father is a professor in Canada and chose to stay a few extra days in Amsterdam before flying out to go to a lecture or two at a University there. 

I took a rather long train ride (only long due to the 2 hour layover in Paris) to get there where I did not use my best judgment and got turned around on the metro.  Luckily, almost all of the Dutch speak English better than I do and I was able to ask people for help along the way.  One of these days I’ll figure out how to work a public transportation system, until then I’m going to be making a lot of friends.  Marryn’s parents were staying in an apartment just outside of the city center and they were nice enough to let me stay with them. It was wonderful to be around parental figures again.  The conversation is different and the type of traveling goes up a notch. 

We spent the morning getting ready slowly and made it out of the apartment around 11:30 to get a coffee in a completely round restaurant, when Marryns Dad asked the waitress how she liked working in a round room, she responded with. It’s great! There are no corners.  I’m sure that’s her go to response for that question but it’s a good one just the same.  There was a strike on public transportation that day so we walked the 20 minutes to the center on our way getting an absolutely delicious lunch.  The food in Amsterdam is perfect. They use a lot of fresh ingredients and they don’t cover them in sauces or flavors they let the food speak for itself (like the chickpea bruschetta) At lunch I got a sandwich with Arugula, Tomatoes, Mozzarella, and a balsalmic reduction. Perfect lunch!!

Marryn had a wedding in Austria that weekend that she didn’t have a dress to so we spent the afternoon slowly discovering the different neighborhoods of Amsterdam going into various shops as we went.  The further away from the touristy parts that we went the more charming it got and the more I realized that Amsterdam is much much more than the pot-smoking mecca that we always associate it with.  It would actually be a terrific place to raise a family.  In fact they have these adorable bikes that have wooded boxes on the front for children to ride in, we even saw a woman who had managed to get about five puppies and the mother dog in one.  We met back up with Marryn’s parents to get dinner and we were off to bed. 

The next morning it took us about 3 hours to finally get our act together we had logistical problems with an extra key and a hostel Kathleen had booked, at last we were out.  Marryn and I got a coffee in the room with no corners, and another delicious lunch at a bar next to a canal. I got the best tomato soup I’ve ever had with a good beer.  From there we met Kathleen at the train station and found our hostel for the night, we wanted to have one night just three of us.  So we dropped our stuff off and we were off to discover more of Amsterdam, this time we went towards the red light district. Somehow we managed to bypass it totally and ended up on the other side just in time for dinner where we ate Italian.  The owner had just moved to Amsterdam from Genoa and could only speak Italian.  Marryn’s Italian is probably better than her French so we were in good hands.  She spent the night chatting away in Italian while Kathleen and I pretended to understand. What a joke.  On our way home we happened across the red light district.  I don’t know if I knew what to expect.  Women were wearing lingerie standing in glass doors waiting for men to show interest. I’m still not sure which part of the whole ordeal is more fascinating to me the women who choose to stand behind the glass doors or the men who choose to cross the threshold. 

The next day the girls and I spent enjoying one anothers company visiting the “I AMsterdam” letters and going to the Anne Frank House, watched some street performances and walked around some more.  We found a street that was junk food heaven.  It has falafels, kebabs, Chinese, pizza, Mexican, pastries, donuts, ice cream. In short it was my favorite street in Amsterdam.  That night we enjoyed falafels and a traditional dutch donut for dessert.  Imagine a giant donut hole covered in sugar, I got another one before we left for Germany!  That evening we wanted to do more perusing through the red light district so we went into the heart of it and really explored. It was absolutely fascinating to me.  It seemed as though the streets had themes. One street would have more ethnic girls while the next would have what seemed like higher class girls, and another had men in various phases of changing into women.  It was interesting to see the different tactics the girls would use to draw attention to them, I couldn’t help but think that they were wiser than I originally gave them credit for.  Maybe that’s just me.

That night on our way home we crossed through one of the huge main squares where a man with a guitar and another with a microphone were singing covers of poppy love songs.  We sat and took in the last three songs of the performance.  I can’t imagine a more perfect moment to end our time together in Amsterdam we all had a type of calm sweep over us and at the end we split a C.D. so we can have the memories with us always. 

The Street Performance

The next day Marryn left for Austria at 5:30 so Kathleen and I woke up later and left the apartment with Marryn’s mother.  We got a coffee with her and then we were off to the train station to look into logistical things such as printing out or tickets and finding luggage lockers.  We had about two hours left in Amsterdam so we spent it eating yet another perfect sandwich by the canal. 

The three of us back together again! Can't wait for the next trip!