Amsterdam.08-24-08

Well everyone I’m alive and I’m free to move about as I please. Who wouldn’t want to be me? I am in Amsterdam and the people of the Netherlands really love their bricks. Every building is made of a very harsh gray brick. I don’t understand the architecture either. The extra window up on the top of the buildings, I don’t know why that’s there. The roof “caves” or slopes down immediately behind the window. When it comes to transportation I find that walking is the best method. Even if I did know how to ride a bike and could afford to rent one, I wouldn’t. They get stolen so easily and there is no room to chain it up every single post/pole/etc. has bikes stacked 20 deep and I am not kidding either. The average person here has the option of taking the tram, driving, walking, biking, or using a scooter on the streets. The tram is the safest if you aren’t worried about the people you are sitting next to. Driving is too risky because you share the road with the trams and they have the right of way. When it comes to biking and using a scooter, in this city, no thanks, for so many more reasons than I am able to list. Walking is the cheapest most efficient method, because its free and you have the right of way. Plus, all of the good stuff is in walking distance. Well, European walking distance. Americans would take a car spend 5 minutes on the streets and spend an hour looking for a place to park and then they would have to park so far away that it would have been the same as walking in the first place. But as it stands I feel like I am playing the arcade game Frogger and I am the frog. The streets are so dangerous to cross that if I were to walk along price I would feel much safer, and it’s a shorter distance to Milford than it is to the cities’ squares that I walk to daily. So, Mom next time I say I’m walking to Kroger/ Buskins/etc. I fully intend to because it is safer and closer than what I do in all of these cities!!!
In the hostel the term “youth” merely means as long as you’re alive you are welcomed here. The British woman that was in bed five has a son and a daughter that are both full grown. The guy that was here this morning left and I didn’t get to chat with him. He came in after we were all asleep and he was most likely stoned (age roughly 27). Amanda (age 22) is in the room with me and has the bottom bunk. The Italian girl is in bed 4 (age 29), but she signed the lease on an apartment and will be moving into it tomorrow. The Japanese girl (age 26) in bed 6 is here for a contemporary dance workshop. I am the youngest person in the room. As for my meeting “Mary Jane”- it doesn’t interest me. I’ve smelled it in the streets and didn’t like it. I can’t imagine smoking it or going into a café to breath the air. Plus, I can’t afford to do stuff like that. As I’ve said the novelty of Europe has worn off and now all I want to do is see a little bit more and come home.
The funny thing is I didn’t even know how much I call Cinci home. The whole time I was there all I wanted to was leave and go else where, but now that I’m gone and have been gone for so long and am still going to be gone, the song “Homeward Bound” is going through my brain. But I actually don’t mind. I think that later in life after school and all of that stuff I just might come back to Europe to live. I won’t change my citizenship though. I like having American rights and American pride. From what I’ve seen of the Netherlands and Germany- Germany is more endearing to me. I have also discovered that I am a mountain dweller. I like altitude. I look at my current window and I know that I am 2 km beneath sea level and I don’t like it. Give me the lands of the ice and the snow covering the mountain tops!!
As for the Dutch language my group and I are of the opinion that it is the missing link between English and German. To hear it, you think you know what they are saying and that they just have really strong accents, but the meanings are different. Also, I’m the type that looks for the Latin words in all European languages and I have yet to hear them in Dutch. Believe me I have heard a lot of Dutch, granted I’ve heard more Cantonese (Chinese) than Dutch, but that’s a story to tell. (I’ll come to my morning later.) As for seeing Dutch written I have no hope of ever figuring it out. (I’ll post a sample later.) I was in a café/bar for lunch (no I didn’t breathe anything funny) and I saw in the local newspaper something is going on in D.C. It was in the economic section of the paper and I saw that Obama made the news for something. Could someone please fill me in? I can’t decipher the meaning or the message, plus I just did a quick scan. A New York Times in this country cost 17 euro (to convert all € to $ just multiply 1.50.) (That’s $25.50)!!! I don’t have that kind of money to spend. I am on such a tight budget that even €1.60 for the tram will break my day!
Pat and Gerry- neither of you could do what I am doing. You would have spent every penny I possessed on day one and starved for the next 6 weeks. One pair of shoes that I saw and wanted would have done that to me. All of the gift shops all of the restaurants- Pat you couldn’t do it. I order the cheapest thing on the menu and half the time do without a drink. I have splurged a couple of times. Believe me I’m feeling that splurge as far as my wallet is concerned. But I know I can go five days without spending a cent! I have some food left over from Germany and breakfast is free, but when I’m in such a big group in such an expensive town I get out ruled as to where we eat. We do try to eat cheap, but a base drink is €3 and a basic plate is 6. Also, no free refills here, I HATE THAT! I really hate that about this continent, but it is good portion control. As for when I do get a drink- it would seem I have “American” stamped across my forehead and they put ice in all of my drinks. And you know me I am the type to do without ice.
As for my morning today and this is a story to tell. Last night as we were coming into the area I saw some nice cathedrals, so I asked about going to church for a Dutch service at the front desk and they gave me a map and said “good luck”. The guy at the time was most likely Muslim. Today, I was woken up this morning by a British woman at 6 in the morning! The sun wasn’t even up yet!!! Granted the sun doesn’t visit Amsterdam, ever! But still it was very early. I tried to sleep a little more and couldn’t. So, at 7:30 I walked to house/wing A, and got breakfast. It was just a couple of sandwiches with a minute maid knock off orange juice. I assume the meat was chicken and salami with a wheat germ cheese. What it was in reality, I am not asking. From there I took out my map and started walking. I walked and walked and finally a steeple showed over the roof tops. I walked around the church only to find the main entrance had a concrete couch in front of it with chains making absolutely certain you couldn’t walk around the couch and go in. A similar scenario for the next three churches I found. After a while I came to a guy that was unloading keys from a safe deposit box of the rent-a-car. Right as he put a set of keys in his mouth I asked if he spoke English. He spit the key out said “yes” and I told him what I was looking for. He said that most services start at 10:00. So, I had 2 hours to find a church. He gave me a different map and told me to catch tram 1 about 30 or 300 meters down the street. When I got to the stop I saw a guy sitting there and he was an Asian guy about 22 dressed nice in a white button down and black pants with guitar next to him. I figured “hey, an Asian version of Justin”. I asked him if he knew of any churches I could go to and he said “Yeah, they’re kind of far though”. He mentioned that he was going to his church. The service wouldn’t start for another couple of hours; he was just going early to practice playing his semi-acoustic guitar. I asked if I could tag along. He said sure, but there would be a ketch- the service would be in Cantonese. It turns out that Michael is a Malaysian immigrant and he learned his English from TV. So, I paid the €1.60 for the tram and followed him to church in the poor/immigrant/suburb/non-touristy part of town. When we got there he introduced me to AJ. AJ is the director/teacher for the little kids and he is Persian/Iranian via North-western Canada. He came to Amsterdam with his Mom after 9-11. So, his English was perfect. We shot the breeze for an hour. After that when the people started arriving I helped look for the programs (that hadn’t been printed yet) and then I helped fold them while they were still hot off the press. I got lucky, I wasn’t the only white chick there, one of the regulars brought his girl friend. When it came time for the collection sack to be handed around I put a € in. The service today was a special one because it was led by the youth. The last Sunday of every month is led by the youth. So, the message was “honor thy father and thy mother”. With Corinthians and Ephesians, AJ lent me his English copy of the bible so I could fallow along. Also, they projected the phonetic pronunciation of the Cantonese words (using the Latin/western alphabet). So, I sang Hymns in Cantonese, Dutch and the chorus did have 2 songs to sing in English. The service lasted 2 hours. I sat in the back right hand corner with the sound guy. And someone named Li Ling (I think) spoke just enough English to tell me what the big bulks of Cantonese were about such as their summer camp and some other thing. He also helped me when the church gave me a welcome at the end of the service. He told me to stand and wave. So, I did and it was good. After that AJ and the people I had chatted with had a meeting so I stayed just long enough to eat a Dutch nutria-grain bar thing and say a good “nice to meet you and bye”. I walked back alone to the spot where the tram dropped us and paid another 1.60, but I didn’t get off in the right place or it didn’t go back to my spot. Either way I had a 30 min. walk back to my hostel. It wasn’t bad. I saw some good stuff. After about 15 min of walking I stopped to look for a street sign and a guy sitting by the door of a pub helped me out and said I should just keep going straight. He smelled of beer so badly. Granted Mom is most likely having a heart-attack, but she just needs her nightly dose of Prozac and she’ll be fine. It turns out that the street I was on connected with the church I had originally found with the cement couch. So, from there I passed the hostel and went to the “Max” café for lunch. I couldn’t help it. I splurged. It is one of those very hip/modern/trendy, but intimate places. They didn’t have chairs there though. They had those little box things you sit on or put your feet on, but it’s meant to be a chair. You know the thing I’m talking about. Also, the newspaper was from Friday and sitting out on the counter for free. I ordered a coke and I convinced the waitress to let me keep the bottle. I figure it will be Justin’s birthday present. Yeah, I go to Amsterdam and all I bring back is a glass bottle of coke in Dutch and Mandarin Chinese. Well, Justin it’s not like I can get you a date with “Mary Jane” and frankly she smells so bad!!! The funny thing is I made a mistake when I ordered my soup. I meant to get the Peprika soup, but I wound up with a Thai coconut chicken soup with spring onions and mushrooms, coriander leaves, and chili oil. As a lover of food I can appreciate how perfectly prepared it was, but it took a lot of force to shove it down my throat and yes, I did use the Chinese soup spoon. I hate the flavor of coconut, mushrooms, and onions. The bread that came as a side was small and the crust was hard. I now understand where the basis for our white sliced sandwich bread comes from. As I ate and the flavor got more unbearable I drank my coke, added some lemon juice, and some pepper just to break up the flavor and make it more bearable. I ate almost all of it. All that was left were some tiny remnants and the coconut milk. After that I grabbed the paper did a quick scan and ordered a blue berry muffin with dough that was a cross between a Starbucks muffin and corn bread.
So, my day ended at 2:00 PM which for East Stand. Time was 10:00 AM. I haven’t left my bed since and I don’t intend to for the rest of the night. It’s now 10:42 PM here, and Cinci is 4:42. It just hit me; the thing I really want today is either a very rich chocolate cake with chocolate icing or a chocolate chip cheese cake. I also wouldn’t mind watching Justin blow out his candles right about now. What’s the weather like there? Here its 23 C it feels like 55 F and cloudy and rainy with a slight breeze. I don’t know what I will do tomorrow. It depends upon what time I wake up. I know I will be up in time for breakfast. So, that’s sometime between 7:30 and 10:30 AM. From there I am going to see about a canal tour. I wonder how it will work out. I wonder if it’s free?