Amsterdam: Land o’ Canals, Bikes, Pancakes, Wacky Tobaccky, and my former employer

I think local Amsterdamites/Amsterdamians/Amsterdammers were wondering why I was taking pictures around a bank building. Whatever…my former employer owns you!

A short quiz for you:

The Dutch are:

a) a remarkably progressive-thinking but average-looking people with extremely admirable language skills
b) endowed with an unusually high dreadlocks per capita ratio
c) boring
d) all of the above…?

The Dutchies’ use of bikes is truly admirable.

It’s always difficult to get a sense of a foreign country’s culture when you are there for so little time, but the quiz above is an indication of some things that I picked up during my three days there. Actually, I really enjoyed Amsterdam. It’s very calm and lovely, with terrific architecture (narrow housefronts with gabled roofs! How I love gables!), the canals, and a very chill atmosphere. And, oh, how I admire the efficient use of bikes! Yeah, some may call it “boring” (and, apparently, the Dutch are stereotyped as being such), but, like I’ve said before, I’m a pretty dull person, so I don’t mind in the least bit.

Even in the land of the boring, pickpockets abound.

Most of Liss and my activities during our stay there consisted of visiting museums, walking around town, shopping (I got some really cool pants!) and eating. And, oh yeah, making fun of the Dutch language. Winkel is Dutch for “store”! Hee! In any case, the Van Gogh Museum is as delightful as it is remarkable– it’s arranged chronologically, so you can see the progression of Van Gogh’s painting style from beginning to end. And, by the way, Van Gogh is pronounced "Fahn Gock", thank you very much!

The Anne Frank House is, as expected, a pretty moving place. The rooms are empty now, but in Anne’s old room, you can still see the pictures and magazine photos that she pasted on the walls to brighten the place up during her stay there.

The Rijksmuseum is the Dutch equivalent of the Louvre, but it’s under some heavy construction/renovations right now, so the collection is limited. It's still very impressive. Oh, the Rembrandts! :) The Rijksmuseum contains a lot of artifacts that detail the glory of Dutch history, which, not to sound pejorative or condescending, makes one kind of sad to think that they were so awesome in history (think 1600s, awesome naval power, “Hudson Bay Company” Dutch!) and are now, well, just Dutch. Wow, I'm really mean. Anyhoo, I have a funny feeling that the Smithsonian is going to make tourists feel the same way about the United States in the future!

The only thing that did make me vaguely happy in the Red Light District.

And…ah, the Red Light District. Liss and I ventured into the neighborhood, which is expectedly seedy and where we seemed to be the only girls walking on the streets. Hmmm. Amsterdam’s Red Light District is definitely a tourist attraction, but – now that I’ve been there – I don’t see how any tourist could actually go there and feel good about it. I mean, I’m glad that I saw it, but I also found it extremely depressing. Basically, the girls (I guess I can write “prostitutes” if I want to be more technical about it) stand in small rooms with large windows framed by red fluorescent lights (thus the “red lights”), waiting for someone to find them attractive enough to hire them. SIGH. It’s sad and makes you kind of hate mankind. Liss felt the same way, and we decided to leave fairly quickly. We did, however, get into a good discussion about how we felt about the legalization of prostitution, why women choose such a path, etc. It definitely makes you think about stuff!

That is, like, so deep.

Speaking of illicit activities, no visit in Amsterdam would be complete without some discussion of the infamous “coffeeshops.” Ahem. As opposed to a café, where just drinks and food are served, coffeeshops, in addition to having drinks and occasionally internet, also sell weed and maybe ‘shrooms. By the way, to clear it up, that stuff isn’t technically legal in the Netherlands – merely tolerated by the authorities (way to rain on your parade, eh?). The coffeeshops get a special license for the government to “tolerate” their sale of stuff. Hmm. Anyhoo, it should be noted that walking in front of certain coffeeshops (especially those targeted at tourists or those with a huge Rastafarian flag in front) and taking a big whiff should be sufficient for some!

Okay, I’m gonna stop here on the subject because my mom reads this blog occasionally, as do my siblings (Hi, mom, bro, and sis!). Erm…um…hey, look at this pretty picture of a canal!! Isn’t it so pretty and totally unrelated to the previous topic?!?

Dude…whoa, that canal water is so totally…wavy!

Liss and I experienced some Amsterdam nightlife, too. Well, actually, we tried to experience some nightlife. Apparently the Dutch don’t really go out…at least not on weekdays…but this is understandable, I suppose. We hit up the Paradiso, which I was pretty psyched about since it’s a pretty famous rock club where a lot of the bands I like end up playing when they are in Amsterdam. It’s a converted church (I love any sacreligious, really)!


During the daytime, when we couldn’t tell what the heck was going on and where we could enter, I snuck around the loading dock to spy inside…

Where are the hipster bands?!?

We had an oookay time…too bad we didn’t get to experience it on a weekend! There was a cheap 5 Euro show, and we watched a band with a girl lead singer who clearly wanted to be Gwen Stefani (sorry, toots...good try, though) plus a Spanish folk-pop trio (BTW, it was observed, though the music playing in various venues throughout Amsterdam, that the Dutch really enjoy Jack Johnson and Norah Jones). Mostly, though, Liss and I entertained ourselves by studying the mating ritual of two Dutch youths, and the various foreign hoochie mamas who tried to intervene by wooing the dude away with their pulsating hips and constant hair flipping. Oh, and there were also quite a few dread-locked Dutch guys dressed up in skirts and dresses moshing. Very entertaining!

This is better than potatoes!

Surprisingly enough, the food in Amsterdam was pretty great! Of course, we didn’t go the traditional Dutch meat-and-potatoes route (which probably would have made us change our minds). Instead, we stuck with savoury Dutch pancakes (soooo goooood) and Indonesian food (again, proof that colonialism was admirable in the fact that it at least helped improve the crappy cuisine of the motherland). Above is Liss and me attacking our Indonesian rijstaffel (rice table) meal, which is basically a whole bunch of little plates of Indonesian food plus rice. Yum. Actually, we had better Indonesian fare later, but it was just pretty neat that we got so much food in one sitting.

Liss in Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s equivalent of, say, New York’s Central Park.

All in all, it was a nice trip! Ah, Amsterdam, I need to come back so that you can prove to me that you’re more exciting than what a cold winter day promises. On the way home, I also realized a couple of things stemming from my travels:

(1) The upgrade to “Premier” frequent flyer status is both blessing and curse. On one hand, you get sweet seating towards the front of the plane (which can often be roomier than coach…not that it matters for someone who is 5’3), better service, and (so Xiao tells me) better chances of flying standby. On the other hand, being Premier thrusts you into the blurry transitional seating between First/Business Class elegance and Economy chumpiness. On my connecting flight between Amsterdam and Frankfurt, I had to watch the First/Business class dine on their lobster (seriously!), asparagus and pâté while sipping wine from proper wine glasses. SIGH. Oh, yeah? Well, my pickle and butter sandwich on stale bread and plastic cup of orange juice was pretty good, too!! :)

(2) I’ve been flying Lufthansa too much when I can predict the dinner and snack menus (dinner: lasagna or beef/chicken and rice, some sort of cheesecake thing for dessert; snack: veggie pizza or ham panini)

(3) You meet some pretty interesting characters on planes! This time, I chatted with a middle-aged Chinese man who grew up in Spain. He’s an acupuncturist in Barcelona and just so happens to speak perfect Mandarin and, obviously, Spanish…and German…and English…and French. SIGH again. Monolingual Americans are just not as cool.

(4) Last, but certainly not least important, realization…


The way back home is often as sweet as the voyage away!