This is my first post in a newly created category titled, “Travel” because it’s clear that I’ll be doing more of this. As an example, my first set of photos uploaded to this trip is titled, “Trip to Amsterdam (October ’10)” as in I’ll probably have another trip to Amsterdam very soon. It’s difficult to truly measure how awesome this trip has been and I’ve started this post a few times but the level of work paired with severe jet-lag and added to the fact that I am not getting very much sleep equals a lot of issues when it comes to cataloguing the experience properly. I’ve been too busy to write it all down.
One thing that is constantly spinning in my head is how far away from my friends I am. Here, it’s 1 hour ahead of london on a clock but 6 hours ahead of Boston & Florida and 10 hours ahead of San Francisco. My Twitter stream is dead from 7AM to 4PM and most active when I’m trying to sleep at midnight. If I lived here, I’d never get used to that.
Please understand this is my first visit to Europe. I’ll do my very best to not generalize one city in one country to an entire continent but it may happen. My ignorance is to blame for that since I haven’t explored this place to its fullest.
I do see what people mean when they compare San Francisco to most European countries. San Francisco has that liberal angle of free love, music, good coffee and quality food that makes you feel that you’re in Europe. The Amsterdam fog and hazy rain feels like San Francisco but the temperature has real seasons while SF does not. The openness of sex and drugs is like San Francisco but American oppression on those things still makes them illegal and mostly hidden even there while in Amsterdam, it’s in your face but not in a bad way. Sex & soft drugs are in your face just as much as prescription drugs for erectile dysfunction or terrorism is in America. It’s all relative.
Last night, I was trying to find a baseball game on television (I’m sure you figure that I had very little luck) but what I did find is news. I found real news and it blew me away that real news was 10 whole channels in different languages but all covering nearly identical stories. Did you know there was a tsunami yesterday? Did you know that Obama is making some decisions about Israel that are pissing off most of those nations and to hear Al Jazeera talk of Obama’s mistakes (although slightly bias) feels more honest than most of the news we have here in America. To hear an argument between a Senator in DC and a member of Italian press was eye opening for so many reasons. I had forgotten about the BP oil spill but it’s still being talked about on BBC and it turns out that there’s a huge Cholera outbreak in Haiti due to UN facilities poisoning the water that people drink out of. It was an accidental poisoning from sewage runoff but to see reporters so frank about the situation and showing footage of demonstrations in Haiti was something I don’t see on TV in America and right after turning the television off, I see this tweet from @SpecialKolin who is in the US:
How to tell that it’s a slow news day: CNN is doing a story on toilet paper rolls.
What I saw on International news (english and dutch with captions) is that real news that’s global is being talked about. It seems like most of the world looks at America as a leader in many ways (economically and with the large size of government and armed forces) but has this disdain for us as in, “America screws up again but we gotta love ’em, right? Maybe we’ll forgive them again.” Hearing that kind of coverage made me angry but luckily, I can subscribe to RSS feeds from these news networks outside of the US as most of them have English versions and I will. Goodbye CNN, Hello Al Jazeera & BBC.
Amsterdam is a 4AM city during the weekend but a 12AM city during the week. Things do close down and last night, I awoke from a nap and vestured out at midnight to find food and had very little luck and wasn’t going to succumb to McDonalds or a hot dog stand.
I don’t get excited about marijuana. You smelled it all of the time in San Francisco so it kind of reminds me of that. I just don’t have any interest in it. I laugh at how many friends wrote me saying, “dude! amsterdam! weed!” but I guess living in “Europe of the USA” for 3 years means I don’t find it to be a big deal.
For years, I have been buying Genever / Jenver (prounced fenefver) and I’ve been buying Bols Genever which is the most popular world wide. Turns out, the stuff is made here and there are many types beyond Bols. I’ve sampled most of the best ones and will bringing back a few 20 year jenevers with me to share with friends. Most of the time, my friends can’t stand it. Ah and Belgian chocolates. Seriously. I’m pretty sure this stuff has addictive properties. Sorry Hershey, you lose.
This is a walking city. it’s also a biking city and a car city and a boat city. It’s pretty remarkable that a city that’s hundreds of years old has been able to accommodate so many modes of transportation. the trams are pretty slow but they have bells like the street cars in San Francisco so from my hotel window, I feel a bit home sick.
The food here is smaller portions than in America. There are less fruits and veggies than I expected and most of the focus downtown is on international food so there’s shops called “cafe cuba” or “argentina steak house” or “walk the wok” but I think these are positioned for tourists. If you drive out a bit and pay a bit more, there are some wonderful places to eat and food that I can not get enough of. Amsterdam doesn’t have a “food” of choice or style of food. It’s an international city so you can get anything you wan.
Europe, as a whole, doesn’t promote farms in food packaging. They don’t need to. You’re buying milk so you get a red carton that says “Whole Milk” in vertical helvetica lettering and a price tag in euros. The milk carton doesn’t say “farm” and a picture of cows and there’s nothing that misleads you. Bread, milk, meat and cheese is all just that. They waste little time on fanciness. I think the US who is literally slaughtering thousands of pigs an hour in a factory with underpaid illegal workers has some real arrogance to smack a sticker that says “hillshire farm” on the side of it and even if that is happening in Amsterdam, no one tries to lie about it. Food is food without special artwork to make it feel more appealing or homely.
Toilets and showers are different here. They’re just different and I can’t quite put my finger on it.
There are good and bad times to visit the red light district. I had my camera down there photographing buildings and architecture (no, not the women) and realize that at noon, it’s full of parents and kids walking to and from school or parks. It’s no big deal. From 6PM-10PM it’s tourists and tour groups. From 10PM to 2AM it’s lone men with coats and heads held low walking up and down the streets. Very weird indeed.
Despite the age of each building, road and canal, it would appear that Amsterdam and even Europe on the whole is very design forward when it comes to day to day life. Every chair and door and logo is very modern. The cars and even clothing blows America out of the water. People aren’t bland. I recognize this is a metro area but having lived in SF and experienced office spaces all over the US, Amsterdam has us beat. Sharing this revelation with others and I’ve heard most European cities are like this. It’s refreshing being in a place that feels so modern yet is so old in culture, history, art and architecture.
Travel seems trivial here and people aren’t afraid of exploring. Most people I meet are in Amsterdam for a year or so and very few were born here yet they live and work here right now. A lot of people have been to Athens or London or Paris and Brussels. It’s not unusual for a 3 day weekend in Paris and then deciding to live there just as I would move from California to New Hampshire to Florida.
It also sounds like most countries had their wars already. They fought and battled and politically started behaving. Things in the EU are pretty chill. People here aren’t afraid of terrorists or war like Americans are. A lot of companies have this long standing understanding of each other, the currency, the banking and cultures. Americans are big and mostly scared and I just don’t feel that here.
I’m only highlighting some observations and, as I said, I’m mostly ignorant in my viewpoints after 5 days in the Netherlands but I hope that my views will change and improve over time. It’s great to be here and I’m enjoying just taking long walks around the canals.
Thanks for reading. I’m here for 9 more days.