Amsterdam

The difference you learn about a summer voyage compared to a fall or spring voyage is that you don’t have the luxury of in between time to unpack everything you experience from the prior port. Given that in many ways, I’m also on a more privilege itinerary meaning that aside from Russia and Turkey many of the countries I’ve visited either speak English so it makes communication easy and it’s relatively easy to navigate on your own. I know I’m saying this really early, but I definitely want to come back, this has truly been an amazing experience.

 

When I come to a new place that I have quiet prepared myself for, I get tense. I believe this is the type A personality in me but when I can let my guard down and remind myself that this is the purpose of the journey I find myself ready to learn, compare, and embrace. So a group of us headed over to Amsterdam, the city center right by the train station was busy and I wasn’t really impressed by the city. It wasn’t until after you leave the area that you find the true beauty of the canals, buildings that look slanted, and green trees lined up from sidewalk to sidewalk. Given that the city is built over water, the metro system runs street level and you really need to look left and right before crossing the streets since a train could easily take you with it if you weren’t careful as I very quickly learned while dodging cars, bicyclist, and trains. We all needed to use the restroom and Zuri who has lived in Belgium took us to a café that he knew of and surprisingly enough it was called the “420 café”. So walking in, you find a room that smelled of pot, it was like sitting in a hot box. I couldn’t handle the heavy smells and after using the restroom and looking around, I had to walk out. So given the heavy unregulated use of pot and drugs in Amsterdam, the café/bar sold only water, juice, and drugs. The menu was a list of drugs that you could buy, in order to not mix drugs and alcohol, they could sell one or the other. So that was lesson #1 in Amsterdam. Right across the alley was a pleasant surprise, “maoz”, a falafel restaurant that has found it’s way from Amsterdam/Europe to NYC. I had to try it out and it tasted exactly like the one back in NYC. To another pleasant surprise I ran into “Wok to Walk” which has also found it’s way to NYC. It was really cool to see how much of NYC has imported these unique stores from other countries and truly making it a global city. After eating Maoz, we found our way to the Red Light District. When you first enter it, it looks like any regular street in Amsterdam but boy was it different. Windows one after another with women dressed in bikini’s tapping at the window in hopes of grabbing attention of the patrons on the street. Many of the women were extremely attractive and you start to wonder why they would choose this profession. It was that same moment that I had to step away from my American centric mentality and viewpoint because similar to if they would visit the states, I’m sure there are going to be moments in which they question the values and behaviors. Mixed in between these windows were bars and sex show venues. Most places charged about 25 euros to enter and it would be watching live sex. As we strolled along the way the group of us are called out on the street by our students about 10 of them standing in front of one of the places. They had walked into what was a 2 euro for 2 minute venue where in about 12 doors that would then look into a frosted window until you deposit your 2 euros. At that time you are greeted with a man and woman having sex on a rotating bed. So that felt like the longest 2 minutes of my life. The awkwardness of watching but the even more uncomfortable feeling of being watched by the performers, it is an art in a way isn’t it? After walking out of the show, we all had comments about the action of, but we didn’t really talk about the feeling of. I had always heard about the red light district and while it was stepping out of my comfort zone, I am glad I did go and experience it rather than walk around passing judgments.

 

The red light district was located next to Chinatown so you walk through it to get to the Chinese community. I always enjoy seeing Chinatowns in all the neighborhood, it gives me a sense of comfort and that I could find a place to recharge even if it meant seeing people, street names also written in Chinese, and the smell of Chinese spices, not I didn’t mention the smell of food. We ate at a Chinese restaurant for dinner and while it wasn’t bad it wasn’t the bed that I’ve tasted, but it was okay I hadn’t had really sit down Chinese food in over a month which I don’t recall ever having done in my life so thankfully I got a taste of home. We walked around to the bars and ended up at this place called “club nasty” it wasn’t really that nasty, they had cheap Heineken beer so that’s all that mattered, by the way I’ve decided to try a beer in each country, yes David is drinking J it has actually been really cool and to see openair bars have been really cool. Being tired from the day, Marco and I called it quits early since we wanted to do some museums the next day so while the others went out more, we hailed our Mercedes taxi, the weirdest thing about Europe is that all the cabs here are nice leather seated Mercedes. Although we told ourselves that we were going to be waking up early, we didn’t get out of the hotel until around 9ish where we went to the Anne Frank House. I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was younger but only bits and pieces remained, so going through the museum and seeing first hand what, where, and who she was writing about was touching. The rest of the day was spent walking around and just being amongst the locals. I didn’t get to talk to any of them, but nonetheless it was some good times.

 

This  trip was mixed with lots of things, the food was great, the people were nice, the emotions ran in a myriad of directions. I look forward to talking to others who have been to Brussels, Amsterdam, Antwerp to hear about your perspectives. I miss the waffles and I learned that Belgium chocolate does not cause me headaches.