Amsterdam!!!

**As with the other cities, this is just a transcribed copy of what I wrote while on the road.

First, a story, THEN day 1 in Amsterdam! So. When I was 14, I thought, "When I get to high school, I will feel grown up." Didn't happen. THEN when I was 15, I thought, "When I get my drivers license, I will feel grown up!" Again, no. Then, when I was 18, I thought, "When I go to college, I will feel grown up!" Still... no. Sure, I felt MORE grown up, but it was a gradual change that you don't notice until you look back on the past few years and realize all of the changes that have taken place. This whole traveling alone thing though? I defiantly feel more grown up. While I've had this feeling that I could do all of this and take care of myself and everything, this really proves it. Now I know I can take care of myself. I mean, I paid for this trip. I planned this trip. And I've been on my own with a minimal support system in countries where the main language is not my own... for this trip. And, I feel like, if bad things happen I'll be able to deal with them.

Anyway. Amsterdam! Its a beautiful city. I love the canals and the houses and all of the history. And all of the Dutch people are super nice. Know what I don't like? How the Netherlands is known for lenient soft drug laws... Basically allowing pot and shrooms. They're legal... but only under specific laws... My tour guide said that less than 10% of Dutch people actually do pot, no one cares; they've gone through that phase and not its over and done with. HOWEVER. Every traveler I've met, mostly college students, came here for ONE reason. Coffeeshops. There are ~300 licensed coffeeshops in the Netherlands. Why would a coffeeshop need a license, you may ask... Well, "coffeeshop" is code for "place where you can go and buy and smoke pot legally." Which, I knew. However, I didn't know that they were everywhere and that every brochure I found would have 2 pages listing the best coffeeshops... and half a page for museums and cultural activities. And there was nothing on cheap food. Coffeeshops? They're mainly there for the tourists. The guy giving the tour to ~30 college students? Yeah... he assumed we were all there for the pot. And, I docked his tip because of it. But anyway, while I don't really feel safe here after dark and generally stay inside because of this... I'm not even comfortable getting lost in this city in the day light. The Netherlands, seems lovely. The canals are great... and they're everywhere. And they get new water once or twice a week. Lovely. The houses? gablestones are amazing, and so are the hooks used for hoisting up furniture for move in. And I love how narrow they are! The bridges? Amazing. Basically, i love Amsterdam. just not the touristy part where there are coffeeshops on every corner. Today, I woke up and went wandering around, as is my usual routine. I did this for maybe a half an hour before I decided this was not the place to go exploring on my own. I passed half a dozen coffeeshops in any direction I went. So, i went back to the hostel to wait for the time to go on the free tour! I love the free tours! If you end up in Europe, I highly recommend them. They're not really free, but they're based solely on tips. So, the guides work really hard to give you an amazing tour so you tip them well... So, anyway. I went on the free tour. I saw the city's oldest church, which happens to be in the middle of the red light district. There are prostitutes in windows in the red light district. You just look up... and... yeah. No matter how many time you're told about this... its still surprising when it happens. More on this later though. The church was there because Amsterdam was a big port city. Merchants would come to land after month at sea on a ship with only men... and the first thing they'd to would be to go pick up some girls. Then, they'd feel guilty before going back out to sea, and not want to be on God's bad side... So they'd go to this church and purchase indulgences. The church made money, the guys went back out to sea without a guilty conscience... Everyone wins! But yeah... the tour. We saw SO much! You'll have to ask if you want specifics. I'll ramble for a little bit about things though. The symbol of Amsterdam is three xs (xxx) and you see it everywhere (you'll see it in the pictures.) We asked what it meant. Apparently the story goes that when the Netherlands became an independent nation it adopted the symbol for the saint of merchants. His sign? An inverted cross, which looks like an x. The 3 xs are each for the 3 things Amsterdammers have to fight: flooding, disease and fire (at least I think the last one was fire...) Anyway, it was stamped on everything exported from Amsterdam (which was a lot due to the east india company (which I saw!!!)) Some say that is how the symbol for porn (the 'xxx') got started... Main port city, lots of merchants... what do they want... All of it got marked with xs and sold abroad... I think the story sounds a little far fetched, but whatever. ANYWAY. I think someone said that Amsterdam's population is about 40% foreign/tourist... Which is rather high. The skinniest house... is rather skinny. I didn't see it, but I saw the second most narrow house. Dutch people move into their new houses by hoisting their belongings up using a pully system since the stairs are too narrow... Things like that. After the tour I went right to the Anne Frank house. When the Nazi's invaded the house, they took all of the furniture. Otto Frank (the only one who survived...) came back after everything was over with and said that he wanted the building to remain furniture-less. So, the whole building is empty. There are videos of interviews with the people who helped the Franks and stories about their time there... And then you walk through a door, and you see the bookcase hiding the entrance to the annex... and then you're there. Its kind of surreal. It seems... crazy? that 8 people had to live there for 2 years and that they never left... All for their religion. They didn't even do anything wrong... Now... to find a way to transition away from this. Amsterdam prides itself on their tolerance... Which they have a hard time reconciling the Anne Frank house with. They claim that their tolerance was built off of everyone having to work together to save their town from floods (the saying goes, "God built the world, men built Amsterdam." since man 'reclaimed' the land from the sea.) If you ask them for proof of their tolerance, they talk about how they had the first gay bar and the first lesbian bar. They talk about their legal prostitution, porn and pot. They talk about how sure they denounced Catholicism, but they let them keep practicing if they didn't flaunt it (leading to hidden catholic churches.) but, I was relating this to Anne Frank House. One way they found to reconcile this time of intolerance was a story of a rebellion. When the Nazis came to the Netherlands, they tried to 'trick' Amsterdammers into thinking that they were a welcoming force. They hid the fact that they were horrible to Jews for the most part. Then, they forcibly took some Jews from their homes on Market day, when everyone was in the Jewish Quarter. The Dutch saw how horrible the Nazis were to the jews, they got the trolly drivers to strike. And, without the trolly drivers, no one else could go to work either. So, they all walked out and started an uprising. Which was unsuccessful and ended with many Dutch people getting killed and retreating back into hiding from reality. But they tell this story in a way that is supposed to show how they loved their Jewish 'brothers and sisters.' Despite the fact that in reality, this did very little for the Jewish population. Okay. Topic change! Tolerance... laws... legal sex and drugs. Why so legal? Here's the reasoning: In the 70's, heroin started to become really popular and began to replace the previously popular pot. Authorities decided that heroin was bad and that pot... wasn't as bad and that they'd rather have a bunch of people addicted to pot than to heroin. So, they legalized pot (under very specific rules: can't grow your own, go to the coffeeshops, no one under 18 in the coffeeshop, no hard drugs, no alchohol in the coffeeshop...) and focused on punishing those using or dealing heroin. Now, the numbers of Dutch people who do pot OR heroin are -very- low. Pot isn't so special to them any more (unless you're a tourist. then its quite popular.) and heroin has some bad consequences with the law. Prostitution? Its legal because they couldn't stop it... so they decided to legalize it so that they could protect the prostitutes. They even have a 'union' that helps them get out of the business and provides various kinds of counseling and provides a pension? All of the prostitutes have an emergency button to hit if any problems arise and the cops will be there super quick. And, if they find out that there is organized crime involved with any of the ladies (like, if they were forced into prostitution), there are serious consequences. But yeah... After I went to Anne Frank House... I went to the Pancake Bakery! I went alone. You get served REALLY fast when you go alone! For pretty cheap, I got a pizza sized apple and cheese pancake and covered it in syrup and sugar... Ta-da! Dinner! Then I got tips from the hostel (they were SHOCKED when I said I didn't want to go to bars alone and that I had no desire to go to any coffeehouses...) and ended up at a chill jazz bar, where I drank a little bit of cider and listened to some Latin Jazz. Good times.

Today I woke up later than I thought I would without an alarm, then ran (okay, I took the tram...) to the Rijks museum (the national museum) where I met up with the group for the Mike's Bike tour!!! Yay. So, we stood there and he tells us the history of the city for about 45 minutes. Then, we head off to pick up our bikes at the shop. It was advertised as a 4 hour tour, but really its only 3 since an hour of it is spent story telling and picking up bikes... After we all got bikes, we headed out of the city on the banks of the river Amstel (get it?! Amstel Dam?!) We were riding on a big dijk (english spelling: dike. Pronounced the same way.) for most of the ride- so if you looked to your left you saw water! If you looked to your right... you saw land... a few meters below where the water was... We rode at a leisurely pace down the scenic path to the first stop: windmill! It was an old one, one of the few traditional windmills with the thatched roof. we stood there, it was a beautiful day, and our guide explained how the land is BELOW sea level. Reason? The windmills. They were fitted with an Archimedes screw, which pumped water out of one area (on one side of a dijk) and to the other as it spun. Its called reclaiming the land. We rode back on this reclaimed land. Now, it doesn't really flood much, they've gotten the keeping water out thing down to a science... The last big flood was in the 50s... but now they have an intricate system of locks and dijks. They even have a system of locks that cleans out the canals on a rotational basis once a week! Anyway, after the windmill, we went to a cheese and clog factory. Big tourist trap. Whatever. It was cool. The whole 'backpacking through europe' thing put a damper on my wanting to buy 10 cheese wheels... The only other interesting stop on our tour? Amsterdam Hilton! The one made famous by the John Lennon song. Its the one where Yoko Ono and John Lennon went crazy and invited a bunch of reporters up to their room where they were barely clothed... then they wrote on all the walls and windows. They never cleaned it up- they just charge more for that room now. And you can still see the marker marks on the windows... From the street. After dropping my bike off, I headed to the Van Gogh museum! Van Gogh lived in Amsterdam. It was... rather expensive, but worth it. I was there for 3 hours until it closed and they kicked me out. I was actually pretty sad to have to leave... I only saw half of the museum: the '125 favorites' exhibit and the van Gogh exhibit. And part of an indian art exhibit. The 125 favorites thing was really interesting. It talked about the organization that works to collect art for the museums of the Netherlands and how it got all of the pieces and why they're important. My favories were one with giant cut-outs by Matisse and View from a Balcony Gustave Caillebotte. You can find it if you put it in google, I'm pretty sure. Van Gogh's exhibit... He's not really my favorite. But I can now have a seemingly intellectual conversation about how van Gogh's early period was much too dark and his Uncle Theo was right that he needed to use more color. And I could tell you that while van Gogh was in Paris he had some rather nice works, though he should stay away from pointillism and I could tell you that my favorite period of van Gogh's life was when he had checked himself into a clinic after he started to show signs of a disease... I think those were his best works. See? I can fake knowing something about art now! Then I went to the Indian Art exhibition... which I was enjoying when they came on the intercom and told me to leave... I never made it to the permanent collection, which I was looking forward to. I think they have some Warhol? I find Warhol quite... interesting. After that, I bought some post cards before going to the comedy show: "Bye, Bye Bush" as performed, in English, at Boom Chicago. I ordered a 15.50 euro meal... (~25$) which was actually pretty reasonable considering my pancake was one of the cheapest meals I'd seen and it was 9.50 euro... But it was good. And my only food of the day. The show came on after I'd eaten. It was hilarious. They started by having people cheer when their country was named. Americans were rather quiet. Then they mocked us saying that 8 years ago we were the loudest in the crowd... then explaining the 8 years of Bush does nothing for our country's self image. Then they asked people to cheer if they wanted McCain to be the next US president. And I've never heard a room full of so many people be SO quiet. All side conversations stopped... everything was silent. You could have actually heard a pin drop... But, to be fair, they mocked McCain, Obama, Palin... but not Biden. They said he was too dull to mock. But the entire second half of the show was dedicated to mocking Palin. After the show, I headed back to my hostel and packed up... then slept for 3 hours before waking up to head to Berlin!

Morning time in Amsterdam! Today's lesson: DON'T BOOK THINGS BEFORE 7 or 8 in the MORNING!!! The people in your hostel get annoyed with you waking them up before the sun comes up and public transit usually hasn't started or is just ridiculously hard to navigate, and, in general, its not worth the loss of sleep. For example: I woke up at 3:45 AM, annoyed the other 9 girls in the room at the hostel, walked a creepy 5 minute walk to the train station... which appeared to be closed despite the fact that I checked twice to make sure I had a train to the airport... I bought my ticket (didn't have change, had to use my card. Cost 2.30 euro) then had to ask someone how to get in since all of the doors were closed and locked with bars? They pointed to the hidden door a decent way away from the main entrance... where 5 security guards were standing. I had to show them my ticket before I was granted access. Once in, not a problem. I caught my train, and off to the airport I go!