AMSTERDAM!

I’m really glad we chose Amsterdam : what a great place to spend our four-day weekend. I definitely could have stayed another week, another month, maybe several months. It’s a lovely little city filled with beautiful, calm canals lined with old narrow townhouses that are bright, pastel, and welcoming during the day, and illuminated and quietly charming at night. In between there are endless little restaurants and coffee houses and coffeeshops (two different things!) and lunch spots and local bars that are all very unassuming and inviting, filled with happy, easy-going people: all the Dutch people we met (unfortunately that only includes waiters/waitresses/servers, and random people on the street we asked for directions) were very warm and friendly, and we felt very comfortable there as foreigners. In comparison to Paris, not only is the city itself much smaller and more manageable (and walkable pretty much in its entirety by foot), but the atmosphere is more laid back, slower-moving, and also more international, which I think was part of the comfort we felt. It wasn’t just that there were a lot of tourists or that everything was in Dutch and English (and that everyone spoke English), but also, I think, that there isn’t the fierce defense of Dutch language and culture that the French have. Not to stereotype the French – because I’m the first to get sour at Americans who go on about how rude French people are, when Americans are truly just as bad with foreigners, and when there are of course plenty of very nice French people – but the difference really was tangible, I thought.

We spent the weekend quite leisurely, getting plenty of sleep and taking our time getting up and out, and only did two touristy things: the Van Gogh museum, which was spectacular, and the Anne Frank house, which was really striking and good to see too. Other than that we strolled along the streets, ate, um, a lot of stroopwafels – the most delicious cookies EVER – and just enjoyed ourselves and life and the city.

so, I’m just going to start posting a selection of my bazillion photos :

Bloemenmarkt - the floating flower market

a typical canal view at night - how lovely does it look?

one of the more popular conceptions of the city

this lunch place was just the best - the atmosphere was free and relaxed (yet again), but also had a particularly organic, homegrown, country feel to it too - which reminded both of us of upstate New York.

Can't get enough of the Dutch language... if anyone can tell me what this says I'd be quite interested (um, Erin??).
(Can I also make note of the fact that warnings on cigarettes in Europe are bigger and more blunt? e.g. "Smoking Kills." Granted they smoke like chimneys over here, but still, yet another reason why Europe is awesome...)

Leah in... the name of the place escapes me... Hailey? help?

I like to think that this is what the room looked like to most people

Here’s one of a series of paintings from an artist (Rae Witvoet) who did her own take on 24 masterpieces (e.g. this Chagall one), which Hailey and I loved (if the link ever works, her stuff’s pretty cool). They were just displayed in a window facing the street – a “public art space”. Art is everywhere!

Building on that, here’s a shot of Hailey in the bar we finally decided on, to duck into for a drink and to get out of the cold one evening – look at the art on the wall! The thing is, this wasn’t a quirky place or anything – this was just a normal bar – and that’s the point. Their “normal” is our (american) “weird” – same with how a lot of European pop music is our indie music. I mean, someone I met from England the other day couldn’t believe that most of my friends hadn’t heard of the Arctic Monkeys; he said his grandma could probably name their hit song. That’s actually another thing too – I feel like there isn’t as much of a division between what appeals to old people and young people in Europe – there isn’t that protective need to shade older people from “that loud music those young kids listen to”, for example, that I feel there often is in America. I mean, you go to the supermarket and the old lady next to you is wearing a hip manteau (long coat) and a skirt with stockings and boots, like all the young women in winter, and over the loudspeaker is Lily Allen rapping in her brash cockney accent. If there was a supermarket back home where old and young dressed alike and the music ranged from rock to rap to pop – no “smooth jazz” – wouldn’t you think that that must be an oddly liberal, modern place? Well, here it’s just the everyday. …Just one stab at exploring a much much larger underlying cultural difference that I don’t know will ever cease to exist between the US and Europe. At least, I don’t think our culture is capable of changing and becoming more like theirs in this sense – and god, I really hope Americanization doesn’t seep into theirs so much that it bends more towards ours.

Anyway back to Amsterdam – we really had a tough time deciding where to stop in, because everyplace just looked so darn cute and inviting! Somehow every place we went over the course of these several days managed to have a very local, low-key, warm feel to it too. I just felt comfortable the whole time, and never really like a foreigner either.

Oh man, here's a shot from inside the BEST record store EVER - it's called Concerto, on Utrechtsestraat (where there were like, two more down the block too! Wtf!). If I'd been left to my own devices and didn't feel bad making Hail sit there and wait for me I could have spent all day here. Sean, if in Amsterdam, would have spent his entire stay here (and likely bank account too). The section here, with the upstairs and downstairs - there were four such sections, and one of them - "Pop" - was filled with I'm pretty sure every CD that's on my list to buy. And of course so many more - a lot I hadn't heard of and had to write down and look up when I got home. Some of which I found one or two tracks from on hype machine, many whose CDs weren't available on any American sites I checked, some of which was barely findable online at all. I really should have picked up some things there that I can't find anywhere else... but in my haste and bewilderment I somehow only managed to grab a jazzy edition of the Arcade Fire's new one (that had come out a day or so earlier) and the Klaxons. They had listening stations - posters everywhere, flyers, news, events - I got a free music magazine and Arcade Fire poster on the way out - how much better does it get?

More love of and fascination with the Dutch language.

Drinken!