I Amsterdam, I (Am)sterdam

So it took a day as equally bleak, cold and rainy as the day I left Amsterdam for me to finally get around to writing this, my Amsterdam story.

Canal in Amsterdam.

I’m not sure what drew me to Holland for my birthday. Maybe it’s the one place in Europe everyone expects you to visit when you’re abroad. It was my birthday and I admittedly wanted something crazy. I already did 21 (on a dry Sunday in Oxford, Miss., no less). I knew the Tulips would be out of season. I guess I really knew nothing about Amsterdam before I planned the trip, save that you could get really high there and buy a hooker. Isn’t that the appeal of Bourbon Street, too? I do Mardi Gras every year …

But thank you Amsterdam. I think you changed my life a little, you changed my semester a lot and you changed how I look at travel. No, the pot’s not that good. (I mean, maybe it is. I wouldn’t know.)

I’m one of the antsiest and planning-minded people I know. I get sick with worry. I fear the future, but at the same time I postpone the future with everything possible. My travel buddy, on the other hand, was a total free-spirited, Euro-savvy being. Instead of planning every day’s activities like I did in Paris, she showed up in Amsterdam with a map and a tour booklet, leaving her activities up to her mood. My activities were up to me, awkwardly, but I learned, conveniently.

It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to hang out or needed her space, but she just wanted to do her own thing. We did a lot together but through her nonchalant distance, I got to feel more of Amsterdam, drink in the culture and figure out travel. Sure, travel can be about making great friends and sharing bonds. But it’s also about doing whatever you want, whenever, however. I still don’t have it totally down; it’s just not my personality. But I’m learning slowly to let go. I have to look at what really matters instead of what was planned. After all, life doesn’t really come with a plan or guidebook.

Bicycle on a canal.

Despite it not being Tulip season, Amsterdam was still gorgeous. On some tram ride around the city, we passed the last of the giant windmills. I loved visiting Flevopark and Vondelpark, both natural and beautiful, unlike the frilly French parks. I don’t get to see a lot of fall colors in Mississippi, so I enjoyed that too. Leaves of every color pressed into a dazzling array on the sidewalks.

Part of loving Amsterdam is just being surrounded with charming architecture, canals and bicycles. I never dreamed of a city so full of bicycles, as though it was some children’s book. Absolutely everyone rides a bicycle everywhere. It’s a bit dangerous, I’d say, for the pedestrian tourist, but it makes the city so much more ethereal. Bicycles … chained to every rail and fence … whizzing down every street … making that little ding ding sound at you … swearing at you. Apparently drunk people throw so many unattended bicycles in the canals that they must be specially dredged.

Swans in the red light district.

The canals make you feel like you’re always on the water, my dream come true. They also lend this adorable character to the city with all the necessary bridges and the accompanying swans and birds. By chance, does anyone know of a duck that is entirely black with a white head? Fell in love with that animal!

Dutch houses.

The buildings are just as funny – the Dutch built all these narrow houses leaning both to the side at some awkward angle and into the street. At the top of each house is a little flourish resembling a curly bracket turned on its side. The Dutch were taxed on their homes based on the width, so skinny houses were all the rage unless you were crazy rich. The houses lean to the side because the pilings holding them up started to collapse before this problem was addressed. And then there’s the little protruding pulley system, which the Dutch supposedly still use to raise furniture and other items into their homes. (The staircases are too narrow). The houses lean into the street to make the pulley system a little more effective.

Tour guide (hottie). He's an Aussie.

I took a New Amsterdam Tour, which I fully recommend. It’s free and you just tip your guide. Probably anything factual I’ve written here came from my tour guide. My favorite part of the tour had to be looking at the house plates on a wall somewhere in Amsterdam. Apparently it was in vogue way back when to affix a miniature mural to your house that depicted your profession or something about you. Then Napoleon came in and made everyone get house numbers. I just found the pictures so funny and so much more personal than numbers. I think my blog is sort of like a changing house plate, that is if I had it broadcast on a TV outside my pad. Maybe that is a little creepy.

Milkmaid lives here.

Beer aficionado?

So, now we’ve got to talk about the bad stuff … sex, drugs, Amsterdam. Some French boys in our hostel actually made fun of us for visiting the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank … they were not there being tourists, mind you, they wanted drugs. Unlike everyone says, marijuana is not actually legal in Amsterdam, although it’s absolutely everywhere. You can buy it in every coffee shop and smoke it on the street without a problem because the city would rather crack down on hard drugs. I hear ’shrooms will be illegal soon, if not already.

This is what happens in Amsterdam. Forget Vegas.

The sex was absolutely alarming to me. I felt like the drug and sex tourist culture really ruined part of Amsterdam. Could you successfully raise kids there or have a serious life there, I kept wondering. But it did really gross me out to walk by the windows and windows of bathing suit-clad women working their stuff. Most of them looked anorexically skinny with ribs showing. Some had scars, bruises, poorly kept bikini lines. I can’t imagine thinking of that as sexy and wanting to partake (proof that men really are disgusting). I’m glad that it’s legal in Amsterdam though. The women are part of a union, pimping is outlawed and those ladies work for themselves.

Oh yeah, what was up with paying for the bathrooms, even in the cafes? Another beef I had with Amsterdam was the outrageous prices of everything. It’s a city that exists to take advantage of people … in every sense. It also made me very mad to learn that women’s public toilets used to exist but became havens for heroin addicts. So, male urinals are available, but nothing for the ladies! Apparently some feminists peed on a bridge one time to protest … but nothing came of it.

I went to a sex show … it was infinitely more tasteful than having to look hookers in the eye. It was also hella creepy and weird. Sex … crazy, dirty, hardcore sex was like four feet from my face. I thought I might have been disgusted, but I was just mesmerized. I literally could not look away. My friend said one stripper must have thought we were in love with her. (Friend was staring too.) I’m not a sex freak or a frequenter of strip clubs normally, but it was Amsterdam. I had to do something crazy, and a sex show seemed the least regret-inducing.

Some other fun Amsterdam things:

• Meeting so many French guys when we’d left the country.
• Chatting with a Cornell law student obsessed with Brand New and his newly purchased, shitty-as-hell, left-handed guitar.
• Dancing with some of the creepiest guys as a really funny night club (We didn’t want to pay a lot to go to a real one).
• Attempting to haggle with the bouncer at the sex show.
• Finding that even Amsterdam closes around 1 a.m. on a Monday night.
• FEBO – sorta creepy, poor quality Dutch fast food. Yum. Kaas souffle (deep fried cheese pocket). Onion-infused cheeseburger.
• French fries with mayo. Ok yum whatever.
• Chatting with the bartender at the sex show for longer than I watched the sex show. He was cool and told me my name was “Veelovich” or something. I have no idea how he got that job or why, but he definitely didn’t look the part. And he was eating shark soup on his break. How cute/cool/Dutch.
• Argentinian physicists and German engineers. One of the Germans looked and talked like a Wizard of Oz midget!

Anyone make it to the end of this?