As we embark on our year long adventure we want to make sure to keep our loved ones informed on what we are doing and where we are. We hope that this will provide you with an easy way to keep up to date on our travels.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Amsterdam, Netherlands - July 23-29, 2005



(Victoria and Bill: From High Brow to Low Brow)
Amsterdam is a city of dichotomy. On one hand it is arts oriented, on the other it is famed for its legal prostitution. It has fashionable shops and shops that legally sell pot, hash, and magic mushrooms. It has cobblestone streets lined with 17th century Dutch canal houses next to 21st century streamlined chrome apartments.

At first glance, Amsterdam seems like any big cosmopolitan city…a little New York, a little San Fran, but it definitely has its own unique personality. It is diversity at its best. There are restaurants of the world here. You could eat not only Thai food, but Southern Thai one day and Northern Thai the next. We have seen restaurants advertised as Vietnamese, Mongolian, Indian, Jamaican, Argentinean, Brazilian, Uruguayan…yes, Uruguayan…everything. We have had Thai, Mexican, Italian, Dutch and it has all been excellent. There do not seem to be segregated ethnic neighborhoods; the Thai place is next to the Brazilian, etc. There does not seem to be an ethnic look here – it is like a United Colors of Benetton poster – every one of all ethnicities, together. With all the difficult race relations in the world, it seems like a hopeful microcosm of what is possible; the rainbow of bicycles with their rainbow of riders all swirling over the many canals together.

The museums are amazing. The Van Gogh collection contains some 700 of the surviving 900 paintings by Van Gogh. They also have his original sketch books, his sketch studies, and thousands of letters to his art collecting brother, Theo. The letters are a real treasure because Van Gogh wrote copiously about what he was trying to do with his art, what he was thinking and feeling and learning. They really give insight into the mind of this troubled man. Although, Bill has piped in saying they sold all the “good sunflowers.” Alas, there was only one sunflower painting, but there were so many other things that I didn’t care. We also went to the Anne Frank house which has been modernized from the outside, but is a remarkable memorial on the inside. There are also the National Museums, but they are currently closed for renovation, so we just admired the architecture.

Then it has its seedy parts. The Red Light District is by far the height of the low brow aspect of the city. It seemed like a circus -- smelly, dirty, noisy and crowded. At one point Bill and I made a bet about which of us would be offered more drugs – illegal ones in this area. He won, 9 to 6 in some 20 minutes. It was packed, on a Sunday night, with lots of men in groups, but also with families and curious tourists like us. Call me a prude, but I just found the whole scene bazaar and unsettling: women in lingerie, sitting behind large square windows highlighted by red curtains and red neon lights, talking on the phone or filing their nails. They looked so “normal” – some were even pretty. Some of them would tap on their window to get your attention, but most looked bored. We saw many of the men in large groups mocking the women, as this street seemed more for lookers than takers. I just don’t get it. What type of life can that be? I want to be careful here, not to be too judgmental, because as I said, I just don’t get it. And actually, they seemed to have the better job compared to some of the even more degrading “shows” that were around. Needless to say, we left after getting the gist.

But this area is such a small part of the city. And Amsterdam has so much more to be famous for than red lights.

(Bill – Blackberry update and the CTR-ALT-DEL re-boot)
After all of my complaining about the Blackberry not working in Greece I spent hours on the phone with Cingular in Amsterdam trying to figure out what the problem was. In the end the Blackberry “specialist” authorized me to attempt the extremely technical, highly confidential, security clearance last resort procedure known as the CTR-ALT-DEL re-boot. I literally laughed when he asked me to do it – the old “when all else fails reboot trick”. Well, it worked and now we are back in action with the Blackberry.

Oddities or Things We Noticed

(Bill and Victoria)
Amsterdam is built on a maze of beautiful canals and considers itself the “Venice of the North” (see Oddities… section for Belgium).

Bicycles – (1) they are everywhere, literally millions of them, (2) they are all very old, like the bikes in the Norman Rockwell posters, and (3) they ride them all ways (normal; normal + one passenger on the book rack sitting sideways; normal + one baby in the basket; normal + two babies in the basket; normal + dog in the basket; normal + baby in basket + person on handlebars + dog and baby in wooden cart attached to the front).

World’s smallest car award – We’ve seen the world’s smallest cars here, literally. They travel in the bike lanes and seem to have a scooter motor in them. It’s just really funny to be walking in the bike lane, which we found was dangerous to begin with, and have a car pass you, slowly, as if it were completely normal.

Vodka tonic with lime = glass of vodka with ice, full bottle of tonic, real slice of lime, and bottle of lime juice on the side.

I will add that I stand by my claim that the Van Gogh “people” sold all of the good sunflowers to other museums. And, although I did lose the bet to Victoria on whether there was actually a sunflower painting in the Van Gogh museum at all, I again stand by the claim that it is so different from the other sunflower paintings that it is hardly recognizable.

It’s still cold (65 degrees) and rainy in Amsterdam. Luckily we found H&M in the city, a clothing store that sells what we will dub “disposable clothing”. That is, clothing so cheap, yet fashionable, that you won’t feel badly throwing it away. Example – Victoria bought a wool sweater for $4…and it’s cute.