Weekend in Amsterdam

You'll hear people say that Boston is a like European city, but compared to Amsterdam, Boston isn't very European at all. Which is fine for both cities, I guess, seeing as Amsterdam is in Europe and Boston is not.

The city was beautiful, and really old. Canals ran through most every block (Amsterdam is called "the Venice of the North"). Real estate was appraised by the width of buildings, which has created tall, thin houses packed against each other. It seems to be incredibly wasteful, space-wise, but it was so interesting to look at.

We went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was really, really awesome. I'm ignorant about art, but I do know I wouldn't've liked Van Gogh 3 or 4 years ago and that I think he's brilliant now. His use of color and perspective distorts whatever his subject happens to be. But with that distortion comes more truth of emotion than any "realistic" painter could display.

The Anne Frank House was really interesting and sad, but I left feeling uplifted and hopeful about our world (I needed that after walking through the Red Light District).

We spent a lot of our time just walking around, trying to soak in as much of the local culture as we could. "Coffeeshops" (where pot vending and smoking is tolerated) litter the city without any sort of logic. They're really all-the-hell over the place. Whatever.

I'm not into the whole sex drugs and rock n roll thing, so a lot of what other people would appreciate in Amsterdam, I don't.

Despite this, it was still a really cool city and I felt pretty engaged.

A lot of their culture was American culture Euro-ized. McDonalds were all around, and Burger King, KFC and Subway were present, too. One of the best parts of the trip was the soft serve at McDonalds. It cost 35 eurocent!

Done.

Retroactive to two Fridays ago...We're here!

Traveling is really no fun. Between the bus from Emerson to Logan, the loafing in the terminal, the flights to Dublin then Shannon then Amsterdam, the stamping of my passport at Dutch immigration (I think the employee simply verified I was indeed a biped and then let me into the country), the train to Utrecht and then to Nijmegen, the bus to Well (this loud, annoying ride showed me not only American 13-year-olds who are idiots) and the 10-minute half-dazed dragging of my luggage (don't pity me, I have rolling duffels) to the castle gates, it took 20 hours to get from A-B (or, like, M).

I defeated jet lag, though, with naps all throughout, and functioned on a normal sleep schedule from the time I got here.

Sunday brought the Patriots-Chargers game. Ben and I at first tried to get the game to work through Skype, and then we tried to find an Internet TV tuner, but our efforts (Ben's, really) were in vain. But mercifully, wonderfully, some others found the game on ORF--a Dutch TV network (or something). The commentary was in Dutch, which is only slightly less substantive than John Madden or Boomer Esiason or whoever was doing the game.

Stuff is smaller here. That about as profound as my cultural observations are going to get. Stuff is small. The largest container of water at Meer Mart (Well's smallish supermarket) is 1.5 liters, a far cry from the 3 gallon-large tankards at Market Basket.

My room is small but spacious, given that I didn't (or couldn't) take most of my crap with me.

I'm tired. Time to pretend to do homework and then read and then really do homework and then retire.

I'll write about my weekend in Amsterdam very soon. Goodnight!