Although I know where I could begin, I'm not going to. Instead, I am going to write about the experiences in Amsterdam that matter most, and allow the minutia scribbled in my notebook to simply remain just that. Someday I will come across these notes and reminisce, but here and now I prefer to just share the good stuff.
"Little by little, one travels far."
-J.R.R. Tolkien
Tuesday, October 28th, 10 PM. We are wandering through the Red Light District trying to find Shelter City Christian Hostel on Barndestesteeg. They've hidden it pretty well. Finally, we find it and check in. The boys go upstairs to the male dorms and we ladies remain on the ground floor. We enter the dorm area, and at the end of the hallway, painted in big, curvy red letters across an archway, is the phrase:
"GOD LOVES YOU"
Our dorm has about 10 or 11 bunks in it. I almost expect to see soldiers in uniform shining their boots and cleaning their guns. Each bed is numbered and we all find ours spots, unpack, and cram our stuff into our lockers. We are given a lumpy pillow, two flat sheets, and 2 thin, blue blankets. Not knowing what to do with myself, I spend a ridiculous amount of time making my bed.
We chat a little bit with two women, one older and one younger, bunked on the other end of the room. The younger one, who is Australian, is planning to volunteer at the hostel and is going through the testing period, during which she must live in the hostel for a time to see whether or not she can manage it. The older woman, who is English, is merely traveling. She asks us if we have seen the Red Light District (actually, she avoids even saying "Red Light District," and instead refers to it as "those streets"), and remarks at how flabbergasted she was.
"Can you believe it? I had heard, but I can't believe it! I was frightened!"
As she folds some clothing she shakes her head from side to side and sighs, grinning slightly. We all look at each other and try to adjust ourselves to being surrounded by people that believe that we too are Christians and share in their beliefs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the Red Light District either. My point is, that outside the hostel this woman would not assume that we share her Christian values, but here at Shelter City, she makes this assumption...and perhaps validly so. I can't help but wonder how many non-religious people have ended up here by accident like we have. Some of us are Christians, yet I still get the feeling that we as a unit are all out of place.
We retire to our bunks. I can't wait to wake up, get out of this giant, crowded room, and explore. For the next couple hours women go in and out of the dorm, which is only lit by a tiny blue bulb in the center of the high ceiling.
Wednesday.
I wake up as a young girl jumps off of her bunk across from me. She is wearing a skin-tight, incredibly revealing "nighty" which gets caught on the bed and I am forced to see some very un-Christian underwear. Good morning irony. It just keeps coming.
The showers aren't awful, but pretty bad. I feel just as icky coming out as I did going in. I have memories of my one sleep-away summer camp experience in 5th grade and feel nostalgic for the days when I did not think about itineraries and time constraints in the shower. As I attempt to get clean, I decide that today is going to be that kind of day. I recall the flosser that I dropped in the train station in Florence, and how I felt that the universe was giving me a sign telling me to chill out.
~ ~ ~
We drove all day on roads without a speck
of paving, not knowing but knowing not
to ask when we would stop or where.
-Christian Wiman (b. 1966)
We wander, attempting to navigate the disorienting street design of Amsterdam, which is basically four concentric semi-circular streets separated by canals (which are lined with tons of houseboats built on old tug boat hulls), and in the middle--the historic center--a muddled cluster of smaller streets and canals. Amsterdam is like a giant mandala in which visitors get lost and hopefully found at the same time.
"The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time."
-Colette (Paris From My Window, 1944)
We ask for directions from a young guy on the street, who has been living in Amsterdam for nine years, and he sympathizes with us:
"These streets are crazy, man! You go round and round and you end up where you began! I walk for an hour and pass the same things over and over. You go around in a circle forever here if you don't pay attention."
I can't help but think of that Joni Mitchell song, "The Circle Game"...
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
...
Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
(Yeah, It's a little corny, I know--but true and fitting nevertheless)
We all knew that we wanted to experience the most that we could of Amsterdam--that is always the goal when traveling as a college student who is on a budget and in a hurry--but all of also seemed to silently agree that the best way to do this would be to let go. I have found that some of the best adventures are the ones in which you travel "roads without a speck of paving" and don't know what exactly is going on or is going to happen, and yet are able to restrain from trying to plan each future moment.
"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
-Miriam Beard
Another factor to consider is that Amsterdam doesn't look or feel like a tourist-oriented city. The monuments and historic buildings for the most part blend in to the rest of the city...and our map didn't have little icons of the tourist attractions on it. So wandering from one little icon to the next was not really an option.
We eventually find the Van Gogh Museum on Paulus Potterstraat and spend a couple hours inside, learning about and seeing the work of a man who only understood what he truly wanted to do with his life at the very end of it, during his last ten years alive. And even though he created innovative, distinct, passionately executed works of art, he never received recognition while he was alive. The idea of this is baffling to a group of American college students.
Recognition is important to many of us I'm sure, but how important is it? As long as the bills get paid and there's enough left over to live comfortably and travel, why do many of us feel the need to be recognized? Why do many of us feel the need to have more than we need? Money is good and great, but greed is not. Now if I only knew if the desire for recognition is indeed a form of greed...
Thursday.
We check out of Shelter City and check into Hotel Orfeo on Leidsekruisstraat, a hostel far from the Red light district but not at all removed from the local eccentrics. We encounter an old man relieving himself to the left of the front door and see a man in a white suit and fedora driving a white cadillac with red interior pass by, blasting country music. Nevertheless, I I feel grateful that we are in the company of these oddballs now, rather than the women of the Red Light District. Very grateful.
We climb the steep, narrow staircase to the 4th or 5th floor, which is the very top of the building, causing our dorm to be shaped like the typical a-frame-like upper stories of Dutch buildings. The room is small, has five bunks, a comedically gnarly bathroom with a water drainage problem, and the walls are exposed wood and beams. Strangely enough, I feel like I am in a cabin in Tahoe. We share the room with four other girls, two of which are from Spain and the other two from America. We don't see them often.
We go to the Anne Frank Museum on Prinsengracht and spend several hours there. Several intense hours. There is no way to briefly explain this experience, so I will simply say that it was an experience I think of often and that will be hard to forget: nothing since I have been away has made me more grateful for the life I lead and the opportunities I have than visiting the eminent secret annex.
Friday.
We spend the entire day at Artis Royal Zoo on Plantage Kirklaan, which is a park with a Zoo--including an aquarium, reptile room, and insectarium--and a Planetarium. We see lions and tigers at feeding time, leopard geckos (I had one when I was younger), giant pythons, a candy-cane-like starfish, pink pelican-like birds, and my favorite...nearly 50 different species of insects flying around us. The insectarium was not merely a room with frames filled with pinned-down insects, rather it was an humid indoor garden with winding paths in which we were allowed to walk around while butterflies and moths of all different "ethnicities" (although I like to believe the animal kingdom transcends national barriers, dead or alive) flew above us, around us, between our legs... It was incredible. I'm just really glad no one killed anything.
Later that evening, my roommate Kim, our friends Joanna and Beaver (a.k.a. Beaves) and I find a charming little Dutch bar where we spend some time relaxing and reflecting. It is a small bar with a tiny back patio, and it is well-lit, clean and simple. Creedence Clearwater Revival is playing quietly and the bartender is singing along as she tidies up. She is a red-headed woman in her mid-to-late 40's, and the only other people inside are two old men who stand a few stools down, clutching pints and engaging in sporadic conversation with each other and the bartender. Their dog, a medium-sized, long-haired white beasty with black spots, is hands-down the cutest and friendliest bar dog I have encountered in Europe so far (It is a surprisingly happy moment when I find its hair on one of my sweaters a week later, as gross as it sounds).
The bartender sees us humming and singing along and bobbing our heads to Creedence and she asks,
"Aren't yoo a beet young to be singin' these soongs?!"
I couldn't help but think, Aren't you a beet Dutch to be singin these soongs?
Saturday.
We all slept through our alarms and missed our complementary crappy breakfast because none of us slept very well the night before, thanks to one of our American roommates...Katie. Katie likes to snore. And squeak. And gasp for air. Katie's travel buddy comes back to the room an hour or two after Katie's performance begins and apologizes to us all. As she is getting in bed, we ask her to wake her up and turn her on her side...or something, anything. I get up and hold my cell phone in the air as a light source as Katie's buddy gently pokes Katie's arm over and over ever so gently. Katie? Katie? Katie? Katie does not wake up. Her buddy says,
"I don't think I'm the best person to be doing this."
Sick and tired of the snoring crap and the shyness crap, I immediately give Katie (did I mention that we have never met or seen either of these girls before?) a FIRM shove and practically yell into her face,
"KATIE?!!!"
And as the sound machine stops and opens it eyes I get back in my bed and let Shy-McShyerson deal with her from there.
We don't have any specific plans for the day other than finding a windmill, so we go in search of one. It is much colder and windier today and a light rain is falling, so our relatively long walk to the windmolen is a bit arduous. It is great to see but I can't help but be upset by it. Technology is obviously advancing, and quickly at that, so where have all the windmills gone? I won't go into it here...but come on...you have to admit humans can be pretty dumb sometimes.
Afterwards we spend some time wandering one of the large steets, called Damrak, and do some souvenir shopping. We have to catch a plane back to Milan this evening and rain is now pouring, so we say goodbye to Amsterdam a few hours early, as much as I don't want to leave it behind. Although I sort of miss being able to walk the streets without worrying about being killed by a Dutch bicyclist that is eating, talking on a mobile phone, steering, pedaling incredibly fast and avoiding other crazed bicyclists all at the same time.
...Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down...
~ ~ ~
Later at the airport we see a group of Italian Hells Angels. I can't imagine what they could possibly be doing in Amsterdam. It is no place for them.
We reach Milan, miss the last train to Florence, find another route that will take three times as long, and spend our night riding two different night trains. We reach Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence at 6:30 AM Sunday morning. The sky is dark blue, a few gray clouds are smeared across the sky above the steeple of Santa Maria Novella, and strangely enough, the streets are quiet and empty...unusual for Florence, even at this hour.
We get back to our apartment and my roommates go to bed, meanwhile I begin to unpack. My mind is too busy to sleep. As I unzip my backpack--and I am not dramatizing or exaggerating this--the bells calling people to 8 o'clock mass ring. It's one of those moments where even the obnoxiously loud cooing of pigeons outside my window makes me feel warm and toasty inside.
I sleep incredibly soundly that night (or day really), but when I wake up, I feel completely confused about how to go about managing my time. I have tons of homework to do, but can't find the motivation to do it...and I spend the next three weeks procrastinating, planning trips, wishing I were back in Prague and Amsterdam, and just daydreaming in general. As of a week ago, I am "back on track" and I have managed to yank my head out of the clouds, so to speak, but time is running out and I'm not so sure how I feel about that.
How else could I possibly end this quote-happy story than end it with yet another quote:
"Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey."
-Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Indeed Mr. Conroy, INDEED.
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