31 Jul 2012: Amsterdam DNA

31 Jul 2012:

Amsterdam DNA

Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands/Brugge, West Flanders, Belgium

H: 18/17 L: 12/11 Weather: Light Rain/Mostly Cloudy

The next day, I had even more time in Amsterdam. As you should probably tell by now, this was a quite rare experience for me, to actually be able to savor a city a bit.  Speaking of savory, did you know that combining plain yogurt, muesli, and brown sugar makes deliciousness?  Omnomnom.

I headed out to the Anne Frank House right after breakfast, because I knew it was a very important thing to see when I was in Amsterdam.  It was, well, pretty much what you expect.  "Claustrophobia" is the name of the game, and it really wasn't a fun one to play.  The stairs lurched up at impossible angles, and the rooms were quite cramped.  They preserved some of the wall hangings she had put up, framing them behind some glass, and preserved some of the original pages from her diary.  It was a moving experience.  (And one I couldn't take pictures in, again.  Grr.)

My next stop was the Amsterdam Museum that I had also tried to go to the previous day.  Unfortunately for me, on the way to the Amsterdam Museum, I discovered a couple of stores, side by side, that were basically stores custom made for me.  One had a bunch of old collectibles: stamps and such.  Interesting, yeah.  But the bookstore: now that was awesome.  Rows and rows of old books were stacked side by side, haphazardly, in a store that had steps everywhere and winding spiral staircase on the side to get to rooms with even more old books.  I was basically in heaven.  This is a problem, though, because heaven is hard to leave (see also, the London Science Museum).  I basically had to handcuff myself to hustle myself out of the store having only bought a $15 map of Amsterdam that had been cut out of an old atlas.

The Amsterdam Museum had received somewhat underwhelming reviews on TripAdvisor (I mean, they were very good, but some people complained about some aspects of the museum), but I found that those reviews were not at all merited; I was very impressed.  Looking obsessively at the social history of one town was much more impressive to me than giving sweeping overviews of social history.  You got a real taste for the city that you wouldn't otherwise.  I mean, there were some aspects that were a bit distracting--the museum had an obsession with this hokey QR scanning thingy that bordered on unhealthy--but overall it was well done.  The museum offered an "Amsterdam DNA" feature that was essentially a personality test, and it told me that I my "Amsterdam DNA" was "civic virtue" and "trading strength".  Okay, I guess it understood that I'm lawful :?  Someone should probably tell my ancestors the Langestraets, who I'm descended from.  I do suppose that the Amsterdam city burgher still is pretty pimptastic.

The Museum took a while, though, and I had no time to visit the Dutch Resistance Museum before I went to Bruges.  At the Amsterdam train station, though, I had the absolute best pasta that I've ever had at a take-out place.  They made me (fresh - I saw them making it with my very own eyes!) a salmon pasta that was absolutely delicious.  Despite the fact that it was piping hot, I wolfed it down and headed for the train to Brussels, then connected to Bruges.

The train to Bruges was rather disorienting; the only language used for announcements and on the screens overhead was Dutch.  I practically had a panic attack when I realized I hadn't checked the monitors to confirm whether Bruges was listed as a stop on my trip; the only cities I had seen were Ghent and Ostend.  Thankfully, I had caught the right train.

Bruges is a very pretty city; it's one of the best-preserved Medieval towns in Europe, thanks to having escaped much of the destruction of World Wars I and II.  My hostel was a ways away from the train station, so it took me some time to drop off my stuff.  My roommates, unusually for the time, were all in their room after I got done with dinner, and I got to know them.  One was a Colombian woman who had been living in London for about four years, while the other two were backpackers from Perth, of all places.  They were all pretty nice, though the Perth guys had to ask what language they spoke around there.  (I heard them the next day saying that the guy working at the hostel from the US Virgin Islands didn't sound like they thought because he didn't sound Jamaican.  Uh, yeah.  The USVI are not Jamaica.)  They were pretty nice, though.

I gave them hints on what to visit in the US, as they mentioned they were interested in going there later that year.  They said they had New York City, Texas (for a music festival), and Los Angeles on their itinerary.  Okay, sure; depending on the length of your stay, you have to go to NYC.  It's not actually the US, but it's definitely important.  Texas, well, they were there for a music festival, and I hope for their sake it was in Austin or San Antonio.  Los Angeles?  Skippable, in my estimation.

My advice to them was this: Chicago should be one of their most important destinations.  Think about it.  What other place in the US offers the combination of (1) a city-sized city with tons and tons of stuff to do and (2) being in the Midwest, empirically the most US-like region of the US?  In Chicago, you can have your exciting events and your folksy Americana all in one complete package.  And it offers a good public transit system (for the US) to boot!  I also gave a shout-out to the West Coast north of Los Angeles.  They seemed like guys who'd really enjoy the San Francisco/Portland/Seattle axis, particularly because they mentioned they were hoping to go to Vancouver (which I'm also hoping to go to sometime!).

We decided to go out to "da club" later that night.  Okay, well, it wasn't a real club.  It was just a bar that had music.  But I still enjoyed being able to dance.  My dancing won several approving stares, particularly my hip gyrations.  I guess being obsessed with hula dancing as a kindergartener helped me out with that.  Some guys even came over and, having clearly been dared to do so, started dancing with me.  One of them started a dance off, but my ridiculous flailing quickly put a stop to that, as they proclaimed me the victor.  They were amused enough by my dancing that they ended up taking a couple of pictures with me.  I don't actually claim that I'm a good dancer, mind you.  But I like seeing others happy, and, based on the fact that people were entertained enough by me that they were taking pictures of my dancing, well, I guess I succeeded that night!

On the way back, I chatted with the Colombian woman about her boy troubles.  She had this Texan, you see, who had been trying to seduce her.  It sounded like he was kind of succeeding, and, from her testimony, anyway, he seemed to deserve her praise - he was quite kind to her, and her coworkers kept texting her during the evening about how he had been asking for her at the restaurant she was waitressing in.  She also kept mentioning a British guy she was also kind of flirting with, but I told her to go with the Texan.  I'm not sure if she followed my advice.  We grabbed some fries on the way home, then fell asleep pretty soon after getting in to our dorm.  Whew.