Calling the Kettle Black

Last night I had the opportunity to Skype with my cousin, something we have not had a chance to do in some time.  We swapped stories and discussed our own intercultural experiences (she came to Europe four years ago with school) and came to the agreement that, despite some radical and subtle differences between American and European culture, neither was good nor bad, but rather, that each just IS.

Today I did something I have yet to do in Amsterdam: I went out as a tourist, with the intent of functioning as a tourist.  What’s more, it was raining, so I didn’t go by bike, I just walked, something else I have yet to do.  It’s much easier to get lost on foot, and that’s what I intended to do.  My first stop was one that I have been meaning to make since the day I first arrived in Amsterdam and that was at St Nicolaaskerk (St Nicholas Church), Saint Nick being Amsterdam’s patron saint.  One of the first things I did in Holland was take in the Rijksmuseum, which is one of the many museums in A’dam with both an emphasis on Dutch history AND art simultaneously.  Here I learned to recognize historical emblems around the city such as VOC (the Dutch East India Company) and got some deeper background on the royal family than Wikipedia could ever provide.  A number of exhibits also covered the reign of Protestantism in Holland and the Catholic struggle therein.  With Protestantism as the dominant religion at the time, many Catholic churches here were disregarded and now only exist in a tourist or museum capacity.  For this reason, I was shocked to find that St Nicolaaskerk was just as beautiful as many that I have seen in my travels around Italy and France, albeit much smaller.  Next I went to the Oude Kerk (Old Church) which, though under restoration at the moment, was also rather stunning, The New Church was even more so.  Finally, the Royal Palace has just been reopened after some allegedly extensive renovations as well.  This too was spectacularly on par with other palaces I’ve traveled to the past few months and was as interesting as Versailles, if not more so.  In keeping with my tourist day, I ventured to an outdoor shopping center (not unlike downtown crossing) that is rather touristy, and one which I have made an effort to avoid the past few months for this reason.  Here I came across many offshoots leading to traditional style houses and shops and the entrance to the Begijnhof, a Beguin convent of sorts, which houses not only one of the oldest Dutch enclosure of houses, but among them is also housed the oldest wooden house in Amsterdam.  On the way, I stopped in and had a sandwich at this cozy, amazing bakery adjacent to the red light district.

Yesterday I blogged that Amsterdam upset me because it is so overrun with tourism that such history and culture become overshadowed by the overwhelming tourist industry.  I also said that the weather in February got me down a bit and that, in general, Amsterdam was not what I had expected.

To hell with what I expected.

Who am I to have expected anything from Amsterdam? That was never the point of coming here.  The point was to be transplanted outside my comfort zone and learn about a culture while simultaneously examining a subculture.  All the things that I did while traveling this last month made me think “wow, I wish Amsterdam was like this.”  Well it always was, I just had to put in the effort to look for it.  I got so caught up in trying to NOT be a tourist that I missed all of the alcoves that were hidden behind the fluorescent lights; its neither good nor bad, it just is.

That is my European epiphany.  Finally.  I’m just glad I had it now and not two weeks from now.

That’s what I love about being in Amsterdam: nothing was ever handed to me, I always had to go find it.  I’ve been a firm believer that each IF student has their own unique IF experience tailored to their exact needs at this point in their lives.  Some have never been outside the US or to Europe, some have never lived beyond their parents’ house or on their own, some have duel-citizenship already, and some go on a safari.  No one experience is any better than another, but much like the respective locales where they occur, they just are.  This was mine.

I knew when I first selected Holland that I would be without a host family so this did not come as a surprise to me.  What did bother me was that anyone else who didn’t have a host family at least had roommates.  I was dumped in a three person apartment by myself with a couch, a bed, and a TV that isn’t connected to anything.  Lonely as this was at first, I’ve realized that I needed it. To have a host family for me would have been easy, it would have been in my comfort zone.  This was hard. My IF experience, my challenge, my comfort zone, was that I have to function for three months with no one around and no schedule.  If you know me, you know that is not me.

Challenge accepted.

 Typical of my time at Suffolk, everything on my trip happened at just the right time.  Even the books I was reading were apropos to my situation at the time. It starts on the eve of Thanksgiving 2010, when, at the Archies football game, I ran into a long time family friend who asked “how is school going?”  I explained to him my project and my plans for the spring and he responded, “that’s interesting, my brother-in-law coaches an amateur team in Holland” though he could not remember which.  In January I received my housing assignment.  It was about a ten minute drive from said Brother-in-law, who coached a team in the Amsterdam Pirates organization.  My first night in my new apartment I was fortunate enough to meet my neighbors, perhaps the only people in the neighborhood who seemed to be my age. Within the month I had a nice regiment of going to the ballfield and coming home with enough time to eat with my neighbors, all the time reading Bullpen Gospels, about life in minor league baseball and why Dirk Hayhurst kept playing.  By the end of February I had all but finished my project, at which point I began my travel with a trip to Hamburg, simultaneously beginning Slaughterhouse V, a carpe diem piece focused in part around WWII Germany.  As my travels continued, I dove into On The Road, another carpe diem book that helped reassure me that a confusing time traveling was not uncommon.  So often I had worried that I was never having a “this is the greatest place, I am never going home” feeling that so many before me and with me seemed to be having.  In the end I don’t think that that was ever the point.  Study abroad offers an opportunity to examine a culture and attempt to become acclimated with it; no one said that a student studying in Amsterdam would become Dutch.  I don’t think it’s possible, and that’s ok.  Every ex-pat that I ever met while over here, whether they had been here for twenty years or twenty minutes, would slip back into typical dialects and vernacular by the end of our conversation.  No, rather I believe that someone traveling may be able to come abroad and have an experience, but that one cannot truly learn from that experience without then returning; leaving a comfort zone, becoming acclimated, and then returning to a place that has inherently become equally as foreign.  Certainly, today I had an epiphany, my temples were resonating with excitement for this revelation and my love for Amsterdam overflowing and exploding from every pore, but this was part of the experience.  This was a degree of personal enlightenment which I am now responsible to apply to the remainder of my trip and then my time when I return home.  An experience I must recognize the rest of my life.  In this way I learn.

I’m realizing as I write this, that this is my last blog post as the Illiterate English Major, well, almost last, I will still post my March travel and my baseball posts, which are both in the works and will be completed following opening day, but otherwise I don’t pretend to believe that my ideas have any place on the internet (though I might follow through with a sports blog this summer). The purpose of this blog was to keep a record of what I did for the three months and I put it all online so that my friends and family might be able to follow along and keep in touch.  For the past three months almost I have spent it talking to myself on trains, trailing off on tangent lines of thought every night in bed, and carrying on silent conversations with my reflection in lonely train windows. 

But today was different.  Today I realized that Amsterdam is my favorite place I have traveled to because I actually traveled there and learned about as many corners of the city as I could.  I broke my travel down monthly: February was for my project, March was for travel, April was for Holland.  My project, however, could not monopolize all of February.  Instead, I spent my free time attempting to search obscure aspects of the city, and trying to avoid being a tourist.  I went to museums and watched chess; visited microbrews and listened to jazz.  I skipped a few steps, when I should have been a tourist, I was trying to do my best Dutchman impression.  March reminded me of this.  I was the Efficient Tourist and saw Hamburg, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Vinci, Rome, Endinburgh, St. Andrews, London, Cork, and Paris all in about three weeks.  It reminded me how enjoyable it is to be a tourist as long as you do it right.  Tourist spots are such for a reason, they are the important highlights of a region, though may not be the only things there are to see, that is why it is important to remember that it is not where you travel, but how you get there, and what you do once you are there.  You can see the sites without being touristy.  For example, I’ve thought a lot about what I would say to someone in Boston if they asked me what I’ve been asking locals here, “where should I go?”  Go to Fanueil Hall, go to the North End, eat at the Union Oyster House, and be inconvenienced by the MBTA.  But when you go to Quincy Market, don’t buy a Boston or Harvard sweatshirt, in the North End, don’t go to Mikes (Bova’s closes never), and on the T, just don’t put a twenty in the machine for a four dollar ride.  Traveling as such was so enjoyable that I wondered why I hadn’t traveled as such in Holland.  With my timeframe finally in a crunch and my project already taken care of (though I do plan on traveling to places based on what games are there that day) What were the highlights? What do I want to see, but have yet to get there? And then, just get up and get there, the same as I always have.  It’s helped me to see Europe as best as I can. 

Yes, today was different.  Today I met the eyes of my reflection in a mirror and for the first time in months…I laughed.  I giggled at the site of myself, worn down after three months of travel, hair uncut and blown around in the wind of a dark, yet fulfilling day, and jacket tattered from the demands of weather in different climates and time zones.  I laughed at the reality that I had just finished backpacking Europe and that my travel plans had yielded the results I had wanted.  I was happy to be where I am and loved the places where I was.  Everything, without my knowledge, had slipped into place; events, over which I have no control, occurred once more in spontaneous perfection.  I’ve planned a lot of trips in my life: Cape Cod, Florida, Bowdoin, but this was the best, and, in the end, this one I could not control.

I owe this, in large part to my family, my parents especially.  In addition to the financial help they have given me in my years at school (I believe the quote was, “you’re only job is to get good grades, we will make sure the rest is taken care of”), they also bred me to recognize what is important in life and to recognize the priority of nuance and majesty.  It started when my dad took me on a walk of the freedom trail, or to see Air Force One take off from Logan instead of going ice skating (by my count, I’ve been ice skating much more in the time since, but have yet to see a presidential jet).

It started when my mom explained to me what “window shopping” was on our yearly trip to Kellerhaus and the Lakes Region as a kid.

It started when we traveled into Boston each year to walk around and see the Common decked in Christmas lights, taking the commuter rail in “because it was special.”

This is my last blog post because, while I have enjoyed writing these and hope that you have enjoyed reading them, they take some time and I have been using them to try to talk through my thought process each day.  Today, I realize what I have been trying to talk my way through each day and no longer need to write it out towards that ends.  I will rather, keep a personal journal of what I do and recount those tales upon my return.  I need to talk when I get home, and what I need from all of you reading, is just to ask.  You have read my stories and heard my thoughts, but again, home is no longer a comfort zone: my newly defined comfort zone is that of solidarity and, though I enjoy it, I love the sociable person I am and I am afraid that I will be more silent when I come home.  I am afraid that in conversation, I will again trail into an internal tangent.  But again, in an effort to learn from my experience, I must re-acclimate to my new surroundings and once again redefine my comfort zone. 

Baseball opens this weekend between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the rest of the league opens next week.  That’s all I get to see, I have a conference over Easter weekend and the following weekend is Queensday.  I fly home that weekend and will land early enough to hopefully see my grandparents, maybe get a late lunch and a haircut.  Errands will include fixing my watch and buying some new pants finally, and at last I will get to watch an episode or two of how I met your mother, but the next day the world goes on.  I’ll wake up, drive my sister to school so I can have the car, go to the gym, go to breakfast to see friends, and hopefully umpire a game (if it’s not snowing), but most importantly, this English major will once again be literate. 

Thanks for reading along everyone, I can’t believe how quickly that time went by, but I am happy to be returning to you with the experiences I have had and the stories to share.

Den Haag

First of all: Holland has a serious case of the “Monday’s”

I first noticed this when I needed to top up my phone because it ran out of money in the heat of an emergency and the store where I buy more money didn’t open until 1pm.  And it isn’t like everyone works on Sunday and takes Monday off, Sunday is still a day of rest, shops just say the hell with it on Monday and let people sleep in.  Wednesday is a half day; sometimes Tuesday or Thursday too.

I only have a limited amount of time to finish seeing Holland in the spring as I have planned to (I should have known; “don’t wait ‘til tomorrow, tomorrow might rain”) and so I kicked off the Dutch traveling today with a trip to Den Haag.  Den Haag houses a number of notable attractions including the Dutch capital building (Amsterdam is “the capital” city; I call shenanigans), Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring , and the MC Escher museum, amongst others.  However, we made it to the Escher museum, which was obviously closed from a couple of blocks away and so we made our way towards other such attractions.  No Dice.  All museums listed hours between Tuesday and Sunday, no Monday.  Fortunately there is baseball in Den Haag and I have an excuse to spend another 20 euro on the roundtrip ticket.

As for the rest of the day, I was content to just walk around; Den Haag is everything I expected and wanted Amsterdam to be.  Amsterdam is too touristy.  I know that I have achieved my “become acclimated with the local culture” goal because I have developed opinions based on local events and debate that would impact me if I was actually a resident of Amsterdam.  For one, I keep getting mail about a debate over the pros and cons of having a metro line to Amsterdam Noord (north) that extends all the way to Zuid (south).  YES PLEASE…switching three different buses and trams for hours on end to get to baseball…Second, before I came over, a debate had sparked regarding locals wanting to limit coffeeshop sales (did you know they sell pot in Amsterdam?) to strictly Dutch citizens.  At first glance, why would anyone suggest that? It would kill a thriving and abundant tourist industry.

Please limit coffeeshop sales to Dutch citizens.

I’m not saying the party scene in Amsterdam isn’t fantastic, the weekends…and maybe a weeknight or three…are amazing, but anyone who has ever come back from Amsterdam saying ‘THAT WAS AMAZING’ was only here for a weekend.  They are right, it WAS amazing, but two and a half months in, the fluorescent lights get in the way of all the cool buildings, and you realize that there might be one or two more “men” in the red light district than you may have originally thought and the whole atmosphere overshadows all the culture and history…the scaffolding on the Royal Palace doesn’t help either.

Den Haag was completely unlike that.  There were no fluorescent coffeeshops, no red-lit windows, no tourists (probably because they knew everything was closed) and it was just quiet and attractive and authentic.  The architecture was not as overrun with canals, but still the facades of the houses and such were just as abundant.  First we made a stop off at a school so Ashlee could take care of some work, but after we sat in a park and looked over a map and then went off to find a museum.  Instead we stumbled upon a deer reservation…right next to the central train station.  After we wandered some more and stopped in a few delis we made it over to the royal palace and House of Oranje. 

Next, we walked over to the one museum-esque place that WAS open, the Madurodam, which is a scale model world of all the main attractions in Holland, from the Palace at Dam Square, to the cheese market at Alkmaar.  Along the way, we were frightened by a two-minute-long air raid siren, or at least that’s what it sounded like.  No one stopped and nothing changed, aside from us, we were overcome with confusion as to the noise.  I thought perhaps that it signaled noon, but it was far too obnoxious and lasted for two minutes.  Then it stopped and all was as it had been without consequence or explanation.

The Madurodam was pretty cool and very detailed as far as the buildings, but the landscape and interactivity couldn’t hold a candle to the emergency-responding fire engines and functioning aircraft at the Miniature Wunderland, but still worth the take.  Next we made our way over to the beach…not quite warm enough just yet, but a nice place to grab some lunch and warm enough for some ice cream and at least a walk along the pier.  Hopefully I will be able to get back in the next few weeks for a ballgame and to take in the museums.

Otherwise, the weather here has warmed up significantly, to put it in perspective, Amsterdam weather is about 2-3 weeks ahead of the average New England weather (average meaning not this winter) and so a walk on the beach was not an unpopular venture today.  However, the cold is the result of a storm coming in tomorrow night, but that appears to be the only blemish on an otherwise amazing next week.  This past Saturday was the pinnacle; at about 65 deg F Amsterdam was abuzz.  Following a walk to the hardware store with Daan and a few balcony beers later I ventured into town to meet some baseball friends at the Vondel Park.  The place was a mob unlike any I have seen in Boston.  This was like Boston Common on the first, nice, April Saturday mixed with the esplanade on the fourth of July mixed with a rally where Oprah gives out lifetime-supplies of happiness.  People were in every corner of the park riding bikes, drinking beers, barbequing and just generally lounging.

Most people I was with said it was only a fraction of the crowd to expect on Queensday.

Culture Curve (Amended)

Positive feedback thusfar from yesterdays installment, and I thank you for that, but I looked it over and I felt that I needed to complete it a bit.

Two things that I wanted to say on the topic: The first is that, while this kind of travel is the way everything should be, it is not the way things are.  I love having this experience, but I’m starting to miss my real life just because I had a plan.  In the past few weeks I have strongly considered picking up a second locale and continuing my research in South Africa in the fall.  This is not in the plan and I understand that having “a plan” is entirely against the point of what InterFuture strives to create and perpetuate, but I think something that gets lost is that, while such an experience would be ideal, InterFuture truly exists to give students who will appreciate it, the opportunity TO live like this for a semester; the opportunity to make their lives something utopian, if only for a year at most.  South Africa would be amazing, but would completely put my life on hold and probably overwhelm me to the point of life-ruining if I DID do it.  My plan the last three years has been as such: Go to college, go abroad (junior year), get degree, try to make it as an umpire, *succeed: become umpire* *fail: fall back on the number of fail-safes created in college*  That plan has surpassed all expectations: go to college turned into go to Washington for a week, be inducted into two honor societies, go on a self-directed study abroad, graduate with honors in English; fail-safes include becoming a journalist.  I love my project. South Africa doesn’t fit. I would have to pick up summer courses which would interrupt other parts of my life plan: umpire high school ball and return to Boys’ State yearly.  These too are things I love, they make me who I am and help to define my passions, they have for the last 5 years.   What is life without passion, Ashlee and I discussed this at the June conference.  You need passion for InterFuture, but you don’t need InterFuture for passion.  I will return to staff InterFuture, I love it too much, and I always give back to a program that gives to me.  IF is up there with Boys’ State and umping in Cooperstown, and going to Suffolk it has become something that exploits my strengths and helps me overcome my weaknesses.  Most importantly, I am always learning with these programs.

South Africa also plays into the second point I want to discuss.  The other thing past scholars warned of was that, while we may be homesick, it will come at a time when it hits us that there are only three weeks left in our travel (17 days until the conference to be accurate) and that fact has become overwhelming.  My plan for this trip is still right on track: Feb – project month, March – travel month, April – Holland month.  I wanted to do Holland when it was warm and nice out.  The tulips are in bloom.  I realize already how much I will miss Holland as soon as I step on that plane and there is so much I still want to see.  I will of course, I am the efficient tourist (will explain that in my trip post) and I see what I say I am going to see, it’s just hard because when I said I was going to see Rome, I knew that when it was over I was coming back to Amsterdam, when I’m done with Amsterdam, my visa expires.  I think South Africa was me trying to avoid coming home, realizing that I was doing this well and not wanting to leave, but I HAVE to leave.  You can have an experience coming abroad, but I don’t believe that you can LEARN from it without returning home and I am excited to learn from it and see how this HAS improved me.  Picking up another semester would be me trying to claim permanence; trying to make this my real life, but it never can be.  Because of that, it’s not worth giving up Boys’ State, giving up umpiring (as I would need work around school), and giving up my plans.  In the end, I just want to do this time right, to KEEP doing it right and as well as I have so far.  In June I said I didn’t want to do a second locale for so many reasons that still apply today and now there are even more reasons, the chief reason being that I care about my project uniquely in Holland, not somewhere else. Now it is time for me to recognize that, see Holland, and attend opening day next week. 

Then back to the real world.

Culture Curve

The recap of my euro trip is in the works (it’s very long) but for the time being, this is what is on my mind at the moment.

In January, at our conference, InterFuture had us draw “culture curves”  which plotted how we would feel being on locale week by week and then for the two weeks after we get home.  To this point mine has been right on target.

For the first two weeks, I said that I would be somewhat depressed, as I usually get homesick at the beginning of a trip rather than in the middle or at the end.  This, with no help from the weather and loneliness at the time, ended up being the case and although I was having fun, I was rather homesick.  Next, I said that in the weeks following that I would start to make friends and really spend time getting into my project once I was adjusted to my new surroundings.  The next high point of my trip would be traveling Europe and the peak of my excitement would be April when it gets nice and baseball really starts up.  Coming home, I assumed, would be bittersweet because I was finally watching baseball and now I would have that end of trip feeling, but at least I would see my friends and family again.

By the time I started traveling at the beginning of March, I had my project all but finished and had hit the amount of interviews I had intended to conduct, so I was traveling with a clean conscience which made my travel even better.  Being home now, I am thoroughly excited with how warm it is (sorry for the snow Boston) and getting ready to travel through Holland and make my final push through the next month before I come back to Boston.  I am amazed at just how accurate my curve was, but things are starting happen that were not predicted. Not by me anyway. 

Past IFers warned of subconsciously missing normal things and hitting a point where you become overwhelmed with the nuances of your local.  For example, one staff member recounted that she was tired of the amount of butter used in Ireland; essentially just everyday things that after two months away from home begin to wear on you.  Mine was Heineken. In Paris, Ashlee and I got caught in the rain and when we returned to our hostel we just wanted to change into dry clothes and have a drink.  When I got down into the hostel bar I looked at the tap: Heineken and Amstel.  Nope.  In the fridge a bunch of Italian and Mexican bottled beers.  Nope.  On the side there was a row of Budweiser, one of the first times I had seen it in Europe and for the first time I caved and had something American in Europe.

They told me it would happen, that around this time I would need a stash of American candy or to go to a McDonalds or something like that.  Comfort food.  To be honest, I don’t venture often to the golden arches in America and when I do go here, I still get a McKroket – typical Dutch fast food.  It’s getting to that point.  With each day in Amsterdam I love it more and more, but more time in Amsterdam means more time away from home, which means I’m hitting a point where I really notice that I’m not home and I’m starting to itch to go back.

Other things are getting to that point too.  I just ran out of shampoo and face wash and had to buy more soap, etc.  My pants are becoming worn and faded and the rest of my wardrobe makes it clear that I’ve been living out of a suitcase for two months.  Also, that nice little nest egg in my bank account that I left with is significantly smaller than when I arrived here. 

This is the way life should be.  If everyone had the opportunity to travel so freely like this, the world would be a little less violent and a little more friendly.  Unfortunately, this isn’t real life.  People have to work, people have to make money and go to school and do all the things I’ve avoided the last two months….I just lost my train of thought; as I write this my neighbor is reading me a news article about UN employees who have been decapitated due to an American burning the Koran or some such bullshit in the real world. So it goes. I’ve spent the last two months living in my head trying to make sense of all of these experiences, but right now The Illiterate English Major has nothing intelligent to say.

Dutchland to Deutschland

For those of you who have been following consistently, A. thank you, but B. I apologize for not having been posting equally as consistently.  The reason being, I have been in Germany since Sunday night – Hamburg to be exact – it was my first time planning and traveling internationally on my own.

Scenario:

I really wanted to see two musical performances while I was abroad: one from any artist I like who might be touring Europe at the moment, one from some local performance.  I accomplished the latter by stumbling upon Café Alto outside Leidseplein, which provides a nightly venue for local jazz talents.  Fortunately for me, I found my solution to the former back around October when I saw a Facebook ad for Ben Folds in England.  As it turned out, he was on an entire European tour, including Amsterdam.  However, I didn’t want to put off traveling to hang around Amsterdam to see a performance I’ve attended three times prior in Boston.  Luckily, he was in Hamburg, as is a fellow IF-er, so I had lodging and a concert buddy.  My European travel was ready to begin.

The concert was a Monday night; because when I think “night out,” I think “Monday” (I miss wing night…or wings in general really).  The challenge here became finding a reasonably-priced means of transit that would also get me to Hamburg before the show.  When I say reasonably-priced, I don’t mean the 80 euro flight that became 240 after taxes and fees with a 10 hour layover in Prague (Dan and Ben, I love you, but not for 3x my flight cost). The best answer was a train 7(19:00) from Amsterdam that would reach Hamburg at midnight (0:17).

Next challenge: the public transit in Hamburg shuts down at….TWELVE THIRTY, JUST LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE.  So, with that in mind, I had a very tiny margin for error.  I would have to get to baseball practice on Sunday afternoon, have practice, have interviews, get home, pack, and make it back to Centraal Station (which translates to Central Station) in time for my train. Done.

Next: I have to change trains in “Hilversum.” If one train leaves Centraal Station at 7 headed towards Hilversum, which is 17 minutes away, and another train leaves Hilversum at 7:21, how much time do you have to change trains?  So much for my margin of error.

So I get to Centraal early enough to ask a station attendant where my first train picks up since my ticket didn’t list a train from Amsterdam to Hilversum.  She was kind enough to print off a list of all the platform numbers for my entire trip asking if I wanted to take “the next train to Hilversum” which was at 6:56 (I’ve been rounding).  I grabbed a sandwich and went to find my platform, where, at 6:26, a train to Amersfoort via Hilversum approached.  I thought perhaps I had misread the ticket, but no, it was 6:26 and my train was for 6:56 and why would the station attendant tell me the next train was a half hour after this train, when the next train was clearly THIS train? So I got on.

We went along for a while, me being constantly aware and rather nervous that I had gotten on the wrong train, but comfortable because these trains are not the MBTA and comfort is possible.  Then I noticed the train pass through “Diemen” (German for "the men") and immediately started to freak out.

What if this wasn’t the right train?

Hilversum was a junction on the map, what if “via” just meant passes right through Hilversum?

Why didn’t I just chance the four minute platform switch?

We stopped in Hilversum, my next train would be arriving on the same platform in 27 minutes.

When I did get on my connecting train, I noticed that the seats were numbered.  Unable to translate my ticket, I asked the ONE person in my car if there was reserved seating.  He looked around and said “I really don’t think it matters.”

Still nervous about where my next train change would be (Osnabruek), I settled into a seat and played around with my ipod for a bit.  As I did, the conductor came over the intercom, “dutch dutch dutch dutch Osnabruek dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch something about coffee (in dutch) dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch more dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch dutch”

Then,

“good evening, thank you for riding with us, there is coffee in the dining car, the next station is Amersfoort.”

No.

Liar. That is not what you told everyone else. I heard you say my station, what don’t you want me to know?

Nevertheless, the second change went off without incident.  I had a half hour until my next train, so that switch was a bit more relaxed.  Speaking of relaxed: The seats on the final train were amazing. Everything about the final train was amazing.  I stepped into a comfortably-lit car where passengers dozed in seats with built-in pillows.  When I took my seat, I reclined it to read and almost fell asleep; it curved in all the right places.  Such comfort reminded me of other incidents of comfort: the hammock-swing-chair at the antique shop in Vermont, reading on the love seat on the porch in New Hampshire, napping on the couch in my apartment…

I could have died there happy.  I would like to think that if Mitch Albom is right, and Heaven is a scene of extreme comfort, that this will be my Heaven, sitting in that seat on that train with my family, loved ones, and impactful people from my life (both known and unkown) seated in the coach around me as scenes from my life pass by outside the window; my chair appropriately faced towards the back of the train.

Mussolini must still be alive and living in Germany, because these trains could not have been more accurately timed.  We made Hamburg at exactly 0:17 with plenty of time to catch a bus.  The next day we returned to the station to walk around Hamburg, going to a German beer garden for lunch.  I know why Uter is fat.

Fun fact: apparently in the German airings of The Simpsons, Uter is Austrian.

We then headed over to the Ben Folds show at Dock’s Club on the Reeperbahn (which houses Hamburg’s red light district), around the corner from The Indra and Kaiserkeller where The Beatles started their gigs. Gives a new meaning to “Norwegian Wood” (stole, that from an email with my parents…) We ended up watching a fantastic show from the front row [ we had a good view at the Ben Folds show too ;-) ].

Jokes aside, let’s talk about prostitutes.  The infamous red light district in Amsterdam is rather underwhelming.  The women are clothed (which I didn’t realize was the case) albeit in lingerie, etc, and rather unattractive for the most part.  It isn’t uncomfortable so much as just unappealing.  It isn’t limited to the RLD either, you could pass these windows just about anywhere around the Center Ring of the city.  But that’s just it, they are in windows.  They tap at them to get your attention, but otherwise it’s harmless.  Not so in Hamburg.  They are RIGHT. THERE. On the street, no windows.  They can come up to you and have a conversation and walk you to the train station.  I was so much more uncomfortable there than I’ve ever been walking through Amsterdam and the unusual part about that was that they WERE clothed – again, in electric pink jumpsuits so you still know what’s up – but it was below freezing, so they were WELL clothed and still it was extremely uncomfortable.

Moving on to something I DO like.  The next day we went to Minatur Wunderland, a warehouse full of model trains and other transportation and scenery.  I had met a man from Frankfurt at a couchsurfing event a week earlier, when I told him I was going to Hamburg, he asked “if I liked small trains” at first I thought I should stop drinking immediately, then realized what he was really asking.

Hell yes I like small trains. 

I used to have a LEGO book that I read from cover to cover every day.  I grew up playing BRIO with my dad most nights.  I like trains of any size.

The setup was amazing. The first room we walked into was pitch black creating a night landscape for the Switzerland scene housed in the room.  Slowly, however, the dark lights faded into dawn and then daylight and then entire exhibit changed as the exhibit-city woke up and began buzzing in full force.  By the end of this room I was more than satified for my price of admission, but upstairs there were a good six or seven more room-sized models. Each room was a different country influence starting with switzerland, then germany, america, norway, et al. When I say that they have model transport of every kind, I mean everything from trains to floating scale cruise ships, even an airport with planes taking off and landing then taxi-ing to a gate, all programmed.  Enjoyable as our travel "around the world in 80 minutes" was, one shocking moment came when a scale model of the palace of Versailles caught on fire and started smoking! ...at which point, small emergency vehicles zipped through their exhibit up to the palace to handle the situation.  They even made sure to signal with their directionals.

On the final day we went to the Beatles museum that they have on the Reeperbahn, also a bit underwhelming.  Though some parts were really interesting - the exhibits ABOUT Hamburg were cool - a lot of areas were a bit forced and cliché, such as the last room which was designed like a yellow submarine, just for the sake of making the reference.  The exhibit culminated in a gift shop that could have fit in a scene at Minatur Wunderland.

Italy next.

Tentative Conclusions

My blog description promises culture AND curveballs and I realize that I have been slacking on the latter in favor of descriptions of over-abundant aviary populations and apologetic bicyclists. So, for those of you curious about the state of baseball in Holland, these are some of the tentative conclusions I’ve discovered in my interviews and observation this month.

Firstly, I must address, the most difficult of my project - since August – has been truly defining what “amateur” refers to.  In the US it is easy to point to a professional baseball player and say “he is a professional,” noting a semi-pro ballplayer is a bit more difficult and non-descript, but for the most part any team in independent ball is probably a good barometer of that, but as for amateur, the boundaries are not as clearly defined.  You have the Cape Cod League with collegiate athletes who are amateurs in the sense that they have not yet turned pro, and you have the Cranberry League where you have amateurs in the sense that they have given up on ambitions of becoming pro, but are good enough to still compete.  Furthermore there is beer league softball which can be even more informal and unstructured than any other level (hoping to find one of those in Boston this summer, for my own amusement)

In Holland, however –

Sidebar:  My project is now between Holland and New England, not the US and Netherlands.  There is a difference.  Holland is in the Netherlands and made up of Noord (North) and Zuid (South) Holland which are only two provinces out of the twelve that make up the Netherlands.  Because the most famous towns and cities (The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc) are in Holland, most people refer to The Netherlands as synonymous with Holland, such as today’s article about a 7 foot Dutch pitcher from Oss, The Netherlands.  Oss is not “South Holland,” it’s in North Brabant, which is in the southern part of The Netherlands.  Sure, ask someone from Holland and they will have no problem agreeing that The Netherlands and Holland are the same, but ask someone from one of the other ten provinces and it can get pretty animated and impassioned.  Because I have interviews from Holland natives and will only get interviews from teams in New England, I will be narrowing my focus in this way.

-- teams are a bit more difficult to categorize.  EVERY team is amateur and every level is within the same club.  Take for example, the Amsterdam Pirates.  They have teams set up by age group with teams that are the equivalent of little league, babe ruth, pony, legion, and Cape-Cod-League-amateur.  It’s like a perpetual AAU team and when you get to a level that isn’t quite good enough to be head-class, they have satellite programs which are much like the regular amateur leagues in the US.

 Because this is so difficult to differentiate, and really it seemed as though I should be comparing the latter group – the satellite program – with teams in the US exclusively, I have made the executive decision to focus on all players encompassed within my Project Plan.  I went back into the work I’ve done the past nine months and looked at what I had planned to do and how I defined that.  My definition of amateur is any player, paid or unpaid, who plays baseball while simultaneously maintaining another job.  Here that is everyone, even at the national level (which is awesome because they practice in Amsterdam and so I don’t have to track them down haha) while in Boston, players in the CCL most likely have host families for the summer so the only after-work game would be in the Cranberry and Park Leagues, etc. 

So far while being here, I’ve noticed that baseball seems to benefit from being a minority sport. Almost all of the players I have interviewed point to soccer as being too competitive and too intense, to the point that it is un-enjoyable.  This is not to say that none of them LIKE soccer (though some have admitted that they hate it), more so that there is too much pressure to perform because everyone is trying to go pro with it and so if they do play, they prefer a pickup game with friends.  Others, say that they hate soccer because it is too simple, there isn’t the strategy and thought that baseball provides (see, I knew it wasn’t just me).  Most plan on playing until work or family knocks them out of the game.  There isn’t the “this IS my relaxation time” mentality that I have found with baseball in the states.  Rather, people often say that baseball is time-consuming; taking up weekends and time after work.  The sport here is an afterthought, they enjoy playing it and it's social, but they would rather socialize with their teammates by going out for a beer the night before (or sometimes right before) the game.

When it comes to drinking, even the practice facility has a bar.  It’s like a VFW of sorts where people come to watch practices or socialize after them.  I’ve even conducted an interview in this manner more than once.  It makes the interviews themselves more social and informal and has led to conversations rather than interviews.  This is often where parents spend their time during practices, grabbing a beer or tea and walking into the warm room to socialize and watch.  As far as why people play baseball, my main finding is that it IS a much more relaxed outlet for friendly competition.  Friendly, here, is the most important word.  If someone messes up, it’s not a problem, nor is it held against them, it just happened and the game continues.  People are inherently competitive, but not necessarily intensely competitive.  It wouldn’t be a game without competition, but the adage rings true here: it’s just a game.

Road Rage and Other Intercultural Phenomena

I watched this happen.

While waiting for the ferry last night, I witnessed one bicyclist, en route to the Buiksloterwegveer Ferry (adjacent to my own “Ij Plein”), T-boned another bike being walked alone by its driver towards the Ij Plein ferry.  There were no variables involved here.  No pedestrians to be suddenly avoided or a rush to get to the ferry as the gangplank was raised.  The weather was even fair (much unlike tonight where it’s snowing.  I can’t avoid it).  No, with only witnesses surrounding the immediate area, this woman plowed directly into the center of an essentially immobile bicycle, knocking it over to the point that the plastic covering the chain cracked and was left dangling from the pedal.

Being a Bostonian, I can’t help but rubber-neck, a cultural norm which is not lost on the Dutch.  We all waited to catch a glimpse of the scorn the bike’s owner was certain to demonstrate with a well-executed stink eye and perhaps a select word or two.  Surely, the broken bike and his own discomfort (having been knocked over in the process) would certainly warrant such a reaction, after all, trams avoid bikes better than this girl.

But no: he laughed.  He stood up, looked at the offender, and laughed.  My Dutch isn’t very good, but I’m pretty sure he even apologized, the proceeded to force the rest of the shattered plastic from the chain and went over to meet up with his buddy and continue to laugh and recount the scene.

Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore.

Damn…that analogy doesn’t work for me since Ben (another IF-er) is actually FROM Kansas.  And judging from the pictures he and Dan have posted, the Scarecrow was trying to point to Prague.

Anyway, back to Amsterdam.

It’s school vacation week, and the Dutch take vacations like it is their job (….wait) so even if I DID want to be a tourist today (and I DID have every intention of seeing the Picasso exhibit at the van Gogh museum) I couldn’t.  Time for another round of “Dutch Mafia.”

I followed only one bicyclist today before arriving at a street vendor that I keep passing by train and meaning to pay a visit.  Lucky me the merchant specialized in herring, a Dutch delicacy, which I am more than ok with.  Determined to put some of my Dutch into practice (again, not good) I placed my first order in the native tongue: “een haring  alstublieft.”  Apparently I must have said it correctly (though I question my spelling [of course I looked it up]) because the vendor responded with Dutch….

Now normally, you can try speaking Dutch and they appreciate it, but to be nice, they will respond in English, knowing you wouldn’t know the response anyway.  However, the problem is, even when I DO manage a correct Dutch phrase, he will respond in Dutch and I still won’t know what he is saying.  Hoping not to tip my hand, I thought ahead and knowing that the next part of the cadence is usually “would you like pickles and onions?” I nodded politely and mumbled an English, “yes, please.” 

…Apparently that wasn’t an option.   He had been asking if I wanted it for here or to go, but my constant approval and nods were not enough to convey that I did want it here (with pickles and onions…) and the jig was up.  The rest of the conversation was in English.

Toto, I’m not ordering wings in Boston anymore.

...despite the snow.

Peter Black and other Short Stories

The Adventures of Peter Black

I mentioned last week that I attended my first couchsurfers meeting and had one of my most “radically open” sessions since being on locale.  Having had such a positive experience, I felt that my friends Ashlee and Pete, also looking for intercultural development, would benefit from an outing with the couchsurfers.  However, what good is stepping out of your comfort zone if you do so with safety pads on.  To that end we decided to not see each other while at the meeting and to be aware of our “other selves” while there, so that if we did meet in a group, it would be as if we had just met.  I would be from Boston since people already knew me, Ashlee would be from Pittsburgh since she has family there.  Pete decided to be from Montana.  I don’t know why, but we saw a brand new Pete

Peter Black is a 22 year old accountant from a farm town in Montana (because what else is there, he assumes).  His company put him up in a flat in the west part of the city.  He has been starting to travel and wants to go to more exotic locations, but his firm sent him to Amsterdam.  He can’t ride a bike well because he is too used to horses. He wishes he could be back in school so he could do a study abroad program and meet up with people like couchsurfers.  After all, there were more people in the bar that night than in his Montana hometown.

Peter Black is a 20 year old Boston College student from a farm thirty minutes south of Boston.    He lives in a dorm-style apartment that BC arranged, but he pays for.  He has never been outside North America, but his Spanish is good enough to be considered conversational in Amsterdam.  Given the choice, Amsterdam was probably his first choice locale.  He can’t ride a bike because the one he bought was too deformed from the person before him and he was forced to buy another.  He is in college and plans to attend couchsurfer meetings regularly, though having someone stay over probably won’t happen.  Can’t say I blame him.

Polly Want a GPS?

Today is the first sunny day in a week and I have to wait in my apartment so my landlord company can come and have me sign off on my lease.  However, determined to get outside for a little bit, I decided to explore a bit of Noord, as I probably should have done by now, but other than the market up the street, I haven’t.  The city is much more appealing, but going to the ferry by bike, I’ve noticed a lot of places that I would have otherwise overlooked, so I decided to go to a corner bar and throw some darts while being warmed by a bier and a tosti for lunch.  While getting ready I ended up sitting in a chair I don’t normally sit in so I could put on my shoes.  This chair is angled to look out the window.  Out the window there is a tree.  In the tree there were two parrots.

Parrots.

Green parrots.

People of Amsterdam, is this common?

PARROTS.

WILD. PARROTS.

I know they were wild because I looked around and saw no falconer, and I thought I had seen birds similar in the past month, but was never really certain, thought they might be finches or something.  Now, it would be one thing if I had studied somewhere in Africa, as I’m sure they have any degree of colorful wildlife, but I’m not even close.  Forget the cracker, Polly needs a map.

***disclaimer – according to my neighbor, the parrots in this region are “green parakeets” that are native to the Tibetan mountain region.  Some guy brought a bunch over in ’96 and released them into the wild and because the climate here is so similar, they were able to reproduce.  Dad says the same thing happened with a pet shop in Rhode Island***

Romeo and Juliet

Including parrots, there are a number of regional birds here.  Due to the canals in the city and around my apartment, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to see these birds, which are rather odd as compared to the same wildlife in New England (I’ve also yet to see a squirrel, I imagine they aren’t here).  Otherwise there are Magpies, Crows, unusual looking (and sounding) seagulls, and big black ducks which travel in packs that look like something from a Hitchcock film.  There are also herons.  Big. Freakin’. Herons.  I thought the pigeons in Boston were daring, flying wherever they want and waiting until near-death to fly away from something, but these herons are borderline domesticated.  They also get some serious air, perching in trees in flocks and landing on buildings.

Anyway, this has offered me an opportunity to get up relatively close to them in this time, the weird part, however, is that every time I see the herons in my apartment complex, there is always one on a roof with the other immediately beneath it on the ground.  The title pretty much speaks for itself.

Stalkward

Today I was spontaneous

(Yesterday I went to a library, two very opposite Kevin’s)

I had planned to hit up a number of museums and maybe even a bar trip with my friend Pete, fortunately he woke up sick.

Yes, I mean fortunately (sorry Pete I really hope you feel better), because otherwise I would not have had the day I did, nor would I have had my best idea since being on locale.

Upset at the loss of the prospect of doing some touring today, I reluctantly googled a nice café in which to spend my day reading.  Not even working on my project, the day had “bad IF student” written all over it.  I made it to the ferry and had a coffee at the dock-side café before getting on the boat.  When I got off the boat, however, things seemed different: the pavement felt slightly downhill, the bike (my automatic mood-booster) was riding a bit smoother, and, surrounded by other cyclists, I decided on a new route: wherever the people in front of me go.  I call my new game “Dutch Mafia.”

The rules of Dutch Mafia are simple enough:

-          Pick a bike and follow it until it stops

-          Do not follow a rental bike, as they are most likely tourists too

-          If a group splits up, follow the one going down a street you don’t recognize

-          If it stops at a house or office, keep riding until you find a new mark

-          If it stops at a shop, bar, or restaurant, go inside

-          Always go down side streets

-          If you get made, make a friend

-          Bonus points for keeping up with a scooter

-          Negative points for following a horse (should be obvious)

Essentially the game is a combination of people watching, community exploration, and my other favorite game, “American or European” (but that’s usually exclusive to loud, UGGs-clad girls falling on each other in Leidseplein)

The first few marks ended uneventfully, in a random neighborhood and then in the Red Light District, the mark meeting with his friend.  I think he made me because he ducked around a crowd and looked back at me, but no matter.   The third was the best, having followed her through an unknown neighborhood, I ended up on a familiar street at a bookstore I had not yet recognized.  That was the beauty in the game.  I might end up in a place where I had been before, but I was visiting it in a different way.  The game makes things so spontaneous that even normal and known occurrences are special.

Once inside the bookstore I attempted my hand at flipping through the Dutch books, only to resign myself to the English section.  I found my apartment in a book about “Dutch Architecture” …beautiful as my apartment is, the building itself is not so much.  It looks like a concrete McDonald’s play place which had no business in the same book amongst the Taj-Mahal-and-Sears-Tower-esque of other buildings and structures in Amsterdam.

The next mark didn’t last long, but the yield was exponential.  Two blocks from the bookstore we landed at a pancake house where the mark worked.  Now, the good and bad of this spot; First the good:

A.    I’m pretty sure it’s the same pancake house my cousin Jill mentioned to me just last night (as it is near the Anne Frank House)

B.     The pancakes were amazing. They are the thickness of a crepe, mixed with meats like some sort of batter-omelet the size of a bar pizza.  I got mine with chicken and a glass of baileys. an excellent choice. The pancakes go down rather easily, but be warned, they hit hard.  I could do more than one more often than once, but I don’t think InterFuture wants to pay for another seat on my flight home.

The bad, however:  While it appeared as a hole in the wall with a small, painted marquis advertising “Pancake House: The Best In Town,” it was a bit of a tourist trap,as evidenced by the Brittney Spears being pumped through the speakers and the girls exiting to “Those were literally amazing”…oh were they? ‘LITERALLY?’

…Fall in a canal.

Anyway, being alone, the hostess asked me if I would mind sharing a large table with another party…of course not, I’ve been stalking people all morning.  Radically open is the name of the game (that would be a good name, actually, come to think of it).  Sitting with another group was an opportunity I expected to offer the chance to speak with other travelers (as many in the shop were speaking English, including the 6-year-old playing with an ipad…really?), but my particular table-guests were not even speaking to one another, let alone me.  The majority of their wait was spent on iphones, stopping only to discuss the actions of said device.  I people watched and read.

The remainder of my day took me deeper and deeper into the western part of the city, doubling back along the waterfront and tram-tracks that I take to baseball stadiums.  None were particularly entertaining after the pancake house, though all took me into areas I was unfamiliar with and that was the point.  While not out of the ordinary, the remaining few offered quite the chase.  I think the most fun were the ones who ran red lights, which were numerous.  My choice was hold the tail or be hit by a tram (we've been over the transit hierarchy).  I avoided both.

Having lost my final contact after chasing a commuter from Centraal Station to the East I turned into and wandered through a park.  I had lost focus, but I considered my day: these people would never know that they had been followed all day, what if I had been followed too?  What if InterFuture had people on the ground responsible for following me day to day to research me? Sure there was Rick, but what about someone I didn't know, someone I couldn't ever make?  Fortunately I didn’t have Ashlee riding on the back of my bike sending me into a building and embarrassing myself in front of this stranger. 

Alone Again, Naturally

Spoiler Alert: come the end of the year, Feb 16 might be listed as one of my top days in 2011

For the first time since being on locale I forced myself into radical openness of a solitary kind.  I had once read an article regarding bucket lists (as became popular following the box office bust) which suggested taking a trip alone so as to build self-reliance.  Though worried coming to Amsterdam and knowing I was living alone, I saw it as an opportunity to strike this item from the list.

 However as you probably know, while I’m studying baseball in Amsterdam, one of my fellow IF scholars, Ashlee, is studying about an hour away in Utrecht.  Meanwhile, my friend Pete is staying even closer while studying at the University of Amsterdam.  While this is not the first time IF students have been in close proximity to one another, or even with other American friends, it is not necessarily carte blanche to socialize with these people, not that we don’t still wish to embrace the opportunity, we are just all aware that we don’t wish to exploit it. 

This is not my first interaction with solo travel, as I spent much of my time in Washington, DC alone wandering through museums, though in DC I had the advantage of a large school group in the mornings, as well as six roommates when I returned home at night (aside: I miss Grosvenor).  In addition, I had cell service where “cha-cha” or “KGB” could direct me around via text.  Here, so far I have spent a good deal of time with Ashlee and Pete and most of my solo time has been interacting with persons at the Amsterdam Pirates facility.   Even when I attended my first CouchSurfers meeting alone, I did so with the reassurance that everyone else was out of their comfort zone as well.  Determined to make my own way, Tuesday night I set in to plan my day alone.

First on the list was FOAM; a photography museum covered by my museum card (two more museums and I get a free one! I wonder if they have a sandwich deal…)  Knowing that my compatriots were not interested in this stop as I was, I made it my first priority for the day.  The first obstacle was to actually LOCATE the museum by bike.  I knew the general area, but had never taken my bike in said direction before and, as stated in past posts, bike lanes mixed with directions do not mesh well with me.  Likewise, when the museum is on “a street that starts with a K,” one that you can’t pronounce even if you COULD remember the name, things become a bit more challenging.

Nevertheless I made my way to FOAM (only overshooting the street once) where the exhibits on display followed the theme of the day, portraying pre-civilization isolation.  Additionally, other halls portrayed the history and discovery of photojournalism –

***Quick background on my career aspirations:

5^th grade: recognize a desire to be a sports journalist
8^th grade: aptitude test tells me to be a sports journalist
11^th grade: A week around law and politics at Boys’ State causes me to question sports journalism.  Lawyer is a much more serious profession
12^th grade: Apply to college as a poli-sci major
Freshman year:  DC and Rotondo’s class make me realize I have no interest in law or gov., I become and English major
Junior year:  My work with InterFuture and my umpiring ambitions shift my focus back to sports media***

– While in this exhibit, a video shows the subject discussing what it means to be a journalist and what it means to be passionate about journalism.  Having the opportunity to take in this video came at a time in my life where my career goals are in transition as a result of my project.  It’s safe to say that this exhibit provided me with the mental push I’ve needed to re-access and re-accept my future and my goals in the next five years (after I try my hand at umpiring of course)

Moving as the photos were, the exhibit hall was much smaller than many I had spent time in the past week or so and I was done rather sooner than I had expected.  Calling an audible on my day, I traveled to Leidesplein to watch a few games of chess, which I’ve yet to do in full.  My favorite part about watching these matches is that everyone has an opinion and no one has a problem with approaching one of the competitors to suggest a maneuver while everyone else chats and points among themselves on the sidelines…does chess have sidelines?  The theme of my trip has been bonding over a common interest in a game and this was no exception.  Language barriers be damned, games plus body language seems to throw down the trump card on international hindrances.

Next on my agenda (as spontaneous as I’m trying to be, I’m still me and plans and to do list are omnipresent) was the brouwerij ‘’t Ij.  That’s Dutch for brewery in a windmill (actually the Ij is a river, brewery on the Ij).  But seriously, IN A WINDMILL, talk about immersing yourself in a locale.  Fortunately, I managed to stay under the radar as a traveler given that the two guys who walked in ahead of me were wearing backpacks and asking for tours.  The regulars around the bar drunkenly called them out on it.  I, however, managed a discussion with the bartenders over the egg-based names of the beer (i.e. Columbus, natte, etc).  I also managed brief conversations with newly married Scottish and Brazilian men, apparently already eager to be out of the house and at a bar one week in! Also, a bit of history: this windmill is the tallest of 8 in Amsterdam and has been moved between multiple locations in its history, which begs the question, how do you move a windmill? …other than wind

 Having sampled all the offerings (the Columbus was my favorite on tap, Struis was the heaviest, but it was bottled) I made my way towards my final destination.  A tall order of chipsy king and a misplaced bike later I entered Club Alto for a Jazz show.  Unaware that the doors opened at 9 for a 10pm show, I was rather early, which gave me my choice of seating.  Having selected a seat with good viewing range and room for company, I was fortunate enough to be joined by a German couple vacationing for the weekend and a mother and daughter pair from Raleigh (though they were Dutch-born, so it counts)  We chatted for an hour before the show and then again during the intermission before having to leave to catch our respective ferries and trains.

After such a day however, my bed was welcomed refuge. Being radically open is both rewarding and exhausting.

“I got my brown shoes, my button shirt, my scaly cap”

Two weeks in so let’s asses the accuracy of the wardrobe and, quite frankly, the validity of all the “Do’s and Taboos” blogs that I read over the past 8 months.  This one’s for you Dan.

First the shirt:  …actually no.   not the shirt.  As long as it looks good it’s pretty standard and trans-cultural.  And let’s face it; the kid looks good.

Next the scaly cap:  pre-departure I had developed the hypothesis that the only reason I get made fun of for the scaly cap – or anything really – is because people have known me for so long as the kid wearing sneakers, t shirts, and baseball caps that any change to my style as I grow up out of such slovenly styles will be so obvious that questions of  “where did you park your cab?” and “how much for a newspaper?” become inevitable.  Because really, I like the hat as do many members of my extended family (thanks grandma!), and of course mom thinks it’s cute, while dad tends to contribute to the group curious about what I’m doing with my “Newsies” money. Europe seems to be the right place to put this theory to the test, right? Right.

So I put the scientific method to the test.  My “other” IF project, if you will.

Question:  Is my hat worthy of ridicule? 

Hypothesis:  The jokes are merely the product of evident change combined with my jesting nature. 

Results:  I have stopped hearing the cabby comments.  Yes, now its “how was your trip to Paris last night?”  (I enjoyed that one)  I asked my advisor, Rick, what the consensus might be regarding my hat.  He responded that it might be “more French,” but that “certain circles here might also appreciate the gesture.”  Fair enough.  So it’s French.  I’m taking that as a win, I just said the scaly cap was European, I didn’t specify which it was, I just overshot being totally correct by a few hundred miles.

Finally the shoes:  Now my personal opinion is that I have adequately blended by virtue of the shoes and very much stood out on the day I wore white sneakers on the tram.  I honestly got looks that day.  Otherwise, most everyone wears some form of nice shoes, usually brown, but sometimes black, with jeans.  They aren’t the EXACT same shoes, but at least it’s the same idea generally.  Even the women are riding bikes in heels (female equivalent of a nice shoe turned casual).  There was, however, one bump in the road of my seamless assimilation.  Sunday, following a group interview with three baseball players after practice (I’ve seen this skit before.  I’m pretty sure my response was “I have no intention of conducting an interview this while on locale”…oops), my interviewees were kind enough to treat me to a beer in the clubhouse.  While we discussed my project and informally chatted about the state of Dutch baseball, the conversation broke off as one player pronounced, “hey, I gotta ask, what is it with you American’s and wearing nice shoes everywhere?”

I couldn’t contain myself.

I explained to him this whole social experiment and how I had read that Europeans, Dutch specifically, wore nice shoes, not sneakers, and expressed that I was just trying to not stand out.  He agreed that the Dutch won’t wear white sneakers and dressier shoes may be common, but “Jordan’s” are perfectly acceptable.

More importantly, he agreed with my hypothesis that the kid looks good.