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.
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.
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