#can helpfully slot Clip’s mom in here

[cipher-the-sidhe]

They have something to bond over right away~

Shore (left) belongs to @theninjamouse from their amazing fic “Ocean on Fire”

[awolfroams]

April Break 2017 - Belgium and the Netherlands, Part 2: Amsterdam

Thursday, April 13, 2017, 1:30pm The Lebanese Sajeria, Amsterdam

Anise reminds me of my grandmother. We arrived at 11, walked along beautiful, sunny canals to our hostel to check in, and stopped here for lunch. I got a beef and labneh with creamy coconut lentil soup and yensoun - anise tea. Some people can’t stand the taste of anise and it breaks my heart because I can’t get enough of it. It tastes like Christmas at home.

7pm City Hall “Coffee Shop”

We took a Sandemans tour of Amsterdam. I really love Sandemans. They always give great tours. The guide, Kor, was passionate about everything from his hometown of Amsterdam to his hatred for Trump and a decent chunk of American culture, to the importance of accepting refugees. Thanks to him, we realized the value of booking online tickets to the Anne Frank House - we literally got the last two between now and us leaving, for Saturday at 8:30am - and I secured a ticket for the Van Gogh museum on Saturday at 3. We also booked tickets for Keukenhof tomorrow. Apparently, this is the busiest weekend of the year for Amsterdam, because naturally. After the tour, and profusely thanking and tipping our guide, we wandered back to Dam Platz to buy “Amsterdam” fries - covered with sweet spicy sauce, cheese, and fried onion bits - and stroopwaffel half-dipped in Nutella at the carnival. From there we came to this Coffee Shop, City Hall, recommended by Kor. It is a mellow place sunk into the side of an old building. Reminds me a bit of Christopher Street in the Village. The weed here is very high-quality, and very strong, for very cheap (7 euros a joint).

Friday, April 14, 2017, 1:30pm On the bus to Keukenhof!

After the coffee shop, we walked to Leidseplein, as I had read reviews online to check it out, but we found it underwhelming, so we went back to the hostel to shower and relax for a bit. At 9, we headed to the Red Light District, which was PACKED. I can’t decide how to feel about the “book readers,” as Kor coyly referred to them. Part of my reaction is holy-hell-you-are-gorgeous. On the tour yesterday, Kor took us to a section of the Red Light District where there was a Church, and explained how that Church kept great business because of the book readers back in the days when Amsterdam was a fishermen’s city, as sailors, having visited a “book reader” before braving months back at life-threatening sea, and unable to go to Church the next morning to confess, would pay the priests to “pre-confess” beforehand and be absolved in advance. Yo ho.

Another gut reaction I have to the book readers is to feel self-conscious and wanting to go ask them if they’re getting on alright, even though I’m sure if I actually did they would tell me off and shoo me along so I wasn’t getting in the way of business. I guess there was a big soccer game in town last night, so there were a TON of “polite, family-friendly young men out for a sporting event” (very funny, Kor) wandering half-drunk through the Red Light District, and half the things I overheard Brits saying to and about the women made me truly want to knock their teeth out.

Kor explained the rationality of Dutch tolerance for prostitution, weed, gay marriage, and Catholicism, back in the day, thus: “It must follow the cardinal rules of Amsterdam. Number one, it must be good for business. Number two, it shouldn’t hurt anyone. And number three, it must be discreet.” (Hence, “coffee shops” that don’t sell coffee, and “book readers” who don’t read books; at least, probably not on the job.)

In the middle of our wandering we visited the Erotic Museum, which had a floor of porn from around the world, from at least the 15th century to the present, on everything from Japanese ceramic tiles to Grecian mosaics to British and Dutch watercolors. There were autographed photographs from celebrity icons like Madonna and Bette Davis, and confiscated “lewd” drawings by John Lennon of Yoko Ono in various stages of lovemaking. There was a room screening fairy tail and cartoon porn, and an entire floor of BDSM videos and toys.

After the museum and walking around a bit more through the Red Light District, we went to a Surinamese Restaurant for some we-are-closing-at-midnight-so-you-have-fifteen-minutes-to-eat, tasty food.

This morning, we slept in a bit, then had a late breakfast at Broodje Bert, a Bert-and-Ernie-themed cafe overlooking one of the canals. I ate eggs, homemade bread with Dutch cheese, and fresh, seasoned salad with awoooooogala. I drank Earl Grey with a complimentary biscuit while we people-watched for a bit before walking to Centraal Station where we caught the ferry across the Canal to Overhoeksplein, from where we are riding to Keukenhof in style on a Mercedez..bus.

Easter Sunday April 16, 2017, 12:30pm Gare du Nord, Brussels, waiting for the train to Bruges

Keukenhof was beautiful. Everywhere smelled of flowers. I counted at least thirty different types of tulips, as well as hyacinths, and many more other varieties than I could name or count. As we walked the grounds, we at homemade ice cream in a cone for 2,50 euro. It tasted like frozen fresh-whipped cream. Not as sweet as the ice cream back home, but very light and creamy. We saw Mondrian’s Composition II made out of tulips, visited baby goats and pigs at the petting zoo, and climbed the giant windmill made in the 1800s. Inside the windmill, if you looked up, you could see the aged gears turning in their sockets. On the bus ride out, you could see fields of bright stripes of tulips in every color of the rainbow. I’ll have to write to Sharon to let her know I finally went. 

Back in Amsterdam, we took a canal tour of the city with Lover’s for 16 euro. They gave us headphones so we could listen to the history of the city and keep an eye out for key points of interest, such as the Rembradnt House, Flower Market, and the point on the canal where you can see a gapped tunnel of sorts forming from seven perfectly-aligned canal bridges. I tried to take a photograph, but the boat was too crowded.

After the tour, we walked to Sonneveld, a restaurant on a quiet canal recommended by Kor for traditional Dutch food. Brittany had Stamppart - mashed potatoes with vegetables topped with a giant meatball covered in gravy - chased with a Heineken, of which I stole another sip. I had fresh cod with greens, fries, and Dutch mayo, which is more like butter with herbs mixed in. For dessert, I finished off the last of the Tony’s salted caramel chocolate bar I had bought at the Keukhenhof gift shop. Dutch chocolate is much richer than our chocolate. Less sweet, and more complex.

It had started to rain, which we couldn’t really complain about, as we’d had two days of sun after a forecast promising showers every day, so we pulled up the hoods on our raincoats and, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to find a souvenir shop, headed back to the hostel for the night. The girl from Brooklyn who’d quit her job and rented a car to drive to breweries across the countryside here was still below my bunk, but the two girls from Croatia had been replaced by a woman from Vietnam and another from Ethiopia who were living in Budapest and working for Unicef. Oh, to work for the UN...

6pm Sitting below the Simon Steven monument across from The Chocolate Line

We woke up very early on our final day in Amsterdam so we could make our 8:30am time slot to the Anne Frank House. As expected, the visit was rough. We walked through too choked up to speak, listening to our audio guides read excerpts from Anne’s diary, while we stared at the pencil marks showing Anne and Margot’s growth on the walls and the dozens of pictures, comic strips, and other book clippings Anne had pasted onto her walls. The Nazis had raided the attic of all furniture and major belongings, and Otto had wanted it kept that way, but photographs showed recreations of what the annex had looked like when people were living there. Perhaps the hardest thing to hear was the accounts of Otto and others who had known Anne and experienced losing her. Afterwords, I bought a copy of her diary, as I haven’t heard it since middle school, and a book exclusive to the museum about her life and history as a gift for my mom.

After the museum, to change up the pace a bit, we went for breakfast at The Happy Pig Pancake Shop, where I had a chocolate-hazelnut covered waffle with banana and a yerba mate, and Brittany had a delicious apple-caramel-nut pancake that she kindly offered me a bite of. The owner of the shop was an adorable, friendly British woman, who aside from oinking along with her poor bemused chef when we tipped, kept checking in to make sure the food was good, remembering us by name - NOT EUROPEAN AT ALL. When we mentioned we were looking for tulip bulbs and other souvenirs, she helpfully suggested we visit the Albert Cuypmarkt. On the way, we stopped into Mail and Female after seeing their bright pink sign out front proclaiming “Eat Pussy: It’s Organic!” At the Market, I bought fresh stroopwaffel made in front of me for a euro fifty, and a few bags to take home to my students [Future Note: They liked it so much, one of them ordered more on Amazon.], and we did most of our souvenir shopping. We couldn’t find any US-certified tulip bulbs, so we went back to the Bloemenmarkt to buy some for our moms. [Future Note: My mom’s have already come up, or at least, the leaves have. Hoping they bloom next year.]

Finally, we found the I AMsterdam sign to take some photographs (it was PACKED with people), and then split up for a bit so that I could go to perhaps my favorite stop on our tour of Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum.

8:45pm On the train back to Brussels

Wandering through the Van Gogh Museum by myself, at my own pace, was just what I needed on this trip. I take a long time in museums. I’m the type of person who wants to read all of the plaques and stare at the art from at least four different angles, if you give me the time. What can I say about Vincent Van Gogh that hasn’t been said already? Probably nothing. That won’t stop me from trying, though, or loving his work. His yellows and purples and deep blues. His thick, tactile paint strokes urgently sprawling, writhing across the canvases, or Japanese box lids, or tablecloths. Sometimes the art just couldn’t wait for the perfect material. Getting to view his seascape pieces under a microscope and see the bits of sand and sea washed into the paint. The sense of desperation, of needing to leave behind a legacy, of running out of time. What is a legacy? Seventy paintings in seventy-five days. Why did he paint like he was running out of time? Did he, too, imagine death so much it felt more like a memory? He too, chose when it would get him. And what if it hadn’t? And what if he’d lived with the monsters in the window? What if he’d actually seen Amy and Eleven’s gift? Would it have felt like a gift, or an unattainable, suffocating challenge?

After the museum, I met Brittany back at the hostel where we charged our phones for a few minutes and I accidentally got to witness for the first time a man in a Zelda shirt snort a coke line off his hand in the smoke room across the window from us. Ah, Amsterdam. You popped so many cherries for me.

We met Kris, the same BlaBlaCar driver, who picked us up along with a quiet girl from somewhere in Southeast Asia and two Armenian girls whose driver had cancelled on them, so Kris had offered to take them along if one rode in the trunk. At least it was a minivan.