I wasn't quite sure what country Amsterdam was in. It was either Holland, or the Netherlands, or whatever country Dutch people were from. One of the three. (Turns out it's all of the three.)
This was my first trip to Europe, or to any country outside the U.S. and Canada. Expect to hear amazement about things six billion people do every day, like riding bicycles and using the metric system.
This was a work trip to cover a convention, so that instantly earned me a spot on half my friends' assassination lists. They're stuck at a desk or behind a counter, and I go for free to where they had the best week of their life back in college. The fact that I'm not a pot smoker or hooker-picker-upper just adds to their frustration. I really shouldn't tell them about me visiting Tijuana next week.
Let's get the most important Amsterdam discussion out of the way first: toilets. Toilets have round seats in Europe, as opposed to the American egg shape. The drain is shaped like a large slice of bread; you'd think us obese Americans would be the ones requiring wide mouth plumbing. Toilet paper is rectangular, not square. The handle is a large round or square button directly above the toilet. You can head butt it if you lean back.
The least trustworthy person I ran into in Amsterdam was the first one: my airport cab driver. He said not to trust anyone in Amsterdam because they're all thieves and pickpockets, then insisted that he take my bag. I said I could carry them myself; he said not to trust anyone because there are thieves everywhere, and could he take my bag? I had 50/50 odds he'd take off as soon as I put the bags in his trunk, with two poorly-hemmed suits and some trade magazines as his haul.
The Hotel Lairesse gave me room #101, right above the lobby. It seemed appropriate that my first time outside North America was Amsterdam #101. The textbooks could be the Big Book of Hemp and a Swank subscription.
The hotel was a quaint old building with a garden patio in the back. It's part of the Best Western chain now. Once in your room, quaint loses the battle with Best Western's favorite adjective, uninteresting. ('Quaint' does make a comeback in regards to the hotel's lack of air conditioning or irons.)
Sheets haven't made it across the pond yet. Instead, they have duvets (two-inch thick bedspreads) and duvet covers (fitted sheets for the mattress). You either sleep with nothing, or the bearskin rug.
The Netherlands are on the Euro now, which is roughly equivalent to the dollar. A Euro is actually worth $1.20 now, and expected to jump to $1.40 by next year. The EU has really benefited the European economy. It helps that the U.S. economy is as strong as wet tissue paper.
Amsterdam isn't as famous a canal city as Venice, but it has over 100 of them. They all look alike. Combine that with all roads curving and me not remembering five syllable road names, and it's incredibly easy to get lost. I tried to navigate without glancing at a map every block, and I spent my entire first day getting turned around in a single square mile more than a whirling dervish playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. My feet felt like I did Riverdance in clogs.
I had the societal obligation to visit the red light district sometime during my visit. I accidentally got this taken care of while I was lost this first day. (Yes, I went there by accident. Believe me if you wish.) I saw the infamous windows with the red curtains, most of which were empty at 6:30 in the afternoon. They're in very narrow side streets, so you can't see inside them until you're well within the hooker's eye contact. I blitzed by the few occupied booths, glimpsing an elbow or knee. These were the first girls I could actually confirm were prostitutes and not just sluts in bad neighborhoods. I had my camera, but I figured that would get Dutch pimps chasing me. Which almost sounded worth doing.
Everyone speaks English in Amsterdam. I had heard this, but figured it meant "Enough people in Amsterdam speak English for your monolingual ignorance to get by." Close to 100% of the Dutch, though, know English. Dutch isn't spoken much outside Holland, so the Dutch need to pick up other languages to be able to travel more than an hour away. Walk in any store, look confused, and they'll try addressing you in English.
Popular culture in the Netherlands is virtually the same as American. Their movie theaters were showing the Matrix Reloaded and X-Men 2, their TV played American sitcoms and dramas, and their music was 95% American and British. If that much of my entertainment was in Dutch, I'd be speaking Dutch before you could say Nieuwe Zijds Voorburgwal.
I didn't know any stereotypes were around for the Dutch, but they have a big one: they're cheap. Dutch fountains don't have a single piece of change in it. The standard Dutch joke is that copper wire was invented by two Dutch guys fighting over a cent. One guy at the convention proudly displayed that his badge was actually last year's issue, meaning he avoided paying the entry fee this year. "It proves I'm Dutch!"
I've come to expect some cheap $15 clock radio on hotel nightstands, with mild disappointment that hotels don't have anything nicer. The Lairesse had nothing. The TV had a clock on it, but I had to use wake up calls. Maybe too many people were taking the clock radio along with the mini shampoos. We are talking about the Dutch here.
For music, I ended up leaving MTV on. Dutch MTV plays videos 85% of the time. Their music is almost completely American and British, so it's a de facto English station. MTV also plays several hours of 90s music every day. It's directly responsible for Getting Jiggy With It as my mental soundtrack the whole trip.
Half the TV channels are in Dutch. Another quarter are in various European languages with Dutch subtitles (which worked nice when it was originally English). The final quarter was the BBC and international news channels in English. This balance is probably different if you're not watching TV from a hotel. The preview channel shows nine channels simultaneously in a Brady Bunch grid.
Smallville is subtitled, and on its first season. The Osbournes are unbleeped. Buffy is letterboxed, but decapitations and flayings are edited out (that might be a particular of the BBC). Movies aren't edited for content, but commercials are shoehorned in. Nudity gets broadcast, but the movies on during my stay were Boys Don't Cry and other movies where the nudity is never something you're rooting for.
My hotel was right by the Van Gogh Museum. The Dutch don't pronounce the Ns at the end of some words, they run their words together, and they pronounce Gs as Hs, so "Van Gogh" is actually pronounced "Vahhouh," not as a chauffeur's order. Between Van Gogh and Anne Frank, the Dutch don't have much luck becoming recognized while alive.
There's a six hour-time difference between Holland and Eastern Standard Time. Imagine the hour hand of your watch flip flopped, and you know your other time. I mentally trained myself not to do that. Walking around at 10:00 A.M. when it's 4:00 A.M. back home is bad enough, but when you're aware it's 4:00 A.M., your body gets permission to strike.
Sunset at 10:30 P.M. didn't help any. I was over there close to the longest days of the year, and Amsterdam is so far north that it picks up a couple hours of extra daylight. (The sun sets around noon in December, though.) It was 25 degrees every day (70 Fahrenheit), when normally Amsterdam's soggy and overcast. New Jersey had hogged all the horrible weather for the week. Nice of them to do that for me.
You haven't heard of much Dutch food because there's not that much unique about it. Most restaurants were Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, various Asian cuisines, or Argentinean steakhouses. I can understand why non-US steakhouses aren't big in the states, but every single time I saw the word Steakhouse, it was preceded by Argentinean. (Except for one time when it was Uruguayan. When I think Uruguayan food, I think soccer player.)
The one truly Dutch restaurant is Febo, a fast food chain. A human at the counter gets you soda and ice cream cones, but burgers, fries and krokets come from an automat. Everything is greasy, recently microwaved, and cheap enough to make the place perpetually packed. That's how you attract the Dutch: give them a restaurant where there's no obligation to tip.
The hotel breakfast buffet offered cereal with my choice of milk or yogurt. This is common in Europe: they sell yogurt in cardboard containers like milk for easy pouring. When I was four, I'd take plain yogurt, dump Grape Nuts, maple syrup, puffed wheat and honey on it, and ingest bowl after bowl of murky paste. I had no idea I was eating so continentally.
Soda is Euro 1.75, over two dollars American. Amsterdam, home to Amstel and Heineken, is not a soda city. Soda's more expensive than beer. It might sometimes be the same price on the menu, but you'll get a 0.2 L glass (half a can) while the beer man gets a European pint (0.5 L). I don't drink, but found myself ordering beer at dinner simply so I wouldn't have to ration my sips. (Restaurants don't give you water. They want you to order a Spa water, which is even more expensive than soda.)
Easily the most revolting revelation regarding Amsterdam is the pissoir. They were built to alleviate the social dilemma of too many Hollanders stumbling out of bars and urinating in public. So pissoirs were built, green metal booths you stand in to urinate. There's no grate, they're around just to avoid seeing someone's little Dutch boy. You will walk a kilometer radius to avoid being downwind from one.
I bought a phone card to avoid hotel phone rates, and didn't find a single phone number on it. European phone cards are only for public phones. Phone booths are triangular and neon green, and hopefully never mistaken for pissoirs. Stick the card in the slot and dial. An LCD screen gives you a countdown of how much money your call is costing you.
After a thorough discussion with my brother about toilets, a woman banged on the door and yelled "Haary oop!" I've seen this happen a lot, but always in movies where an angry sniper is making someone rob a bank for them. "Haary oop!" is usually the third or fourth thing you say to the guy in the phone booth, not the first. I was ending my call anyway so I left, wondering where the sniper was. I was half a block away before I realized I forgot my phone card. Euro 3.80 down the pissoir. This might be some Dutch scam to distract Americans into leaving phone cards. The cabbie was right.
I didn't spend any time in a coffee house. I suck, I know. I did feel the attraction of outdoor cafes, sitting in public parks for long stretches, and other classic European ways to waste the day. I just didn't associate that pleasantness with the allure of watching German tourists eat Febo in a dank pit that smells like burnt hair.
This is the first of hopefully yearly trips to Amsterdam, so I should have plenty more days there in the future. I have months of things left to do: the zoo, the Rijksmuseum, touring Anne Frank's house, riding a bike into the tulip-plagued countryside. Maybe one of these years I'll be so disgusted with my life that only a big joint and a hooker can bring me momentary pleasure. Until that proud day, I'll have to be a disappointment to everyone.