Shamsterdam
It was going to be a high of 45 degrees so I opted to go pant-less for the day. Not exactly, but I wore my favorite faux leather leggings that have approximately zero insulation. The breeze cuts right through them. I figured after a few weeks in Poland where the highs were in the 30's that a 45 degree day would feel downright balmy.
I was wrong. My sister had arrived the previous night and we were off to the Keukenhof, the expansive gardens known for their annual display of millions of tulips. We arrived in an empty field. "I think that's supposed to be a field of flowers." I said. We looked at the empty but recently tilled land next to us that expanded several acres.
With teeth chattering we asked the woman at information what would be blooming right now. She said well nothing really. It was early in the season, opening day in fact, and the main blooms would be in about May. We had assumed as much. We were instead instructed to go into the display buildings. The theme this year was Romance, which is perfect for my sister who seemingly lives in a constant fear of us being mistaken for lesbians. It leads to many situations where she will blurt out we are sisters like someone with tourettes. I have assured her many times I am not interested, she has no reason to worry. And if she's that concerned she should probably stop inviting me to her work events at fancy hotels where the wives and I spend time at the gym and spa while the men and Cass go golf.
We began to think the daily temperature high was a lie. The first of many. It was unbearably cold outside, a fully grey overcast sky (Netherlands speak for partly sunny), and misty air with a breeze. We ran from one flower display building to another. Within the second flower building there were probably 50 large plots of indoor planted tulips. Half of the plots were not fully bloomed. The other half were filled with flowers so stunning that just looking at them you fully thought you were staring through some specialized filter. Cass wanted to start at the unbloomed flowers to take approximately 200 pictures of green tulip leaves. I stared on in dismay. I finally got her to mosey over after twenty minutes to the flowers that she pretended she had seen all along, and her pictures of dirt and leaves were intentional.
She was smirking. There was no way she had noticed the actual flowers.
In the actual blooming flower section there were some very clever Asian women. I think it is no surprise that Asians take the best pictures. It seems to be a large part of their culture, and since they are so prolific in their pursuit they know how to shake it up. There were like zero flowers outside. A few peaking up from the ground, but nothing that looked particularly noteworthy for the biggest flower garden. These women had poked their heads underneath the tulip rope and were leaned back with their selfie sticks making their pictures look at though they were resting in a field of flowers. In actuality they looked like they were doing an ab workout in an invisible dental chair smiling wildly up at the ceiling. We followed their lead and immediately started taking "tulip field" selfies while actually hovering over flowers while sitting on a concrete ground. We continued to do this throughout the day. Checking the Kuekenhof twitter today I see they are employing the same method.
Amsterdam is full of clever little perspectives, some may say lies. For whatever unknown reasons when I thought of Amsterdam I recalled all the documentaries talking about this eco-friendly clean bike friendly city. It's the most bike friendly city in the world! Sure Jan.
The canals through the city while beautiful are also full of trash. I'm not talking a stray bottle that blew in, I'm saying a bouquet of balloons, a bike, 75 bottles and cans, chip bags all sitting in the supposedly clean water in every nook of that canal. In fact they say they pull 50 bikes out of the river per day. But what they don't pull out is all the drunk men puking into the river, or the man who walked out of his house with a bucket of dirty water, made eye contact with me, then proceeded to dump the filth water right into the canal. They claim in the summer the water is perfectly clean for swimming. Yet every bit of the canal I saw was dirty. The wider parts looked fine, but I saw enough crap going in there that I wouldn't put a paw in it. Also considering the canal froze recently and the spring weather is 45 but feels like 30 I can't imagine the canal ever gets that warm. I truly believe that is why it's clean enough to swim in. Bacteria doesn't proliferate in the cold. One water quality website touts that the waterways have never been so clean in the past 400 years! Well no shit. Wait that doesn't work, I'm sure there is plenty of shit in there, but surely it can't have been worse when it was literally a dumpster. On the water quality site there was one lone comment.
I think we also tend to think of Europeans as sophisticated individuals who value art, exercise, and more leisurely intellectual pursuits like reading in a cafe but once again Shamsterdam strikes. (Well Amsterdam does value art as they haven't returned the art the Nazi's stored there from the Jews in WW2). And maybe that was a lie we were just telling ourselves. The grass is greener, the water cleaner, on the other side.
In addition to the diarrhea water , the air quality felt the same. Never in my life have I seen so many cigarette smokes than when in Europe. The airports have glass smoking booths that are so filled with people the doors can't close. When returning to the states the sarcastic flight attendant said in his Dutch accent "if you are looking for the smoking section in the airport you will not find it. You must wait till you leave the airport but not near doorways or public. Best to just wait until you leave the country." Many on the plane laughed, I presume because they were tired of being walking ash catchers while abroad. Now per capita rates of smokers are fairly similar between the US (26% of men) and the Netherlands (38% of men) but I think its sort of like that smoking booth. In Amsterdam you feel like you are stuck in that smokers booth. And I'm not even talking about weed. I didn't care about that. It was all the cigarettes.
The final point I have is the bikers. Bikes are everywhere which is a cool way to get around but they will nearly mow you down like 89 times per day. They are very adept at braking though. They're also adept at not following the bike traffic lights at all and scaring the shit out of you, but they still stop so that's good. And I don't care that they don't wear helmets, except the kids. I know they are a safe bikers with free healthcare and all that crap. But popping a kid on a tiny little seat not strapped in and biking around with them is not about you being safe. It's about others. What's to say a tourist won't accidentally step in and knock your bike over dropping your kid on their head, or your bike won't slip on some trash or wet stone? You spent 9 months making a tiny human, probably even love them, just put a helmet on them.
It is my determination that Amsterdam has been filmed with clever camera angles all along. Maybe the Asians advised them how. When I returned home I got dinner with a friend who I had forgotten had spent time in Amsterdam. He immediately said "yea I would have told you not to go, those canals are disgusting and the people are rude, its just a bunch of people who want prostitutes and weed." He may not have been too wrong.
I was wrong. My sister had arrived the previous night and we were off to the Keukenhof, the expansive gardens known for their annual display of millions of tulips. We arrived in an empty field. "I think that's supposed to be a field of flowers." I said. We looked at the empty but recently tilled land next to us that expanded several acres.
With teeth chattering we asked the woman at information what would be blooming right now. She said well nothing really. It was early in the season, opening day in fact, and the main blooms would be in about May. We had assumed as much. We were instead instructed to go into the display buildings. The theme this year was Romance, which is perfect for my sister who seemingly lives in a constant fear of us being mistaken for lesbians. It leads to many situations where she will blurt out we are sisters like someone with tourettes. I have assured her many times I am not interested, she has no reason to worry. And if she's that concerned she should probably stop inviting me to her work events at fancy hotels where the wives and I spend time at the gym and spa while the men and Cass go golf.
We began to think the daily temperature high was a lie. The first of many. It was unbearably cold outside, a fully grey overcast sky (Netherlands speak for partly sunny), and misty air with a breeze. We ran from one flower display building to another. Within the second flower building there were probably 50 large plots of indoor planted tulips. Half of the plots were not fully bloomed. The other half were filled with flowers so stunning that just looking at them you fully thought you were staring through some specialized filter. Cass wanted to start at the unbloomed flowers to take approximately 200 pictures of green tulip leaves. I stared on in dismay. I finally got her to mosey over after twenty minutes to the flowers that she pretended she had seen all along, and her pictures of dirt and leaves were intentional.
She was smirking. There was no way she had noticed the actual flowers.
In the actual blooming flower section there were some very clever Asian women. I think it is no surprise that Asians take the best pictures. It seems to be a large part of their culture, and since they are so prolific in their pursuit they know how to shake it up. There were like zero flowers outside. A few peaking up from the ground, but nothing that looked particularly noteworthy for the biggest flower garden. These women had poked their heads underneath the tulip rope and were leaned back with their selfie sticks making their pictures look at though they were resting in a field of flowers. In actuality they looked like they were doing an ab workout in an invisible dental chair smiling wildly up at the ceiling. We followed their lead and immediately started taking "tulip field" selfies while actually hovering over flowers while sitting on a concrete ground. We continued to do this throughout the day. Checking the Kuekenhof twitter today I see they are employing the same method.
 |
| Here we see clever camera angles. Those flowers are maybe 3 inches out of the ground. |
The canals through the city while beautiful are also full of trash. I'm not talking a stray bottle that blew in, I'm saying a bouquet of balloons, a bike, 75 bottles and cans, chip bags all sitting in the supposedly clean water in every nook of that canal. In fact they say they pull 50 bikes out of the river per day. But what they don't pull out is all the drunk men puking into the river, or the man who walked out of his house with a bucket of dirty water, made eye contact with me, then proceeded to dump the filth water right into the canal. They claim in the summer the water is perfectly clean for swimming. Yet every bit of the canal I saw was dirty. The wider parts looked fine, but I saw enough crap going in there that I wouldn't put a paw in it. Also considering the canal froze recently and the spring weather is 45 but feels like 30 I can't imagine the canal ever gets that warm. I truly believe that is why it's clean enough to swim in. Bacteria doesn't proliferate in the cold. One water quality website touts that the waterways have never been so clean in the past 400 years! Well no shit. Wait that doesn't work, I'm sure there is plenty of shit in there, but surely it can't have been worse when it was literally a dumpster. On the water quality site there was one lone comment.
 |
| I agree. |
In addition to the diarrhea water , the air quality felt the same. Never in my life have I seen so many cigarette smokes than when in Europe. The airports have glass smoking booths that are so filled with people the doors can't close. When returning to the states the sarcastic flight attendant said in his Dutch accent "if you are looking for the smoking section in the airport you will not find it. You must wait till you leave the airport but not near doorways or public. Best to just wait until you leave the country." Many on the plane laughed, I presume because they were tired of being walking ash catchers while abroad. Now per capita rates of smokers are fairly similar between the US (26% of men) and the Netherlands (38% of men) but I think its sort of like that smoking booth. In Amsterdam you feel like you are stuck in that smokers booth. And I'm not even talking about weed. I didn't care about that. It was all the cigarettes.
The final point I have is the bikers. Bikes are everywhere which is a cool way to get around but they will nearly mow you down like 89 times per day. They are very adept at braking though. They're also adept at not following the bike traffic lights at all and scaring the shit out of you, but they still stop so that's good. And I don't care that they don't wear helmets, except the kids. I know they are a safe bikers with free healthcare and all that crap. But popping a kid on a tiny little seat not strapped in and biking around with them is not about you being safe. It's about others. What's to say a tourist won't accidentally step in and knock your bike over dropping your kid on their head, or your bike won't slip on some trash or wet stone? You spent 9 months making a tiny human, probably even love them, just put a helmet on them.
It is my determination that Amsterdam has been filmed with clever camera angles all along. Maybe the Asians advised them how. When I returned home I got dinner with a friend who I had forgotten had spent time in Amsterdam. He immediately said "yea I would have told you not to go, those canals are disgusting and the people are rude, its just a bunch of people who want prostitutes and weed." He may not have been too wrong.
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