Sept 5
Lisa drove me up to SF late in the evening to stay at meriko's house, closer to the airport for our early start. Patrick, meriko and I will be travelling together. Neither of them are quite packed, and they are still engaged with work things. We have to get up at 5 to make our flight. I go to bed after midnight to the sounds of them still fussing around upstairs.
Sept 6
Early start today, all three of us in the back of a taxi to the airport with a storytelling driver before dawn. He barely needs our polite filler words for motivation, and is regaling us with frightening stories of taxi-jackings and murders of both drivers and fares. We're glad to get out at the airport.
Business class is the way to fly. I read an entire book between SF and Atlanta.
A coworker's mom met us at the Atlanta gate with a non-stop stream of friendly southern hospitality while she walked us to the business class lounge. Lisa would fit right in here. So would our cabbie.
Sept 7
When we arrive in Amsterdam early in the morning, I find that my phone has no service, despite 2 weeks of trying to get approval for a service plan for this trip. meriko sends an SMS to Lisa to let her know we've arrived. We all pile into another taxi, and he enters the address for m&P's hotel in his GPS, but I can see from my front seat vantage point that he's entered the wrong street. An amusing/frustrating tour of centrum ensues, while he circles around and around looking for the right combination of street and address. Finally he admits he's lost, turns off the meter and asks for directions. And then asks again a few minutes later when we are obviously no closer. I try pointing out the place on a map. I try pointing out the place on meriko's phone with Google Maps. Finally, we get him close enough and convince him to stop the car so they can get out and walk the last few blocks. He's relieved when I give him the address to my hotel on Dam Square and he knows where it is without aid of the GPS.
I check in to my grand hotel (thanks, Apple!), connect to the internet, and shoot off a note to our admin, asking for emergency help with the phone. It is really early morning back home, so I don't expect an answer right away. Strange to go from a life where I am so digitally connected all the time to being unhooked like this. I take a quick nap and a shower, as we've planned to meet up again at 2pm for a bite and a beer.
But then they don't show up at the meeting place. And I can't text or call them. And I've only had about 3 hours of sleep in the last 24, so I'm pretty discombobulated by that point. I walk around in circles for a bit, not entirely sure I'm at the right cafe, but they are not anywhere to be seen, so I head back to my room, and send m. an email. And then realize that I've lost my scarf. I know I had it when I left the room, and I remember adjusting it just outside the door of the hotel, but now it is gone. It was one I really liked, too.
Alright then. This is a good opportunity for me to forge out and get my bearings and get comfortable - and buy another scarf because it is chilly here and I'm going to need one. I look at a map and realize that I'm close to a shopping street I'd visited on my last trip to Amsterdam, so I head over there and start poking through the shops. Wow. I love the clothes here. And so many boots! I found an H&M store that had a good selection of scarves, and got a hat and a pair of gloves, too - all of them pretty inexpensive. The hat is adorable on me (I think so, anyway).
I found a cool antique book market near Spui, and a shop that sold frites, so I sit and have a snack, then head back towards the hotel. It is late afternoon by this point, and the light is pretty, so I wander down a few alleys to take some pictures. I stop in at Lush for some face wash and a new tin of Whooosh, which I forgot to pack. At each shop, people are speaking Dutch to me! I must be pulling off the Euro look adequately well to at least lead to the assumption I'm local - until I open my mouth. Still, I like the feeling of blending in.
Finally back at the hotel, I check with the concierge, and someone has turned in my scarf. ("I think we will make you happy again," he said). I get an email from meriko that they'd fallen asleep and didn't wake up in time for our meet up. And I get an email from Adam that he's madly working to solve my phone issue back at the office. And then, a few minutes later, one instructing me to power cycle my phone to activate the connection. Finally. I'm connected again. Just in time for meriko to SMS me asking to arrange the dinner reservation for our group - her hotel isn't big enough to have a concierge, and Stephen is still at the conference center, where the show opened today.
I have an amusing/frustrating (see a pattern here?) conversation with the concierge, who doesn't want to make me a reservation at the restaraunt I've requested, because he doesn't think it is very good. He recommends another one, "More authentic." Fine. I'm too tired to argue with him, though when I try to call him back to go ahead with the reservation, he's not answering. I punt back to meriko to call the new restaruant. I meet up with Stephen in the lobby and we walk over to the place, which turns out to be a bit further than we thought. Somehow, I'm the one with the map, directing us, and I'm really starting to feel the effects of not enough sleep, but we get there without too much trouble. Then a text from m&P saying they've overshot the street on the tram, and are walking back - start without them, they'll be a while! The service at this restaurant turns out to be painfully slow, but the beer comes fast enough, and the food, when it comes, is delicious.
We walk by an Apple store on the way back, and I've had enough beer to be talked into posing for silly pictures. Which then quickly get emailed to anyone who is anyone back home. I'm really glad to get back to my hotel and into bed.
Sept 8
I planned to get to the show floor early today, on Stephen's suggestion ("The Europeans don't show up until after 11 - come early before it gets crowded.") so I set my alarm for 7:30, but can't manage to wake up until 9. and I'm moving really slowly. Shower, get dressed, read through the show magazine to form a plan of attack, a brisk walk over to the Albert Hein grocery store for breakfast foods to keep in my room, then locate the tram stop and ride out south of town to the RAI conference center. I finally arrive at 1pm. So very European I am.
The show is huge, overwhelming, loud, and crowded. It takes me forever to find the Apple booth, even with a map of the center. This is far harder than finding a restaurant in the maze of old Amsterdam streets. This is more like finding a restaurant in a maze of Venetian streets. I sit in on some demos at the Adobe booth, then meet up with another co-worker, Samir, to wander around the halls a bit, mostly just getting my bearings. Finally, we both admit exhaustion and head back to town for a cup of coffee before the Apple party at Rembrantplein that evening. A couple hours of quiet is good for us, and we are revived when we meet up with the rest of our group at the party, though we still resort to sitting in a clump in the corner, and not mixing like we should be. I'm fighting, and losing, the sense that I'm just not earning my keep on this trip. I'm out of my element.
We've planned dinner at an authentic tapas place in the Jordaan, so we gather our group and leave the party early. La Plancha is a bit hard to find, but the walk is nice, and Jordaan is pretty, and the bar was open at the party, so we're in no particular hurry. meriko is guiding us with the map on her phone, but some of us get the sense we are headed the wrong way. We have a showdown in the street with a paper map vs. iPhone, and this time the paper map wins. We find a street party, live music and a big crowd in the middle of an otherwise quiet street, and unanimously declare that we love this place. We declare it again later in the evening when our server settles himself at the bar with a guitar and starts playing Andalusian folk music and singing with one of the regulars. We toast him with glasses of the best sangria we've ever tasted before closing out our tab with shots of a liquer called "43," rich with vanilla and cloves. Really, we love this place.
Although it is late now, we're not ready to sleep. The group splits up, and several of us walk back across the center of town to a coffee shop that is a favorite of an ex-co-worker who isn't with us. We send him a text message, though, telling him where we are and that we miss him. The group splits again, and meriko leads us off in search of "A good bar, I'll know it when I see it," and Patrick and I are happy to follow in her wake. We wind up back in Jordaan, and settle in with beer on a patio, facing a canal. I don't usually like beer, but I like it here. Is it the beer or the environment? A group of Dutch guys sit at the tables next to us, and after a while a couple of them start chatting with us. The conversation starts with their disappointment in our president, and we agree with them heartily. "I never meet Americans who admit to voting for him," they guy next to me says. "How did he win the election?" Then he wants to know who we support for the next president, out of the current candidates. We launch into a conversation about Hillary vs. Obama and whether a woman or a black man has a better chance with our voters, and how it is less about their politics, and more about the chances of actually winning. I love that I can sit next to a random person here and he is informed about our goverment. This doesn't happen in the states. Random people at home often don't even know about their own government. From politics we veer into religion, and we teach him a new English word: "agnostic."
I love this place.
Sept 9
Finally make it out of bed at a reasonable hour, and head out to the show for a few hours mid day. After several failed attempts, I connect with a sales guy I helped with a bug a few years ago. He wants to tell me how much getting that issue fixed meant - the success of that particular event has allowed him to close deals with a bunch of other big companies. I had no idea. I explain he just happened to catch me on a good day, the first back from a vacation when I didn't have a lot to do. Just luck. He's very grateful nonetheless, and introduces me to his boss as "The one that saved the World Cup." The boss seems grateful, too. Maybe I am earning my keep.
I could live here. It is a big city, but spread out enough not to feel really crowded. Neighborhoods, like San Francisco. It does feel a lot like San Francisco, culturally, too, underneath the European veneer. Less cars than SF, though, and cleaner. And canals. San Francisco has beaches and bridges, but they don't beat the canals. Nor the beautiful canal houses that all seem to lean on each other for support. I'm really enjoying having some time on my own here, walking around, getting to know the place. I'm gawking at the women. The women here have something - a confidence - that I crave. Of course, everyone seems in such good shape, healthy and strong. Lean, but not skinny skinny. Powerful, though. I want some of what they've got. I want to learn how to be that present in my self, that sure. I recognize the feeling as something I have felt in my own skin - I have moments of it, but it is still fleeting for me. I want to have it all the time.
Supperclub for dinner tonight, just meriko, Patrick and I. This place is an experience, less about the food than the whole event of the evening, though the food is really really good, too. The dining room is a bit like a dance club - open and clean, with deep cushions along both long walls and more seating in a loft above. One short end is open to a huge kitchen where we can watch the food being prepared and plated. The "tables" are just set on the cushions, and diners lounge around them, plates on laps or on pillows. We share three bottles of wine between the three of us, and are languid agaist the cushions by the end of the appetizer course. The music is loud, and the servers are plenty of entertainment. There is a sort of unchoreagraphed dance in their movements. They take turns standing on the counter to hand up plates to the diners above, forming an assembly line between the cook, the floor, and the loft. There is a pretty blonde waitress in the center of the line for a while, in a simple black knit dress, just enough pregnant to show a round curve of belly. There's a waiter above and below her, and their big hands pass and receive the plates from her small ones, reaching up and down to meet her. She's not quite tall enough to reach the loft window, so she stretches up with each plate from her toes to her fingertips, with a look of such concentration that I imagine each plate could be an infant in her hands. I could watch her all night. meriko hands me her journal and I sketch the shape of her in just a few lines.
Sept 10:
I wake at 8 with good intentions to attend the show early today, then roll over and sleep until 1pm. I decide today's my day off. I catch up on some email, write in my journal, then head over to meet meriko at Cafe de Jaren, midpoint between our two hotels. It is raining, and I walk through the grounds of a quiet university on the way to the cafe. We sit quietly, each with our journals, and I eat an amazing bowl of tomato soup. Just right on a rainy, cold day.
I make plans to meet up with Samir, whose wife and little boy are also here, so he hasn't been able to join the rest of us for our late dinners. I walk over to the apartment they are renting, on the far side of Jordaan, and we chat about travel and food, share restaurant recommendations, and discuss how little Reyhan is adjusting to the jetlag (staying up until midnight, sleeping until noon - mama is loving it). I like this little family, and want to know them better. It is good to spend time with them on my own. We've all had a late lunch, and so we don't head out for dinner until 9 or so, and it has started to rain again. We wander down Rozengracht and find another tapas place that is cozy and warm, and not too smoky for the baby. I had no idea tapas were such a big thing here, but it seems these places are everywhere. It is a nice, cozy meal, and afterwards we walk back to the apartment where Arushi trys to put the baby to sleep, but how he's over-tired and won't settle. It is raining again, hard, and I realize I have a long walk back to my hotel, and it is getting late. Samir is shocked that I'm not taking the tram or a bus, but I point out the trams run the long way, and walking straight across the middle is shorter. I don't think he believes me that I'm really going to walk it, and once out the door my bravado does falter a bit. I mean, it is midnight, and raining, and I'm a woman walking alone. Not safe. But I walk fast, I know where I'm going, and I notice a few other women walking alone, too, so I mimic their body language and forge on. They walk with one hand on their bag, one swinging at their side - it looks like they are skating. I try it, and find it is a comfortable, energy efficient way to walk fast for a long distance.
After a few blocks of cursing myself for forgetting my umbrella at the hotel, I notice what the locals do: when it starts to rain, step under an eave and wait it out. The rain comes in squalls, and the drizzle in between is light. I try it, and laugh in delight when I emerge from an overhang to a suddenly busier street when the rain lets up. I send Samir an SMS when I'm back in my hotel, as he'd requested. "I'm home," I say.
Sept 11
Today is the last day of the show, and I feel like I have some catching up to do. I plot out my plan of attack, mark up my map with the booths I want to visit, and head over. I make good progress, see a bunch of stuff, collect a bunch of paperwork to read over later, and take a bunch of notes. I meet up with meriko partway through the show, and show her a few things I've found that have very little to do with our work, but are fascinating nontheless: a super slow motion camera that can take millions of frames per second; a motion-activated controller that is showing how you can turn the volume up or down on your ipod by shaking it; a device that senses your tone of voice and colors a grouping of lights based on the emotion detected (calm, joy, sad, excited). We play smart girl/dumb girl at a couple of booths, and then stand in the corner and compare notes on the information we gathered as a result. Finally we declare we are donedonedone and must eat. There's an Italian deli near RAI that Stephen had recommended a few days ago, so we head over there for a snack. Across the street is Venetie Ys, a gelato place that I'd read about before the trip. Apparently it is run by an Italian family who moved to Amsterdam 3 generations ago, and the gelato is the best outside of Italy. So of course, I have to try it. It's pretty good. Not nearly the selection that you'd find in an Italian gelateria, but the hazelnut gelato is certainly better than what I've had in the states. An older British gentleman tells me that the stripey slacks I'm wearing are "lovely trousers," and I leave the shop grinning.
We split up for a while to clean up and change for dinner. My head is still spinning from the show, and I realize how much I miss my friend Vince on this trip, who I spent a lot of time with at the last conference I attended. He has many more years of experience in this field, and we fell in the habit of talking over the day and what we'd seen at that show. I miss the context those conversations gave me to fit all of this information into.
We meet up for drinks before dinner at Wynand Fockink, possibly my favorite place in Amsterdam so far. This tiny little bar has been open in this same location since 1679, a fact that boggles my mind every time I think about it. They make their own brandywine (in 40-odd flavors), are only open a few hours each evening, and the same guy is behind the counter every single night. It is a local's bar, and the barkeep knows everyone. He also speaks four languages, so if he doesn't know you when you walk in, he gets to know you soon enough. The locals drink a small glass of brandywine and a beer, often drifting out to the alleyway to sit and drink and smoke. There's only enough room for a handful of people inside at a time. These people are on their way home from work, or on their way to dinner. This place is just part of the fabric of their day. As it has been for Amsterdammers for over 300 years.
Dinner tonight is at Marius, a small restaruant that is a favorite of the foodies in my department. It is a bit out of town, and we take a cab out. A co-worker who attended this conference last year was insistent that I make plans to eat here on this trip. Very insistent. And now I see why. The Dutch have a word, gezellig, that isn't easily translateable. It means that feeling of cozy, nice, comfortable, comforting. Brown cafes, unobtrusive service, being served warm soup on a rainy day, all gezellig. Marius is the epitome of my understanding of gezellig. I'm not even going to try to describe it. If you are in Amsterdam, go there, see for yourself. It was amazing. I'll be back. As we left the restaurant, we found some interesting grafitti which somehow was a perfect cap to the evening.
Tonight is my last night on my own - Lisa arrives in the morning.
Hey Dona, I got the address of your blog through your sis, Deb, who lives in the same hallway here at the Fordham dorm. I'm originally from Amsterdam. I'm only here in the States for an exchange program that lasts until the end of this semester.
Anyway, just wanted to say you really made me feel homesick for my hometown. The way you described it was exactly why I love the city so much. So kudos on the great report of your trip and kudos for the great pictures you shot!
By the way: the word is gezellig, not gellezig. And you're right, it's one of the hardest words to translate to English, since you guys don't really have a word for it. It basically means the feeling that you get when you're surrounded by people who really make you feel at home or really create a great atmosphere.
So thanks for the flattering posts about my beloved city! If you're ever need some advice for your next Amsterdam trip, drop me a line!
Posted by: Maarten | Monday, October 01, 2007 at 11:44 PM
Bless you for your wonderful journal of Amsterdam. I felt like I was there.
But I really wished I had been able to join you for tomato soup after you arrived home. It sounded delicious!
Posted by: Yorkshiremom | Friday, September 21, 2007 at 09:21 AM