I don't think there is a metro here
Posted by minou_degrassi at 12:19 AM on September 1, 2007.
This is the first really foreign place I've lived in. I don't understand the language and am completely unfamiliar with the culture, customs, and politics. I'm here for grad school, by the way.Everything is either curious or really funny to me. It helped to live in Paris first where everyone is all up in your bizznizz about things that don't concern them.
So:
- Does Easyjet have a fixed tour for hoards of British blokes to come to the red light district, or do they get that idea on their own? I notice it's primarily the Brits who are sex tourists. Well, them and the Japanese - natch. All other nations seem to come for the pot.
I've yet to see a whore who doesn't look totally used. It could be that I'm also running through the red light district at the wrong time. 2 in the afternoon is not when the star prostitutes would come out.
Before Maggie and Jessica start the revolution about me hanging around prostitution districts and risking my neck, just know that the hooker zone in Amsterdam is miles away from the Bois de Boulogne. In fact, it's tame: you can take your picture with a working gal. Most of them are so blasé they chat on their cellphones while putting themselves on display. It's like the Gap, but for sex.
- Why do Jews have a bad rep for being cheap and moneygrubbing when the Dutch beat them by a country mile? No wonder the Nazis made sure poor Anne Frank didn't get out alive.
I'm not complaining, I'm pretty cheap myself, so I feel like I'm among my people.
- I love how roughly half of the pastries are unidentifiable. I've had three pastries whose names I couldn't pronounce, which looked questionable, but were fab.
- Amsterdam seems to be the only place in the world where total Marley worshipping, dreadlocked hippies are not ridiculed. Well, maybe other Dutch people are ridiculing them, I wouldn't know.
- They sell coloured contacts at the local Target/Zellers/Carrefour, but only in blue and green. Gum, batteries, condoms, coloured contacts: those are your essentials.
- Amsterdam is the umpteenth European city I've been in that confirms my belief that "Chinese" just sounds like a racial slur in all other languages but English. Italian - Tichinese (but with all that drawn out elaborating and hand gestures), Czech - Chinsky, Dutch - Chinees (which I imagine sounds like "CHI-KNEEEEZ!!") Conversely, "Canadian" or "Canadese" makes me sound like a wop. It's still better than "Serbian" or "Servisch" which looks like a portmanteau of Serving Wench.
More to come as it happens.