Ik kom uit Amsterdam!

Hallo! This is my first post from Amsterdam. It's hard to believe this is my fifth night here. The past few days have been a blur of bicycles, cobblestone, cheese, beer, canals, red lights, new names and faces, and very little sleep. It would be hard to cover everything I've done since getting here, but I'll try and describe it.

My flight landed on Wednesday morning around 8:30am. A lot of people f

rom my program, CIEE, were on the flight, and we met up with many more at Schiphol airport. A good number of students had already been in Amsterdam for a night or two. All told, there are a little more than 60 of us. We all go to school in the States, but there are some from other countries: Serbia and Bermuda, for example. 

The day was spent getting our bedding, room assignments, and keys from De Key, a housing corporation that owns 35,000 units in and around Amsterdam and helps the Universiteit van Amsterdam place students. I could have done a lot worse with my housing; in fact, I definitely live in the best neighborhood of all the dorms, and one of the nicest neighborhoods in Amsterdam, the Jordaan. It's about ten minutes walking distance west of city center and is exactly what I thought of when I imagined Amsterdam: beautiful buildings, wide canals, restaurants and bars everywhere. I live on Prinsengracht, the outermost canal of the canal belt that surrounds the city. I'm a block away from Anne Frank's house and see the tourists lining up every morning, and just two blocks away from Westerkerk, one of the most beautiful churches in Amsterdam and the burial place of Rembrandt. Anytime I mention my neighborhood to a local, they go on and on about how difficult it is to live in Jordaan and how I live in the greatest location in the city. I won't dispute that. There are only 8 people from my program living in my building, however. Other people are split between a few other locations, and it can be pretty difficult making plans together and getting around (I bike, of course--more on that later). Some of the other rooms are nicer. My room includes its own fairly pathetic kitchenette with a hot plate and a microwave, and I share a bathroom and shower with one other person. I'm working on making my room homier, however, and I wouldn't trade my location for anything. I met my suitemate on the first day and haven't seen him since. He's from Jakarta, Indonesia, which I would have liked to ask about but he told me he doesn't ever go out and doesn't know anybody else in the building. So I guess I'll see him around. The pictures I posted are all from right next to my building: Prinsengracht canal and street, and Westerkerk. 

Orientation took up the first full three days. The University has buildings scattered throughout the city, most of them in the center. We had lots of information sessions, walking tours, etc. More fun are the borrels, a Dutch concept that basically means "a relaxed drink with friends." The ones I have attended so far have not exactly been relaxed. They have included open bars, hundreds of people, dancing and crappy techno (but who cares?). The first was held by the housing corporation De Key (what a great company!). Immediately afterwards was a borrel thrown by ISHSS, the international school. I just returned from my buildings borrel, which was supposedly a meeting with the RAs. It was just like a hall meeting at Brandeis, only with music, free beer, lots of cheese, and no rules or admonitions. Dutch society definitely places a lot of responsibility on the individual, and everybody is just expected to handle themselves like adults. And for the most part, everybody does. The result is a very respectful environment.

Today was the first free time I've had since arriving. We had brunch at a famous pancake house just down the street (note: these are not Aunt Jemima's pancakes. They have the texture of crepes, and are the size of your plate, with ingredients that you never would have imagined in pancakes before. I had chorizo and cheese; somebody else had strawberry and ice cream. I didn't eat for another eight hours). I spent the rest of the day walking through Jordaan and the surrounding streets, trying to learn my neighborhood and make sense of the concentric canals. We tend to get very, very lost when we go out at night. Luckily, the Dutch are very helpful with directions and in general far friendlier than they even need to be. I have delightful exchanges with Dutch people on the streets all the time. Nearly everybody speaks fluent English, and if they don't, they just smile and say 'hallo.' I also bought kitchen equipment, because my kitchen was completely empty, and new bedding to replace what we were given by De Key (it was so inadequate that for a joke the comforter and pillow case had a cardboard design on it. I think the idea was that it could be worse, and we could be sleeping in boxes. It was funny until I had to sleep on my backpack because my pillow seems to be made out of gauze). Wandering the streets and poking into stores, restaurants, and bars has been the best thing I've done here so far. Everywhere I go I find great food, fun novelty stores, beautiful structures, and of course, Heineken, Grolsch, and Belgian beers flowing like water. I will get used to this place quickly. 

As I mentioned, I got a bike on my second day. There are over 600,000 bikes in Amsterdam (and 150,000 bike thefts per year). There are bikes everywhere you go; there are entire parking garages built for bikes. You'll see entire families biking down the streets together, people grocery shopping on their bikes, people eating on their bikes. I even saw a bike alarm go off last night. Unfortunately, we got ours from a rental company called Orangebike. It is not nearly as cool as the real bikes, and has the company logo all over it to make sure everybody knows that I'm a tourist. I'm planning on trying to return it so I can buy my own. That way, I can spray paint it and customize it a bit, like everybody else here. 

I was terrified the first time I got on my bike. Most streets have biking lanes, next to the car lanes, which have tram lines through them. So when you're biking, you're always in a mess of traffic: pedestrians, trams, other bikes, the occasional horse-drawn wagon. There is a pretty detailed traffic system in place, but everybody just seems to go by common sense. I haven't seen any kind of accidents yet, but when I'm biking I often have bikers directly in front and behind me, and cars passing by only a few inches away. It will take a while before I stop fearing for my life every time I cross a street. 

Since I know everyone is wondering, I will tell you a bit about the red light district. One of the borrels on my second night was right at the edge of the district, and a CIEE student who is studying for the entire academic year offered me a quick tour. I probably shouldn't have marched in so unprepared on a busy Thursday night. It really was one of the most disorienting experiences of my life. Everywhere I looked, I saw things I've never seen in public in America. You get used to smelling pot smoke on the streets all over Amsterdam, but here it was hanging like a cloud in the cramped alleys. There were people clearly on some face-melting trips staggering around and falling. Bright lights come out of all the bars and restaurants, and all the coffee shops are pumping music. And, of course, there are the windows: hundreds and hundreds of red-lit windows with women behind you. I would have thought they were all mannequins if not for the fact that they were beckoning me to their doors. It was actually incredibly uncomfortable, especially when you see the clients walking in and out, drapes being drawn, etc. The whole thing was so surreal. One of my companions aptly described it as "the end of the earth." We could honestly only stand it for about five minutes before we retreated the comfort of the borrel.

Since that first experience, I've been in the district almost every day. It's full of great food and shops, and it doesn't take long before you don't even notice all the bars advertising live sex shows and women in the windows. It's also right in the center of the city, so I pass through it constantly. Now that I've gotten used to it, it barely even seems unusual to me anymore (just like the ubiquitous coffee shops and smart shops all over town). The Dutch are protective of the district; it represents the tolerance their society is based on (for a great example of this live-and-let-live policy, you'd have to see the beautiful 14th century church Oude Kerk, in the middle of the district, and the prostitute's windows directly across the street). The truth is, there is nothing in the red light district that doesn't go on in every other city in the world. The Dutch just don't try to pretend like it's not there. 

Tonight is my night off -- all this excitement has run me down considerably and I'm now nursing a winter cold. I'll start filling in all the details of life here once I've settled in some more, but suffice to say for now that I made a great decision in coming here. My list of things to do this week includes the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh museum, maybe a visit to the Artis zoo (third largest in the world!), tons of poking around and walking the canals, plus visits to local breweries and, of course, class (I start tomorrow). So please look out for updates -- I miss you all!

Jeremy