I went on a short holiday in Europe a couple of weeks ago so the next few posts are going to be a mini-travelogue. For various reasons, I'm gonna pretend that I'm live-blogging on each day as the action happens.
At Changi airport and, unbelievably, I'm writing work emails at 11pm till the very last minute before I need to run to my boarding gate. Thank goodness for free Internet access.
On the plane and get my first impressions of the Dutch (not that I've never met Dutch people before):
- They all follow instructions (unlike Indians!). The man next to me shifts uncomfortably when he sees me tapping away on my phone keyboard even after the safety video has ended. In my defence, I had turned off the radio!
- Even the kids are disciplined. Even though it was a 13-hour flight, not once was I disturbed by a tantrum thrown by a petulant midget. The closest I came to being disturbed by a Little Person was when the 8-year old behind me kicked my seat back a couple of times. Don't think that was deliberate.
- Yet they're not mute and quite willing to speak up (unlike Singaporeans!) or lend a hand when necessary, as happened a few times when a harried steward tried to find an empty overhead bin for someone's bag. Never seen that happen on flights around Asia.
On the whole, a very civilised lot.
One horrible moment on the plane when I thought I'd forgotten my camera! I usually forget to pack something or the other. This trip went without a hitch.
Watched L'age de Raison (The Age of Reason) on the in-flight video. Very nice in parts but only 3.5 stars.
The flight announcements are made in English by a stewardess as usual, followed by a taped Dutch version. Why don't they do this for all flights? Flights to India, China, Germany and Japan, among others, always have stewardesses make the announcements in person in both English and the destination country's language. Why not tape them all including the English ones? Frees the stewardess to do whatever else needs to be done.
It's just after 6am local time when the plane touches down. The lead stewardess makes the standard welcome-goodbye announcement telling us the local time and temperature. It's 1 degree Celsius! A nervous murmur of anticipation ripples through the cabin and second and third sweaters are hastily donned. So even the Dutch are afraid of the cold! I wonder apprehensively whether I've brought sufficient winter-wear.
I step off the plane and into a fridge. It really does feel as though I've entered a walk-in freezer but this is just the sky-bridge. I wonder what outdoors is like.
Scruffy backpacker freezing in front of airport entrance
I've forgotten to note down the address of the backpacker's hostel where I've booked a bed for my first couple of nights (haven't made any bookings anywhere else for the rest of the trip; in fact, I don't even know where I'm headed next; all I know is that I fly out from Munich in about 7 days). So off I go to the tourist information office and they tell me how to get to the hostel. Fortunately, the Dutch nearly all speak English. They tell me Amsterdam airport isn't in Amsterdam at all and it's a whole 25 minutes away by bus. As if that's far away!
The screen shows the exact time each bus is supposed to arrive! Seemed to work better than similar screens in Singapore, possibly because there's much less traffic there. Saw similar systems in Germany also.
Dutch women are hot! Super-tall, great dress sense. The men are just super-tall. Heh.
8.30 am on the bus: Even the birds are massive. I just saw a raven waddling along that was about the size of a sheep. Can't imagine it ever gets off the ground.
This is the hostel! Fortunately, I wasn't staying in this wing.
9.30 am at the hostel: Just checked in and sitting in the lobby examining maps and tourist info, and a guy sits down next to me. Chattering away to his friend. I tune out at first. Then notice he's just taken out a case containing, er, dry leaves and has started rolling a cigarette. Interesting...
10.00 am: Impress random Shanghainese girl called Eu Yan (English name Yolanda) with my 3-word Mandarin vocabulary. We've decided to take the same tour of Amsterdam that starts in a few minutes but I don't really see her again. I'm quite familiar with how this works having been backpacking a few times in the past -- lots of casual conversations and the occasional new friendship.
The hostel really is for all kinds. By which I don't just mean people from all over theworld but all kinds of travellers: the usual young students, but also young parents with babies, large joint families with grown up kids, older couples, a group of middle-aged friends...
Some interesting mini-cards displayed at the hostel reception. Notice anything unusual?
Late morning: Start on the free walking tour with Jo from New Zealand. The concept is that there's no official fee for the tour. The guides work on a tips-only basis. So, according to Jo, they're incentivised to do the best job possible. We shall see.
Jo from New Zealand, our guide on the free walking tour
Quick tram ride to the start point. It's such a beautiful city. Every building, every street, every shop I lay my eyes on is full of character compared to the blandness that dominates Singapore.
The number of bikes is stunning. I later find out that there are 1 million bikes for only 750 thousand residents. Jo says that Amsterdamers treat their bikes almost as disposables, a thought that's practically sacrilegious to me. They tend to buy cheap and heavy machines, which, once you get them moving, just keep going on their own momentum. It's a flat country like Singapore so not very hard to get moving. The sheer variety of styles of bikes is quite something too, even common to see bikes that are really almost wheelbarrows. And disposable truly seems to mean disposable -- it seems that Amsterdamers often dump their bikes into Amsterdam's canals (of which it has a huge number) for a lark and the municipal authorities resort to dredging them up every once in a while, both to clear the canals and to refurbish the bikes for resale.
Even with very few cars about, walking on Amsterdam's streets takes a bit of caution. Massive trams trundle around town and even though they're on rails, the rails seem to be everywhere and go in every direction. The only indication that one is behind you is the tiny tinny tinkle-tink of a warning bell grossly out of proportion to the size of the tram. Our tour group even rescues a couple of oblivious tourists who nearly end their holiday prematurely.
Tell me that isn't one confusing set of lane markings!
Jo tells us that Holland is one of the world's least religious countries. Only a third of the population profess to be religious. Most old churches have been converted for other uses: hostels, museums or simply as tourist attractions.
I think that's a church in the background converted to a museum. Current exhibit is on Islamic art. Very Amsterdam :)
We also walk through Amsterdam's red-light district. It's just past noon but the, er, facilities are operational, the attractions are available, the shopfloor is open... you get the picture. There's nothing particularly sleazy about it. As Jo tells us repeatedly throughout the tour, the attitude of the Dutch, Amsterdamers in particular, to life in general is that, anything you want to get up to is fine as long as you don't harm anyone else. Very matter-of-fact.
There are supposed to be some real characters among the working women though Jo tells us to be careful not to take pictures of them. They hate that and if they spot you, will flounce out and grab the offender's camera. At one of our rest stops, she points out the spot where a 76-year old operates! But then adds that she's not even the oldest, who's 82 and has a two-week waiting list! Must be the novelty factor but still... yeesh.
Amsterdam's general philosophy of tolerance and pragmatism is the reason the authorities turn a blind eye to the use of marijuana. Jo tells us that, contrary to popular belief, marijuana isn't actually legal in Amsterdam. It's just ignored. The reason for this is that historically, Amsterdam had a problem with narcotics of all kinds from the very light marijuana to the hardest of the hard heroin. Heroin addicts in particular cause major societal problems because their addiction pushes them to commit serious crimes (theft, murder) in search of their next fix. The police were under-staffed to deal with all the problems and tended to focus on the quite harmless marijuana smokers, probably because they were easier to deal with. That meant that the jails were full of peaceful but very hungry pot-heads who thought they were the world's most profound philosophers while far more dangerous heroin addicts and other criminals roamed the streets. One fine day, the authorities wised up and said to themselves that this was quite silly. So they began to ignore the pot-heads and focused their resources on the fewer but more dangerous kinds of criminals. The policy has remained to this day.
Some other interesting facts about marijuana from Jo:
- It's sold in so-called "coffee shops", which only call themselves that because calling your establishment a "marijuana shop" is technically illegal.
- It's very hard to get addicted to marijuana, much harder than getting addicted to nicotine, alcohol, cough syrup and other perfectly legal substances.
- It's physically impossible to over-dose on marijuana. The only way to over-dose (losing consciousness, vital organs shutting down, etc) is if you smoke 750 kg in about 10 minutes.
- You're not allowed to smoke it in public.
- Although marijuana doesn't seem to affect one's dexterity, if you operate a vehicle while under the influence and are caught by the police, you'll be dealth with as seriously as if you have been drinking.
I don't know how true any of this is but we all thought it was quite an interesting little lecture by Jo!
The Dutch didn't use surnames until... recently. (My memory of the dates that Jo threw out is hazy.) They used to use pictures carved into a stone tile inlaid into the gates of their houses, which represented their family occupation and told passersby who lived there. Then one fine day, the king of the time decreed that everyone had to have a surname. So they invented them. Two of the funniest ones I remember are --these are the English translations-- Mr Sexy-Hair and Mr Of-The-Hills. Why is the second one funny?
Burger King charges people 50 cents to use the loo! That's S$1!
At the end of the tour, the last six or seven of us still remaining from the tour with nothing better to do head to a late lunch together. I've already made friends with a few of them. A French-Canadian girl called Geneviève who doesn't need the slightest encouragement to chatter away, a cute young couple from Denver called Louisa and ___, and another friendly but slightly-stiff-upper-lippy couple from England called Raina and ___. Predictably, I immediately forget the men's names and only remember the girls' names! Though I do remember that Louisa's ___ graduated with a degree in photo-journalism.
Really quite a good walking tour. Well worth the 10 Euro tip most of us handed Jo. Helped by the fact that Amsterdam is such a small city but take no credit away from Jo's excellent commentary.
More pictures here (no captions, free to access) or here (with captions but requires Facebook log-in).
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