20070622

      Today is my third day in Amsterdam, and I am loving it here. Within a minute of stepping off the plane, I knew what an orderly society this would be, since even the luggage belts at the airport are designed to cooperate with each other to keep bags properly separated by delaying the chain of predecessors whenever the successor was too immediate. (Looking closely at this picture, you can see the little laser-reflector the system uses to detect bags as they cross from one belt to the next).

      My first night in the hostel, however, did present one incident: I had fallen asleep on my bed, and woke to the realization that I had never put sheets on the bed. Not realizing that this was because the bed already had sheets, I took a folded set of new sheets from the empty bed above and started to make mine, which had no folded sheets on it. As I was doing this, a guy came in and asked me what I was doing to his bed. He had already made my bed. I explained to him that this was my assigned bed, and he argued that it was now his bed because he had made it, and placed his clothes upon it. We went back and forth for about a minute before he finally realized that I was not backing down, and that the main office would side with me, whose assigned bed this was. Looking back, I now realize that he was just angry at me because he had tried to cheat me out of my bottom bunk, having himself been assigned a top bunk which he did not want. It is now almost 6pm here, and he is still sleeping in bed. I suppose he likes bed; he took several minutes when making his bed that first night just to fluff the starch out of his fresh sheets while cursing me under his breath.
      Having told this story, I should say that hostels are usually quite a nice experience wince most people recognize the level of collegiality required to maintain workable relationships, but when the system breaks down it breaks down massively.
      Yesterday I saw the Anne Frank Museum, which is situated within the house she actually hid in. It was rather moving, entering this house and standing in the places where we know actually stood and breathed some sixty years ago. I was disappointed, however, that the museum chose to frame her experience as only a Jewish experience, and not to relate the historical Holocaust to modern day and ongoing genocides. Also, the end of the exhibit is always a temporary installation, and the current installation is an "exploration of the boundaries of fundamental rights," including such 'difficult' questions as whether free speech should be allowed even for hate speech, whether freedom of religion should include the right to wear headscarves to school, and so on. The exhibit showed videos of offensive uses of these fundamental freedoms and asked people to vote whether the fundamental freedom should be observed, or whether each particular video clip went so far from propriety as to abridge the freedom. So far as I could tell, especially by the voting habits which were predictably biased toward restrictions of freedom, the point of the exhibit was to show that these fundamental freedoms must occasionally be restricted by resort to value systems of the majority. This is a message in stark contrast to the rest of Amsterdam, which professes freedom of thought, religion, expression, etc. as fundamental bases for cooperative democracy. Nonetheless, if you want an interesting feeling, go to the Anne Frank Museum. I have a feeling I will recommend tomorrow that you see Van Gogh and others first, though, to make best use of time.

      I also went yesterday to the "Heineken Brewery Experience." It turns out that the third word in the name is the most important: Although this used to be a functioning brewery, it has been transformed into a walk-in advertisement with Disney-style effects. From start to finish, the brewery acts just as a beer commercial, indoctrinating the unsuspecting visitors who believe that their admission price has purchased them entrance to a real bit of genuine history.
      My favorite educational parts of this museum were the two rides: First, walking into a small movie theatre, you will wonder why you're given bars to stand between, but then you realize their purpose is to give you a grip while the floor shakes beneath your feet, and you watch the screen as if you are a Heineken bottle moving down the assembly line to be washed, filled, capped, boxed, shipped, and ultimately drank to the tune of "Celebration." The second ride is a horse-drawn carriage ride through the streets of Amsterdam. You sit in a hydraulic wooden carriage, watching a screen as you pass all the happy young school children waiving at the pretty Heineken kleidsdales. Funny enough, many parents apparently think it a great idea to bring their adolescents to the Heineken Brewery Experience. My next favorite part of the tour was the TV-area where you sit down almost totally reclined into a comfortable chair and look up at a TV screen in the top of the curving chair, using your paws to press either forward or back to view Heineken advertising from 1955 until present day. Naturally, there are fewer of the older than the newer advertisements, but the curious side of me wonders what gems are hiding in Heinekens past which are not publicized in this marketing show. You can see in this photo how happy is the Canadian to whom I gave my extra beer token! (Incidentally, he had already used his 3 tokens, and 2 others provided by a father whose young son wanted only a single Coke).
      Today I went on a bicycle tour of downtown, with Mike's Bikes and Rachelle. One of our leaders was a lady named "Mike" who was dressed in a white fur vest and had spiky white hair. I believe that she could probably kill me handily in a knife fight, but she professes no extraordinary skills at such. The tour was nice, though it started to rain just as we transitioned from the biking to the boat-riding part of the tour. We went all around the city on bikes, including Chinatown and the Red Light District. Our guide also explained the way that Amsterdam attempts to curb crime related to various fringe activities by drawing them away from the fringes through legitimization, which allows sex workers to pay taxes and drug users to get needles and treatment. It was a very nice tour, though I'd suggest perhaps a walking tour if you want to avoid criticisms of our President. All in all, it was a great introduction to Amsterdam, which seems to be a place highly affected by, ironically, the free trade of the 1600s laying the ground work for the free lifestyles of the 1960s.
      I have just now arrived home from the Boom Comedy Theatre with Rachelle, which was absolutely hilarious improvisational comedy. I won the first free drink of the night for "Skeletor" as the answer to "Thing." Apparently you have to be really good to perform as a main act in Amsterdam, since these guys were amazing. If you enjoy shows like "Whose Line is it Anyway," you must go see the thing live in person, because the experience is much more dynamic when you have the opportunity to interact with the performance. However, if you don't want to hear criticisms of the current president (and this will probably hold true in the future as well,) I think you might be better off avoiding Amsterdam altogether. This advice also holds if you are readily offended. The number of references to naughty bits and verbs in this act was enough to shock all but the most seasoned veterans of toilet and sexual humor.
      Speaking of the Marquis du Sade, we visited the Sex Museum before going to the Comedy Theatre. EU3 was about what this short "museum" was worth. It's a nice little walk-through in the style of sensationalism rather than history. It was, however, very worth the visit for anyone interested in opening their mind a bit further in an area so typically repressed. At occasional turns, a motion-activated mannequin will spring to life, like the flasher who pops from an alley to reveal the contents of his trench coat. Also, there is an area marked "Enter at your own risk" for those brave enough and interested in seeing more fringe behavior. Of course, this area is not for many people.

      I am now sitting at the sofas of the hostel next to the vending machine watching a guy operate the vending machine and grunt in what is either a foreign language or a mushroom trip gone wrong. I'm not sure it makes a difference whether he's speaking any language or not; he is clearer from the outside looking in than I think he is from the inside looking out. I cannot begin to fathom the difficulties he is going through trying to decide what to do.
      Incidentally, for all those of you who share my love of sundials, here is a building in the center of Amsterdam which has both a main and a backup sundial on the front! I suppose this is some form of redundancy for fault-tolerance in case one of the sundials ices over or is covered by clouds.



      If you look closely in this picture you can see the herd of men making the cattle-call toward the red light district.