It's GAGA! (Gabe & Amanda Going Abroad): Yikes! Bikes!

We apologize in advance…this week had a habit of slipping away from us and we are a tiny bit off on the blog posts. Again we have been writing them but due to spotty wifi haven't been as able to upload them as we would like. Expect an influx of posts all at once. That being said…Amsterdam!

We got an early start out of Cologne heading towards Amsterdam. What started out as a very peaceful ride soon turned into the party train. We shared our cabin with a large group of bros who were enjoying their breakfast booze at 7:45am. By 8:10 they had begun a sort of singing/chanting combination, mostly in German, but with charming english phrases like "mother fucker" interspersed.

Once off the train we went through a series of 17 separate turns and streets to find our hostel. Then we grabbed a quick bite to eat before setting off on a 4 hour free walking tour of the city. We snagged a couple slices of pizza and I (Gabe) loaded mine with piles of garlic, mistaking it for parmesan. Yum. In all honesty I thought it made it better.

Our bellies full and minds alert we left for the tour. As for some of the history of the city, there was a river called the Amstel. People came to live here and built a dam, now we have Amsterdam. Along those lines the Dutch have literally created this land by drying away all of the water. The highest point in town above sea level is 1/2 meter. Most of the town sits 3 meters below sea level because the land shrinks when the water is evaporated from it. This leads to the phrase "God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland."

You can also see evidence of this when traveling through the countryside. Currently I'm (Gabe) writing this passing through the outskirts of Amsterdam and it really is just marshland wherever human work hasn't been put in. I'm not sure all of the particulars of how the Dutch do it but I do know it involves windmills and canals.

After a brief history we went straight into the center of Amsterdam's red light district. Here, as i'm sure you know, prostitution has been legalized; not decriminalized but highly regulated. Instead prostitutes are treated as an independent entrepreneur. They pay taxes on their income and rent the window space they occupy for 8 hours a day. The women are highly protected with security systems in the windows allowing emergency response within 30 seconds and a police officer within 1 minute. The community tries to be as supportive as possible, realizing that if they are in this line of work they probably don't have many other options available to them. There are men who work in the district but they typically find better business working in massage parlors or with private phone lines. Laws have been created around this industry, most recently raising the earliest working age from 18 to 21. The oldest known working woman in the district is in her 80s and constantly has a 2 week waiting list of loyal customers whom she has worked with for decades. The red light district is generally a very safe neighborhood and it is not uncommon to see parents with children walking around at night. Photography, while not prohibited, is really frowned upon and there have been instances where the ladies will throw buckets of urine at a photographer. Best not have a camera out.

If you want to find some coffee in Amsterdam try looking in a cafe. There are over 500 coffee shops in the city but coffee isn't what they are famous for serving. One of the coffee shops we saw on the tour is famous for having a scene filmed on location in the movie Oceans 12.

Weed in Amsterdam is a tricky issue. This issue is still evolving and many in the Netherlands don't like their reputation being known as a place to smoke. It is technically illegal to smoke weed in the Netherlands but the only arrest for the past 20 years has been a woman a few years back that had 20 kilos on her. We don't know all of the specifics of the laws but it amounts to weed, mushrooms and some other drugs, labeled as soft drugs, are not really what the police are concerned with. The policy that has evolved to the point of having 500 shops that sell weed started by trying to combat a growing hard drug industry meaning things like heroin, cocaine, meth etc… At the time when the policy was enacted there were an estimated 10,000 hard drug users in the country. It is estimated that nowadays there are 300 hard drug users. Of those 300 most are in rehab and steps are being taken to keep them from growing the industry. By and large the policy has been a success but it has come at a bit of a cost.

Oftentimes I (Gabe) think that the U.S. would be a better place if prostitution and marijuana were legalized but seeing it here was just weird. I'm not sure if it was culture shock or what but walking around seeing glazed looks in every third persons eyes every single time I went out just kinda seemed sad to me. Along those same lines the red light district was crazy depressing to be in. When tours would come around some women would slam the doors and shut the curtains either out of anger or shame or something else I'm missing. Meanwhile there were jackasses gawking and pointing and making fun of the women in the windows. It felt seedy and wrong. I guess forcing the public to really see the depravity is part of what legalization does. The same things are happening in the U.S. it's just not on display. The economist in me is weighing the number of people who join in because it is no longer illegal and the negative effect of having it in the open versus the safety people now have in both industries and people being forced to come to terms with their beliefs. Most interesting econ lecture ever.

As a young woman I (Amanda) can't begin to express how it felt to walk around that area with my peer group on full display. I am exceedingly fortunate to not have to be in their compromising position. It breaks my heart. Then came the rage when we walked past a souvenir opportunity. You could pay to "dress up" (or down in this case) and stand with a friend or two and have your picture taken in a window; this juxtaposition really illustrated the depressing nature of this kind of tourism. Literally across from each other was one girl who was paying to pretend, her foolishness exposed and another who's look of shame was impossible to avoid.

While the seedy part of Amsterdam is the most famous, it was also just a cool and beautiful city. The city has over 100 KM of canals with over 1,000 bridges crossing them. The canals are typically 3 meters deep. Of that 3 meters, the top two are water and the bottom meter is mud/garbage. Luckily they clean out the canals regularly so they almost always look fairly clean. Along with the canals the Amsterdam style of house was really pretty.

All of the houses here have a special hook built on the side of the house. Space is a precious commodity and many of the houses are narrow and tall. Those hooks are so you can raise furniture to the higher stories and get it into your house via the window.

The houses are nice but my god the bridges and the canals were just so pretty. I (Gabe) think that while the Rhine River Valley was my favorite scenic area, Amsterdam has been my favorite city. The feel of it is just so laid back and cool. There are around 800,000 inhabitants living here and around 900,000 bicycles. Everybody everywhere rides a bike. Every time I went outside someone was on a bike. Every time I looked out a window I saw a bike. I was in the bathroom and heard someone ringing their bike bell. On our way to the train station at 5:40 in the morning on a Tuesday I saw more bikes than i did during 3 months in McMinnville. An average 12,000 bikes are cleaned out of the canals every year. When people's bikes get old they throw them in the canal and get a new bike. Bikes, bikes, bikes, BIKES!!!!!!!!!! They told us to be careful of bikes and trams while on our tour: "if you hear them ring the bell, run like hell." There were a lot of bikes.

Anyways back to the history. When Napoleon took over he put his brother in charge. His brother tried to bring about change implementing a policy whereby all buildings have an address and that all people have a last name, leaving the citizens to choose their own names. Before that people could be located by a crest that depicted a family symbol or depiction of their occupation. A lot of people didn't think this reform would last so they chose funny last names. If you looked in a Dutch phone book today you could still find surnames that translate to phrases like "born naked".

These are some of those original crests

Clearly this family could levitate buckets attached to sticks,

but only to shoulder height and while not wearing shoes

Dutch people are known for being really tall. People say that part of that is all the time they spend riding bikes around and the other is that they eat a lot of cheese. We got to try some cheese on our tour. New cheeses are usually soft while aged cheeses are much harder in texture. The cheese we had was aged around a year and the term they use to describe it translates to "cheese that has been laying around for a while". It was pretty tasty!

After the cheese we went to an enclosed area with a courtyard which was once home to a group of nuns. These nuns were looked down upon by other religious groups because they were a particular sect that allowed women to leave the sisterhood, no hard feelings, if they decided they wanted to get married/have children. Today the area provides housing for single mothers and their children.

In this square is also one of the only wooden houses left in Amsterdam. Building the outside of your house with wood was illegal due to the fire hazard it presented.

Another interesting piece of the local politics are the squatters. These were a series of buildings that were abandoned by people at some point in the past and new people just moved into them. We didn't get a ton of information about it beyond the fact that they are basically a commune of people who live together inside these buildings and will raise money to live on by selling stuff outside the buildings. The politics come in because people still own these buildings and have been trying to get these people evicted for a very long time. The Dutch government are the ones who decide on it and they say that if someone is rich enough to buy a building then they probably aren't as bad off as someone who is a squatter, so the squatter needs it more. Coming from the U.S. this was nuts. It makes Berkeley rent control look like throwing people out on the street for being a day late with rent. When some people asked our tour guide about it he explained that a lot of these more liberal policies come as fallout after WW2. The Dutch felt compelled to stick up for the little guy so to speak. I'm sure there is a hell of a lot more to do with it but the Netherlands was definitely effected by the war in ways that can still be seen today.

Later on we stopped in and had some amazing Dutch pancakes. They are authentic to the area and aren't like the typical pancake you would find at home. You can order some that are sweet with chocolate and what not but the really delicious ones are savory. I (Amanda) enjoyed one that consisted of potatoes, spinach, mushrooms, red bell peppers, and pesto while Gabe grabbed one that was loaded with salmon, pine nuts, guacamole, and a type of creamy cheese what was delectable. If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam drop in at the restaurant; Pancakes!

One of our favorite ways to pass the day was to simply sit by the canals and enjoy people watching. We had a great time playing a game where we would make up outlandish scenarios about the people passing by in their boats. The crowds can feel a little overwhelming when you are moving around the central areas of the city. We took advantage of sitting and observing.

We decided to wake up early one morning while in the city to visit the house Anne Frank hid in during her time in Amsterdam. Walking through the area was tragic. Honoring the wishes of Otto Frank the annex has been removed of all furniture and the windows were completely blacked out, giving off some small idea of the oppression and bleakness that those people lived with for two years. Some of the quotes from her journal wrote about a desire to just see the sun again. After just 15 minutes in those blacked out rooms I (Gabe) felt the onset of claustrophobia. It is very difficult to imagine a life like that.

We concluded our last night in Amsterdam with some mexican food. The restaurant scene was slightly overwhelming because you would walk down a long street with restaurants on both sides. Servers would stand out front of their restaurant and try to persuade you to choose theirs. After the 12th or so proposition we went off trail and found a cozy little mexican place. Gabe was overjoyed to find chicken in mole while i grabbed a few carnitas. The margaritas were also extremely large and satisfying.