My First Week In Amsterdam Part II. -- Impressions

Some things I forgot to mention the last time I blogged...

My next door neighbor, Anoop, is from India. He has already been here for 5 months, so he already figured out living in Amsterdam and knows  helpful information for losers like me who cannot find anything. We also had a great conversation over dinner tonight (2/2) about American politics, planning of cities, comparing places we both have been to, the cost of things/living/education, Africa and Apartheid...a rare mix of topics that was great to hear what someone from outside the US thought.  Nicoletta from Romania joined in a little later.  Anoop made fun of me for my cooking skills or lackthereof.  

I also just learned that my dorm is in the exact area where a lot of wealthy Jews used to live before the war--the portuguese and russian synagogues are around the corner because of that very reason.  I also just found out that the zoo nearby has WWII connections as well. The zookeeper at the time of the Holocaust was a righteous gentile. He built a giant rock structure in the monkey cage and hid Jewish children behind it to save them from the Nazis.  The zookeeper was friends with the german soldiers monitoring the area and he gave them gifts to ward them from entering the zoo. He was worried that whenever the nazis would come into the zoo they would see the monkey constantly looking back to where the children were hiding as the monkey got slightly irritated with others sharing its space.


Below, I give my impressions of Amsterdam culture. They are random and may not cohere...

Here, and it could be a European thing, electricity is not as strong so if you want to microwave something it takes a flippin' long time.

Also, when I got dropped at my dorm for the first time, I saw someone moving in to an apartment. The only way he or she could move his or her's stuff into the apartment several floors up is to basically forklift it through a window in the apartment.  Quite a site seeing a dangling fridge and sofa. Pretty crazy.

The food-
The food in Amsterdam is interesting. I dont know if I can say it is delicious or not because there are many kinds of foods. Amsterdam has a lot of indonesian restaurants, but at the same time sushi places and burger joints (friends have recommended Burgermeester or the Burger bar) with thick potato-y fries. When I tried these famed fries, I asked for ketchup.  Little did I know that I was charged! Can you believe it?? I was charged for ketchup. I guess this makes up for the times where I have taken too many Heinz packets from restaurants.  Payback. Any condiment is not gratis, but 50 cents extra! That is a whopping ~65 cents in U.S. money!

Also, the Dutch sure do like their pork products be it pork from a can--like spam--or delicately laid over the top of broccoli or a chinese noodle dish. It looks sort of random when you first see it, but it is the norm here.  I don't eat pork so this has been mildly difficult to find stuff without the oink in it. There are these panini sandwiches called tostis which are fantastic and cheap. Those two adjectives are key when looking for food here or anywhere in the EU for that matter.

Lastly,  everyone should try a stroopwafel at some point in their eating careers. Two thin waffle-y cookies crammed together between a thin layer of carmel-y syrup. DELICIOUSNESS! Lay that baby over a hot mug of tea to melt and let the euphoria begin.

Drinks

Well, to put it plainly, beer is cheaper than water here.  No joke.  It costs 25 euro cents for a Grolsch at Albert Heijn, the Jewel Osco of the Netherlands, and 65 euro cents for a bottle of water. Go figure.  And, that is the mentality in Amsterdam. Everyone drinks beer nearly all the time and there are 1200 pubs to quench the residents and tourists' thirst for the hops.  As much as it seems that everyone is an alcoholic, it is just a different way of life.  The Dutch love to go out and sit in a cafe or a bar/pub to converse starting at a very young age.

Grocery Stores

While grocery stores may at first seem to be the one place of cultural same-ness, they are not.  A) you have to bag your own groceries B) you must do so in an efficient/timely fashion, otherwise other peoples stuff comes flying down the collection chute.  C) While paying, which is only with cash since Amsterdam is a cash oriented city where credit cards are not commonly used in places like grocery stores in the US,  one receives coveted futbol cards with futbol players from all the different teams. Little kids will wait outside the grocery store to ask if they can have them, and some times the check-out person will ask if he/she can have yours. D) One needs to bring his or her own bags, otherwise one is stuck paying 25 cents for a bag. Definitely an eco-friendly system that the US should institute!! Some stores are doing that in the States, like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, but not nearly the same way.

Directions

This city is really REALLY hard to navigate as it is constructed on a semi circle and to get anywhere you have to maze through bridges over canals to take you further to the interior and vice versa to get to the exterior. Some canals have the same names as streets. When one crosses a bridge one may see that there are two sides to that street, one on the interior of the bridge and on the exterior.  Hard to explain in text, hard to figure out in actuality. Also, when I got lost the other day, I called someone who was near a computer to google map us to the right spot. Well, the street names can be 30 letters long and multiple words--for example: Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal is just one street name and then when you are spelling that through a crappy cell phone it can be quite the feat.

To be continued...
Alstublieft