I’ll be travelling 21 days in November. That’s 70% of the month. Yowzers. posted on 28 Oct 2009 by Leigh to twitter

That’s no exaggeration. I will be away on travels for 70% of November, 74% if I count a camping trip I cut from the calendar once I realised how insane it was to spend more time on planes and trains, open roads and busy hotels than falling asleep in your own bed. I feel like I’ve reached a new pinnacle in my status as traveller now that I’ll be essentially absent for the better part of a month. And I’m not just embarking on a 21-day trip, either. I’ll be taking four separate journeys (each of which has their own mini-stops), touching down on home soil for sometimes a week, sometimes just a few hours. It’s a good mix of travel as well: I’ll be visiting friends and family just as often as I’ll be going solo, I’ll be travelling for work and for play and for in-between alike, and I’ll be hitting up the east cost and the west coast and some of the turf in between. I foresee needing a small library of books, a case of granola bars, and my own pillow.

Do not for one microsecond think I’m complaining, because to be honest, I’m thrilled to be travelling this much. While I wouldn’t want to make a habit of tuckering myself out in such a short span of time, a little excitement is nothing to balk at. To the outsider it can seem like I’m rushing about from place to place, but let’s be realistic, travel is a much slower beast than the calendar lets on. There’s the waiting to do, see, or go, and then the sitting while you’re getting from point a to point b, and of course periods of intense activity when a deadline presents itself or an event occurs, followed by leisurely periods of downtime before you get up and do it all again. I love the single-taskedness of travelling; right now I’ve nothing to do but pass the time by working or reading a book, now I’m working on the task at hand, now all I can do is sit back and observe, now it’s time to interact with the world around you, right now it’s time to unwind, explore, create, etc. You never have to choose because travelling limits what you can do. So when I was in Amsterdam, what I was supposed to be doing became incredibly clear. During the day I was supposed to explore. When I was hungry I was supposed to eat. When I got home it was time to work. When others were available to meet up it was time to go out. There’s no balancing act required.

Things are certainly simplified when travelling, as described above, but travel also amplifies other things. As Alain de Botton describes so acutely in his book, “The Art of Travel,” you cannot help but take yourself with you when you depart. It’s impossible not to check your emotional baggage along with your suitcase and even when you thought you’d left it behind, there it is, circling the luggage carousel, waiting to be carried on your back into paradise. De Botton notes that, without the distractions of our familiar surroundings and with the added expectations of our unfamiliar ones, our problems grow louder, our fears grow bigger, our outlook, darker, until they are impossible to ignore and you could be in Barbados but it isn’t going to make a fight with your wife any easier, especially if your rented cabana has no doors to slam. To some extent, this is very true, but there’s another side of it pessimistic Botton likes to ignore. Your laughter is louder, your joys are bigger, your triumphs, brighter, until you find yourself with a curious sensation you’d thought died with childhood. From this experience, some people, like Botton, write books, while others, like Edward Hopper, paint on canvas. Stephen Shore takes pictures, Che Guevara fights revolutions, Edward Ruscha throws typewriters out of speeding cars. It affects us all differently. Today, with travel so accessible, there are even more fruits of the travel labours. Tom Kevill-Davies cycles, Lindsay Nash and Whit Altizer blog, Gary Arndt publishes podcasts, Mariana van Zeller makes movies, and both Davey and Matt dance.

“It must be nice…”

I travel a lot. And as anyone who travels a lot knows, I hear this phrase a lot. “It must be nice you can afford to travel so much. The rest of us have to live responsibly.” Yes, because liking to travel automatically implies I’m irresponsible. “It must be nice that you can just leave whenever you want. I have a job to hold down.” Of course, because all trips just happen without planning, and the only people who travel are unemployed. “It must be nice to be able to do what you want all the time, when I have a spouse and kids to think about.” Sure, because I don’t have anything else to worry about in my life just because I’m child-less. “It must be nice to be so young you can travel like that.” Absolutely, because Melena RTW and Jason Harris aren’t at least twice my age and travel more than I do. It must be nice, because I seem to like it, and I seem to do it, but I also seem to not be the only one. It bothers me that travel is still associated with something only the upper crust or collegiate get to do, when it’s become something so much more accessible than it was years ago. And it is nice to travel as much as I do if you like it as much as I do, but it isn’t nice because I’m independently wealthy (I’m not), because I’m so unencumbered (I’m not), or because I’m in some magical life stage that makes mine so much easier than yours (it’s not). I have an edge over some folks who have a mortgage or a dog or a bum leg, but that doesn’t mean travelling three-quarters of the month is out of the question for you either. You just have to want it.

Now, I’m not saying simply the will alone is enough to find the way, but rather travel is a question of priorities. You can have many interests — I’d like to (and am trying to) learn Japanese, along with 42 other things — but they aren’t priorities, because your decisions can only be motivated by a choice few things you care about, and your priorities are it. I have not found a magical beanstalk or genie, I have just made travel a priority because it is so fulfilling to me right now. I have other priorities, and sometimes my priority to make rent and feed myself takes precedence over visiting Buenos Aires, but just as often my priority to go somewhere pushes me to buy that ticket. Having travel as a priority doesn’t mean I drain my bank accounts just to get away, it means I spend my money on hotel reservations and train tickets instead of shoes and books. I spend my free time combing Travel Zoo and researching destinations instead of browsing facebook. I spend my energy planning the next excursion and I spend my brainpower daydreaming about what Croatia is really like and I spend my hard drive space on my travel photographs. There’s nothing wrong with spending it any other way, it’s just different, and it’s different for me because travel is a priority. So if you’re going to say “its’ nice that…” say it’s nice that travelling is one of my priorities.

Growing up we were a two-part meal family. Aside from the occasional one-pot chili bowl, for the most part it would not be presumptuous to expect an appetizer with your entree, and coffee with your dessert. Going out to eat was always a splendid, patient affair complete with aptertifs (my sister and I learned to love the Shirley Temple during this inclusive cocktail hour), pressed white linen serviettes sometimes in fanciful shapes, and conversation to outlast our lengthy restaurant stay. It was over these candlelit tables that I learned to navigate any menu and, following my father’s lead, order the best item, to ask the right questions about a dish’s composition or seasonality, to perfect the art of sustained conversationalism from a ripe young age, and to appreciate slow food at its best, cultivating an adventurous tongue and forgiving intestines out of my family’s persistent and generous food education.

Of course dinner at home was hardly a sordid affair; I have the great fortune of not one but two culinarily-capable parents engrossed in the pastime: my father a resourceful foodie born with New England sensibilities, European taste buds, and a love of leftovers that I aspire to adapt, and my mother a fully-baked mix of southern blooded debutante raised on soul food vegetables and French-ranked gourmand who keeps a counter covered in baked goods at all times, who both have passed on their passions and know-how to their daughters, who in turn dabble in the kitchen with equal fervor, my sister fed by flour and yeast and I fueled by farmers markets. It’s quite a legacy to behold when you look it, and even more intense when you put us all in a room together.

It’s unclear to me whether my respect and adoration for good foods of all calibres — there’s nothing like a properly prepared Grande Mariner souflee, but then again not much beast a felafel kebab when your mouth is dry and your stomach empty and your clock says it’s too late for such antics — came from my family and their food passions or from my own experiences. Certainly the best part of travel for me is the gastronomic adventures I embark upon, be it breakfast sushi in Tokyo, bread in Berlin, or, as my latest adventure saw me, mussels in Brussels, but my convictions surrounding diet are equally impressive, if not altogether formidable. You’ve seen countless pictures of what’s on my plate and in my kitchen and read numerous posts about my obsession with cooking, baking, and eating, so it should come as no surprise to discover that I simply cannot comprehend why anyone skimps on food.

I understand that, when forced to cut corners in your life, food is on the list, and I wholeheartedly agree with keeping your grocery bill reasonable given your particular means, but for the life of me, I don’t understand why food is so often the first to go and not the last. Even when I was a broke university student in an expensive city I’d spend my last penny at the supermarket. I’d shop smartly, and generically, but people would look at my not pre-sliced cheese and bakery bread and basket of greens and cluck their tongues, like it was a luxury only I could afford, never mind that produce is the cheapest thing you can get at a supermarket and that my cheese cost the same as a box of instant macaroni or hamburger helper and would last me thrice as long. No, eating right and cooing well is only for the lucky. Please. As if.

You are what you eat, but you’re so much more. Food is your fuel, it becomes your skin and hair and sweat, it can turn a place into a home, it can show gratitude or devotion, it can cease a runny nose or comfort a lonely soul, it can make and recall memories stronger than anything else. A slice of my mum’s apple pie and I feel twelve again, the smell of my dad’s crab casserole and I know I’m home, the crunch of a taco and I instantly remember the faces and taco orders of all my friends back in Texas, the aroma of cornbread grounds me like a good night sleep. Take in these sights and smells and tastes. Relish them. Long for them. Learn to recreate them, or if you cannot, learn to seek them out. Sample everything. Because food is so much more than just food.

Admittedly, I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten how wonderful a slow meal in good company is. I’d forgotten how to take my time and savour every bite. I’d forgotten how food used to inspire me, not sit silently like a task on my to-do list. I’d forgotten about the relationship between food and community, the kind of honesty you just can’t find in a McDonald’s or California Pizza Kitchen. It’s a beautiful thing and I never thought I’d lose track of it. Remembering all this has overshadowed so much of my attention lately, and for good reasons, since finding my path back to the kitchen has been so much more glorious than I remember the place being. And it was Brussels that brought me back.

My whole childhood I’ve been informed in an unshakable deadpan by multiple relatives that Belgium has hands down the best food in the world. It’s easy to see why this opinion was law in my family. Couple regional specialties with French dining values, Dutch home cooking, and a wide mix of European influences and you get a gem of a culinary culture and one hell of a food scene. But it’s not just the impeccable Belgian blanche brews or the ethereal quality of the chocolateries, the incredible quality of the humble waffle stand or the mastery understated in a plate of frites with mayonnaise fritesausse, it’s the fact that there are so many unique Belgian specialties. It says to me, we don’t just do on thing well, we do everything well. Everything with passion, with an eye to detail, with a standard of quality, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, dessert, drink or snack. It says, quite loudly, quite repeatedly, that we value food. From the taste of the food in Brussels, it’s pretty hard to argue any differently. With each coffee I sipped, each chocolate I nibbled, each plate of something new and exciting I sampled, I remembered that I used to value food this way too.

I have been quite busy the last four months, adjusting to life in DC and getting myself set up here across the country on an entirely opposite coast, and as a result I have taken most of my meals without much thought, quietly even, in my very own kitchen. Since my return from Belgium, I have attended three sumptuous meals with a fresh mouth: a sushi feast at Momo in Old Town (by far the best sushi in Virginia), a simple but scrumptious Italian affair at Pizzaiolo in Del Rey (unbelievable wood fired pizzas), and some classic tapas at La Tasca in Penn Quarter (you can never go wrong with manchego and honey). I must say, though the costs were undoubtedly a splurge for me, especially given the frequency, the quality was superb and the experience, previously forgotten, was worth far more to me than just the cost of a meal. Eating out is certainly a luxury, but rarely is it about the food itself or even about the costs of eating it, it’s about a quality of life. The food is always tastier when you’re free the burdens of preparing and cleaning, and there are more than enough eateries in DC with the high quality food to boot. DC has the coffee shops and the produce and the posh bars in spades, but it’s my responsibility to live out the quality of life I hold dear. I consider myself well versed in the art of healthy cooking and of course gourmet tastes; I realise I am one of the few, especially considering my still green age, who appreciates not just the food, but the context, community, and the culture behind it. The road back to the dining room is no longer second nature to me, but it’s lined with delicious restaurants, seasonal fare, and an exciting new slice of local culture to delve into, and I’m just following my nose, excited about heading home.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I had heard a lot about the KCCLA, the Korean Cultural Centre of Los Angeles, where the Korean government subsidised language lessons that were so absurdly affordable nearly everyone had heard of their highly successful programme. I desperately wanted to learn Korean (one of my life aims is to become a polyglot fluently speaking Korean, Japanese, English, Spanish, and possibly French) but it wasn’t until my last year in LA that I had a Tuesday evening free to pursue KCCLA’s Korean language programme. I didn’t just like it, I simply adored it and would highly recommend the programme to anyone interested in learning another language. The classes went at a reasonable pace for someone completely unfamiliar with eastern languages, the professors were super fun and kept engaging us with real-life, practical vocabulary that I could immediately use on the street, and I fell in love with the language to go along with my pre-existing love of Korean movies, music, and soondobu, all of which I learnt to properly spell in hangul.

Sadly, there is no KCC in Washington DC, though the myriad grocer’s, restaurants, and tae kwon do gyms in Annandale more than rival LA’s Koreatown. Instead I discovered there is a JASWDC, the Japanese-American Society of Washington DC, which offers Japanese language classes. My intense love of Japan and Japanese culture is no secret, and I jumped at the chance to experience the same fulfilling language studies in another favourite culture of mine. In fact, I have another lesson tonight that I’m feverishly studying for whenever I can grab a free moment. I think the JAS, especially here in DC, is a wonderful society that does some pretty amazing stuff. I have no qualms with the people there, but if I were to be completely honest with you, I’m debating whether or no to continue my lessons.

At first glance it looks like my quandary is merely a squabble over values: I paid so I should go. This assumes the expense of classes is equal to, greater than, or somehow comparably worth my time, effort, and the payoff I’m getting out of the experience. Logistically, my list of excuses is long —I was out of the country for last week’s class and am already behind, I’m ill prepared for the current class, I don’t feel I’m progressing well, my time would be better spent catching up than flailing about for another hour and a half, my need to go the grocer’s is arguably greater — but my list of reasons to go short. It’s the same reason I paid what is to me a hefty fee to enroll in classes; I don’t want to punk out because I want to learn Japanese. And while all of these factors are vying for weight in my head and thus decision, a simple thought occurred to me. Just wanting to learn Japanese is not enough.

Pause. Let’s go back to Korean. I had two successful terms at KCCLA when I would have been terribly disheartened to miss a lesson, but that last term before I left was a complete botch. I went to maybe three out of ten classes, and they were the first three to boot. I like to pretend it was a slippery slope after I missed that fourth class, or that I had too much else on my plate outside of funtime (yes, I did consider language lessons and my language homework my free/fun time), but the reality is that there wasn’t a compelling enough reason outside of the desire to learn Korean to make me drive the 45 minutes to the centre, sit through the two hours of class, and do my homework for the next week. Just wanting to learn Korean wasn’t enough, I needed the children’s songs, the menu translations, the soap opera analysis taught in my previous two Korean classes to engage me. I needed the payoff of knowing I could walk into the Korean Galleria and complete a shopping transaction in only Korean, or that I would understand the answer when I asked if there was meat in the so-and-so, the simple joy of hearing someone answer you back in Korean when you say hello, or thank you, or goodbye. I stopped having that. Was it because Korean suddenly got hard? I certainly thought so. But that’s a big, stinky, heaping pile of hogwash and we both know it. It wasn’t fun anymore because my professor wasn’t making it fun.

In the world of educational professional development, we talk about letting students “take ownership” of their learning, understanding intuitively that no teacher can make them learn, they have to take on the responsibility themselves and then, through inquiry and experimentation and hopefully some teacher guidance, they push themselves to actually learn instead of memorise and regurgitate. Was it my professor’s responsibility to make learning Korean fun? Yes and no. It was his responsibility to make language lessons be about more than language. It’s about communicating ideas and not about subject markers and using the appropriate polite form. The grammar comes intuitively after the ideas, not in their place. Going to classes stopped being fun, so I stopped going. That’s not a terribly illogical logos. But what I had already learned in my Korean studies was how to make learning Korean fun. It was supposed to be hard, but my other professors showed me that focusing on the ideas behind the words made the language become invisible, and instead of being a math equation it was TV show. You didn’t have to simplify a bunch of variables, you just had to learn which actor was which.

Now we return to Japanese lessons, something which, from the little I experienced in Tokyo and my early Korean lessons, should be fun. I should want to go back to class. I should be searching for Japanese music and humming “The Rabbit and the Turtle” and failing miserably at restraining myself from going to yet another sushi restaurant just so I can say “Okanjo onegaishimasu!” I should be looking forward to my homework, like solving a puzzle. I should be trying to use my Japanese whenever I can and searching for furigana manga. If I’m not enjoying my Japanese lessons, which are at present pretty much rote repetition straight from the textbook (not helpful in making things sticky aka: easy to remember at all), it’s a shortcoming of the environment I’m in, not of my brain or my desire to learn the language. It should be fun, and if it isn’t, it’s up to me to make it fun. If that means not going to Japanese class and instead watching Train Man then so be it. Another way to look at it: If language class isn’t teaching me much, continuing to attend just because I want to learn Japanese is like standing in line at the Sprint store to fix a problem with your AT&T phone. It seems related, though it’s really just a waste of time. On the other hand, if you are learning something significant in class, or if your reason for going is something else, like to hear a native speaker for an hour and a half, then having a perfect attendance record might be worth your while. That’s the real question: what am I getting out of my class time?

It all boils down to my initial revelation. Just wanting to learn Japanese is not enough to learn it. It’s foolish to think sitting for 90 minutes a day will teach you anything as all-encompassing as a language as fast as the textbook or JLPT says you should. It’s about what you do outside of the classroom that matters (please direct all arguments to AJATT), and the plain-ol’ desire to learn Japanese is insufficient to guarantee I’ll actually learn from this class I’m debating to attend, or any other formal learning structure to begin with. My problem with this class? It’s not teaching me anything I couldn’t alone in my room with nothing more than the textbook in hand. I’ve been to three classes already (see a the similarity with my final Korean classes yet?) and I’ve had a hell of a time trying to get the vocabulary to stick in my brain. Yet in my independent kanji studies from Heisig’s book, Remember the Kanji, I’ve had no trouble whatsoever retaining the 200-odd kanji, seemingly one-off and random heiroglyphs, I’ve learned thus far. It’s no mystery to me why the difference; I have fun with the Kanji. They fit into stories and sentences and they build off one another and I got chills when I looked up from my book in Amsterdam’s Chinatown after lesson 8 and realised I could read the Chinese poster (hanza and kanji are similar) advertising fish ball soup for 8 euros because I knew the kanji for fish, and soup, and eight. Contrast this with class, where I can’t remember the word for “international relations” because it’s dry, isolated, and I won’t read it on a poster anywhere. I’m not even in college anymore, so asking Elgin, my speaking partner, what his major is eighteen times doesn’t help either of us.

So am I going to go to class? Probably not. Sure I feel bad wasting throwing my money away, worry I’m missing an opportunity, lament I can’t get more out of the class, and chastise myself for falling behind, but it’s not a complete waste, because while I didn’t get the best Japanese instruction ever, I did get schooled in something far more important. It’s not, “no pain, no gain.” It’s, “no thrill, no will,” and without the thrill alive and well inside the classroom, I just haven’t the will to learn any of it. The answer? Seek the thrill somewhere else, which is exactly where I’m going to go instead.

On my plate: an early-morning, red-eye reducing raisin koffeebrooj (coffee cake) somewhere in Schipol

One would expect a place with the hype of Boston to be far less unique than the beloved city happens to be. Whatever you’ve heard about Boston, it’s true — the big-bellied Red Sox barflies, the hippie-cum-yuppie-foodies, the strong historical shadow, the supreme collegetown vibe forever fighting the townies, the lovely Boston lagers, I mean all of it — and in fact, despite multiple visitations, Boston continues to delight me.

The scape of the city is recognosable well beyond the numerous iconic neighbourhoods, and despite the incredible variety of its residents, Bostonians exhude a certain, not entirely unwelcome mojo. The city crawls with their escapades and their hangouts (a priveledge granted exclusively to places urbanised on such a walkable scale); even for a true city as surprisingly small as Boston, the anteceding culture is unexpectedly dense enough that the neighbourhoods themselves might as well be their own city-states for all the fierce loyalty the inspire.  My most recent venture lasted a mere weekend and still I managed to amble through just about every quarter in search of the full Boston story.

The Boston I know is full of fairly conservative art, a healthy dose of wealth and all that entails, and die-hard sports buffs. It’s all cold weather and humble history. But the Boston I witnessed firsthand on this spin through the area was the Boston of comminist t-shirts, marijuana music festivals, and pirate cabarets. It was the Boston of stuffed French Toast, of microbrews, of Newberry Comics, of an impressive public library, in short just the type of off-the-cuff complexity you want in a repeat visit. Sure there’s that romantic Boston, the one filled with old-world architecture and strolling parks, apple cider at the farmers market, and “pak the kaa in Haavad yad” but to rely on a textbook image of Boston is to discredit the adaptive ability the region has, making the Boston of yesteryear just as poignant as the Boston of today. It’s not the cobblestones or the quaint churches but the way they are side by side with shutter shades and breakdancers, where English Premiere League fans and Patriots fans are vying for the same territory, where diner-dripping cream pies are just as likely to be accompanied by 19 cent coffee as by a 12 dollar cocktail.

Let’s not forget that Boston has a long history supporting such diversity: even the 1920 immigrant version of Boston had subcultures in spades, a cournicopia which, though perhaps only tolerated back then, has been wholeheartedly embraced today. The result? Same old authentic Italian-American fare and Irish pubs a-pleanty, but you’ll no longer incite anyone’s emnity from frequenting both, nor from sampling the Ethiopian, Nepalese, or Chinese so abundant in the city.  Back then like stuck to like, and playdates were easily accepted or denied based on who attended which church, but today it seems hard to imagine a Boston without the black coat-clad assertively vocal aetheists or the Kamboucha-swigging mystics on their way to Bihkram Yoga practice. While other, maybe even more worldly metroplises (New York, Los Angeles, Paris, et al) claim to host the same spectrum of personalities, to do so in a place with as big a pool as NYC or LA is a feat not nearly so admirable as when Boston pulls the same off wih a mere 1.4 million people and 12.9 kilometer reach.

That’s the real power of Boston; it’s kept up with the changing American face. Just as our grandparents and great grandparents needed it back then to usher in their Dream, so too did we need it to pop up international businesses and engineering schools and hipster bookshops to foster our own Dream. We needed it to keep that real-world, salt-of-the-earth feel but grow some skyscrapers and new-money boutiques and restaurants to cover up the spots the 1950s left bald. Luckily, Boston, being the giving spirit she is, obliged and kept Boston very much alive.

On my plate: a day spent sampling chocolate truffles from nearly every chocolatier in Brussels. Elisabeth was my favourite by far and included flavour combinations like: pistachio double chocolate, multi-berry and milk, raisin walnut white, grand marnier praline, and my pick of the day, dark chocolate with cardamom and mexican chili. The boutique also had a bunch of gift boxes, various fruit- and nut bars, and a series of hot chocolate flavoured mixes, which were a block of chocolate, essential oils, spices, and sometimes liquors cooled into a block set around a spoon. Simply stir into hot milk and you’ll die a happy chocoholic

On my plate: the carnage left from a dinner of mussels with an old mate. Some call it garbage, but I call it VICTORY

On my plate: street waffles in Bruxelles

I arrived in Amsterdam to an ordinarilly drizzly day and made my way in by some combination of train and bus, the details of which are kept foggy by jetlag. It’s easy to be struck by either of the city’s extremes; the picturesque and positively poetic canals are met with a grungier (though hardly seedy) undercurrent that is simultaneously ill-fitting and well devised, but don’t let yourself be distracted by the Italian tourists or the medieval architecture, Amsterdam’s strength is in its subtleties, not its smokeshops.

The residents of this self-acclaimed “global city” are an international bunch, diverse enough that finding traditional Dutch fare is somewhat of a rarity among the numerous Indonesian, Surinamese (which is from…where exactly?), and Mediterranian fast food joints lining the alleyways.  The hotspot strikes me as constantly in flux, somewhere between a celebrity A-lister and a novellist only revered post-mortem. Amsterdamers have already changed their identity once in my short lifetime and I’ve no doubt that the faces of the populous, the city itself, and the cultural vibe will change yet again well before this current generation cedes to the next.

Adding to the general topsy turvy, the Holland hub is blanketed by a layer of seemingly endless construction and urban revitalisation projects that knock the tourist in me straight out of paradise; I can only imagine how it grates on the locals, all of whom appear to be managing just fine on their menagerie of bicycles. The famed must-sees are nothing compared to the impressive image of a single dad carting three toddlers and four bags of grogeries on his single-gear bicycle, or of a tuxedo-clad resident toting a contrabass to what I assume is practice, though from the way he’s matered the delicate balance required to keep such an unseemly load semi-stable has me convinced me he’s capable of anything. I’ve been even more taken aback by the Dutch sense of hospitality, gezellig as they call it, which extends well beyond common courtesy and differs from other European sensibilities foremost in its depth.  Such observations, quite impenetrable at first glance, are quickly broken by a squabble with a passing tram or a nice big wad of spit aimed in your vecinity.

Idyllic it is not, but still, I remain struck by how three dimensional Amsrterdam is. There are a number of assholes and ill-wishing Amsterdamers, but for each is a warm, if eccentric person such as Jay of Jay’s Juices, who has nicknames for his regulars and calls each new patron pet names. Each traveller has his or her preferences and opinions, but to call the Dutch cold would seem inaccurate to even the most disapproving of passers-through. Reserved, yes, formal, perhaps, but when has a strong conviction in defense of personal choice been anything but admirable?  Nor is misunderstood or overlooked an accurate descriptor.

In fact, verbalising the Dutch experince is precisely the problem. How do you explain the outlook of a people with a history as rich and a culture as diverse as these? How do you give creedence to a place so one-off and yet so pilfered as this? You see for yourself, drinking alongside the clientelle of a local brown cafe. You watch and learn at any of the small parks tucked inside the crook of intersecting canals. You listen to tellers effortlessly switch between languages when you’re in line to buy your kaas and broog (cheese and bread). You feel it when you walk the border between the old and new sides of Amsterdam, because, as I’ve tried to illustrate in these meagre words, this city surpasses and disappoints all your conceptions beyond description. Simply put, Amsterdam marches to its own beat.

On my plate: pofferjetes in Amsterdam