Thanksgiving in Amsterdam

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday. There are no overt religious themes (and, in fact, it's implicitly celebrating charity from pagan Native American), it is not strongly commercialized, and it involves pie and football. And, as Jon Stewart pointed out, it's the only day of the year in which it is socially acceptable to get drunk at 2pm in front of your children (not that this is particularly relevant to me, but I do appreciate the sentiment).

Despite Thanksgiving not being a Dutch holiday, I managed to find two dinner gatherings to attend on Thanksgiving day.

First, Omar, who works at the university, volunteered his apartment for a dinner. Brian, an American Ph.D. student in the psychology department, cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, complete with six hours of prep time. Omar also managed to download a torrent of an NFL game - Steelers (for Brian, who is from Western Pennsylvania) versus Bengals. It was the first football I'd seen since the Superbowl last year. When I walked into the apartment and saw the game on TV, I felt myself grinning from ear to ear. It was a genuine "reminder of home" kind of moment.

I was surprised and pleased at the Dutch folks' response to the game. They were interested enough to frequently ask me and Brian and Allen (another American) for rules clarifications, and they started to get into rooting for specific teams. I wouldn't have been surprised - or even blamed them - if they'd complained about the game being boring or otherwise unpleasant to watch (much like many Americans would while watching a European league soccer match). So, in all, it was a pretty fun experience.

Brian's meal turned out great. There was "turkey" (whole chickens, I believe), cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and vegetables.

After spending the afternoon at Omar's on the edge of the city, I rode to the center of town for a Couchsurfing dinner on a houseboat. I'd gone to these monthly dinners twice before, so I knew a few people, including Rick (Dutch), Alexsandra (Polish), Niki (Sudanese), and Bea (American). There were several others who were either passing through or hadn't been to an event before, including two guys from Iraq, a guy from Pakistan, and others.




After dinner, I introduced myself to a guy I hadn't met before, who had raised his hand earlier in the evening when the hostess asked who was American (four out of the 20 people there, it turns out). His name was Corey, and he had just arrived in Amsterdam with his Japanese girlfriend Hitomi. Corey had lived in Japan for several years (and is completely fluent in Japanese, which was good, since Hitomi's English was limited), traveled through India and Nepal, and was touring Europe with Hitomi in search of hip hop dance competitions. Both he and Hitomi are apparently very good, competitive hip hop dancer.

Corey said that he had heard about the event at the last moment, and that he and Hitomi did not have a place to sleep that night. I offered my air mattress, and they walked back to my place with me and spent the next two nights before moving on the Utrecht.

Pretty interesting experience. I've met many interesting Couchsurfers, but no competitive Japanese hip hop dancers. Regardless of the novelty, it was a nice Thanksgiving experience.