Walkabout, August 17, 2013

I followed up two weeks of intense (4.5 hour per day, plus two hours of homework) Dutch language classes with a weekend of catching up on some work, cleaning my apartment, waking up at 4:45am on Sunday for my fantasy football drafts with my friends from ASU, and, finally, taking a four hour walk around Amsterdam on Sunday.

The rains that were falling when I work up early in the morning stuck around for another five hours, but they did not return despite the low, fast moving, and occasionally dark clouds that floated over Amsterdam for the rest of the day. Even with warm weather (~68 degrees F, or 22 C) and beautiful skies, the streets were almost empty as late as 12:00pm.

View from the bridge over the Amstel near my house

An aside: construction projects are constantly littered across Amsterdam. It helps keep up the fantastic infrastructure, I suppose; I do also wonder if it is a strategic form of government stimulus to the economy.

Keizersgracht, one of the canals around the center of Amsterdam

A houseboat on the Amstel. You can see the ladder connecting it to land on the left.

I'm cheating here - this was taken on Tuesday, five days ago.

The center of Amsterdam bustled a little more, mostly with tourists. The French were everywhere, and I'm not sure if I heard more English, Dutch, or French while walking around. As always, the tourist crowd navigated the streets and traffic customs a bit clumsily, but it also brought an infectious sense of curiosity and joy. 

A typical scene in the center of Amsterdam: fast food and sex shops flanked by old Amsterdam buildings and split by narrow streets. Passersby glance into the sex shop windows while eating fries and falafel. 

Read the Bible, the book for you. Given the (lack of) religiosity in Amsterdam, I'm guessing that this is a less-than-serious message.

A pair of (I think) Italians who tried to navigate this map for several minutes.

After walking around the center for a while, with stops to purchase craft beer, practice Dutch in a coffee shop (the coffee kind, not the weed kind), and grab a sandwich from a deli, I ran across a Sunday used book market near Waterlooplein. I walked through the tents to get a feel for the (as you can see below, older) crowd and the types of books that were being sold. After browsing for a while, I found a table that had Dutch children's books. I leafed through several before identifying two that were (hopefully) around my reading level, and I bought them with the intention of using them to keep practicing my Dutch.

A crowd that was a bit older and a bit more local than that around the Red Light District.

My two new Dutch books.

And, finally, I took a stop by the FOAM, Amsterdam's photography museum. One exhibit detailed an American unit stationed in the Eastern mountains of Afghanistan. It showed men in their early 20's in various stages of boredom and terror, and it detailed some of their thoughts regarding their service and what it meant to them, their country, and the land they were occupying.

A scene of a side of photos of U.S. soldiers sleeping, with battle scenes flanking it.

And, finally, here is the little gem of beer I purchased during my walk around town. Dutch Imperial Russian Stouts, each of which were aged in a different type of barrel. I'll need to get a small group together to compare the tastes, since having all five to myself in one sitting would cause some serious problems (they're all ~11% alcohol).