Bachelor Party Boat Trip

My friend Dan is getting married in September in Venice, where I'll be going to attend the wedding. I took charge of organizing his bachelor party, which took place yesterday, during some of the nicest weather to touch Amsterdam this year. I organized the bachelor party into two phases. Phase one was a four hour boat trip down the Amstel river, and phase two involved dinner and an evening in the center of Amsterdam, with a sort of scavenger hunt of tasks that Dan had to complete. 

Our boat trip ran along the bike route I've taken to Oudekerk aan de Amstel multiple times, and it gave me a chance to see the river and a bit of the city from a different angle than I'm used to. 

Seeing how boats like this from the river level is one of the treats of taking a boat ride.

The river was busy, and there were several interesting scenes such as this of a dog and a shirtless man standing on a boat.

Dan with the scotch I bought him two years ago as a thank you for allowing me to stay at his apartment when I moved to Amsterdam.

Restaurant and terrace at Oudekerk aan de Amstel

Real estate advertisement along the river

A classic car on top of a house boat

Sunbathers were ubiquitous on the river

My apartment is about 200 feet from this rowing club.

There were a lot of boats on the river, and there were even more people on the bike paths adjacent to the river. Some people raced along the path on road bikes; others leisurely road on city bikes, often with children; others walked or lounged on the banks of the river.

Serbia

The hosts of the Serbian Psychology Association’s 2013 conference decided to add an interdisciplinary element to their program, and they identified evolution and biology as pieces of that interdisciplinary framework. After a few others (including my department chair) declined invitations to give a plenary lecture at the conference (this basically refers to a long, honorary, invited lecture), the organizers sent me an invitation in March. I accepted, partially because I’ve never been to the Balkans, and I was curious to see the nature, meet the people, try the food, etc.

After a departure that was early enough to require a taxi to get to the train station (the metros do not start running until a little after 6:00am) – the 5:00am wakeup was a little rough after I’d been at a Neko Case concert the previous night – and a layover in Warsaw, I arrived in Belgrade around 1:00pm on a Wednesday. The conference organizer told me that a man named Dag would be waiting for me at the airport. After deboarding, I looked around the terminal for a man matching the picture that the organizer had sent – a man that I’d commented to looked like an older, slightly larger jawed version of me (meaning that he was white and had a shaved head and glasses). Dag and I found each other after a few minutes, and the two of us were escorted to the parking lot by an airport security agent. Dag told me that he is an instructor in criminology at a Serbian police academy, and he knows former students who now work as detectives all over the country. The agent who escorted us through the airport was one of these former students.

Before beginning our drive to the conference venue, which was about 120 miles east of Belgrade, Dag took me and the two others we'd be sharing a car with to what he described as a traditional Serbian restaurant - one that in a traditional style, and was run by traditional men. The menu was written in Serbian and in English, but the descriptions were somewhat lacking. I was able to identify things that I did not want to try (mostly organ meats), but many of the dishes had ambiguous names with vague descriptions like "traditional meat dish." So I blindly ordered one dish that I guessed was either chick or pork, since it was described as "white steak." You wouldn't know what it was based on how it looked, and I'm still not sure what it was after eating it. It was indeed some white meat, but, after being stuffed with cheese, it had been wrapped in approximately 10 slices of bacon. This was an introduction to what is the norm in Serbian dining - more meat in one meal than I eat in a week.   

The other Serbian restaurants I went to described all their meat dishes in weight. I ordered the fish one night, and it was described as 1500 grams. For lunch the next day, I ordered the lightest dish available - kebabs that were 350 grams and slathered in some kind of off-white meat sauce. In total, I think I ate about six weeks worth of meat in my Wednesday through Saturday stay in Serbia.

Apart from meat, there were three things that struck me as particularly interesting during my stay. They include:

1) The people. Apart from Dag, I mostly interacted with students during my stay. The ones I talked with did not seem much different from students in Amsterdam. They were internationally minded and exposed to the same (mostly U.S. based) global media culture. They spoke excellent English. They were liberal and open minded and wanted to travel and to meet new people. Belgrade is not a hub for international travel and business like Amsterdam is, and it is not a rich country like the Netherlands is. Others noted that Serbia suffers from a bit of a brain drain, where many of the best and brightest young people are eager to move to other countries like Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and the U.S. This made sense to me after I interacted with the small group of students and learned a bit more about the history of the country and its current condition.

2) The history. I brushed up a bit on the ancient (well, at least pre-20th century) history of the country using Wikipedia, and I read about how the area was on the line between Muslim influences in Europe largely coming from the Ottoman Empire and Catholic and Orthodox influences coming from the Roman Empire, Austrian Empire, and Holy Roman Empire. 

This combination of religious and ethnic backgrounds was relevant to the 1990s conflicts within the recently dissolved Yugoslavia, which now consists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. My superficial understanding of the conflict that involved the U.S. and NATO is as follows: Serbia claimed an area with an ethnic minority (Muslim, I think) as its own; the ethnic minority was not happy about this and engaged in some domestic terrorism; the Serbian government responded in a heavy handed manner, with martial law and eventual deportation/relocation of the area based on ethnic lines; this lead to more aggression from the minority; Serbian troops engaged in further bad behavior (including, though the use of the term is debated, genocide); NATO told all parties to chill out and disengage so that an international presence could establish order; Serbia declined to do this despite NATO threats; and, finally, NATO bombed Serbia (and specifically Belgrade) in response.

I'm guessing I got some detail(s) incorrect there, but I believe the gist is correct. The last part is definitely true. When Dag drove me through Belgrade, he pointed out buildings that were still in ruin from U.S. missiles and bombs from 15 years ago, and I was told, "This is what you did." I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that.

3) Related to the first two: the ambivalence toward the U.S. The wall of the largest room in the first restaurant I went to displayed framed photographs of Vladamir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. As far as I can tell, their strongest commonality is that they are all (or were) perceived as adversaries of the U.S. government. Remnants from the NATO bombing campaign are salient in downtown Belgrade, and the U.S. is perceived as the commander of NATO. At the same time, people I spoke with mentioned the amazing nature in the U.S., the American dream, and (interestingly, to me) the free speech and relative lack of corruption in the U.S. as virtuous qualities. 

And, with these thoughts, I'll provide some pictures. Unfortunately, I was not able to take any of Belgrade. But I do have some of the conference, the people I was with, and the areas surrounding Donji Milanovac. 

An optical illusion set up for the conference, with Dag in the background.

Dag with cat. The cat was enjoying it.

Me and Dag.

Bottles of wine and spirits at a vineyard that Dag and I visited.

Sign and path at the vineyard

View from the vineyard

The two men running the vineyard

Buildings at the vineyard

Donji Milanovac

Donji Milanovac

Looking across the Danube to Romania from Donji Milanovac

Exterior of an orthodox church in Donji Milanovac

Church interior

Me with Vesna and Natasha (not sure about the spelling)

Donji Milanovac

Grand Canyon

I have two confessions that usually shock the European members of the circles I run in. First, I've never been to New York City. To many Europeans with a traveling bug, NYC is the U.S., and it is the greatest city in the world. After I explain that the distance between Phoenix and NYC (2138 miles) is approximately the same as the distance between Amsterdam and Baghdad (2347 miles), and that my travel budget was fairly constrained before I moved to Europe, their incredulity (mostly) fades.

The second confession is a bit less forgivable - despite having lived in Arizona for 22 years, and in New Mexico for seven, I've never visited the Grand Canyon. It's a pretty embarrassing blight on my traveling resume. So I decided to remedy it when visiting friends and family during a quick trip to the U.S. in the first week of May.

I hadn't prioritized visiting the canyon in the past for a few reasons, the strongest being an assumption that the desert/high desert landscape wouldn't be that much more spectacular than what I'd seen in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Salt River Canyon, Sedona, etc. Boy, was that a stupid assumption. The trail along the South Rim was hands down the most spectacular natural scene I'd ever seen. It was better than mountain summits in the Alps, Coastal Mountains in British Columbia, Canadian Rockies in Albert, and San Juan mountains in Colorado. It was, truly, breathtaking.

The warm sun and blue skies seem far in the past after two weeks of heavy (daily) rain and wind chills that have dipped below 40 degree. Summer in Amsterdam will not happen in May, but hopes are high for a pleasant June.

Warning sign in five language (or six, depending on how many non-Latin language characters languages are being used at the bottom). Good decision - there were a lot of Germans on the trail, and many Asian tourists. 

The high desert trees dotting the edges of the trail offered some eye candy. And something to grasp onto if you got too close to the edge.

A five foot snake slowly made its way onto the trail from under a pile of logs. I wasn't sure if it was a rattlesnake (it wasn't) until its tail appeared, and by then it had seen us and decided to slink back under shelter before I could get much closer. 

Emily in a dancer pose on top of a memorial for John Wesley Powell.

Me modeling a shirt I purchased in Thailand, which was described by Emily as "heavy on the taupe." I'm glad she provided this description - I had previously had no idea what taupe looks like. 

IJ Brewery

Spring has (meekly) sprung, with leaves popping out of branches seemingly overnight despite still cool weather. Despite daytime temperatures still barely topping 50 degrees, people are flocking to outdoor markets and sun soaked cafe terraces.

While walking through the Dappermarkt, an outdoor market in the Eastern part of Amsterdam similar to the Albertcuypmarkt that I've shown several times, I realized that I was very close to the Brouwerij 't IJ, and that it might be a nice time to have a beer and see how people were reveling in the sunlight.

The Brouwerij (brewery) 't (abbreviation of "het," which is a definite article used for "non-gendered" nouns) IJ (the name of a river in Amsterdam, pronounced like "eye") - or, as I usually call it, the "IJ Brewery" - is Amsterdam's most well known craft brewery. It's been around since the 1980s, and it distributes to most bars that I've been to in Amsterdam. The beers are not up to the standards of U.S. craft breweries (or De Molen, the world class brewery in Bodegraven, NL), but they are a substantial upgrade over Heineken, Amstel, Jupiler, and the other watery pils that are standard on tap in Amsterdam.

The brewery and tasting room/bar are located beside one of the most prominent windmills in Amsterdam. Indeed, the windmill leads to some confusion when I mention De Molen (again, the excellent brewery in Bodegraven). People often think of this as "the windmill brewery" ("de molen" means "the windmill") rather than the Brouwerij t' IJ.  

The brewery logo includes an ostrich standing over a large egg. I'm not sure why the creators decided on an ostrich, but the egg is a play on words in Dutch. "IJ" is the name of the river, and "ei" is the word for egg. The two are pronounced similarly, so you have the brewery on the "eye" (IJ) river with an "eye" (ei) on the logo.

I've heard some locals complain that the IJ Brewery was added to Lonely Planet travel guides recently, and this led to an influx of tourists visiting the brewery. I'm sure I arrived in Amsterdam after the brewery was added to the guidebook, so I can't comment on how much brewery tourism has increased, but I heard far more English there than Dutch. And I also heard something that might have been Russian, some Portuguese (a guess based on the Brazilian soccer jersies that a group of four men were wearing), and some French.

Two of the tourists were a British couple sitting on a bench in front of mine. I did not notice them kissing at any point until I took a look at a picture of my beer and peanuts I'd taken.

The IJ IPA with peanuts. And a kissing couple in the background.

The IJ Brewery snack list. Cheese, meats, nuts, and eggs.

Beers on tap.

Small cluster of apartments across the water from the brewery.

Boater on the water and train in the background outside the brewery.

Bird nest on the water outside the brewery.

Spring Delay

Amsterdam has been remarkably cold since I returned from Thailand a little over two months ago. There was a false alarm of spring in early March, when the temperatures passed the 50 degree mark for two of three days. Since then, though, we have been between five and 15 degrees below normal, often with strong, biting winds.

Some (though not all) of the reason for the long gap between writings about Amsterdam and travels was due to the hectic nature of a conference that I helped organize and hosted in Amsterdam last week. Researchers from all over Europe, and a few from the U.S., came to Amsterdam for the annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association. We advertised the often beautiful, late March springtime weather as a benefit of coming to the conference. But the high temperatures hovered around 35 degrees, the lows dipped into the low 20’s, and arctic winds howled through the canal streets that I led conference guests through around dinner time.

Part of the reason for the low temperatures has been the (relatively) dry air and lack of cloud cover. When there has been enough moisture, we’ve seen little snow flurries that remind us how lousy it is outside, but that melt quickly and leave none of the charm of a solid snowfall afterward. Even last Sunday, March 31^st, saw an hour or so of quickly falling dry little snowflakes.

I took my camera out into the streets during one of these snowfalls right after I returned from Scotland. This one did leave snow on the ground for at least a day, and it showed the grit of (some) Amsterdamers in the face of bad weather. Many people biked as they normally would, only with gritted teeth and with squinted eyes that tried to keep the snow at bay.

Now, though, it feels like spring has arrived. The temperatures remain about 10 degrees below normal, but the winds are calm and the sun is shining brightly enough that even 40 degrees feels like a heat wave compared to what we’ve experienced for two months. The ten day forecast shows temperatures rising to the upper 40’s and lower 50’s, with rain and, hence, a return to normalcy. If this normalcy does return, spring will hit Amsterdam like a ton of bricks, with people skipping work to drink beer on café terraces and lounge in the parks as soon as it hits 60 degrees.