New Delhi

My flight from Amsterdam to New Delhi arrived at around 2:15am - about 45 minutes later than scheduled. Even so, Vijay, the driver arranged by my hotel to pick me up, was waiting for me, holding my name on a sign just outside of customs. Vijay was tiny - maybe 5'6" and mostly skin and bones - but he insisted on grabbing my backpacking backpack and laptop case and carrying them to the car. 

The wide-laned first few miles of highway around the airport were similar enough to those leading from Phoenix and Los Angeles in the U.S., except that the smog was far thicker than anything I've seen in either city. Indeed, if you stacked the LA smog on top of the Phoenix smog, I think you'd still have clearer air than what I saw in Delhi. After those first few miles, the air did not clear, but the road lost some of its similarity to those in the Southwestern U.S. Even though lanes were clearly marked and maintained, drivers stopped paying attention to them and drifted, seemingly aimlessly, left and right across the three lanes on our side of the concrete median. Pedestrians darted across the highway, and some people simply stood around on the shoulder as cars and trucks zipped by at high speeds. 

After I checked in to the hotel, got a few hours of sleep, woke up for the last hour of the breakfast service, and got a few more hours of sleep, I left the hotel to explore the streets a bit and try to arrange my transportation to my next destination. There were a handful of run down buildings with shoddy "travel agent" signs within a thirty second walk from the hotel entrance. I decided to return to the hotel to ask the front desk if they could recommend one of these. Management said that my safest bet is to go directly to the train station and to not deal with any private dealers, who would invariably try to screw me over. I was also warned that I might be approached outside the train station by someone telling me to follow them to the ticket office, and that I should ignore them.

I left for the train station with my camera strapped around my shoulder and my passport and wallet in my pocket. I didn't have a chance to take pictures, though. The walk was chaos. There were goats, cows, and dogs wandering along the road, sometimes guided by people, and sometimes wandering freely. Throngs of men walked up and down the street at slow paces, seemingly with no real destination in mind. I saw hundreds of people every minute, and none of them were female. The road was filled with cars, bicycles, and three-wheeled, CNG powered auto rickshaws, with the cars and rickshaws honking constantly for reasons that were beyond me (and, I do mean "constantly" - I could hear honking, with less than two seconds between each honk, even from inside my hotel room from 7am to 9pm).

After I darted across the road through the rapidly flowing stream of vehicles toward the train station, I was immediately approached by a short man who was in the mood to chat. He asked me where I was from. The Netherlands, I told him curtly. He commented on my short hair with a smile. Thanks, I like it too, again, curtly. He asked How long are you? I told him that I'd be in Delhi for two days. No, he said, laughing, how long are you? When I realized he was referring to my height - and that he was looking up at least eight inches at me - I told him 185cm. I started turning left toward the man part of the train station, and he urged me to follow him away from the train station, where he could get me a good deal on a train ticket. I told him, No, I'll go to the train station. He pleaded, No no no...that's only for Indians. You need to come with me! I kept my head forward, even as he put his hand on my shoulder to guide me with him. Without looking back, another man ran up to me and also said, No sir! No! This is for Indians only. Tourists need to come this way, with me! 

Delhi train station platform

I kept going and, when I entered the station, I saw a large sign advising If anyone tells you that the office is closed, or that it is for Indians only, please ignore them. This is a commons scam. It reminded me a bit of a the message blaring from loud speakers outside of the Imperial Palace in Bangkok, which advised Trust no one.

After purchasing my ticket and making my way back to the hotel, I didn't venture outside into Delhi again before leaving the next day to catch my train to Agra. I regretted this a bit, because it's a giant city, and there were more things to see than the chaos immediately around me (and, really, I felt like a bit of a wuss to be discouraged by the craziness). But I justified it given the fatigue associated with jet lag and the hectic last few days in Amsterdam (getting my visa at the last moment - another story), and the benefit of getting rest before traveling the next day to Agra outweighed those of venturing more into the smoggy mess.   

*All photos grabbed of google image search this time.

Gent the Third

I went through the "intense" portion of my teaching responsibilities in September and October. This involved teaching two classes during the eight week period (so, a period akin to a U.S. quarter system rather than semester system): 1) structural equation modeling (a statistics course to students in our masters program), and 2) research methods (a methods/statistics course for students in our "research masters" program - so a program that has more emphasis on research training than our other masters program).

Immediately after I gave my final exam for one of the courses, I hopped on a train to make my way to Gent, Belgium, which is about 120 miles southeast of Amsterdam, to give a keynote address at an evolutionary behavior conference. I arrived around 10pm after finishing up at work around 7pm, and I gave my presentation the following morning. The conference was great, and my hosts were as hospitable as one could hope for, but the highlight of the trip was (as it's been twice before) the beauty and charm of Gent.

This photo didn't quite do the autumn beauty of this scene justice.

A cute play on "tout suite" (right away) in French

Exterior of the Castle/Fortress in Gent

Most tourists - I think - who visit Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) think of and go to Brugges instead of Gent. I find Brugges to be fairly boring - an overly manicured village that exists purely for tourism. Gent's center, on the other hand, houses a university and thriving non-tourism business (though, naturally, tourism is a major portion of the economy). So an functioning city is built around churches and castles that date back to the 14th century.

I climbed the Belfry for the third time in my third trip to Gent. The first two trips were in December (winter) and August (summer), so this was the first time I'd seen an autumn landscape from the panoramic view. 

I may have visited during what might have been the last weekend before autumn transitioned to winter. It was warm enough to use only a light jacket, there were no clouds on Saturday evening, and the sunlight glowed against the buildings at dusk. 

Of course, the real star of Gent is the nighttime lights above and reflecting against the water. 

And, naturally, the Belgian food and beer were a close second to the nighttime light show. Belgian beers are a bit sweeter and stronger - and less adventurous - than I prefer, but I can't recall ever having a bad one. And the food - the food is light years ahead of what one gets in Amsterdam restaurants (and the Dutch readily acknowledge this). 

So, I'm not done with Gent after three visits. I'll look forward to a fourth soon. Perhaps in spring this time.

Walging

I had a chance to contribute to a Dutch science show on Walging (disgust). Feel free to check it out if you didn't see it on Facebook:

http://www.wetenschap24.nl/programmas/labyrint/labyrint-tv/2013/oktober/Walging.html

Venice

Several cities are sometimes called “The Venice of the North” (largely by tourism boards, I would guess). A brief internet search tells me that Amsterdam and St. Petersberg are the two most common, but I’ve also heard Leiden, Ghent, and Brugges referred to in this way. Given my superficial impressions of Venice gleaned from scenes from Casino Royal and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I suspected that such comparisons to be a little silly. A four day visit to Venice last week confirmed this suspicion – while lovely, Venice is not the Amsterdam of the South, Amsterdam is not the Venice of the North, and the two cities seem to have little in common outside of being beautiful in markedly different ways and being especially vulnerable to rising seas.

 Venice had never been on my radar as a travel destination until two close friends of mine invited me to attend their wedding there. I never asked Francesca why they planned the wedding in Venice rather than Amsterdam, but I suspect the decision had something to do with Venice’s more reliably warm and sunny weather, the convenience for Francesca’s family (Dan’s family is from Wisconsin, so differences in travel efforts between Amsterdam and Venice were small), and the fact that the beauty of Venice might be more suited for romance and weddings than Amsterdam’s beauty is.

Venice takes one of my favorite things about Amsterdam – the relative lack of cars, compared with places like Phoenix and Albuquerque – to an extreme; there are zero cars in the city, which is accessible only by water and via foot bridges. There are also no bike paths and, from what I saw during my short stay, no bike paths. Everything is by foot or by water taxi. One of Francesca’s relatives actually bemoaned the government’s lack of investment in alternative transportation in the city, since the heavy emphasis on walking and the ubiquitous bridges, all of which are covered in steps, present challenges to the physically disabled and parents with strollers (as well as tourists with roller baggage). It’s not clear to me how the city could be changed to be more accommodating, though; it feels like it is has been oriented in its current form for centuries, and that this orientation is constrained by the water on/in/around which it is built.

The streets were quite narrow, and they snaked their way in between buildings that, again, felt as if they’d been there with minimal changes for hundreds of years. The main pedestrian arteries between major sites were nearly as narrow as the side streets, and they were clogged with people walking in different directions at different speeds and stopping to look at shops. There was a minor feeling of claustrophobia in these areas. But after a 90 second walk down an adjacent street – many of which were narrow enough that I could touch the buildings on the left and the right side of the street at the same time, simply by spreading my arms – I could find myself alone, with no other people in eyesight, and only the muffled sound of the crowd within earshot.

The contrast with the tourist zoo was even stronger at night, when many of the visitors have taken buses or trains back to the cities around Venice in which they are staying overnight. These side streets – and after midnight, even some of the previously bustling main streets – were not only empty but also silent. There were few street lights, and the sole source of light came from dimly glowing windows. Walks down these streets at night felt like walks into a different century. Apart from those dimly glowing windows, there were no obvious cues to indicate that it was the 21^st century, and even then it was easy to imagine those lights replaced by candles. 

The canals in Venice bore little resemble to those in Amsterdam. Many of the Venitian canals separated houses rather than separating roads, most were far narrower than those in Amsterdam - some narrow enough that a person could touch both sides of the houses lining the canals at the same time - and the water was a striking teal color, which contrasts with the dark gray of Amsterdam's canals.   

.

And, finally, the wedding was beautiful. Dan and Francesca picked a perfect venue, and they pulled it off marvelously.

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).