Bonjour! Though we have spent most of our trip so far in Amsterdam. The Dutch language is less accessible than French, and we are driving to Paris now, via Antwerp and another Belgian city I cannot hope to pronounce or spell correctly.
So. We left home at 3pm on Wednesday for Dulles airport and flew to Paris on Air France. I cannot overstate how terrified I had been of this flight for the preceding seven months. I used to joke that there was not enough Xanax on earth to fly me over the Atlantic. It turns out that there is. But I still must credit myself for pulling my shaking, sweaty body on the plane. It also turns out that sitting in the first row of business class alleviates my social anxiety and claustrophobia greatly. I did not require champagne, a three course dinner, or even the cozy slippers the airline provided. But I greatly benefited from the impression of sufficient oxygen. I watched a few episodes of Bridgerton and passed out for 3.5 hours, waking 20 minutes before landing. Chef’s kiss and the last thing I expected. Sorry, sorry. This is meant to be an account of our family vacation, but I had to begin by noting that it may not have happened this way, without a kick of courage.
We arrived at our temporary home in Amsterdam 18 hours after bidding the dogs goodbye. We tromped around to a nearby park and the Albert Heijn grocery in an effort to stay awake. A few things about Amsterdam. So many bicycles. Was not clear to me that many were even locked when not in use. So few cars for a city of that size. The bicyclists did not wear helmets. Maybe helmets for kids, sometimes? Public transit was also hopping. We took the tram and walked everywhere we went.
We found the Dutch to be relatively friendly. I did notice that the Dutch never moved an inch to accommodate anyone walking in the opposite direction on a sidewalk. And some folks literally pushed me to get where they were going. But in other ways, we found the Dutch to be extraordinarily accommodating and generous. At the science museum, a presenter polled the group to see if anyone did not speak Dutch, and finding that a relatively small minority only spoke English, delivered his entire presentation in both Dutch and English. The U.S. would never. On our way back from the Taylor Swift concert on our last night, the train conductor spontaneously invited our children to come to the front of the train and drive. They were absolutely delighted.
As Nitin had noted, in Canada, life is about 90% the same as the U.S. I believe he estimated that life was about 20% the same in Amsterdam, which seemed low to me, but there certainly were notable differences. I should caveat that we experienced roughly 48 hours of life in Amsterdam, and the slice we sampled may not have been representative.
At one point, a tour guide pointed out a sign that read, in Dutch, fuck the housing market. This sentiment is not entirely surprising to me given what I observed of the housing stock. Nitin searched high and low for our Airbnb, and we landed in a home shared by a divorcee and her two children, which they vacated periodically for Airbnb guests. Our kids enjoyed the ample supply of toys. The home was friendly and creatively decorated, if quite hastily cleaned before our arrival. The main floor of the home is basically a storefront with a giant window that opens to the street. We learned that the Dutch have a cultural preference of keeping their drapes open to show they have nothing to hide. We tired of being gazed upon in the main living area by passersby and drew the drapes. All bedrooms in the house were subterranean. To lighten the basement quarters, the main level included several glass panels installed as flooring.
The place bore hallmarks of storefront that was only moonlighting as a residence. The toilets were housed in different rooms than the showers. The stairs were narrow and irregularly shaped. The wall in our bedroom jutted out above the only outlet. We ended up smacking knees, heads, and elbows repeatedly. The home was likely glad to see me go. On my first night, I accidentally shorted out half the electricity in the house by attempting to use an American heating pad. We did not spend much time in the garden behind the house, but it was lovely. The rain was never far away when we were in Amsterdam.
We visited a science museum on Thursday, followed by a very soggy and blustery tour of the city’s many canals. Boats provide yet another form of non-car transportation—and also housing. After a houseboat boom, the city restricted the number of houseboats permitted to 2,500. Still quite a few more houseboats than I am accustomed to seeing! We began our tour in the red light distract and I got a glimpse of one of the ladies working in a window. Per our guide, the ladies work near a childcare center and a church, so that patrons can drop off their children, visit the ladies, and pray for their sins. I have no idea if she was joking, but those businesses were in fact located quite close to each others! The kids weathered the messy weather fairly well. The guides assured us that this was a typical Amsterdam in July and I could not help but feel cognitive dissonance. Back at home, there was a heat index of 112 the same day. Later that day, Nitin and the kids hunted down croissants and hot chocolate. They dined in a Thai cafe down the street.
We keep explaining to the kids that there are many buildings in Europe that much older than
what we are used to seeing at home. Like a castle, built in 1200, that we visited today in Antwerp. We cannot help but notice that many things seem smaller in Europe, too. The guest towels provided by our host were the size of American hand towels. The capacity of the washer and dryer was less than half that of our machines at home. Paradoxically, each load required many hours to fully dry. Also smaller: IKEA glasses, sinks, serving sizes. I know. This is very on brand—a fussy, poorly traveled American squawking about small towels. Notwithstanding my tendency to pick things apart, we did enjoy Amsterdam.
Yesterday, we visited the exterior of the house that Anne Frank lived in before her deportation. I photographed the house, inadvertently capturing other tourists who were snapping smiling selfies in front of the house, which was jarring. We have taken our fair share of selfies, and I couldn’t explain why we needed to capture the likeness of our family in front of a cathedral that is centuries older than the country we live in. That somehow seems less crass than a smiling selfie in front of Anne Frank’s house, but perhaps I am mistaken. As we strolled those streets, I thought of her footsteps on the very same bricks, considered her view of the canal from her front windows. We skipped the museum. We thought our children too young to hear about the atrocities children in that neighborhood had experienced.
We did allow the children to hear about the colorfully tragic life of Vincent Van Gogh, however. Our delightful guide, Maryanne, managed to capture their—and our—attention for a full hour. Van Gogh lent his assistance by living and painting so vividly. Everyone remembers that Van Gogh chopped his own ear off—though there was no mention of him mailing said ear to a prostitute. I had not known that Van Gogh only painted for ten years—from 27 to 37. He began at 27, following a string of 10 failed attempts to launch other careers. He began with dark paintings modeled after Rembrandt, but thankfully discovered brighter colors—yellow, so much yellow—and painted seven separate portraits of sunflowers. He developed an absinthe problem, then quit the absinthe but remained terribly unstable. His brother Theo kept him afloat in many ways over the years, eventually finding a hospital where Vincent could reside safely. In periods of mania, he painted prolifically—75 paintings in 70 days. In dark periods, he could not paint and tried to kill himself by ingesting paint chips. The paint chips failed, but eventually, Vincent succeeded, shooting himself in the chest in a field of wheat. Vincent died an outcast, with no reputation to speak of in the art world. Theo died six months later.
We took two trains to see Taylor later that night. I have less to say about the concert. Not because I was underwhelmed. It was exactly as expected, and could only have been improved had Travis Kelce, who was in attendance, made a dramatic cameo on stage. Her costumes dazzled; the lights, dancers, and set were spectacular; and I was reminded that Taylor, while not Beyoncé, actually has a beautiful voice. I respect her work ethic most of all. She came on at precisely 7:25 and played until 10:45, exactly as she had done each previous night. She clearly had a cold—blew her nose several times when she was near her piano—but nonetheless ran, climbed, strutted, and danced up and down the stage for 3+ hours continuously. She even added an unaccompanied acoustic session at the end “to challenge herself,” and honestly, as rich as she is, being Taylor Swift seems challenging enough, at least to me. The volume of her musical catalog itself also speaks to her focused energy.
We were predictably exhausted when our driver arrived this morning to take us to Paris, but there has been plenty of napping in the car. We arrive at 4:30. French election results are in at 8pm tonight, in an interesting twist of circumstances. Nitin’s European colleagues suggested that we plan to be in for the night by then, in case there is a public reaction to the results.
So, that is my accounting of our European adventure thus far. I’m glad we came. We had a memorably delicious lunch at a cafe in a small Belgium town that lacked English menus today. I would not go as far as to say that life begins outside of one’s comfort zone. I’m not a fridge magnet. Taking the dog for a walk on our street is also life. The beauty in the mundane is ever more apparent to me as I age. But stretching gives us more to think about. And it is a thrill to experience a new place at nearly 40. To learn that the Dutch pronounce fuck the same way we do, sometimes loudly and on public transportation. To marvel at how plastic caps remain affixed to bottles in Europe. To realize my world is a vanishingly small part of the world at large. And to plant that seed of an idea our children, who are otherwise very much in danger of believing that their bubble is the world itself.
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