I have not posted recently because I was in London, and try as I might, I couldn’t find any clever ways to connect the Dutch and the British. The British don’t love sugar as much as the Dutch, their drinking culture is more hardcore, they are far more interested in their national history (I had one of my professors here laughingly tell the class that the Dutch really aren’t interested in their own history), etc. Nothing terribly exciting.
I acted the same way there that I do here, in that I try very to not look like a tourist. I mean, I went to all the cool sites and spent six (6!) hours in the British Museum being unimpressed by the Elgin Marbles, but I refused to take out my map and walked everywhere as though I knew exactly where I was and where I was going. As a result, I got asked for directions seven times in five days.
So when a friend from home who will remain nameless and three of his friends from college who are studying abroad in London came to visit Amsterdam last Thursday, I expected that they’d act much the same way I did when I was in London – go see the pretty museums, walk around enjoying the city, and eat at cool local places. Instead, they immediately insisted on visiting a coffeeshop, seeing the Red Light District, and drinking absinthe. Nothing else appealed to them, and they spent their first day so high that they couldn’t see anything. We took them to SUB, a cool bar on Rokin, and they couldn’t process what was happening. Their second day was much like the first, only with the addition of absinthe and a sex show. At the end of the night, they told me that the city depressed them now.
When I told people that I would be studying abroad in Amsterdam, I was told that the city would be wasted on me because I don’t smoke at all, and I’m not interested in trying hallucinogenic foods in either solid or liquid form. But after this experience, I think Amsterdam is wasted on tourists like them. What did they see of the city? What can they remember of it? I’m not against people smoking or drinking or whatever they’d like to do, but if you visit this fine city, try to see or experience something other than the Holy Trifecta of Tourism.