By the Light of the North Sea, Dimly
It was snowing when we landed at Schipohl in Amsterdam yesterday. It was also freezing cold and dark. One of the first things we saw was a large display of cheeses. Then we found an ATM and became instant fast friends with a slight, pleasant man who was traveling with his family of six. He seemed to think I knew what I was doing so he asked me how I thought he should get his family of six into town. I told him to take a taxi. We ran into him again in the taxi line, and then our taxi passed his somewhere along the outer canals.
We are staying at the Hotel Pulitzer which is a fabulous, five star hotel composed of 26 different canal houses all joined together. It covers a whole "block" between two canals. Inside it's a labyrinth of hallways and half stairways and wood paneled sitting rooms and sudden garden courtyards. Each canal house is on a slightly different level from the next so when you pass from one to another you have to go up or down a few steps. Our room is on the fourth floor of the canal house just to the left of the main entrance. We look out over the same canal that Anne Frank's house is on. We also look out over our hotel's dock, which has an old wooden restored canal boat that Winston Churchill once rode around in.
Anne Frank's house is only two blocks away. In between us and it is the huge medieval Westerkerke. We walked down past it in the snow and got to the Frank house just when it was opening.
I remember visiting the Anne Frank house when I was about 9 years old. Back then, you walked right in the front door and walked up the tiny stairs and back into the annex. Now there is a whole huge new very modern museum next to it where you enter. It has a big book store and a cafe and is light and airy. Which makes the Secret Annex when you get back up into it seem even darker and more cramped then I remember (I'm also bigger now). Now they have videos of Otto Frank (the only one of the 8 people hiding in the house who survived the war) talking about how he felt when he found his daughter's diary after coming back from Auschwitz. They also have real black-out curtains up on the windows now which makes the Annex just awful during the day. It's amazing they hid in there for 2 years.
I had also forgotten how narrow and steep the staircases are. They are so steep you have to walk up them sideways -- otherwise your knees get in the way.
When we left we heard the Westerkerke churchbells ringing.
This morning we slept in and when the sky brightened (would be an exaggeration to say that the sun rose) we saw the thin North Sea light above the canals and listened to the seagulls and to the Westerkerke bells ringing. I realized these were the exact same bells that Anne Frank could hear from the Annex. That was a strange feeling.
Once we got going we took a canal boat tour, walked through the flower market and the University of Amsterdam, and ended up having a wonderful dinner of some kind of fish called a brill at a little restaurant near the Rijksmuseum called the Brasserie de Keyzer. The bartender at the hotel told us to go there and it was truly a Dutch local hang out and the food was amazing. We have discovered that Dutch coffee is amazing. Better than anything either of us have ever had before. Which is convenient considering how watery and damp this town is.
On the boat tour we learned that an average of one car a week drives into a canal by accident. We also learned that the reason every canal house has a "furniture hook" on its gable is that the only way to get furniture into a canal house is through the windows because as mentioned above, the stairs are too steep. And we learned that the houses are built on wood piles because the ground is so soft. We observed to each other that wood rots, which explains why so many of the older houses lean at such crazy angles. Some lean so much the curtains don't hang straight in the windows.
Speaking of windows, we decided the best way to become rich in Amsterdam would be to go into the window treatment business. The canal houses have almost nothing but windows in the front, and the windows are huge -- much bigger than I've seen anywhere else in the world. The ground floors have maybe 20 foot ceilings and the windows are almost floor to ceiling. We realized that if you didn't do that, the feeble North Sea light would hardly make a dent and you wouldn't be able to see anything inside.
But possibly the neatest thing we did today was go to the Old Dutch Riding School, which modeled on the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. There is an indoor arena with chandeliers and marble horse heads. The mommies of the students in class sit up on a balcony with a waitress who brings them Dutch coffee and whatever else they want (crepes, etc.). There are several aisles of school horses and then boarder horses and we walked all around and watched some lessons. Apparently the City tried to tear the school down in the 1980s and the populace rallied to save it. The horses were all beautiful and fat and glossy and very well behaved.
Tomorrow morning we fly to Nairobi.
Vegas: Land of Attentive Strangers
I have spent the last few days in Las Vegas because I was asked to go to give a short presentation about lead paint to a large group of people who make snowboards, skis, ski gloves, etc. -- in other words, people who make things that don't actually have lead paint in them. It's a good life, really.
I got there a few days early and met a good friend whom careful readers will remember as the lovely bride from the riotous Skagit County, Washington wedding where I got stuck in a rutabaga field in my high heels, the best man fell over, the groom dropped the ring, and the dogs in the wedding wound their leashes around the blessed couple while everyone laughed.
This lovely bride and I have known each other since we were 12. She remembers, but I do not, that when she came as a prospective student to our boarding school I gave her a tour and presented the library by saying "Here's our library. We have books here." She came to the school nevertheless. We also went to the same college. But at no time during high school or college were we actually friends. It wasn't until after I got out of law school that a mutual friend thought maybe we might actually have something in common so we met for drinks and were afraid we might not recognize each other. I told her "I'll be the one in the pea green sombrero and the white lycra speedskating suit" and she said "I'll have a feather boa and a refrigerator tied around my ankle." We've been friends ever since.
For example, we spent a week riding Irish ponies in the absolutely pouring rain around the Ring of Kerry in Ireland. We spent two summers in Mallorca eating jambon y queso sandwiches, drinking hierbas, lying in the sun, and riding horses. We spent a week in St. Lucia with a guy who broke both his arms in a mysterious midnight mishap and which meant we spent most of the vacation driving from one wretched third world hospital to another trying to get his arms set and trying to convince him to take painkillers so he'd stop moaning (we almost pushed him into the sea once his arms were cast -- we were on a launch taking us to a beach that was only accessible by boat and we thought, hmmm, no-one will miss him!). We spend a lot of time trying to come up with substantial yet passive sources of income.
But it still was unexpected to find ourselves meeting in Las Vegas to go shopping at Nieman Marcus before sipping white wine by a lovely pool in our expensive sunglasses, followed by gambling and eating. This is not the image we had of ourselves when we were young. We thought we were far too post-modern and deconstructionist to ever do that. Also, we had exactly zero money for most of our lives so it was fruitless to even think about living the high life in the desert. All of which made our day in Vegas THRILLING! We went into very expensive boutiques and tried on EVERYTHING and then left without buying anything. We thought about maybe getting my ears pierced or something radical. We found ourselves in Neiman Marcus and then we actually shopped. Ah..... in fact, all the help in Neiman Marcus started trailing us around because we may have been the only people in the store actually spending money. Again, we tried on virtually everything we saw. Then we'd move to another section but the same woman kept showing up to help us. "Anything I can help you with here, ladies? How about here? Or here?" At one point we had to take a little break so we plopped our stuff down on an empty check out counter and I rooted around for lip balm and the Skagit County Bride helped herself to some free lubriderm and we chit chatted about something or other and the sales lady again came running "May I help you NOW ladies?" "Oh no, thanks, we're just freshening up!" The sales ladies thought at one point that we might be television personalities. Of course, we LOVED THIS and did not exactly tell them they were wrong.
Later that evening the Bride tried to teach me to play Blackjack. We had already had our wine by the pool at this point so I must admit I wasn't paying very close attention. The Bride said something about the number 21 and what to do with your hands if the dealer has less than 6. I looked vaguely at her as she explained all this and then I immediately turned around and realized with delight that there were ATTENTIVE STRANGERS! at this blackjack table. I love attentive strangers. As a result, I was really far more interested in the personal history and trauma of all the people at the table including the Dealer and the Dealer Supervisor and the Replacement Dealer that I made very little effort to actually gamble. I learned how everyone met their significant others. I learned where the 96 year old woman bought her shirt. Etc. I also moved my hands around in a fairly random way and watched the dealer either give me chips or take some away. Sometimes the chips changed colors. Generally they diminished in number. Sometimes I gave him a few. Every now and then Dealer would say ,"Kim, you must hit that!" "Kim, hold!" "Kim, do what I tell you!" "Kim, pay attention!!!!" "Kim, are you watching?" "Kim, I don't think you know how to count!" "Kim, DON'T TOUCH THE CARDS!!!!!" I loved the Dealer. His name was Fite from Eritrea. The Bride thinks I should marry him. The Attentive Strangers also loved me because I lost all my money, of course. But it was WONDERFUL! I love gambling.
We realized that part of the reason we had such fun in Vegas is because we are now the median age. These resorts and casinos, etc. are designed with US in mind -- late 30s, financially stable, women. If we're not happy, their business model has failed. This is quite a powerful feeling. It makes you realize that if you would like a side of broccoli even if there is no such thing on the menu, ask for it anyway! HA! LIVE DANGEROUSLY! BROCCOLI FOR EVERYONE!
The next day I had to give my little presentation about lead paint to the ski and snowboard people. I again found a roomful of Attentive Strangers -- this time potential clients and my fellow presenters. The potential clients were all very scruffy looking snowboard executives with baggy pants and strange hair cuts. After the presentation they MOBBED me. I think this was because I was the only girl who was presenting and because I wore a lollipop red silk suit that I had purchased the previous day at Neiman Marcus. Anyway, now I have lots of new little ski and snowboard clients which is pretty funny considering I've been skiing exactly once and am not quite sure what a snowboard looks like.
Then it was time for more Attentive Strangers. I had turned the full force of sunshine on my fellow presenters because I felt bad for them that they didn't have a lollipop red silk suit to attract the attention of the potential clients. During the Q&A they had all ended up rather dejectedly saying things to them all like, "Well, you should probably talk to Kim about that." They seemed sad. But as a result of the red lollipop sunshine, my fellow presenters became VERY ATTENTIVE STRANGERS. One of them planned out our entire entertainment for the evening. Another one tried to plan out my entertainment schedule coming up in Munich (yes, we have to go talk to the European ski and snow board people next). A third tried to install me on various legal task forces hither and yon. We ended up having a very nice 7 course meal at a restaurant that had a "wine cellar" that was a multi-story four-sided column and a woman had to ride up and down it on a trapeze to get bottles and stock the cellar. I learned everything about my Attentive Strangers and they learned virtually nothing about me. They were so thrilled at the evening that they got the hostess to take our picture (once I get a copy of the picture you all can see the lollipop red suit). Then they asked me come to more sports-themed trade shows with them. I may consider it. There are worse ways to make a living.
On the way back to my room, I suddenly felt like Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven. I was walking slowly across the casino, all alone, in my lollipop red silk suit, with no purse or anything to weight me down. I walked serenely. Not exactly smiling. But not frowning either. It took me a while to get where I was going -- the casino is big. Everyone else in the whole place was wearing black and there was me in bright red. It was like that scene where Julia Roberts is walking from Andy Garcia to George Clooney and ultimately ends up with George Clooney. It was only SORTA like that though, because I was just walking from three Attentive Strangers to a completely empty hotel room. Oh well. It's the thought that counts.
