my last ASG night

last night i checked out the "Undercover Night" party that was happening at Cafe Sappho. Folks from the Amsterdam Songwriters Guild all performed interpretive covers as diverse as Bright Eyes, Joni Mitchell, Roy Orbison, Elliott Smith, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Death Cab for Cutie, Simon and Garfunkel, and Feist. and also a dutch folk song that the singer assured all of us anglophones that we would not understand. the fun thing about a good cover is if you do it right, you've got the whole bar singing along. i saw a lot of my usual favourites (like Ro, Eoghan, Roger) but got to see a lot of new faces i haven't seen before. so many talented musicians in Amsterdam!

i think that's what i really like about the atmosphere at Cafe Sappho. it's just so cosy and friendly. i've gone enough times now to be familiar with many of the faces there, and it's almost starting to feel like a second home to me now. plus i scored free soup from the bartender! i think i'm going to miss Cafe Sappho, and the Amsterdam Songwriters Guild the most when i move back to Canada. that, and Wok to Walk. looks like i'm really going to have to find an excuse to move back here.

can someone please give me a job at the International Criminal Court in Den Haag, alstublieft?


Ro sings the Boss's "Used Cars", with Luke backing up on piano

bedankt voor uw gastvrijheid, Amsterdam Songwriters Guild and Cafe Sappho.

ninja adventures through the snow

it's snowing in amsterdam. for reals. the fields and canals look magical. my apartment, however, is not so magical, since my landlord for whatever reason decided to remove my heater.

growing up in the Canadian back woods of the Greenbelt outside Ottawa means that i am pretty good with winter. i know how to build a snow shelter and survive through the night if i have to. i am used to driving sports utility vehicles through dark blizzards. i can sense deer approaching the road before i even see it. i wear pajamas under my jeans and still feel sexy.

what these Canadian winters of my childhood have not equipped me for, however, is surviving Dutch winters. yes, surprisingly, it does snow here, and while it's no "-20 degree, 20 centimetre of snow" ottawa, it is actually still terrifying to bike through snow, especially the dark, unploughed wild terrains that compose the town of Diemen where i live.

i don't bike this time of the year in Canada. i either drive the SUV or resign myself to public transportation. in Holland, however, i've got this little rattly bike that i bought for 50 euros, and i'm not sure if bike snow tires even exist. i watched a girl on a motorcycle wipe out right in front of me tonight and go sprawling across the pavement, which was scary motivation enough for me to bike really slow. but still not slow enough to stay behind the snow ploughs. seriously, they go so slow i pass them on a bicycle.

it's also painfully cold. as i mentioned before, the only way i've been able to get the nerve to bike twenty kilometres a day through the frost is to wrap myself up and cover my face like a ninja, and blast Wu-Tang Clan. it helps me get into the ninja mindset. you never hear about ninjas feeling cold. unfortunately my ninja-biking powers got me pulled over by the cops for biking too stealthily. or rather, i need a better bike light. still, all part of the ninja adventures. tiger style.

starbucks in amsterdam

amsterdam got its first Starbucks about a month ago. actually, other than the one in Schipol Airport, I'm pretty sure it's one of the first Starbucks to open in Holland. it was pretty great to watch. The Dutch people were really excited about it, with lineup extending out the door and wrapping around the store. the newly-trained barristas were nervous, and you could see them silently begging you not to order a complicated drink ("Americano? i can do Americano!"). it was fun to see all the excitement about it.

still...Douglas Coupland calls McDonald the Taint, but i really think Starbucks is "The Taint" in Europe. Europeans generally make good coffee - they don't need a Starbucks. sure, back at home in suburban Canada, i'll willingly drive to the Starbucks and pay five bucks for a fancy espresso drink just for the hip atmosphere and to have a decent cup of coffee, but that's because regular North American coffee sucks and you have to pay the extra to get the reliably good coffee, at Starbucks. In Europe, you can get a damn good cup of coffee even at a bar. there's no need for the Starbucks here, except maybe to promote the North American idea of "coffee to go" (a concept that Europe is still just learning). But i thoroughly disapprove of the Americanization of Europe, even though it might be inevitable. Fight, europe! Fight! Rage, rage against the dying of the light! Do not go gentle into that good night!

McDonalds, on the other hand, are already a dime a dozen around here. My favourite McDonalds snack in Amsterdam? Bitterballen.

music is my radar

apologies for my prolonged absence. after my epic month of traveling, i became bedridden with some very strange stomach bug for a week. well, after watching every single episode of the Big Bang Theory, i feel better now and have been seeing a lot of shows around Amsterdam.

Sunday night, there was the Amsterdam Songwriters Guild Showcase featuring beloved local artists such as Lake Montgomery, Case Mayfield, Max VanRemmerden, Brian Neubauer, the famous DJ Lucky Fonz III, and the band Chin Up:



i was particularly impressed by Chin Up's set, which despite closing up a pretty folk music themed night, ended on quite the rock-and-roll note, with microphone stands hurled off the stage and the guitarist moshing in the crowd on the dancefloor,his glasses flying off and broken guitar strings flailing. i take back my premature remarks about the Dutch not really rocking out and dancing at shows.

Tuesday night was the weekly open mic night held at the cosy Cafe Sappho, reuniting a lot of the ASG folks again. i played a pretty fun set and learned an important lesson: your audience is much more likely to pay attention to your music if you forget to wear a bra on stage. i do NOT have video footage of that, but i did manage to capture Eoghan's lovely Christmas song, with Ro Halfhide and Brian Neubauer spontaneously backing up on vocals.



God bless the Irish, every single one of them.

Thursday night was Lake Montgomery's birthday show at the Jet Lounge. i've only discovered her music recently but absolutely adore her style. i'm usually pretty good at describing what i like about musicians but she just leaves me speechless. she is amazing.



can we somehow convince her to come to Canada? please?

Ro Halfhide is backing her up on drums in this video. i don't know why he pops up in all of my videos. probably because he's the founder of the Amsterdam Songwriters Guild, which is, by the way, one of the best things i've discovered since moving to Amsterdam.

in one day, i head off to germany, on a mini-tour by myself to Cologne and Hamburg. in ten days, i move back to Canada (sob). in fifteen days, i turn 25 (nooooooo....)

i was kind of hoping it was the Freemasons

so there is this club that i pass by every day on my way home from downtown, and i've always been curious about what it is. it looks like a normal residential house, but there are hints that it is some sort of special place, like the fact that i occasionally see people getting out of taxis and going into the place, and also the fact that there is a big black bouncer in a suit that stands outside. yet it doesn't actually seem to be a regular club. you don't here house music pumping from outside, and there are never any lineups to get in, and there are no windows to peak inside, and also, it's in freaking Diemen, my neighbourhood, which is in the middle of nowhere and no self-respecting club that wants business would be located there. rob and i have hypothesized several times that it's probably some secret society stonecutters lodge or a Eyes Wide Shut-esque sex club.

well, it turns out it's a sex club. today as i biked home i squinted hard past the hired help smoking on the porch and saw that there was by the door a very discreet sign that read in very small letters the name of the establishment. and then i went home to google it. and yeah, really, it's a sex club. with free finger food and pick-up service from your door.

the Monroes / Pony Pack

caught the Brand at Bitterzoet series on Thursday night, a semi-regular showcase of Dutch indie bands that i really enjoy. this week it was the Monroes CD release party, with Amsterdam band Pony Pack opening for them, both off the tocado record label.



both of them were quite entertaining, but i especially liked the opening band, which had a satisfying Bikini Kill-esque riot grrrl aesthetic to them. they were energetic, tight, and made me wish i could write pumped up punk songs like that. the drummer packed a surprising amount of power, given her small frames.


(she even looks like kathleen hanna, swoon)

i first got into the Monroes solely because i really liked the frontwoman's guitar. their recordings sound fantastic, but their live performances had a bit of a shaky start, and some problems with the soundboard, although eventually they were bouncing their catchy surf pop sounds with much more ease and convincing everyone on the dance floor - including somebody's parents? - to dance their feet off. which was pretty impressive, given the fact that nobody was dancing to Pony Pack, despite their awesome high energy performance, although to be fair, nobody dances to the opening act. i am beginning to get the feeling that people don't really dance at the dutch punk shows here? maybe it's because most of the venues here serve as concert halls only until 11PM, when everything is converted to a night club, so everyone's saving their dancing feet for later. or maybe swaying is dancing here. i mean, given the fact that i was nearly beaten to a pulp in a mosh pit in Seattle, this might be a safe if not welcome change for me...


The Monroes

tourist in my own city

sorry i haven't written in a while. my friends Hayley and Gabe visited from their home in London for part of the week, so i've been doing all sorts of tourist sightseeing in the city i live in, and trying all sorts of "dutch" things:

-hutspot - which, as potatoes and carrots and sausages, seems like perfect comfort food
-pea soup, with that odd cold soft bacon served on a real rye bread
-MORE PANCAKES (the Pancake Bakery on Prinsengracht is now a new source of happiness)
-krokets, of course
-Hayley and Gabe were brave enough to try Febo
-helping drunk passed out tourists lying on the ground (this is a common Dutch custom)
-janever - dutch gin. i hate gin of any culture, really, so i can't say i loved it, but at least it didn't have a strong nasty tast
-Indonesian food. since Indonesia was a former Dutch colony, Holland does Indonesian food quite well, kind of like the way the English can make a pretty good butter chicken. We went for the full menu at Puri Mas and was so satisfied with what we got, i can't wait to go back there and tackle the spicy beef again.

we also went on a super touristy boat ride along the canals, a tour that included all you can eat cheese (awesome), all you can drink wine (romantic), and a walk through the red light district (bizarre, as can be expected). we finally got a good close-up of the houseboats on the canal. i really want a house boat now.

while Hayley and Gabe saw the Van Gogh Museum. rob and i biked around Vondelpark, which was simply breathtaking, especially on a rare sunny day today. we could enjoy the warm but crisp air and the autumn leaves and the dutch children screaming like banshees with rabies. Amsterdam is not very green or naturey - mainly you hang out in the City Centre to see the impressive manmade canals, the cobblestone streets, the inexerienced stoned tourists blindly stumbling into the bike paths. so having giant greenspace like Vondelpark full of trees and lakes is quite refreshing to someone who spent the summer on West Coast beaches , even if Amsterdam parks are rather manmade and immaculately manicured.

i also had the pleasure of exploring the Jordaan this week. i am so in love with this neighbourhood. i want nothing more than to become a yuppie and move into one of those beautiful, high ceiling, spiral staircase, trendily decorated, 300 euro per month apartments. i have not felt such strong feelings of adoration and longing since i disovered Queen Street West in Toronto - and now i have $1000+ ward robe and credit card ebt. seeing how i had to be steered away from a $150 Euro sweater yesterday, the Jordaan may be bad news for my wallet. but it is such a cosy neighbourhood, far away from the tourist traps, where real dutch people go about their normal lives, meeting friends at cafes, shopping at the cute boutique shops, catching a local band performing at the record store. and boy are there some great record stores in the Jordaan....now i'm going to have to find some way to bring back all the CDs i keep buying. oh well, at least i've resisted the urge to update my vinyl collection, although i've discovered this great soul/funk/blues store that makes vinyl pretty tempting...

my cultural, if not legal, education in Holland

well, this weekend was culturally and musically educational, if not, you know, academically productive.

i had a take home exam over the weekend, but instead, allowed myself to be persuaded by my friends to go to an all night dance party that i didn't know anything about, hosted by some deejays i'd never heard of, in a location that i still can't quite remember. it turns out that it was part of the massive week-long citywide Amsterdam Dance Event. this is a huge electronic music festival, featuring all sorts of big names like Armin Van Buuren and Fat Boy Slim and all sorts of other folks i've never heard of, mainly because all my beats-driven electronic music is as Canadian as maple syrup (Kid Koala! Woodhands! MSTRKRFT! Crystal Castles! Holy F---!).

the night was featuring homegrown Dutch deejays, and the club Panama was huge but packed - it was pretty fun to party with the europeans, because we all know europeans love their techno house trance stuff (which has made me appreciate hiphop on whole new levels since i moved to Holland). but i still maintain that i will never understand how europeans love this kind of music so much without being on drugs. we love this kind of music in North America too, but in the context of raves, where nobody would think about attempting an all-nighter without the help of E and eight dollar bottles of water (also, being permanently stuck in the 1990s). because europeans don't seem to do as much drugs as the tourists do, and yet i think that psychedelic drugs are the only way that you can suspend disbelief long enough to not think about the fact that you are listening to the same synthetic riff over and over again for five hours. i say this with love.

despite only leaving the club around 4AM, and still having three questions on my take-home exam to answer, i decided it would be worthwhile to check out this dutch indie pop band i've been following lately, the Madd, who were doing an in-store acoustic performance today at this record store called Phantasio in the beautiful Jordaan area. quite a change from last night's music; these guys are a catchy band that has studied well their influences (the Beatles, etc.). plus their organ player was playing a melodica, so they totally won me over, especially with their cute Dutch accents.



i like this band particularly because they sing some of their songs in French (including "Ce Soir Je Vais Boire" - probably an anthem for exchange students everywhere). i've already expressed how impressed i am at the Dutch ability to compose songs in a second language; so having songs in a third language is all the more neat. plus there's something awesome about hearing French with a Dutch accent.



afterwards, i went to the beautiful public library, where a guy was tinkering away at the public piano. usually folks are playing some crappy Vanessa Carleton or schmultzy lounge jazz - or, in my case when i'm playing it, the same old Leonard Cohen song that i feel inexplicably compelled to play over and over again in my strange bouts of nostalgic patriotic homesickness. but this guy was playing a bewitching composition that was reminiscent of Steve Reich; followed by a faster paced Thelonious Monk-inspired jazz piece; and finally concluding with a honky-tonk blues interpretation of Aretha Franklin's Say a Little Prayer. needless to say, this random guy totally won my heart too. it made my wait for the elevator much more pleasant...so much that i missed my elevator twice.

okay, back to studying i guess. studying law is nowhere near as fun as studying physiotherapy, which is what my floormates do. when i walked into the communal kitchen today, i saw that they had pushed aside all the furniture, and this boy in his shorts was lying spread eagle on the kitchen table, while girls were gathered around him, poking and prodding him in various places while consulting their textbook. i wonder if i should tell them i have whiplash...

sinead minus meg

sinead came to visit me in amsterdam this weekend. as you may have gathered from other sources, it was quite the eventful weekend. if only megh could have come too, as this video set to the fine music of Los Campesinos will attest to.



featuring the one and only megh, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister contestant, freelance journalist, that darling face in those movies about Ottawa, and also that really cute bartender at Mike's place that you probably hit on Friday nights.

happy (Canadian) thanksgiving, expats

yesterday, me and my fellow canadian expats decided that even though we are many time zones away from our mothers, there was no reason why we couldn't have our own Canadian Thanksgiving dinner in Europe.

well, actually, as i discoverd at my beloved Albert Heijn grocery store, there were a few reasons that we couldn't. most importantly: lack of turkey. apparently, turkeys are not native to Europe. i should have figured this out before from various hints (ie, the Pilgrims came to America and ate turkey there, or, the French word for turkey is "from India"). but i figured that in today's age of globalization, this would no longer be an issue. apparently not. i can get kimchi in holland, but good old Al Heijn doesn't even carry turkey cold cuts.

nor are was there cranberry sauce available. it took many minutes of painstaking translation to discover this ("no, not cherries, cranberries! you know, the juice you drink for urinary infections? hmmm...i don't know how to say urinary infection in dutch..."). this surprised me; it's not like cranberry sauce is all that exotic. but now that i think of it, i don't know what we North Americans use for cranberry sauce other than for Thanksgiving dinner. i briefly considered a disgusting but creative alternative (pitted cherries in cranberry juice?) but realized that nothing can replace the tarty deliciousness of cranberry sauce.

we learned to make do without. instead of having turkey, we invited Theresa over for dinner. and used chicken breasts. and for whatever we lacked in cranberry sauce, we made up for with an excess of stuffing, gravy, and wine, and amsterdam cakes to help us consume all the feast food. and some Canadian music in the background. my Neil Young, Rush, and Men Without Hats vinyls were all left back in Ottawa, but i did have some Tegan and Sara, Broken Social Scene, Kid Koala, Grady, and Kathleen Edwards to provide an appropriately patriotic background.

and in the end, isn't that what thanksgiving is about? not necessarily the turkey or the cranberry sauce, but spending time with good Canadian company (plus a few American and Italian hanger-ons - Canadian wannabes), good wine, good conversations (about hockey), and good food that puts you to a happy, happy thankful sleep.*



rob the chef


a feast, prepared by a Cordon Bleu trained cook.



digging in





can't forget about dessert...


the food was so good, jeff ate the leftovers with a knife. i have an awful lot of photos of jeff eating.


*i unfortunately did not get to partake in any of this happy happy thankful sleep. due to poor academic decisions this week, i had to immediately write an assignment that was due twelve hours later, after my thanksgiving dinner, so i ended up having a tired grumpy sleep instead at 5AM. still, the few blissful hours i got to spent wining and dining with my Canadian boys made for a pleasant Canadian Thanksgiving.

moss CD release party, with special guests the Secret Love Parade

we went to go see a couple of dutch bands performing at Melkweg last night, which is one of the more popular arts venues in Amsterdam. It's an old dairy factory converted into an arts centre that houses music, theatre, dance, film, photography and media arts, tucked in the heart of liedesplein just past all the noisy bars and tourists.

the opening band was the Secret Love Parade, who i enjoy more and more every time i see them. i met Janna through the Amsterdam Songwriters Guild and i've been continuously impressed by the production quality of their record, which the girls recorded themselves in their jam space. they have a sort of female Postal Service sound with a cute Tegan and Sara look to them. but with much less angst.






Excelsior Recordings' Moss was the main act of the night, celebrating the release of their new album. they played a really tight show; it was immediately evident that this is a band that's got their pop licks down pat, because they definitely know how to pound out a catchy melody - once you get singles like "i like the chemistry" in your head, it's going to stay there for a few days. they put on a good rock show, as one of those rock bands that remind you of a handful of bands without sounding too much like any given one. the crowd really seemed to enjoy it, although there wasn't as much dancing as i would have expected for a show like this, not like the crazy dancers back in toronto. but given the fact that i had the crap kicked out of me in a mosh pit in Seattle, this might be a good thing for once.






it made for a pretty good night overall, a nice change from the usual clubs we've been going to lately. as a bonus, most of the concert venues here seem to hold their shows early so that afterwards they can convert the place into a nightclub for more dancing. i'm a big fan of this policy. maybe it's a sign i'm aging, but i'm not a big fan of bands that come on stage at midnight or 1AM. some of us have to work in the morning. not me, i sleep in till noon, but i'm sure some of us out there do.

i now have a paradiso membership and a melkweg membership.

my life in google street view!

so i know i'm totally behind the times, but i've been tinkering around with google maps tonight and think it's totally nifty that i no longer have to bring my camera around when i travel - i can just post google street view screen shots instead. i don't even have to travel. i can just post a google street view of a busy street in Croatia and tell you that i was there. it would certainly save me the money of flying.

i kid. but it is pretty neat to show you my daily life:

this is my neighbourhood, in middle Diemen. the sparring horses are not featured in this photo.






this is where i go to school. this is the nice end of the street. my school is in the red light district, and on the other end of this street are all the sex clubs and the hookers dancing in windows (makes for an interesting study break).








Cafe Sappho, where i try out my lyrical chops once a week and hang out with dutch men in a lesbian bar.








the containers, where we party on wednesday nights. this is where dutch boys go to try to pick up international girls. unfortunately for me, the pickup lines i get are along the lines of, "hey, are you chinese? i like chinese people!"

now i know what happiness tastes like

I FOUND THE ORIENTAL GROCERY STORE IN AMSTERDAM.

it was a generic asian store in chinatown (which for whatever reason is located in the red light district), so the selection of actual korean products were quite limited. but i did manage to find some chili garlic sauce in case i decide to cook my own ma po tofu. i am also now heavily stocked in 신라면. no chappaghetti though. then i walked over to the Wok to Walk and had some delicious noodles. there are asian restaurants around here, but for some reason nothing satisfies me like the local takeout place.

i miss korean food. i love cheese and fresh baked bread but after a while one gets tired of eating cheese sandwiches...and if i lived on the other stereotypical dutch food (bitterballen, krokets, pancakes, stroopwafels) i would grow to be a very large woman indeed. i have not yet found a korean restaurant here, although i hear they exist. when i went to Stockholm, i found a Korean restaurant and was very excited about it until i realized that they pretty much only served Japanese food...wtf? Stockholm, by the way, seems to be quite in love with sushi. you pretty much can't throw a rock without hitting a sushi place. if only the rest of the world had the same passionate love for 순두부찌개...

dutch indie

went to go see some dutch bands playing at one of the indie showcases held at the Bitterzoet. I'd met this girl at Cafe Sappho on Tuesday who told me that her band The Secret Love Parade was playing, so i decided to check them out:



i'm really glad i went. i missed Roe's set, the founder of the Amsterdam Songwriters' Guild, but i did come in time to see this other act, I Am Oak, which i enjoyed a lot. it kind of sounded like Sandro Perri with a dutch accent.



after the show, the Bitterzoet was turned into a dance club, where we were pleasantly surprised to discover that there is, indeed, a club in Amsterdam that plays old school hiphop. i mean, we all love euro techno, but after a while i feel like i need to be doing a lot more drugs to really dig it...

today me and the canadian boys are going to belgium!

in search for the Dutch equivalent of Preloved

despite having lived in Vancouver (Random Rain City) and Ottawa (where the climate ranges from -40 degrees to plus 40 degrees), i am finding it extremely difficult to dress properly for Amsterdam weather. i was given the name of a reliable weather watching website - however, it's entirely in Dutch. i've come to the conclusion that i simply did not pack the right clothes. so i found myself needing to go shopping once again. as if i didn't spend the whole summer in vintage haven Vancouver replacing my entire wardrobe.

Spui and its surrounding streets seem to be a major shopping district. most of the shops are not my style - Mexx, Esprit, H&M etc., all the places you can find in any city. i'm still searching for the local Dutch designers, but during my shopping trip, i made a pleasant discovery: the Individuals brand produced by the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. all of the clothes are designed by the students at the college, and even better, the store was having a major sale. i found the clothes to be rather hit-and-miss in style. some outfits were breathtaking, and others were probably a bit too hipster for my tastes. my main complaint was the available sizes - clearly these dresses were designed for tall Dutch folks, rather than wee Asian girls. still, i'm glad to find this store and do intend to keep an eye out on it in the future for the next season's releases...hopefully in my size. i can dream.

on my way home the other day, i came across a band rocking out on the roof of an old building. they were doing a cover of the Beatles' Get Back, and a crowd was gathering in the streets, dancing and enjoying the free show. it was pretty sweet to watch. colin comments on the fact that he finds the Dutch to be a cold people, practical, sensible and direct almost to the point of being rude. obviously it can't be all true - Vincent Van Gogh was certainly the emo rock star of painting, for example - but i do agree that all we foreign students ever see of the Dutch is them carrying out their every day duties, grocery shopping at the Albert Hein, biking to work, feeding their kids at Ikea. tourists and foreigners remain quite insulated from the local arts culture. so it was pretty nice to see people hanging out and enjoying the spontaneous street party. one day i'll break out of the foreign student bubble and find the cultural underground. maybe i need to learn some dutch first though.

i weighed myself at the Ikea today on one of their sensible practical bathroom scales, and i weight exactly the same as the last time i weighed myself in Canada. I guess all the weight i would have gained from my cheese heavy diet is being balanced by the fact that i bike between 20 to 40 kilometres a day.

speakeasy

jeff commented that Tuesdays are the new Sundays. I suppose he means the fact that Tuesday nights we go out to the borrel and then have to face morning classes the next day, but realistically that's every day. we've worked out this rhythm: weeknights are for partying, weekends are for travelling. somewhere in there we also try to study too.

Tuesday night i went out to the weekly borrel that we have at the Cafe Heffer. It got way too crowded and hot there, and i'm not actually a fan of being packt like sardines in a crushed tin box (being 5 foot 2 inches means that i am about nose-to-armpit level to the average dutchman), so after the bar closed, i followed jeff and colin to a speakeasy near their place. it's this underground bar that's unlicensed so anything goes - you can smoke anything inside or just hang out. me, i was a fan of the one euro beers and the cosy dimly lit atmosphere - just a bunch of dutch folks keeping to themselves and relaxing while some old school blues plays in the background. jeff says that some nights they put a movie up on the projector and you can just curl up on the couch and just zone out for the night. i could *really* use a place like this near my place.

last night i went out to hang out in the Containers. yes, i'm serious, that's how we refer to the houses there. there is a major housing shortage crisis in Amsterdam (which is why i'm way out in Diemen) so they've been making pretty creative solutions to accommodate the massive amounts of foreign students that come in every year. like sticking them in this giant plastic containers, which i joke is a few steps above living in a refrigerator box. i kid. they're actually quite nice, sturdy and clean - probably the equivalent of the portables that we went to school in as a kid. but they do have the strangest look: my friend Ioana who lives there, describes them as having almost a simulated digital look, as though they are pixelated, these plastic buildings oddly juxtaposed with the green green grass. Picture the SITE building on the University of Ottawa campus, only more...pixelated. inside, with the sterile clean plastic walls, you get the odd feeling of living inside an airplane. made for a pretty interesting party atmosphere.

Dear! Holland! Stop! Raining! and other loving complaints from a Canadian

for two weeks now i have been living in Amsterdam as a resident, not a tourist. this means that no, i have not seen the Sex Museum or rolled a joint in a coffeeshop or gawked at a hooker or partied at a red light district hostel. but i have agonized at a grocery store trying to figure out what is the local dish soap brand, used Google Translate to decipher what a dutch website is saying about the local weather (the only accurate weather website is for Dutch people only, apparently, like a secrety society), shopped around for the best bargain guitar, and tried to get some free medical advice from the Dutch Telehealth line. this, i think entitles me to say a few words about the city.

1. first of all, i do love this city. it's a comfortable size, with the same population as my hometown Ottawa, but with centuries more history and therefore much more developed. i love that biking is an actual transportation option here. i love that most people speak at least a little English (which is more than I can say about many Canadians). i love that everything is close. i love their love for cheese. i love their love for chocolate (chocolate: not just a dessert topping anymore). i also love that i only six hours of class a week. i love many many things. i don't, love however...

2. the rain. PLEASE. HOLLAND. STOP. RAINING. please. i just moved here from Vancouver. there are many similarities between Vancouver (where topless girls sell you weed) and Amsterdam (where clothed girls sell you weed), namely, as you can guess, weed and rain. i think eight months of rain will kill me. Mother Nature, you heartless bitch, you take a young girl's dreams for a Friday night and cruelly toss them into the stormy wind. and then you break her umbrella. isn't it a bit much?

3. the questionable bike paths. i'm not complaining about the existence of bike paths, i'm just questioning what seems to be the definition of a bike. why are motorcycles on the bike paths? they are much much faster than bikes, plus people who ride them are obnoxious, even more obnoxious than bicyclists. and the other day, i swear on my heart that i saw a Smart Car driving in the bike lane. WHY??? dear Smart Car, you may be a pathetic excuse for a car, but you are still a car.

4. paying for bathrooms. for men, there are unsightly public urinals all over the streets so men can yank it out and relieve themselves while admiring the view of the canals. free of charge. for women, we have the exciting opportunity to pay 50 cents to use a washroom that isn't particularly clean or fancy. come on, if i'm paying for a bathroom, there better be a Renaissance-style water fountain for me to piss into, and there better be a string quartet to accompany the sounds of me peeing, and there better be a well-groomed barely post-pubescent towel boy massage-drying my hands for me. or at the very least, i want a public urinal too. i am so filing a human rights complaint based on gender discrimination.

5. i know the legalized pot thing is part of the big draw for the tourism industry, but stoned tourists are sooooo annoying. the only thing more annoying than white people on drugs are white people on drugs that can't stop talking about being white people on drugs.

6. the street signs. whoever is in charge of these street signs needs to go back to school. if i was living in Toronto and wanted to go to a destination, getting there is easy. you take the address (1 King Street East). Pop it into Google Map, and note the intersection (King and Yonge). you make note of the streets that come before and after, and then you can find your way there. sometimes you can use Google to print out specific directions.

i have learned time and time again that this is not the dutch way. first of all, you can look at a map and note to yourself, "all i have to do is go in a straight line" but you will rapidly find out that you will still get lost going in a straight line, and not just because the city centre is a series of concentric circles. streets will magically turn into other street names with no warning whatsoever and then when you're not looking, turn back into the original street. you will arrive at intersections, major intersections, where none of the streets are labeled, not a single one - you have to make a random turn and much later on a small sign will congratulate you on making the right guess, against all odds. maps are wrong, and some streets are not labeled at all on the maps. sometimes you will have two streets with the exact same name, perpendicular to each other. Jake, my bike companion tells me that Google Maps will allow you to plan a trip using bike paths in some cities in California. Not so here. in parts outside of the city, bike paths do not necessarily follow the streets (they dance and twirl around the roads and sometimes perilously dart right across), so using google directions to bike across the city is useless unless you're brave and stupid enough to bike on a highway with the trucks.

you can try using the canals as guiding landmarks, but there are so many of them that it won't work. you basically have to draw your Jedi sense, learn to ride your bike with your eyes shut, be prepared to swallow your pride to ask the locals for directions many times (and many times they too will squint confused at your map), or else hope that there's a clear sky so you can follow at the moon and the stars, just like your ancestors did when they were stomping around and living in caves.

7. have i mentioned the rain? has it somehow been coordinated so that it only starts raining when i unlock my bicycle? what does the world have against me recovering from my cold?

the nice spanish boy who walks me home tells me all about his hometown every night. in spain, it is always sunny. in spain, it's so hot that people have siestas. in fact, it is forty degrees in spain right now. clearly i need to move to spain next. i wonder what their bike paths are like?

lovingly yours,

gloria

so i can't be a professional painter or a biker

i have been riding my new bike to get around the city, and i've gotten sore in places that i didn't know could be sore. the Netherlands is killing my nether regions. when i first bought my bike, it was really ugly, so i painted it. since it was me that painted it, it is now even uglier, but at least she is a patriotic shade of red and white. her name is Tegan, after one of my favourite Canadian bands.

i have discovered, however, that even in the safe insulation of the bike path, the bicycle still has a natural predator: the motorcycle, which for some reason is allowed to ride on bike paths. also, it appears that i do not remember how to ride a bike, because braking one single-speed bikes is really difficult, especially while navigating through a downtown crowd. so far, i've hit two curbs and one other bicyclists. i'm sure there is a motorcycle out there with my name on its front wheel. if anyone tries those idioms about "easy as riding a bicycle" or "you never forget it - like riding a bicycle", i swear, i will cry.

still playing tourist in the city i live in

yesterday, i had a Dutch man explain to me that the Dutch are just the victims of Calvinism. it was his theory of the Dutch. if you believe that hell is an exclusive room with four chairs and you're 99% likely to go to hell unless you work really hard and don't have fun, then the idea of building an entire region that is UNDERWATER by slowly, painstakingly draining all the water from the swampy land (that is located below sea level) actually seems like a good way to spend your time.

i saw the strangest thing at the karaoke bar the other day. i kid you not. a female urinal. i kid you not. complete with a sign demonstrating how to use it. i was going to use it, just to say i did, but there was no toilet paper.









judith and hilde took us on a tour through the grocery store. it was so useful to learn which milk is milk and which is buttermilk, a mistake you do not want to make in your cereal. we bought some delicious dutch waffel cookie things and ate them in the square while playing some game that involves hitting each other on the head. we got a lot of dirty looks from tourists, which may have been because we were rough-housing at a religious monument. but thank God the Dutch are liberal.

HEY this coffeeshop doesn't serve any coffee

J-Man says:
i'd like to visit amsterdam

J-Man says:
not for the pot but because amsterdam is the one place in the world you can be a transvestite, neo-nazi, pot smoking stripper and no one will think that that's odd

lesson i learned today: it is very difficult to find simple, inexpensive, practical furniture in the red light district of Amsterdam. Ikea does not feel a need to market towards stoned tourists, although this surprises me, given the fact that there is probably nothing more appealing to a stoned tourist than the idea of 99 cent hotdogs and swedish candy.

when you think about how much tourism Amsterdam attracts from the weed-and-hookers scene, a lot of the weird things about the city start to make sense. like Febo, (BURGERS IN A FREAKING VENDING MACHINE) a concept that disgusts me to no end, but probably is the answer to the prayer of a stoner with the munchies.

also, the fact that all of the streets in the centre of downtown go in damn circles (as opposed to a rational grid system) probably work interestingly with the stoned crowds. on one hand, if you can't find a street, just walk in any given direction and you'll eventually hit it. that's useful when your IQ has been stunted badly by pot. on the other hand, you'll keep running into the same street over and over again, even if you're walking in different directions. this is probably a little freaky. maybe all the weird things in amsterdam are set up to enhance/freak out the tourists. not the Canadian tourists though. we already have Vancouver.

is it wrong that i like to look at what kind of guys go into those stores with the naked dancing girls in the windows? and i don't mean peeking...i mean getting a good look...