Perfect Day

SANY0786
Originally uploaded by sarahkatina

Disclaimer : This entry is going to be epic. Today was amazing. Not only was it amazing, but my perceptive and contemplative faculties have been in overdrive.

The best way to start a perfect day is a perfect night before. Christy and I wanted to go out but no one else did. Hallie was gracious enough to let me borrow her bike and so the city became our playground. We went to a bar/coffeeshop in Leidseplein that I had also visited with Whitney. A brief note on Dutch entertainment terminology for current and future reference. if something is called a coffeshop, it may or may not serve coffee, but definitely serves marijuana. A very few of these also have liquor licenses - it's hard for an establishment to get both a hash and a liquor license. If something is called a "cafe," it is what we Americans might consider a coffeeshop by day, and what we might consider a tiny bar by night. This place is called De Rokerij and is very small and gezellig, with couches and footstools and votive candles in bright holders, expensive beer in giant steins, hash lovers of all ages and races, a doorman who won't allow you to walk in with yo hood up (did he think I was part of a gang?), friendly bartenders, threadbare Tibetan tapestries on the wall. I was skeptical about biking, but figured nighttime, with no traffic, was a good time to take this most crucial baby step towards being a true Amsterdam resident. So off we went, and it was pretty great. We got to Leidseplein without traffic or incident, locked up our bikes, and sat on footstools amongst potheads for two hours, nursing our expensive beer and chatting. One of my favorite things about coffeeshops here is that you can be in them and be smoking or not, and be completely comfortable either way. I cried a little inside when I realized that we could have bought 3 bottles of Albert Heijn wine for the price of our two beers. It was lovely, though. We got Frites Special (fries with curry ketchup, mayo, and onion) at the Febo (a low-rent fried food automat - you look at food in tiny windows, put in some change, and take it out - but fancy Febos also have counters, which is where we nabbed the fries). Biking, coffeeshop, frites is pretty much the most stereotypically Amsterdam Tuesday night one can have. On the way back I ran into some difficulty - namely that the brakes were the backpedal sort and while they were good for stopping, they were not so good for starting again. I am skeptical about my ability to deal with this in traffic, seeing how faltering I was in its absence. Learning by doing, I guess.

And now, for the perfect day. The perfect day starts with the discovery of a coffee machine in the canteen of the ISHSS (the school building where I am most frequently to be found). This is no normal coffee machine. It sells approximately 16 types of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, all of them delectable, in tiny plastic cups. It sets you back 50 eurocent a pop, which is not bad at all. I had two cups of hot chocolate "de lux" for good measure. All my Euro coins will be going to this dispenser, from now on. Next was the finalizing of our plans to take the bus to Brussels for the day on Friday (less grand a Belgian Journey than we had initially planned, but ultimately more economical and probably just as much fun). Plus I have learned by eavesdropping that everyone and their brother is going to Belgium this weekend. En serio, many many many foreign students will be running around Belgique.

There was a lecture on plagiarism and academic integrity, which was not in itself amazing. My mind wandered, though, to the European academic system, where it stayed happily for some time. School is taken so seriously here - there is not this culture of going to college to find yourself, or to play, or to figure out what you want to do, that I am so used to being in the midst of, even at my baby liberal arts college. Foibles are allowed in European higher education, but basically only to refine your already-formed plans for the future. What I have been throwing myself into full-force for the past two years qualifies as an "academic career" here - something to be proud of and revered, and also something terrible to risk (by plagiarizing). The institutionally sustained possibilities for specialization within a field in this country are mind-blowing for me. For example, the TA in my Masculinity and Migration class is getting his Masters in what boils down to a study of Intersex Political Movements - one of my specific interests within the very broad field of WGSS, Feminist and Queer Studies, and one of the most understudied at that. There are also things that I find off-putting about the way academia works over here - a certain self-importance that can't really be shaken at 400 year old institutions, what I find to be an overly empirical and professional approach to fields best addressed by intersections of activism and academia. Nonetheless, I think my Masculinity class is the best gender studies experience I've had yet, and that's saying something, considering my boundless love for all things WGSS. I would seriously consider coming to Europe for grad work, a Masters or a PhD.

The next perfect thing about my day was that I worked the transport system and my feet from the ISHSS to Centraal to the Plantage to the Bushuis library to the language building WITHOUT GETTING LOST ONCE. What's more, I only had to whip out my map to confirm where I was going TWICE! At the library, I found 5 books about male prostitution, including a Masters thesis written at the UvA in 1995 about prostitution and condom use in Amsterdam - this is going to be an invaluable resource for my field work, partly because of the extensive demographic information it offers and partly because of all the ideas for organizations and people to talk to it's giving me. Pleased with my finds and navigational skills, I made my way to PC Hoofthuis and sat in the lounge eating my peanut butter and banana sandwich (sidenote: Dutch peanut butter is called Pindakaas, and it is AMAAAAZZING - I would say Once Again is the closest thing I've had to it in the US) and reading/taking notes on male prostitution BECAUSE I WANTED TO, NOT BECAUSE I HAD TO, for two hours. During this time, a Dutch person ASKED ME WHAT TIME IT WAS IN DUTCH, AND I ANSWERED THEM CORRECTLY IN DUTCH! By now the day was well on its way to perfect, and I was well on my way to giddy. Christy and I had decided to try to locate a gezellig cafe to visit regularly in the vicinity of class, and so we wandered down Spuistraat and then the Singel looking for one. What we found was Greenwood's, a tiny cafe with WONDERFUL TEA, charming wooden tables, lemon meringue pie and all day breakfast, all cheap to boot! It also had an English language weekly alternative newspaper/events calendar which we pored over in excitement, and friendly/hilarious waitstaff. It unfortunately closes at 5, and so we had to leave a little prematurely. Our waiter was very concerned about this (it is considered un-gezellig to bring a table the check before they ask for it, even if there are 8 of them and they sit in your establishment for 6 hours and do not buy anything but one bottle of water to share), and when we told him it was fine because we had to go to class anyway, he was very relieved - "Oh good!" he said, perking up, "We are not ashamed then, we are not feeling guilty..." As I stacked up Euro coins to pay the bill, he turned to his coworker and laughed - "Look Avi!" he said, "Here we have a tower!" Christy and I definitely want to become regulars at this place. Hopefully it does not always close at 5, although I have never before been so charmingly booted out, and would gladly repeat the experience.

Then came our Field Experience class, which might as well be called Making Your Dreams Reality With Letje. I literally spend all week, and certainly Mondays and Tuesdays and the beginnings of Wednesdays, being excited about this class. Not to mention my project itself. Letje is our professor and I would like to be her one day. She is quirkily high fashion, warm, tall (all Dutch women are tall), and genuinely interested in making all of our projects realities. Today we did an extremely helpful exercise where we free-wrote about different approaches we were thinking about, shared with a partner, and then had them monitor our reactions as we explained ourselves, and tell us which we were most excited about. Then we made mind maps of brainstorms of different questions/worries/ideas/logistics/hopes/fears/possibilities/expectations. This all sounds cheesy, and was, but it was also unbelieveably helpful. I am so thrilled about my project - I'll spare you the details right now, but I am going to be investigating the naissance, functions, and internal politics of grassroots organizations that work directly with male prostitutes. I am so excited that I am taking notes on everything I think and see and read, and making a more professional mind map to put on my wall, like a storyboard, so I can constantly plan and add to it and refine it. Wowza! Here I am, out in the field, studying things that I love! In a city that I am becoming more and more attached to each day.

This love for Amsterdam hit me as I was walking back from my Perfect Day up the Damrak (the most tourist-ridden strip in the city) - past Francophone tourists having their picture taken in front of a KFC housed in a 17th century building, past a Rasta with beautiful dreads down to his waist blowing into the largest digeridoo I've ever seen, past a mother teaching her small daughter how to ride in the bike lane.
Everyone should come here and see this place. I never want to leave.