There are not many cities at Latitude 52.35 North. You have Battle Harbor Newfoundland, Canada, and Nikolski, Alaska, lots of Russia, and lots of other cold places. It is cloudy, it rains, it sleets, there is an occasional flash of hilarious sun and blue sky. There are some cities *north* of Amsterdam, but those people are nuts. I know this: several of them are very disturbed and entertaining friends of mine. They often liked to play evil characters in our D&D games, and they did some very bad things.
Uh, back to Amsterdam: Right now, there's some "Goddammit. Why not Hawaii? I mean, Hawaii, ...right?" Hawaii is the only tropical/temperate climate in the world that's not dangerously, discouragingly chaotic to live in: South of France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Indonesia all seem like a hot mess, for someone seeking The Least Amount of Annoyance. The whole equator, except Hawaii, is screwed, and Hawaii is a bastion of Liberalism. Normally that'd be great, but perhaps not under this regime.
Here I am, waiting for various documents, so that I can freelance. I prepare, I practice photography on a minuscule budget, I'm going to wedding boutiques and googling stuff. In a brief moment of terror, I misplaced my passport and all my apostilled (internationally certified,) documents, acquired with great mental and physical peril. I visit with my friends in Amsterdam-Noord. I walk around a lot building a mental map. Like many people with nothing to do, I'm inordinately busy.
I still have a bit of the Bilbo "I'm going on an adventure!" thing but finances being what they are, I hope to have until July at least, and there are a few promising things on the horizon.
As previously mentioned (see: Onions, Vol. 2) things are small: not just onions, but cars, tiny trucks, portions, motorized bicycles carrying six middle-schoolers at a clip, buckets in front of bicycles carrying two children, the rear-wheel bike platform that 7-year old girl was standing on in front of the Rijksmuseum, her hands on dad's shoulders while he pedaled blithely along. She wore no helmet. Concern for personal safety. Lots of small non-chain shops, selling kebbling (hot fried cod with a side of tartar sauce), clothes, photography equipment, meat, liquor, keys, food, lingerie, pastry and bread, coffee, 'coffee', you name it. The total number of bicycle helmets in the country, which, so far, approaches zero.
There's a lot of alert people — each time you have to cross the street as a pedestrian, you have to cross three to six lanes of lively, dangerous traffic: two bicycle lanes with people mostly going in the same direction at relatively high speed, who have the right of way and expect you to get the fuck out of it while they chat on phones, text, smoke cigarettes. Then two roadways often one in either direction of cars that are paying attention because if a car hits a bike an angry crowd assembles and summarily executes the car driver (that's what I was told) or gets run down by a tram, and one or two tram lines with 20-ton train cars that don't stop so fast. I nearly got creamed by a tram grabbing my hat off the windy street at the Dam Square. The driver rang the bell at me longer than usual, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, one or two being usual, more than that getting you a look... and when I boarded and thanked him for not running me over, laughed and said, "Almost!". Then I went home and put easily-found emergency numbers in my wallet.
I have a serious problem however. I'm wrestling with an addiction. It's not every day, but I'm irresistibly drawn to the insidious harring en broodje, a sandwich with two slices of Hollandse Nieuwe Haring in what looks like a hot-dog bun but is real bread, sprinkled with a tablespoon of raw onions and with three to five pickle slices. I want to have one a day, sometimes two by accident, but I'm hitting about every other day. I think about them all the time. It's really very disturbing. Some places use a pickle spear. I like the spear.
The herring is mild and smooth, boneless, pleasantly fishy, and cut by the pickles and onions.
The place selling these often has a host of other fried fish (kebbling, lekkerbek, shrimp, mussels, in various serving sizes, seared, sliced tuna in containers, smoked salmon, eel ('paling'), and a host, a plethora of other immediately edible fish things most of which you can get onna bun or hot in a paper dish with a side of sauce, which fish-munchies you generally order to eat right there, just outside the store's open-air no-doors front, in the -2° weather, steam coming from your hot food and your mouth, at one of those 3.5 meter tall cable-spool tables, on the street, onions going everywhere, and the world goes quiet about you.
Ok, not really, there are half-a-dozen people sharing and chatting and being friendly and telling you weird stories. I'll tell you about the Dutch-randomly-accosting-you-with-a-random-story thing when I put it together: right now it's a head-scratcher. But I know I'm not alone in observing it.
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