Flying Soon
April 19
Hello, All.
For those who
have forgotten and those who don't care, I'm sitting in Newark Liberty Terminal
B waiting for Joanna's cab to arrive. I came by train from the office. We're
headed for Amsterdam on a 6:20 flight.
We'll have
breakfast at Heathrow tomorrow morning and get a connecting flight to
Amsterdam. Our hotel is 400 meters from the central rail station in Amsterdam,
but train service to central from the airport isn't running tomorrow. There are
shuttle buses to the next rail station down the line and there are cabs.
Funny thing here.
Two men in black have contraband-sniffing dog on a leash. For all their
training, they are still dogs. A guy came up the escalator with his pet, who
must have been flying with him, and the cop dog let loose like any mutt in the
park.
"Damn you,
this is my airport. Get your ass out of here or I’ll chew it off." All
this in dog, mind, so the translation is a little loose.
More later.
Joanna takes a break at Heathrow.
April 19
Have a great time! You’ll be there as Queen Beatrix
relinquishes the throne and her son becomes king.
Beatrice
April 20
Contraband or bomb sniffers? How can you tell?
Just got into Bangkok myself, staying at my usual
haunt on Soi Nana.
Larry
April 21
There are dogs everywhere—airports, bus terminals,
train stations. They are trained to alert their handlers—usually policemen
dressed in black—if they smell certain substances. I think they are mainly on
guard for explosives.
There are periodic announcements in Penn Station
that you are not supposed to pet them.
There is also an air-testing machine in Penn
Station that I pass every morning. That is supposed to frustrate people who
want to release sarin or mustard gas in the Jersey Transit waiting area.
Harry
April 21
Sounds like life during wartime!
Larry
April 22
It is.
It is supposed to give us confidence in the
government.
Harry
Jet-Lagged in Amsterdam
April 21
This is Harry
alive, well, and unbelievably sober in Amsterdam.
We flew in on
British Airways. I forget why, maybe it was cheaper, but more likely it was the
best timed flight I could find out of Newark.
You have to pay
an extra $25 or $50 to choose a seat on BA, so even though I booked our tickets
at the same time, they put Joanna and me in the cramped center jumpseat in
different rows.
I don’t remember
a more uncomfortable flight. So no sleep.
I got a bit of
shut-eye in the hour from Heathrow to Schiphol. But hey, it got us to
Amsterdam.
Here is the
first real reminder on this trip that I was somewhere else.
For this week
only, maybe because they knew I was coming, they shut down direct rail service
from the airport to the city. They are doing some kind of maintenance. Not to
worry, though. They put you on a bus to the next station down the line and
you’re good to go. It adds maybe five or ten minutes to the whole trip.
In the States,
Amtrak can’t get a train from Washington to New York on time, even when there
isn’t any disruption.
The Season Star
Hotel is way overpriced, but hey, it’s in Amsterdam. It’s a ten-minute stroll
to Dam Square, a tourist mecca. And that’s where we started.
We went down an
old narrow street full of clothing boutiques, head shops and sex stores. At the
dam the usual cast of characters was there: Spider Man, Freddy the slasher, Poseidon, all
taking huggy pictures with children. There was shirtless guy doing some kind of
stunts inside a circle of people taking photos with cellphones. But I couldn’t
see quite what that was about.
We had lunch at
a bar called Majestic on the square. It had the tables in the sun and so was
packed outside. We went in and sat by the window. We had cheese croquettes
and some other kind of croquettes that the menu said were traditional Dutch
style. Maybe that was supposed to be a warning. But hey, this is Amsterdam.
And after all,
they tasted pretty good, since the last food I’d had was a portion of chicken
curry over the Atlantic.
The beer was a
brand called Bavaria and nothing to write home about, but I will anyway. It was
a lager, a little on the sweet side, but reasonably palatable.
Best of all was
the window and watching all the people, local and foreign, wandering around
outside. Here’s a hint of what it looked like. the marble obelisk is the
National Monument in memory of the World War II years. Nazis occupied the
Netherlands from 1940 until 1945.
Went out again
around five, I guess. We were wandering around a canal called Singel between
the hotel and the dam, and suddenly I realized: I’ve been here before. It was
last August and the tables were set up on the bridge, so the place looked a
little different. There is a striking statue of a guy who looks like Einstein,
or Puccini, but isn’t. I think the name on the base is Mutatuli, or something
like that. (Maybe it is Einstein or Puccini, and it’s a joke, but I didn’t get
it.)
So I asked
Joanna, are you hungry? Boy, was she. I could tell by the look on her face, but
she had been following this crazy old man around a strange city and just
rolling with it and not complaining.
The bar on one
corner only had bar food, so we crossed the street to Villa Zeezicht. I was
hoping the name doesn’t translate into English as “sea-sick,” and we went
inside.
After the
croquettes, we weren’t up to pot roast. We shared a Caesar salad with an
anchovy on top. Joanna had lentil soup and I had onion. But whether or not
these were traditional Dutch versions of the soups, they are worth writing
about.
The lentil soup
had a floating dollop of sour cream, which mixed in nicely. The herbs were
completely different from what I’d expected. I can’t quite name what was in it,
but the flavors were familiar, but in an unusual combination.
The onion soup
came with the traditional bread and melted cheese garnish, but there was tomato
in the broth. That gave it a very interesting twist.
The only short
beer they had was Brand (but not Brand Urtyp, Larry; the waiter didn’t know at
first what I was asking for). This was a lager not unlike Bavaria and so was
OK. I am behaving and a bit jet-lagged, so I didn’t want to order a bottle of
Duvel or another strong ale, which they also had.
Plenty of time
for that later.
We strolled out
of there past Mutatuli and across some canals I sort of know: the Herengracht,
Keisersgracht, and Prinzengracht. Right on Prinzengracht took us to
Haarlemmerstraat. This is where I was supposed to wait for Larry last summer
and got lost walking in a straight line.
This time keeping
my way was easy because it was getting dark and I was sober.
Haarlemmerstraat
changes its name at Singel but comes straight to the corner nearest our hotel.
I didn’t even
stop for a nightcap at the bar next door.
Good night, all.
April 21
Favorite line: "The beer was a brand called Bavaria and nothing to write home about, but I will anyway."
Karl
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