Blog Like an Egyptian

I have been a bad blogger lately.  It’s been more than a week since my last post; for that, I apologize.  It’s been a busy week; I’ve been hanging out with friends most nights, and somewhere in there, I found the time to see Radiohead in concert.  Hopefully I’ll be a bit more regular about updating this for the foreseeable future.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’m taking a break from Egypt for this post.  Instead, I’ll talk about the city where we spent most of our first day: Amsterdam.

We left Portland at 4:10 p.m. Monday and arrived in Amsterdam at 10:30 a.m. (local time) Tuesday.  I had slept a little bit on the plane but was ready to go.  We had about seven hours to explore Amsterdam before the final leg of the trip to Cairo.

As we began our descent, I looked out the window and saw wind farms out at sea.  About that time, I had my first Samwise Gamgee moment: “This is the furthest from home I’ve ever been.”  That’s when it hit me that I was in Amsterdam.

(Truth is, from above, it looked a lot like Oregon – lots of greenery, waterways and a few roads.  It reminded me of the I-5 corridor in central Oregon, oddly enough.  I remember thinking, “Am I really in Amsterdam, or did we turn around while I had dozed off?”)

After getting our passport stamped, we caught the train to Amsterdam Central Station.  Right away, the cultural differences smacked me in the face: We took a freaking train into town.  The train itself was two stories, with pretty spacious seats and tables for commuters.  In Vancouver and even Portland, we just don’t have commuter trains.  So there was the first big difference.

We got off the train and hopped on a streetcar en route to the Rijksmuseum.  (I should add that the weather was superb.  It was maybe 75-80 degrees and clear, much like most July days in Vancouver.)  Interestingly enough, I’ve ridden the MAX light rail line but never the actual streetcar in Portland, so this was a new experience, too.

We spent a few minutes in the museum and walked to the Anne Frank Museum.  Along the way, we got to see a good slice of Amsterdam.  There were canals every which way you look, in addition to a ton of historic buildings bordering them.  (I wish I could remember more at this point, and I wish I took more photos.  I just remember the city being so much busier than Portland; I was amazed at it all.)

The density surprised me, too.  Pretty much every building was at least three or four stories tall, and people were packed tight into the city and along the sidewalks.  Then you had walkers, cars, bikers and streetcars sharing essentially the same space on the street.  I guess it’s similar to what Portland does with the Pearl District, but this was on such a massive scale … you really had a hard time separating the sidewalk from the street.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the bikes here.  They were everywhere.  And, unlike Portland, most bike riders seemed to have a decent relationship with car drivers.  I think that’s because there are just so many bike riders.  It wasn’t three or four people here and there; it was dozens and dozens of people on every street.  And it wasn’t unusual to see bike racks with 100+ bikes locked up.

So we walked to the Anne Frank Museum and checked that out.  It was really depressing, but also really moving.  The museum was well done, with good background information, videos, artifacts and quotes from Anne Frank’s diary on many of the walls.  The museum explained why Frank was in hiding, how the Nazis were nearby and the great lengths Frank’s father went to in order to protect her.  Then, knowing what happened in spite of his efforts, I was super depressed.  But it was still worth my time.

From there, we walked … and walked … and walked to the Red Light District.  (Okay, there are several Red Light Districts.  We walked to the one people refer to when they talk about THE Red Light District.)

And, yes, it was, um, a titillating experience.  (Pardon the word choice.)  We walked by a few weed banks (I don’t even understand what a weed bank is) and past what seemed like dozens of nude theaters and adult shops.  And of course, there were the prostitutes in the windows, dancing around.  We even saw a few women negotiating with possible customers.

It was all very surreal to walk through the Red Light District.  We were only there for about 20 minutes — don’t worry, we didn’t do anything bad — but it was enough to get a sense of what makes it such an interesting place for tourists.  Name your vice, and it’s probably available somewhere in the Red Light District.

Here’s something I’m curious about: How did the Red Light District become the Red Light District?  What I mean is, how did all those places come together in the same district?  At some point, did the city’s government move all the sex shops and brothels to that particular section of the city?  Did one or two sex shops open a few years ago and hit it big, paving the way for everything else?  How did that section of the city become what it is today?  I am legitimately curious about this.

At that point, it was back to the train station.  We all nodded off on the train ride back, nearly missing our stop at the airport.  But we woke up in time, met up with the rest of the group and promptly fell asleep in the airport.  Most of us had slept a little bit on the plane, but a lack of sleep and the time change combined to catch up on us in a big way.

After an hour or so, it was off to Cairo.