First Stop: Amsterdam

After a very long flight and not very much sleep I finally arrived at my first ever overseas airport. The agent that helped me book my flights had assured me that Amsterdam was an extremely user-friendly airport, which was a big part of my layover decision process, but if this is an easy one I would hate to see what a complicated one is like.
I had a full 12 hour day to explore the city that ended up being a series of mishaps that somehow shaped themselves into a pretty decent day. I guess that’s how traveling alone in new cities tends to go. I fumbled my way through the shopping mall that serves as the Amsterdam airport to retrieve and re-check my luggage and then with the help of some extremely friendly cashiers found my way onto the train to Amsterdam city center. Two things about this – 1) I don’t know what I’m going to do the first time I go to a country where everyone doesn’t speak English as one of their languages. I feel really incompetent as an American in the fact that the only fluency that is mandatory or even that we have the opportunity to be adequately prepared for is English. At the same time I guess it’s not feasible to know every language, but still. 2) Even though I was again assured that the train system was very easy to figure out, I’m pretty sure that I did it wrong. Along with that, no one ever checked my ticket. I bought a round-trip ticket from the airport to the city and back, but no one even walked through the train cars to see if people had paid. I couldn’t figure out if they’re just really trusting in the Netherlands or if there was more to it than what I was doing.
My original plan had been to rent a bicycle when I got to the city and explore for awhile. In the interest of time and at the suggestion of my mom, I decided that there may be better ways to see the main parts of the city on a condensed timeline. Since it was my first time in the city I also decided that I was justified in doing some of the more touristy things. I did a boat tour of the canals that was really great. Unfortunately, the batteries that I had thought were new and put in my camera were actually completely dead, so I didn’t get any pictures of the majority of the city. After the tour I bought some new batteries (there are these stores called HEMA all over the place, I think I like them) and then set out on foot to see some parts of the inner city. Observations of note: 1) BICYCLES EVERYWHERE. Seriously, Seattle is nothing. If you check out my picture stream there was literally a multi-story parking garage full of nothing but bikes. 2) No public drinking fountains. Anywhere. Even the train station. It was kind of bizarre. 3) When I’ve heard people talk about Amsterdam, I always thought the whole café thing was kind of a joke, or that they at least weren’t that prevalent. It’s not, and they are. Just right in the middle of the city. I was a little bit shocked.
Side story - I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Dutch language, but I’m not at all. I told my niece I would get her a book in Amsterdam, figuring they might have some cute traditional series that everyone growing up in the Netherlands reads translated into English. The first book that I picked up I could have sworn that the printer had malfunctioned. I quickly gained an appreciation for the language that I was hearing swirling around me.
Now I’ve come back to the airport and am waiting for my final flight of this series to take me to Israel. As a whole, Amsterdam is somewhere that I definitely would like to come back to sometime, but I think that I would enjoy it more if I had some company to trek around with.

Disclaimer

It appears that the travel blog may have been a flop, but I am finally back in Tel Aviv which is the only place that I have had reliable internet. I'm going to post a few things that I've written along the way, as well as come up with some catch up posts. If nothing else, there are officially pictures posted in my photostream. Enjoy!

SEATAC International

They took my toothpaste.

I love flying. I hate airport security. I think that Seattle has an especially abrasive set of security personnel, but I've heard that Israel is worse so it's a little soon to start complaining. 6 o'clock is just too early to get yelled at.

I mean really, what's the difference between a full size toothpaste tube and 2 travel size ones? I feel like as long as it fits in my ziploc bag I should be good to go. And of course the replacement travel size tube that I bought on the other side of security cost more than the big tube they made me throw away. Ridiculous.

Luckily there is not a shortage of Starbucks in this airport. Philadelphia here I come!

So I'm going to Israel

Shalom!

My plane leaves in just over 8 hours, and I'm busying myself doing some last minute reorganization.

The next few weeks will be full of a lot of adventures. I'm studying abroad via the University of Washington as part of a program entitled "Unveiling Dynamics in Israel: History, Politics, Law & Technology." We're pretty much traipsing around the country meeting with prominent social and political activists, leading intellectuals, legal activists, Parliament members, judges, ministers, NGO leaders, and hi-tech entrepreneurs. I think there are about 20 of us going, along with two instructors, a travel guide, and a bus driver.

I most likely won't have time to email everyone that I promised I would on an individual basis, so I would kind of like to use this blog as a compromise - I see it as keeping in touch on a more massive scale. I'll try to update on a fairly regular basis, and at some point I'll get the picture link at the top hooked up to something. Don't click it now though, I don't even know where you'll end up. Of course I'm saying all of this without actually knowing what kind of time I'm actually going to have, so we'll all just have to wait and see.