Excuse Me, Are You American?

I just spent three days in Amsterdam with my friends Ged and Carol from Manchester. It's a fantastic city, I have to say, although I had forgotten about how mindful you have to be of cyclists tearing about.

The first night in town, we wandered a bit, after I had a minor adventure trying to find the house we had rented. The owners had sent me keys and a map, but were kind enough to mark the house's location on the wrong street on the map. I of course followed the map and ignored the street names and the address provided, and then dutifully tried to open the door to this townhouse with the keys provided. After a bit of circling -- and yes, some cursing -- I realized I was on the wrong street and found the house fairly easily. After our wanderings, we found a nice little cafe on Spui, and settled in for a few drinks before calling it a night.

The next day we did some more wandering, including visiting this fantastic little house that had a church in the attic, essentially. The short version of the backstory as I understand it is that when the Calvinists took hold of the area, Catholics were forbidden from worshipping in public, so many of them worshipped in the privacy of their homes. The owners of this house obviously felt more strongly, and combined the top three floors of their house into a scaled-down version of a proper Catholic Church.

Shortly after visiting that house, we were walking along one of the canals when a young man who had, I am fairly certain, indulged quite heavily at a coffee shop. (Nudge, wink.) As three English speakers approached he came toward us, and said to me, I assume in reaction to my voice, "Excuse me, are you American?" I looked at him and politely said "No, I'm sorry, we're not." The look of confusion on his face was utterly priceless.

Before I forget, I should say Ged took us to a record store he had been to before, called Get Records. It has to be one of the better stores I visited in Europe, with a rather wide-ranging selection of Indie Rock from all over the place. (The Guided by Voices section was HUGE, and I have to say I was impressed by a few other sections, too.) I limited myself to just four CDs: "Disintegration" by the Cure; "Ocean Rain" by Echo & the Bunnymen; "Vivadixie..." by Sparklehorse; and the 3-CD reissue of "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society."

We got back to the house after a long day of wandering, shopping, sightseeing and narrowly avoided being caught in what was one of the nuttiest rain storms I've ever seen. It was like nighttime outside at 6 p.m. (and remember, sunset in Amsterdam in the summer is usually at around 9:30 or 10 p.m.) and the rain can only be described as torrential. Ged and I were totally fascinated by it.

The next day we tried to go to the Van Gogh museum, but the lines were just too long. We did, however, find a phenomenal Ethiopian restaurant called Axum that I highly recommend to anyone who goes to the Dam. You get to eat with your fingers. Actually, you kind of have to. Anyway, good fun, and great food.

Ged and Carol were off early the next morning, so I went back to the VG museum, which I enjoyed, and also visited the Anne Frank House, before wandering a bit more. I took the train home, looking forward to my last three days in Brussels, which promised to be busy. More on them later.