Copyright (C) 2003 Adam Boggs
My last report ended on the night train from Munich after the wild Oktoberfest experience, landing in the equally crazy but different city of Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, for those who don't know, is extremely liberal. The openness stemmed from a hugely successful trade industry that made it one of the richest cities in Europe. Marijuana has been decriminalized, as has prostitution. The results make for a unique city unlike any other place I have experienced so far. The "coffee shops" will sell you a lump of hash or a bag with your coffee, and it's not uncommon to see little rooms with several plants growing under heavy lights. Legally, they are only allowed to grow for seeds publicly, but individuals may grow up to 5 plants as long as they're outside, so you see them all over people's balconies. In practice, the police just don't care, and spend their time focusing on more serious problems. Hard drugs, such as cocaine, extacy, etc., are not tolerated and besides most of the people trying to sell it will sell you powdered sugar or aspirin instead.
Similarly, prostitution, having been legalized, is well controlled. Health standards are in place and regular examinations are required for licensing. (I wonder if you have to take a proficiency test...) While walking through the red light district at night you can see the ladies displaying themselves in windows with a red light above it so you know they are "in service". While I didn't indulge personally, it was an interesting dynamic to witness. Besides, there are plenty of sex museums, shops, shows, and other things to keep one occupied.
Besides those obvious parts of Amsterdam, it is an extremely beautiful and culturally rich city. It is a canal city like Venice, but with wide avenues surrounded by amazing Dutch architecture. Bicycling is the primary form of transportation there, and during rush hour you better watch out or the tourist not paying attention will get plowed over by a bike. The Anne Frank house is there and the tour was quite interesting. I also went to the Rijksmuseum, an art museum carrying a lot of Rembrandt and some other famous stuff. I also met up with Mattijs, whom I met sailing in the Azores. He came up from Rotterdam for a night on the town in Amsterdam. All in all, I felt very comfortable there and really enjoyed it. I could imagine living there for a little while even, though I hear the winters are brutally dark.
I caught the train from Amsterdam down to Paris. Paris is very beautiful -- another "romantic" city where it would be nice to go with someone special and spend a lot of money. But it's also accessible to the individual traveller. On the "left bank" (the south side of the Seine River) is the Eiffel Tower and the latin quarter which is where the students hang. There's also a great botanical garden with several natural history museums (I checked out a cool comparative anatomy museum) and the Zoo, which was raided for food during the French Revolution. On the other side I visited the Louvre, a totally massive art museum which, after spending over 6 hours in there, I only saw about 1/3 of. The Champs Elysees is the main avenue that extends off of the Louvre where all the fashion stores are, proceeding up the hill to the L'Arc Triumph, which I climbed to the top of to witness an awesome sunset and the star topology (in contrast to the rectangular grid of most cities) of Paris. Talk about a hairy traffic cricle!
While it was very interesting to catch Sunday mass in Notre Dame, as a cathedral it isn't nearly as interesting as many of the ones I had seen in the rest of Europe. Sacre Cour, another famous cathedral in Paris, has a great view of the city and an interesting history, but was similarly nothing out of the ordinary. It was, however, by the Salvador Dali museum, which contained a bunch of works I hadn't seen in the museum I went to in his hometown of Figures, Spain. It's also not far from the red light district, which compared to Amsterdam was a bit more seedy and creepy, but has the famous Moulin Rouge that was worth a photo on the way to the subway station.
London, my next stop and final destination in Europe, was a relief for a wary traveller. It was so nice to finally be able to understand the conversations going on around me in the subway. (As it turns out, everyone isn't really talking about me.) I only had a couple of days to explore London. I wandered through Hyde Park, where on Sunday people get up on their soap boxes to exercise their right to free speech (which I heard was cool but I wasn't there on a Sunday). I saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, and then toured through Westminster Abbey which has lots of famous dead people either buried or memorialized there, including Darwin, which seemed strange for an Anglican church to have. I saw Big Ben (which actually refers to the 13.5 ton bell itself which you can't see, and not the clock tower) and the parliament buildings, and then wandered around Trafalger square (the unofficial center of town) and Picadilly Circus, the old red light area that is now mostly trendy shopping. I found a place not too overly priced to buy some clothes for the wedding I was going to attend in New York, and finished off the night with some fish and chips and good old flat warm english beer. I've developed a taste for it (it tastes just like my beer before I put it into bottles!), but sometimes forget it has a lot more alcohol, and after a just a couple of pints I'm pretty silly.
The last day I spent at St. Johns cathedral (yay, another church) and the Tower of London, where the "Beefeaters" (the tower guards) give tours around the premises. The crown jewels are on display there, which contain the Star of Africa, the largest cut diamond. Very stunning. Then I crossed the tower bridge to where the magician David Blair has hung himself in a see-through box for 44 days with no food. I think he's on his 26th day, and wasn't looking too chipper. At least people had mostly stopped eating cheeseburgers in front of him. I don't know if he's big news in the states, but I kept hearing about him all over Europe. The Brits seem to have a particular taste for tabloid news.
Finally the day came to say goodbye to the far side of the pond and fly back to America. Naturally I went to the cockpit to chat with the pilots of the fine Boeing 777 aircraft prior to departure, and then had a relatively uneventful flight (except for the two irish women seated next to me who got really sloshed and kept falling down whenever they got up to go to the bathroom). As soon a I arrived in New York City and met my friend from college, Jim Lane, we got in a rental car and headed upstate to Rhinebeck, New York, for another friend's wedding (Matt, one of my college roommates). The ceremony was held at a historical river house, which was really gorgeous even though it rained that day. I rather enjoyed the cloudy drizzle myself, it seems to make everything so colorful and fresh. The ceremony was really lovely, and contained excerpts from mythology read by the best man/lady, rather than a heavily religious note, which was refreshing (or maybe it was the rain). The Rhinebeck Aerodrome is also rather famous for it's vintage aircraft museum and airshow that they do every weekend, and it just so happened that the day following the wedding was absolutely wonderful for an airshow! The P-11 Piper Cub demonstration was truely impressive; no wonder the US military used them so extensively!
The last couple of days of official travel I got to spend being a tourist around my own country. I have really never spent any time in the Big Apple, and while 2 days isn't nearly enough for this place, I've gotten pretty good at catching the major sights in big cities. The first day I took the subway downtown with Jim (he works on Wall Street) and checked out the new york stock exchange and gawked at the huge buildings on Wall Street. Then I wandered over to ground zero, the old world trade center site. They have some memorial plaques and information on the history of the site as well, but otherwise it's presently a large construction zone and there's not much to see. It definately brought back some feelings from the day the towers fell though. Nearby in the financial building there was a display about the proposed plans for the site. It looks like it will be pretty cool when it's done. Then I wandered down through Battery Park and caught the free ferry over to Staton Island. I didn't bother to get off; I just enjoyed the great views of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan, which is actually difficult to see when you're in the middle of it. I headed to the Empire State Building through Grand Central Station (which is pretty impressive in itself), only to be frustrated by the long lines of tourists also wanting to go to the top of the building. Eventually I got there and enjoyed some beautiful views of New York City at night.
The second day I spent wandering through central park, and decided to hit the Museum of New York on the "museum mile" right next to the park. But they were closed on tuesday, so I headed down to the Gugenheim museum of modern art with the cool Frank Lloyd Wright building. It turns out it was only $3 (down from the usual $15 because half of it was closed while the put up a new exhibit). I was standing there looking at a painting (don't even remember what it was!) when I looked up and realized that Cameron Diaz was standing next to me looking at it too! I of course was too shocked to say anything, which was good because it would have come out stupid anyway. In the end, it was worth every penny of that $3!
Busses and airplanes occupied the final day of my trip. I first grieved the end of the trip, and then embraced the new life to come. Driving into Boulder with the beautiful changing leaves, awesome weather, my cat and home, only emphasized what I like about this place. It's good to be back!
