mokudekiru

I followed Robyn to Amsterdam last weekend, mostly because her tix for Copenhagen had been sold out for months before I even arrived in Sweden. Robyn seemed as good an occasion as any to do the Amsterdam tourism thing, and with a Swedish buddy and a lot of recommendations from my friends and the internets, the trip was a smashing success!

5 days is a rather long time to tour one city, so I’ll skip the storytelling (about how it was awesome to meet up with friends from UIUC, Lund, etc.), and just go with a list of things that were cool and might help you plan your own trip to Amsterdam.

Good Things to Do

1. Canal Tours

On day one, we took the City Canal Cruise which leaves from Leidseplein and takes you all around the city through the major canals, and even out to the harbor. It was great except that the recording for the tour was broken, so we didn’t actually learn what most things were that we were passing. However, most of the sights we saw on the tour became landmarks we used later to help us navigate.

Where the bout tours started

I’m on a boat

Harbor!

2. Openbare Bibliotheek (The Library)

By FAR my favorite place in Amsterdam. Olga recommended it to me and I only wish I went earlier — free internets, nice interior design, food, and a great view of the city. I went 3 times in 4 days. Plus, the library is just a short walk from the Centraal Station, so NO ONE HAS AN EXCUSE NOT TO GO. It’s open kinda late, too!

Lots of construction approaching the library from the station side

inside

Nice setup

STUDY-POD

Bathroom costs 20 euro-cents but it’s worth EVERY EURO-PENNY.

Library elevator hyperjump.

3. The Red Light District

When recommending places to go in Amsterdam, people tend to be weird about *sort of* recommending this place but not ACTUALLY… (maybe they’re worried that if they say to go here, I will think they hired a hooker?) Anyway, I would like to unambiguously say YES, do go there — it is fascinating!

BUT, be warned, that there are not only prostitutes there, but LOTS OF SWANS.

For some reason it didn’t occur to me that there would be actual red lights all around… The main street, with the canal running through, and the tiny, red side streets, was quite pretty. Definitely go there on a Friday or Saturday night, so the district is in full force. Every street (especially the smaller side-streets) has prostitutes standing in windows (as expected). However, there were a few unexpected things:

– If you make a lot of eye contact or walk really close to the windows, the girls start to tap the glass at you. A little eerie.

– On the other hand, about half of the window hookers look incredibly bored and are on their cell phones, texting, or reading facebook, or trading stocks, whatever it is that you do when you’re a hooker in between customers

– Many of them were actually quite attractive

– A lot of the side-streets were narrow enough that it was hard for two people to pass on either side of each other without careful coordination – which is especially challenging if you are busy gawking at the prostitutes less than two feet away.

– Swans.

4. Live Music at Dam Square

There was almost always live music going on here, and it was pretty good! Also a good place to just hang out, people watch, eat food, etc. (I always love finding those places in big cities).

5. Heineken Museum

It was kinda cool — the reason this isn’t higher on my list is that what made it cool was the nice interior design of the brewery/museum, which was greatly surpassed by the awesomeness of the Bibliotheek. So, you can definitely skip the beer thing by just going to the library.

They had some cool chairs though.

6. The Best Tree in Vondelpark

We found the best one. I can’t really tell you where it is, but it’s sorta far into the park. You’ll find it. Good for watching bike tours go by, but watch out, the kids can get pretty territorial and you have to really defend your spot in the tree.

This spot’s MINE

This kid had the sweetest ride

7. Shopping on Kalverstraat

One of the big pedestrian shopping streets in Amsterdam. There are a bajillion shoe stores (LOVE), and I found exactly the boots I have been looking for all winter but haven’t found in Sweden, at a store called Manfield.

I also got a dress somewhere that had cute, cheap clothes, and the LONGEST QUEUE for the dressing room EVER. Every single girl except for me was there with a boyfriend and she would come out of the changing room, model, ask if it made her arms look fat, contemplate for minutes, and then move on to the next item.

WAY worse than the infamous queues at the Anne Frank Museum.

8. ROBYN @ MELKWEG!!!

This would be first on my list of course, but unfortunately Robyn is not ALWAYS in Amsterdam, so it doesn’t really work as an Amsterdam tourism tip.

Just as predicted, Robyn was a friggin’ awesome live performer. She clearly loved her music and performing just as much as we loved watching her — no diva vibe from her! She danced around (yes, on her own), and we danced along right with her.

My travel buddy Philip has a magic power: weaving through a crowd like no other (Swedish queueing skillz in full force), so we quickly made it to the very front.

Everyone behind us — suckers!

<3

“Hang With Me” was the clear winning song, but everything else was wonderful as well. So perfect.

At the end of the show, we found out that everyone else at the front of the crowd was also Swedish (I’m serious about this queueing thing), because we were all shouting “EN GÅNG TILL!!!” which is what you shout to get an encore… in SWEDISH. The girl next to me and her friends turned out to all be from Luleå, and we met a couple from Stockholm as well. After the concert, we were suddenly a gang of 12 Swedes (and one American, of course) and we went galavanting around Amsterdam for hours together. THANKS ROBYN! Best last night in Amsterdam ever.

Food

– Thaise Snackbar Bird – Really really good thai food. We ate here twice in the 5 days we were in Amsterdam. It’s tiny though, so you always end up sitting next to strangers. Sometimes, very very high strangers.

– Fries sold in paper cones on the streets – the mayo looks gross but it was actually quite good. Everyone seems to be walking around with a cone of fries, it’s hard not to want one yourself.

– Stroopwafel McFlurries – I really only go to McDonalds to experience local McDelicacies, but this is by far the best item I have ever found at McDonalds. Stroopwafels themselves are one of the best things in the world — I have been enjoying them for years and I had no idea they were Dutch! This is how you eat a stroopwafel.

There was no other restaurant that compared in any way to Thai Snackbar, but if you want other recommendations, check out Spotted by Locals Amsterdam – they know what they’re talking about.

Bars and Nightlife

Bulldog Hostel – After we found our crowd of Swedes at Robyn, we ended up hanging out at the hostel bar here until like 4 am – there was no bartender for miles around, but no one seemed to care that we were there.

Cafe Mokum – in Leidseplein, a long but narrow bar with a platform at the back and a lot of dancing. And man, were people dancing. Unfortunately, it closed at 2 AM on Sunday night (how dare they?) so we had to move down the street to…

Bubbels — which was definitely the Amsterdam equivalent of Joe’s, complete with the annoying DJs who turn the music down so you can yell along with the song. Additionally, the bartenders had these bells they would ring randomly. Incredibly obnoxious. This club, however, was the first place in Amsterdam I found where people couldn’t speak English. LOTS of Dutch yelling.

Male attention in Amsterdam… PLENTY to go around. In Sweden, getting a guy at a bar to even give you the time of day requires a powerful magic love incantation — not so in Amsterdam (or at least in this club). Don’t make eye contact for more than 1 second with anyone unless you are INTERESTED. And if you’re a guy, the drink-buying competition is fierce — Philip reports seeing guys buying beers at the bar, turning around, and shoving them at literally THE FIRST GIRL they see, before anyone else can get to her. Actually, the guys at this club made the jerks at Joe’s seem totally tame. Whoa.

The dancing situation in Amsterdam was halfway between Barcelona and Sweden. No grinding of course, no circles of people (like in Sweden), but people were actually dancing (unlike in Barcelona) — just not in any particular formation. The timeframe of going out was also halfway between Sweden and Barcelona — people seemed to go out at 12ish and clubs would close at 4.

Stuff that was Meh

Really the only thing we did in Amsterdam that was skippable was the Anne Frank House. It was sorta cool, but wayyy too touristy and corporate. I felt like just reading the book made so much more of an impression on me than visiting the museum ever could. My two cents.

For many more pictures…

Of Amsterdam and even my mini-adventure to Roosendaal, see my Flickr.

After 6 weeks of dreary, dark, just-at-the-freezing-point weather, I needed a break. So, inspired by the fact that the weather is 20℃ there instead of 0, and more importantly, this song, I headed to Barcelona last weekend:

I was traveling with one friend, and we stayed at Sant Jordi Alberg which was apparently the 6th best hostel in the world in 2009, which sets the bar pretty high. Indeed, it was quite nice, and small enough that you could meet people without feeling anonymous. Every night the hostelers go out and party together, and usually you don’t have to pay cover at the clubs if you go with the hostel group. More on clubs later.

Barcelona Attractions
We had 3 full days to explore, which was to see all the main things there are to see. Some were good, some were not so good.

1. El Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter, was nice. Lots of street musicians, narrow streets, lots of people walking around. Also, this was the only place in all of Barcelona that we found horchata, for some reason. Lack of horchata (especially when it was on the menu and then they claimed they didn’t have it) was a major source of angst this weekend.

2. Park Güell, the Gaudi Park, was actually a bit underwhelming, but it’s at the top of a hill on the very edge of the city, so you do get some good views from there:

I think after living in Kobe, I just get really excited about any mountain-city-ocean situation.

3. Magic Fountain of Montjuïc was probably the most epic thing in all of Barcelona. It is also surrounded by another row of epic fountains and a huge museum with beams of light behind it. This place is the best.

Row of fountains

And the actual fountain, in video form (coordinated with music):

4. The Sagrada Familia was cool, especially the inside (the outside is bizarre looking but not nearly as stunning as the inside):

Sadly, the towers were closed to visitors the day we went.

5. Las Ramblas, the big shopping street, was stupid. It was completely filled with slow-moving tourists and street vendors trying to rip them off. There wasn’t even anything cool to buy, either. Definitely can skip.

The Barcelona Metro
The metro was incredibly and unexpectedly good. Here’s what made it great:
– it’s well designed / easy to use
– the trains come very frequently (every 4-5 minutes maximum)
– the clocks on the platforms tell you when the next train is coming TO THE SECOND… not minute, but SECOND. I’ve never seen that before
– it’s clean
– in many of the stations there are little shops selling cheap yet really useful things. I bought a white circle scarf (see above photo) and a purse in two of these stops. My scarf is just like the ones everyone in Sweden has, and yet it was much easier to find one in a random Barcelona metro stop than in Sweden. Go figure. It felt really weird buying winter accessories when it was still warm there, but since it’s Barcelona, 20 degrees meant everyone was freezing and wearing winter coats and boots, etc. Hahaha.

Spanish Party Time
It was amazing how fast we assimilated to Spanish Party Time — everything in Spain starts and ends very late, and everything in Sweden starts and (sometimes) ends in Lund much earlier. The first night we were in Barcelona, we asked Duda, one of the staff at the hostel (with a really great name) what time to be around for that evening’s activities. He told us 11 PM as the meeting time, aka pre-party start time. So our daily routine was always something like:

explore the city during the day/evening
8:30~10 PMish – get dinner
11:00 PM – be at the hostel, get ready to go out
11:30 PM – leave hostel for first bar
2:00 AM – leave first bar to go to club
5:30 AM – leave club
and then sleep in until 12:30 or 1:30 PM

So we were first stepping foot in a club right when the clubs in Lund are closing. Jeez. This also meant I had significant “jet lag” coming back to Sweden, despite the fact that Barcelona and Sweden are in the same time zone. Oops.

People Don’t Dance in Barcelona Clubs
I was extremely surprised by this. I expected everywhere to be a massive rave all the time. Instead, what I got were a series of ENORMOUS clubs (all at least 4x the size of the largest club I’d ever been to before this) where there are one or more huge huge huge dancefloors that are incredibly crowded, but instead of dancing, everyone is just kind of standing and drinking and talking (yelling) at their friends. I don’t quite get the point of being in a club in that case…?

The queues for these clubs are also enormous — like 200+ people at a time, but it takes just 10 minutes or so to get into the club. SO fast! In the queue to Razzmatazz on Saturday night around 3:15 AM, one of the biggest clubs in Barcelona, we actually ran into our friend from Lund. We knew he was coming to Barcelona that weekend too, but it was quite odd that we ran into him in a queue at the same time and same club, and furthermore that I actually spotted him in that line. Crazy!

Spanish in Barcelona
I didn’t know any before this trip, and I still don’t really know any (and I definitely didn’t know Catalan!) You can really get by on just a couple of words. Everyone did seem to know English (especially in restaurants, etc.) but unlike in Sweden, where they just switch to English as soon as they figure out you’re foreign, they actually use Spanish with everyone here. If you need missing vocab though, saying it in English usually did the trick.

What you CANNOT do is ask them to speak in English. Everyone will say no to that and some people will take offense.

So Many Americans
For some reason, every single person in our hostel other than a Japanese brother/sister pair, was American, mostly students studying abroad elsewhere in Spain or in France. I forgot that I hadn’t been in a group of more than 3 Americans at a time in a month and a half, so it was strange to suddenly be meeting people from Minnesota instead of Munich.

There were lots of foreigners at the clubs too, and several times someone would come up to me attempting to make conversation, but then panicked at the last minute, as if they had just realized that they didn’t know any Spanish. Surprise! I don’t know Spanish either. I also managed to find a Japanese guy who appeared not to speak either Spanish or English. See how useful it is to just-so-happen to speak Japanese?

However, I did notice that Swedish is starting to interfere with my Japanese too — I would think in Japanese and sometimes Swedish words (that I use very commonly) would come into my head. So either this means I’m making progress on Swedish, or I’m just getting confused.

Other Upcoming Travels
I’ve soaked enough sunlight up in Barcelona to tide me over until real spring happens in Sweden (I’m still optimistic that it will, in fact, happen). So now, my travels will be motivated not by weather but by live music: Amsterdam for Robyn, Berlin for I Blame Coco, and Copenhagen once more just for kicks, should round out March. April and May are relatively wide open, and I hope to get some more serious Scandinavian adventures going on then.

The full set of Barcelona pictures here!

There’s a lot of rage on the internet these days about the new TSA screening procedures at major airports. I wanted to share my experience & groping story to give you one more data point, and encourage my friends also to choose groping by the TSA over body scanners next time you fly.

Why Opt Out?
In case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the deal. The TSA is using X-ray Backscatter and Millimeter Wave Screening Machines at major airports. There are many reasons people are against these machines, including not being into:
– getting cancer
– being seen naked
– new rules being sprung on travelers without explanation
– the fact that Michael Chertoff, who pushed the security policy that put these scanners in place, is personally profiting from it

So your only other option (the one that they never tell you about at the airport) is to opt out. You do this by saying “I opt out” in exactly those words when the TSA agent tells you to step up to the x-ray or millimeter wave machine (which look, for the record, like they’re right out of an evil sci-fi dystopian futuristic movie… it’s all very Minority-Report-esque).

My TSA Groping Experience
So I was flying from ORD->SJC on Friday. This was the first time I flew directly out of an airport with the Backscatter/MM-Wave machines (they aren’t at the smaller airport, so presumably the terrorists who want to circumvent these EXTRA-secure new machines can just fly out of podunk-USA and then catch a connecting flight at destruction destination of choice).

Anyway, I noticed the security lines were longer and slower than usual. The TSA agents were directing some people into the X-ray machines, and some to the good old-fashioned metal detector. When it was my turn in line, a female TSA agent directed me towards the X-ray machine, and I said “I opt out.” She got out her little radio thing and announced, “We’ve got an opt-out.” Yep, just like everyone else on the internet said.

They took me through the machine (which they said was off while I was walking through it), and into the area where your bags come out of the x-ray machine. I stood with my shoes off still and my arms out on a little mat and a different female TSA agent came and did the infamous pat-down, in rubber gloves. She seemed to be slightly uncomfortable with it. Apparently my pants and shirt were tight enough that she didn’t need to go inside my clothes, though she did ask if there was something in my pocket (there wasn’t, it was just scrunched up because my pants were tight and I was sitting on a bus for 4 hours beforehand). She did touch pretty much everywhere on my body, including my boobs (mostly right above and the underside though, clearly trying to avoid making it into a bona-fide boob grab) and up the inside of my legs, very briefly (most of the time was spent on boobs, around the pocket/hip areas, and ankles, where my jeans were a bit scrunchy).

In total, it lasted about a minute or so, and was actually relatively painless from my perspective. I did not feel sexually assaulted, or like I was in a medical/gynecological exam. And it was nothing that all-girls school in Japan didn’t prepare me for.

I was, however, the ONLY person to opt out, out of everyone I saw ahead of me in line (around 30 people or so).

Despite the TSA’s attempts to make you feel bad / discourage you from opting out (the “we’ve got an opt-out” line, etc.), I did feel like choosing the opt-out and getting groped was actually interfering with their day and their procedures on a micro-level. To protest and interfere on a macro-level is the point of things like National Opt-Out Day (November 24), and Loopt’s Touched by the TSA iPod Touch Giveaway.

So I would choose the groping again over being zapped, and I encourage anyone who is considering opting out to go for it. While I’m sure your own personal groping experience will vary widely based on which TSA agent is doing the feel-up, it’s not as traumatic as the John Tyner internet saga may indicate.