feldmanlarry

I was sad to leave Iceland. I’ll always have a fond spot for it. It’s very unique. There is such a thing as an island culture, the feeling of being a small area that is separate from the rest of the world. The natives I spoke with really love the place. They seem to have it all together. I didn’t see it all by any means. I’d like to come back with the main goal of seeing the Northern Lights in its full splendor, but also to eat in the revolving restaurant where I got my act together, go on the two-day South Shore trip, and hang out more in restaurants and bars.

One lesson I learned from Iceland is that it’s worth going to the out of the way places, perhaps even more than the famous places. Indiana, PA where I live is certainly an out of the way place and does not have the same level of attractions as Iceland but it is also worth the effort (to spend 30 or so years there).

Getting up at 445 AM is Margaret’s thing, not mine. Even she wouldn’t like it though with just 2 hours sleep. My attitude is just to be happy that I’m traveling and save the complaints for another time, preferably never.

A young guy picked me up at the guesthouse who also works at one of the massive aluminum factories. He works 8 shifts compressed into 5 days, working sometimes with just a few hours between shifts and then gets 5 days off.

When I got to the airport, my flight was the only one of about 15 that was late. The business class lounge was a great benefit. On the plane, I sat next to a Dutch paratrooper. We totally agreed on our politics. He admitted that most paratroopers were not like him. He was just coming back from an exercise north of Edmonton, Canada. He was one of the most interesting people I’ve met so far.

I realized I hadn’t really done my homework about Amsterdam. I couldn’t find anyplace selling a sim card to avoid ATT roaming prices. Looking back, it would have been easy to take the rail into town but I took a taxi.

My apartment was in an excellent location, right on a canal, just a 3 minute walk to a metro station. Here are some pictures from outside the front door. My door was the one between the flower pots. Right across the canal is the Amsterdam branch of the Russian Hermitage Museum.

The following procedure is very dangerous in Amsterdam as a pedestrian — come to an intersection, look both ways for cars, and proceed. It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll get in an accident if that’s all you do. Here is the correct plan — come to an intersection, look to your left for bicycles, advance beyond the bike path, look both ways for cars, advance to the next bike path, look to the right for bicycles.

I asked a taxi driver to put the following in order of priority — car, bike, pedestrian. As I suspected he said it’s clearly bicycle #1, pedestrian #2, and car #3. Occasionally I saw a nice shortcut path to get somewhere and realized of course, it’s for bicycles only. Probably you’ve heard about Holland and bicycles before but believe me, it’s real. The taxi driver was complaining but I asked him what it would be like if all those bicyclists had cars like in the USA. He groaned a little and agreed.

I had some sleeping to do so I took a nap, then went for a long walk, which ended up in the center part of the city. I walked by the prostitutes in the windows as every tourist has to do. The nightlife was a little wild since Holland was playing Turkey that evening in Amsterdam. When I took a picture of a group of drunks wearing the orange Dutch color, they got a little aggressive towards me.

Early to bed. The transition from tours arranged in Iceland to nobody taking care of me in Amsterdam was actually a little bit of relief. I’m feeling the tension of relaxing on the one hand and getting to see everything possible in 2-3 days. Probably I’ll try to see everything and recover some in Paris.