Amsterdam Three: Arrival

I love Schiphol Airport. The yellow signs with black letters spelling out Dutch words I can’t pronounce, the spatial layout, the architecture, and the people from all over the world humming through it. Often enough, they are humming. The Dutch, anyway. They favor singing and other auditory expressions of their mood as they go about their lives.

I thought it was peculiar at first, a little eccentric. It would be in the United States, the country that claims me as its property. I would say “citizen” but that would imply more participatory autonomy than the government grants me. Nevertheless, public singing, humming, and whistling in The Netherlands is quite common. The Dutch are a happy people. Happy because they are free … with ample support from their government. Plenty of Dutch would grouse about that, but they’re the Dutch lamenting the freedom available to them, sort of like conservatives in the U.S.: “Damn that free public health care! I want my money and I don’t care how many of my fellow ‘citizens’ suffer because of my possessive selfishness! I’m free … to be selfish!”

It’s true, U.S. “citizens” are free to be selfish. Most choose to exercise that freedom. We’re also free to be giving, but Americans rarely choose that route. Americans give to organizations all the time, institutions that already have money and spend too little on essential needs of the people they supposedly serve, whether churches, the United Way, or any other religious or so-called charitable organization. There are exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of the money given goes to the never-ending administration of the institutions. Americans donate to inefficiency rather than to people who actually need goods and services in order to live a reasonably healthy quality of life.

I thought about these things as I stood in line to buy a train ticket to Amsterdam’s Centraal Station in the heart of the city. I wondered if the Dutch give money to organizations like so many do in the United States. I wondered if they even needed to do that given how many government programs there are to help Dutch citizens meet their needs. If citizens make too little money in Holland they are going to have access to free health care, education, housing, food, and transportation. One Dutch fellow told me during a previous trip that the government even provides a travel stipend for the poor in August, the month when Holland and the rest of Europe typically goes on holiday.

Well, I say “typically” but the Dutch have such a fierce wanderlust that they go on six-month traveling binges seemingly at the drop of a hat. Whether the weather gets dreary or a lust for roaming through another continent develops, it seems that the Dutch manufacture any excuse to travel.

As a foreigner, it’s hard to understand why anyone would leave Mecca for a lesser culture. I always forget that they can come and go as they please. It is I who has to leave after ninety days. Well … ha! There’s always the choice to reside illegally, but the Dutch prove themselves to be conditional hosts to foreigners. Understandable given the limited space in the country, but it’s heartbreaking for me. I feel so much more Dutch than American. It feels as if Holland is committing an act of injustice against me for not allowing me to become a citizen lickity-split.

That’s what it boils down to, really. I want to become a Dutch citizen or a legal resident. Yet, I can’t even speak the language. I would be more motivated to learn if Amsterdammers did not speak English as well as I do. Some speak and write English far better than I ever will. It’s not just that, though. The real reason is because the chances of gaining citizenship or even legal residency are slim to none. While the U.S. government is largely indifferent to its “citizens” it is fairly welcoming to visitors. The Dutch, conversely, are extremely welcoming to citizens while being mostly indifferent to visitors.

I get the worst of it. “Citizen” of the U.S. and visitor to Holland. Far better to be a citizen of The Netherlands and a visitor to the U.S. Before anyone cuts off my head, I will concede that I’m much better off as a citizen in the United States than I am in an African nation or many countries in Asia or Latin America or … it’s sad that the list is so long, but that’s a different story. This is the story of Amsterdam as seen through my eyes. My eyes were conditioned in the United States so my view is tainted through that lens. 

Many of my experiences in Amsterdam in November of 2007 could best be described as conscious hedonism. I treated myself well. I was making up for years of depression. I may have gone overboard. I did go overboard. But, in a sense, I needed to do so. I had to prove to myself that I was worthy of indulging myself. No more self-flagellation, no more moping.

After I purchased my train ticket to Amsterdam Centraal I made my way down the escalators to the train platforms. I listened to the destination announcements. I loved the accent of the voice proclaiming “Amsterdam Centraal” over the loudspeakers. I walked around with my backpack—it was all I brought with me, just a few pairs of clothes, essential documents, cash, credit cards, and my laptop—practicing the pronunciation over and over again. I’m sure I sounded like a fool, but I didn’t care. I was in Amsterdam. Status, looks, and money ceased being important to me. I was precisely where I wanted to be at the exact moment I wanted to be there.

I boarded the train when it arrived. I saw travelers of all stripes. I was tired and nearly dozed off. The jerk of the train now and then kept me awake. Once the train arrived in Amsterdam Centraal I made my way down the stairs and then past the stairs leading to other platforms. I swerved through the throngs of dreadlocks, tattoos, hipsters, vagabonds, wanderers, lovers, suits, and tourists until I exited. I looked out at the expanse. There were trams, buses, and bicycles galore, the garishness of Damstraat, and the breadth of the Singel canal. I took a peek at my map to make sure I was taking the right route to my apartment. It was less than a mile away and I had decided to walk with my backpack, but it was in a part of the city I hadn’t previously visited.

I headed east along a busy four-lane street. I was exhausted from the eight-hour flight and I had to fight the feeling that I was going the wrong way. I found a street sign I needed and turned toward a street that soon turned onto Entrepotdok. The backpack was getting heavier but I was almost to my destination. I found the apartment with my number and took a seat on the steps leading to the front door. I noticed before doing so that the building was five stories and my apartment was clearly on the first which was raised several feet due to the basement apartments below. It was mid-morning and as I checked my watch I realized I was fifteen minutes early.

I took off my backpack and let it rest beside me on the step. I bent over and rubbed my calves. A cyclist who was tall, lithe, and youthful rode by and hit his brakes. He asked, in English, if I was okay. For a moment I was confused. Why was this stranger asking me if I was okay? I replied, “Yes, thank you.” He smiled, nodded his head, and then continued pedaling as he whistled a tune. I shook my head and thought, “What was that about?” I went back to massaging my calves. They ached something fierce.

After a few minutes I propped up my backpack on the step behind me so I could rest against it. I closed my eyes. As I was starting to doze off a stylishly dressed man with dark curly hair, probably late 20s or early 30s, walked up to me and asked, first in Dutch then in English, if I needed help. I replied, “No, I’m just waiting for the landlord so I can get into my apartment. Thank you, though.” He smiled and nodded, put his hands in his pockets, then sauntered away. Once again I was puzzled. Why are strangers asking me if I’m okay?

Ten minutes passed. I rested my elbows against my knees and my head drooped down. I sighed now and then whenever I checked my watch. I turned to my right, to the west, and saw an older woman walk out one of the first-floor apartment doors. She was stout, perhaps 50 with graying hair, and she was walking toward me. She had a concerned look on her face. I wondered if she was going to chastise me for loitering, a Dutch Neighborhood Watch woman. Instead, she asked in a peculiar sort of English if I was lost. I replied, “No.” She said she had seen me walk by earlier and had looked out her window a couple of times. The longer I sat there, she said, the more worried she became, thinking I must have lost my way. I told her I was waiting for the landlord, that I’d rented the apartment up the stairs for the next five weeks. She immediately smiled and introduced herself. She said she knew the woman who rented out the apartment and she invited me to come to her apartment so that I could ring Ms. X. “It’s not like her to be late.”

Again, I shook my head and as we walked to her apartment I thought to myself, “I’ve been in my new neighborhood twenty minutes and the only three people I’ve seen have stopped to check on my well-being. I am definitely not in America!” What kindness I’d been shown. I was unshaven, carrying a beat-up backpack, and decidedly unkempt. I was pretty sure if I’d been sitting on the stoop of a walk-up in nearly any American city I’d have been either ignored or scrutinized with suspicion. In fact, I had been yelled at by a resident of a multi-unit walk-up in Chicago while sitting on a stoop not even a year earlier. The attitude in my new neighborhood was a refreshing change from the indifference and hostility directed at strangers in many large metropolitan U.S. cities. The comparison struck me as I realized just how divisive and distrustful Americans had become.