Doctor, Doctor…
I’m in pain. I need to see a doctor. I’m ill. There’s something wrong. You see, the Dutch are such pleasant people and Amsterdam is a such a agreeable city that I’m having trouble thinking of anything vaguely snarky to say. Have I lost the art of pessimism? Did my dyspepsia take a dive in the Amstel and has my cynicism cycled off along one of Amsterdam’s thousands of red bike lanes?
The Dutch are ordinary people just like you and me. There’s nothing so special about them and there’s not one trait that would jump out at you and require a snarl of “Lowlander” in that vitriolic tone you’ve been reserving for that pompous French man, or overbearing German woman. Nope - they’re just so nice (albeit very tall). Gladly they will speak English even if you attempt to speak Dutch; infuriatingly so it would appear, for Beth is having a hard time finding any Dutch to actually speak Dutch with. Could that trait be something I could wax on about? Not really - it’s really refreshing to not have to go through a translation ritual to order dinner only to be served something unexpected. Could I irritate my readers by putting the ‘dis’ in dissension concerning Dutch politics? Well, as can be seen by their liberal attitude towards just about everything in modern life, there’s nothing really to grumble about. Here’s a partial list of sensible ways the Dutch appear to work:
- Marriage ceremonies are performed by the city first. Once you’ve done that you can have whatever religious ceremony floats your boat
- Drug problems are treated first as a health issue and don’t automatically induce jail time
- Prostitution is legal, monitored, taxed and unionized
- They realized the power of alternate energy sources 400 years ago (OK, well, windmills weren’t actually alternate energy sources, more like the only energy source)
- Give people bike lanes and they’ll use them (pedestrians be warned: you are at the bottom of the food chain)
- If you abandon your boat the police will put a sticker on it. If you see a boat with a sticker on it, it’s yours; therefore the city need never clear up abandoned boats
- Don’t prosecute people for riding their bikes whilst drunk or stoned; sure, they’ll fall in the canal every now and then but at least they won’t drive their car
- Of course, pot is decriminalized. Coffeeshops take the grunge and risk out of buying and consuming drugs but still permeate your clothes and hair with the sweet, satisfying smell of danger
- Stop drunk men peeing in the canals on a Saturday night by supplying portable plastic urinals on most street corners over the weekend. However, a number of dead male bodies are still pulled out the canals each year with, how can I delicately say this? Umm, their waterlogged and turgored manhood still protruding from the zippered trouser outlet. It appears as if a number of tourists (probably Brits) can’t grasp how the low barriers bordering the canals make great safety devices for parallel parking cars whilst making lethal tripping devices for those too inebriated to resist peeing in a large body of water
I’m sure there’s a equally long list of Dutch stupidity but my sudden malaise is preventing me from seeing it. Oh - hang on, I have it. The Dutch are really ridiculously tall. They are the tallest nation on earth. This is a hard fought honor they recently wrestled from the Americans. The average Dutchman is one and three quarter inches taller than his American counterpart which is positively pigmy-like when compared to the average Dutchwoman who towers two and one quarter inches above her US counterpart. However, the Americans still hold the girth record because the Dutch are really ridiculously thin too. Which, again, is amazing considering their national dish is just about anything you can deep fat fry. So, here we have a ridiculously tall and thin nation where the women also appear to have perfect breasts.
Now, the Dutch are also known for their thriftiness, their lack of emotional surrogacy when it comes to exercising their Euros. Today I witnessed a perfectly thin, tall and apparently perfectly affluent woman (her breasts were obscured by her raincoat but I’m sure they were in keeping with the above description) total up her receipt at the supermarket checkout. She had purchased about sixty items and, whilst blocking up the entire checkout aisle, was adamant she’d challenge the mathematical skills of the cash register not to mention the obviously adept scanning skills of the poor store employee. [Oooo - you know, I might be feeling a little better!]
Oh, but I digress, I was in the middle of telling you about the new world record secured by the newly crescendoed Dutch vertex. July is sale season in Amsterdam and, if you take a moment to reflect back upon my earlier comments concerning the national thriftiness, you can probably imagine the shops are rather crowded at the moment. So, this sudden and elated news of the Dutch growth spurt must have taken the store stock buyers by surprise for they apparently overcompensated by buying in way too much XXL clothing as is obvious for all to see (all those who are tall enough to reach to top racks at least) for there is nothing on hangers but ridiculously large garments. Not American rotund large but Dutch stalky stringy large - the kind of large that perfectly tall/thin/thrifty/breasted people would love to wear and for cheap too. [Ah, yes, I feel the veil of sickness ascend from my body]
And so, as I gently return to my pompous and somewhat disagreeable old-self, I still struggle to summarize our time here. I will look back on these days in Amsterdam with a fondness reserved for those in life who are able to put aside their deprecations and disconcertment as well as their ability in accessing adjectives (and assonance) and use pleasant and agreeable’s overworked older cousin and say that Amsterdam was really “nice”. [Which, by the way, compares admirably to my wife’s last blog entry whose overuse of the adjective “cute” was mildly but none-the-less definately irritating. That, by the way again, is probably going to earn me a smack on the back of the head and the label of “pompous idiot” - ah, as is marriage!]