Lee showed up with, like, nothing. A duffel bag--small enough to carry on--and a half-full small backpack.
I, on the other hand, have a bag packed with roughly enough items to build a space shuttle from scratch, then supply it for a year.
Clearly Lee heeded the warnings that Arthur--or rather Hope, his wife, who penned this particular chapter--offers about "the burdens of baggage."
And yet, if you'd seen our hotel room in Amsterdam last night, twelve hours before we were to head off to Brussels, you might have thought that I was the light--or at least fastidious--packer. Which led to the following conversation:
Lee: "How is it that my side of the room looks disasterous and yours is so tidy?"
Doug: "Um, tidy?" I have never been called tidy in my life. Ever.
Lee: "Yeah, it's so orderly and neat."
Doug (stifling an incredulous laugh): "That's because I've learned to create the illusion of organization. My crap doesn't sprawl as much; it's in more vertical piles. It is not cleanliness, it's craftiness. Key distinction."
Lee: "Maaaaybe."
Doug: "Actually, I'm trying to cultivate an 'Odd Couple' atmosphere. You know, for narrative's sake. I'm Jack Lemmon and you're Walter Matthau."
Lee: "I never saw the movie, but I think I get the idea."
Doug (realizing my pop culture references tend to be as outdated as my guidebooks, and about as useful): "Okay, umm ... I'm Bert and you're Ernie."
Lee: "Ah. That's better."
Doug: "I'm tall and skinny, you're short and squat."
Lee: "No. Not better. Or accurate."
I will say this, though, in my defense: I travel lighter than the New York Times' Frugal Traveler. Not that I want to start any battles with Actual Professionals here (and not that I think Matt Gross will read this), but last year, on his own Grand Tour, he packed a blazer and three (three!) pairs of shoes. Really?!
I also travel cheaper. You know, more frugally. Lee's definitely been helping with that. The hostel he found for us in Brussels--from which I write this--is fantastic. Cheap and half a block off the Grand Place. Good work, Lee!
31 August 2009
Fun with out-of-context quotes
The scene:
Doug and Lee have just arrived at the Museumplein in Amsterdam after biking around the city and into the suburbs, which the tour guide promised would be filled with cows and windmills but were totally bleak and industrial and un-bucolic. Lee lies down on an expanse of grass, the first we have seen in the city. He looks fatigued but content. The park bustles in a most agreeably Old World manner.
Lee: This is why I came to Europe: to lie in the grass here.
Doug: You came all the way to Amsterdam to lie in the grass?
Lee: Yes. It's nice grass.
Doug: I'm quoting you on that. "Duuuude, the grass in Amsterdam is really nice. Primo stuff, this grass."
Lee: That's not what I said. You, sir, are completely distorting what I said.
Doug: Correct.
Doug and Lee have just arrived at the Museumplein in Amsterdam after biking around the city and into the suburbs, which the tour guide promised would be filled with cows and windmills but were totally bleak and industrial and un-bucolic. Lee lies down on an expanse of grass, the first we have seen in the city. He looks fatigued but content. The park bustles in a most agreeably Old World manner.
Lee: This is why I came to Europe: to lie in the grass here.
Doug: You came all the way to Amsterdam to lie in the grass?
Lee: Yes. It's nice grass.
Doug: I'm quoting you on that. "Duuuude, the grass in Amsterdam is really nice. Primo stuff, this grass."
Lee: That's not what I said. You, sir, are completely distorting what I said.
Doug: Correct.
30 August 2009
Not-So-Flattering Views of Famous Places: "I Amsterdam" sign
Museumplein
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
I still believe that tourists are really good at heart
[UPDATE: A slightly tweaked version of this essay appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in February 2010. Click here to read that version.]
Frommer gives the Anne Frank House its own section, under the heading "The Unforgettable." He calls the effect of visiting "searing, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief"; he then adds, "Let none of us ever pass through Amsterdam without making a pilgrimage to the Anne Frank House."
But I’d seen the line—out the door, down the block. And I’d seen the tourists posing in front of the house with wide grins, casually leaning on the doorway like it was Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. No matter how serious the subject matter, the experience was bound to be rich with irony and cheesiness.
Lee and I joined the line just behind four British women in their early twenties. We watched them dig hungrily into their bag of potato chips and listened to their stories of drunkenness at various moments in their lives and, the preceding day, of getting stoned at one of the coffee shops here. It was, frankly, the precise type of vapid conversation you’d stereotypically expect of tourists of that age. One woman was particularly quick with the tales of debauchery. She had bleach-blonde hair, pulled into a ponytail with a small pink ribbon, and wore huge sunglasses, an astonishing amount of makeup, flip-flops and a tight black outfit that left little to the imagination. She was, in short, a tourist in all the stereotypical and pejorative meanings of the term.
So amusingly inane was the conversation that midway through our half-hour in line, I discreetly switched on my voice recorder. The topic switched to bad sushi, and the prevalence thereof in London and Amsterdam, then back to drunkenness. Lee and I exchanged looks of amusement and confusion.
"I bet there’ll be some precious comments inside the museum, too," Lee said.
I grinned. This was gonna be epic comedy.
Well . . . it wasn’t. Sure, the crowds were thick, and people said some silly things, like the woman cooing with delight at the bathroom in the hiding space—"Ooh, what a lovely toilet!" Yet even so, the house was so haunting, its story so jarring—even though I’d already heard it, knew it backwards and forwards—that all the snark drained from my body within a few minutes.
It was, as Frommer says, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief, even in spite of the crowds. There are quotes from Anne’s diaries on many of the walls in the lower part of the house, and they are of course lyrical and melancholy in equal measure. But once you climb the steep staircase beyond the famous bookshelf, you enter a place that just should not exist, that should not have to exist—and whose very existence tugs at your soul and makes you despair in some elemental way.
There were two things that struck me most. First was the section of wall, now covered in glass, on which the Frank family measured the growth of Anne and her sister, Margot. It’s such a mundane thing, which is what makes it so immediately identifiable—somehow, this detail can’t help but make you think of your own family, your own growth, your own youth. More disturbing, though, is your realization that they weren’t just in here for a few hours or a few weeks—there was enough time for the kids to grow, for the passing and loss of their youth to be documented inch by inch.
And then there was a line from Anne’s diary, dated December 24, 1943 and printed on the wall in the secret apartment: "I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free."
To read that quote in the midst of my own six-week, trans-continental journey—one that is, essentially, an expression of freedom and youth—is a jarring reminder that life is not always like this for everyone, not an endless stream of new discoveries and delights. For us tourists, the Anne Frank House is a destination to be checked off and posed in front of before we head on to the Heineken Experience or the Van Gogh Museum—it’s a place of fleeting interest in our journeys. We rarely pause to appreciate the fact that to see all these places is a luxury, that travel is a freedom not available to everyone. For Anne—and, more to the point, for way too many other nameless, forgotten individuals, then and now—travel wasn’t an option, not even a journey across the street. Home was prison.
That’s why it’s not the bookshelf that is most haunting, or Anne’s diary entries about having to be quiet and not open the curtains, "not even an inch"—it’s the mundane details, the ones so symbolic of our everyday existence. These are what make you realize that the Frank family passed their days and lived their lives—every aspect, every moment—in this space, in constant fear but also constantly trying to transcend that fear and create something akin to the humdrum happiness of normalcy. The concentration camps are not something that tourists can begin to fathom, so we really don’t even try. But this hiding space—this living space—is something we can relate to, which makes it, in a peculiar way, more real, more searing, more heartbreaking.
So while the house might start off as just another place to visit and check off, it ends up genuinely moving, chilling, enraging. History has come alive in the most unsettling way.
I know that some people leave somehow uplifted and inspired by Anne’s hopeful words, buoyed by their lyricism and introspection in the face of great evil. That’s not how I felt. I left disconcerted and upset by the ending of the story—I’m sorry, but no matter how positive Anne’s sentiments, and how admirable her ability to see the good in humanity, the fact is, she was a prisoner in her own house for years, and then she was captured and killed. Life’s pretty fucked-up: that’s my take-away message. It’s impossible to leave the house without being at least a bit pissed off and teary-eyed.
Near the end of the tour, I saw the British woman who had been in line in front of us, the Stereotypical Tourist with the flip-flops and tales of getting plastered all over the world. Now, her sunglasses were off and her makeup was streaked.
I followed her to the exit and we stepped out into the sunlight, young and free.
Frommer gives the Anne Frank House its own section, under the heading "The Unforgettable." He calls the effect of visiting "searing, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief"; he then adds, "Let none of us ever pass through Amsterdam without making a pilgrimage to the Anne Frank House."
But I’d seen the line—out the door, down the block. And I’d seen the tourists posing in front of the house with wide grins, casually leaning on the doorway like it was Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. No matter how serious the subject matter, the experience was bound to be rich with irony and cheesiness.
Lee and I joined the line just behind four British women in their early twenties. We watched them dig hungrily into their bag of potato chips and listened to their stories of drunkenness at various moments in their lives and, the preceding day, of getting stoned at one of the coffee shops here. It was, frankly, the precise type of vapid conversation you’d stereotypically expect of tourists of that age. One woman was particularly quick with the tales of debauchery. She had bleach-blonde hair, pulled into a ponytail with a small pink ribbon, and wore huge sunglasses, an astonishing amount of makeup, flip-flops and a tight black outfit that left little to the imagination. She was, in short, a tourist in all the stereotypical and pejorative meanings of the term.
So amusingly inane was the conversation that midway through our half-hour in line, I discreetly switched on my voice recorder. The topic switched to bad sushi, and the prevalence thereof in London and Amsterdam, then back to drunkenness. Lee and I exchanged looks of amusement and confusion.
"I bet there’ll be some precious comments inside the museum, too," Lee said.
I grinned. This was gonna be epic comedy.
Well . . . it wasn’t. Sure, the crowds were thick, and people said some silly things, like the woman cooing with delight at the bathroom in the hiding space—"Ooh, what a lovely toilet!" Yet even so, the house was so haunting, its story so jarring—even though I’d already heard it, knew it backwards and forwards—that all the snark drained from my body within a few minutes.
It was, as Frommer says, heartbreaking, infuriating beyond belief, even in spite of the crowds. There are quotes from Anne’s diaries on many of the walls in the lower part of the house, and they are of course lyrical and melancholy in equal measure. But once you climb the steep staircase beyond the famous bookshelf, you enter a place that just should not exist, that should not have to exist—and whose very existence tugs at your soul and makes you despair in some elemental way.
There were two things that struck me most. First was the section of wall, now covered in glass, on which the Frank family measured the growth of Anne and her sister, Margot. It’s such a mundane thing, which is what makes it so immediately identifiable—somehow, this detail can’t help but make you think of your own family, your own growth, your own youth. More disturbing, though, is your realization that they weren’t just in here for a few hours or a few weeks—there was enough time for the kids to grow, for the passing and loss of their youth to be documented inch by inch.
And then there was a line from Anne’s diary, dated December 24, 1943 and printed on the wall in the secret apartment: "I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free."
To read that quote in the midst of my own six-week, trans-continental journey—one that is, essentially, an expression of freedom and youth—is a jarring reminder that life is not always like this for everyone, not an endless stream of new discoveries and delights. For us tourists, the Anne Frank House is a destination to be checked off and posed in front of before we head on to the Heineken Experience or the Van Gogh Museum—it’s a place of fleeting interest in our journeys. We rarely pause to appreciate the fact that to see all these places is a luxury, that travel is a freedom not available to everyone. For Anne—and, more to the point, for way too many other nameless, forgotten individuals, then and now—travel wasn’t an option, not even a journey across the street. Home was prison.
That’s why it’s not the bookshelf that is most haunting, or Anne’s diary entries about having to be quiet and not open the curtains, "not even an inch"—it’s the mundane details, the ones so symbolic of our everyday existence. These are what make you realize that the Frank family passed their days and lived their lives—every aspect, every moment—in this space, in constant fear but also constantly trying to transcend that fear and create something akin to the humdrum happiness of normalcy. The concentration camps are not something that tourists can begin to fathom, so we really don’t even try. But this hiding space—this living space—is something we can relate to, which makes it, in a peculiar way, more real, more searing, more heartbreaking.
So while the house might start off as just another place to visit and check off, it ends up genuinely moving, chilling, enraging. History has come alive in the most unsettling way.
I know that some people leave somehow uplifted and inspired by Anne’s hopeful words, buoyed by their lyricism and introspection in the face of great evil. That’s not how I felt. I left disconcerted and upset by the ending of the story—I’m sorry, but no matter how positive Anne’s sentiments, and how admirable her ability to see the good in humanity, the fact is, she was a prisoner in her own house for years, and then she was captured and killed. Life’s pretty fucked-up: that’s my take-away message. It’s impossible to leave the house without being at least a bit pissed off and teary-eyed.
Near the end of the tour, I saw the British woman who had been in line in front of us, the Stereotypical Tourist with the flip-flops and tales of getting plastered all over the world. Now, her sunglasses were off and her makeup was streaked.
I followed her to the exit and we stepped out into the sunlight, young and free.
Getting sloshed with celebrities
Arthur's opening line for the Amsterdam chapter invites snickers and raised eyebrows: "Amsterdam is a swinging town." The modern reader can't help but think, Oh, really, Arthur? What do you mean by that, exactly?
One thing it means in 2009--one of the more wholesome interpretations, actually--is, "Amsterdam is a great placed to party hard and get smashed out of your gourd." At least, that seems to be what this town has become, tourism-wise: the one place people visit in hopes of a trip they won't remember.
According to our tour guide yesterday, Amsterdam's famously lax drug laws and the attendant rise of the infamous coffeeshops didn't come into place until the late 1960s. (I'm on a public computer and am dashing this off, so no time for a fact check. But it sounds good, yes?) So that would be post-E5D.
But even now, the swingingest, liveliest, most popular part of the Amsterdam tourist experience seems not to be the part that is illegal in most other places, but that which is really quite readily available most everywhere: getting rip-roaring drunk in seedy bars.
Two nights ago, Lee and I took shelter from the rain in a bar near the train station. It was not Old World and wood-paneled and charming, nor was it kitschy and cheesy and touristy, and therefore charming or at least fascinating on an entirely different level.
It was just a dive. There were some gaunt, sallow-eyed toughs playing pool, and I have to confess to a few moments of panic and a vision of the night ending with a broken pool cue through my chest.
Lee and I took our beers to the tiny basement area, which was halfheartedly decorated with retro beer posters and broken sconces. Our conversation drifted to the writing life and the joys of people-watching in anonymity. We decided that well-known writers have just the right level of fame: people know their names but not their faces. No one recognizes them in public.
As we were joking about turning down autographs and wearing sunglasses in seedy bars such as this one, a young woman gaveled a massive beer stein on the table next to Lee, then eased herself onto the adjacent stool.
"We heard you talking," she said in a clipped British accent frayed with tipsiness. Gesturing to her four friends, she continued, "She says you were saying something about being famous. Are you famous?"
"Well, we will be," Lee replied, grinning. "Give us some time. A few weeks, maybe."
"Are you famous now?" the woman asked, apparently hoping we were just being modest.
"Yes, you've discovered us," I said. "I'm Brad Pitt and this is George Clooney."
She was not amused; her face became a mask of derision and disappointment. We were no longer interesting--just some losers in a bar, not celebrities she didn't recognize. I could almost hear her thinking, "Fuck you for not being famous." And also, probably: "I walked all the way over here and you can't even be some B-list reality TV stars? Just some writers? I'm wasting my breath on writers?!"
Lee and I, however, were amused and willing to continue the conversation. They were from London and had come here just for a long weekend to celebrate our new non-friend's birthday.
"Wait, you flew to Amsterdam just for the weekend, for a birthday party?"
They gave us blank looks. Of course you'd fly to another country for a few days for a birthday party. Dumb-ass Americans, stuck in the dark ages of travel.
"But ... why Amsterdam?" Lee asked.
The five answered in giddy, drunken unison: "To get fucked up!"
I'd like to point out, once again, that we were in a bar, drinking beer (that is, not in a coffeeshop consuming other items). Last time I checked, England had bars. Rather a lot. Also beer.
But such is the nature of European tourism now. With the open EU borders and the ease and low prices of air travel, going from London to Amsterdam requires about as much effort as traveling up to Edinburgh by train or even across to the other side of town. So why not?
They certainly weren't the only Brits we've met in the last few days who have come to Amsterdam to drink lots and dance to crappy pop music. (And incidentally, is European music just stuck 15 years behind American music? Because everywhere we go, even the quiet, Old World bars or side-street Thai restaurants, we hear the same godawful mid-1990s techno and Euro-hip-hop, of the variety that Lee termed "Fisher-Price My First Turntable.)
Once it was established that we really were lowly nobodies, the conversation turned to writing, and the pathetic nature of writers, specifically those who are Americans traveling in Europe looking for material. Our new non-friend drunkenly (and accidentally) tore the cover half off E5D when I brought it out to explain the project.
"So what kind of bad ideas have you had so far? Have they been really bad?" Her eyebrows waggled salaciously, as though I could redeem my lack of fame by offering a laundry list of vices, regrets, and deeply misguided doings.
"Well, I ... I showed up here without a map," I said.
She scoffed. "Did you go to the red light district?"
"Er, no."
"That's terrible. Your ideas aren't bad enough." Looking at her friends, she added, "I want a hot dog."
"So will we be in your book?"she asked as she drained her beer.
"You haven't been interesting enough," Lee said brightly.
"Just mention the drunk girl in Amsterdam," came the slurred reply.
"Let's go see a sex show," her friend added. I'm not sure if it was a sincere suggestion or just the first excuse she could think of to ditch these non-celebrities.
They headed out with half-waves, leaving us once again anonymous and at peace. We were fine with that.
One thing it means in 2009--one of the more wholesome interpretations, actually--is, "Amsterdam is a great placed to party hard and get smashed out of your gourd." At least, that seems to be what this town has become, tourism-wise: the one place people visit in hopes of a trip they won't remember.
According to our tour guide yesterday, Amsterdam's famously lax drug laws and the attendant rise of the infamous coffeeshops didn't come into place until the late 1960s. (I'm on a public computer and am dashing this off, so no time for a fact check. But it sounds good, yes?) So that would be post-E5D.
But even now, the swingingest, liveliest, most popular part of the Amsterdam tourist experience seems not to be the part that is illegal in most other places, but that which is really quite readily available most everywhere: getting rip-roaring drunk in seedy bars.
Two nights ago, Lee and I took shelter from the rain in a bar near the train station. It was not Old World and wood-paneled and charming, nor was it kitschy and cheesy and touristy, and therefore charming or at least fascinating on an entirely different level.
It was just a dive. There were some gaunt, sallow-eyed toughs playing pool, and I have to confess to a few moments of panic and a vision of the night ending with a broken pool cue through my chest.
Lee and I took our beers to the tiny basement area, which was halfheartedly decorated with retro beer posters and broken sconces. Our conversation drifted to the writing life and the joys of people-watching in anonymity. We decided that well-known writers have just the right level of fame: people know their names but not their faces. No one recognizes them in public.
As we were joking about turning down autographs and wearing sunglasses in seedy bars such as this one, a young woman gaveled a massive beer stein on the table next to Lee, then eased herself onto the adjacent stool.
"We heard you talking," she said in a clipped British accent frayed with tipsiness. Gesturing to her four friends, she continued, "She says you were saying something about being famous. Are you famous?"
"Well, we will be," Lee replied, grinning. "Give us some time. A few weeks, maybe."
"Are you famous now?" the woman asked, apparently hoping we were just being modest.
"Yes, you've discovered us," I said. "I'm Brad Pitt and this is George Clooney."
She was not amused; her face became a mask of derision and disappointment. We were no longer interesting--just some losers in a bar, not celebrities she didn't recognize. I could almost hear her thinking, "Fuck you for not being famous." And also, probably: "I walked all the way over here and you can't even be some B-list reality TV stars? Just some writers? I'm wasting my breath on writers?!"
Lee and I, however, were amused and willing to continue the conversation. They were from London and had come here just for a long weekend to celebrate our new non-friend's birthday.
"Wait, you flew to Amsterdam just for the weekend, for a birthday party?"
They gave us blank looks. Of course you'd fly to another country for a few days for a birthday party. Dumb-ass Americans, stuck in the dark ages of travel.
"But ... why Amsterdam?" Lee asked.
The five answered in giddy, drunken unison: "To get fucked up!"
I'd like to point out, once again, that we were in a bar, drinking beer (that is, not in a coffeeshop consuming other items). Last time I checked, England had bars. Rather a lot. Also beer.
But such is the nature of European tourism now. With the open EU borders and the ease and low prices of air travel, going from London to Amsterdam requires about as much effort as traveling up to Edinburgh by train or even across to the other side of town. So why not?
They certainly weren't the only Brits we've met in the last few days who have come to Amsterdam to drink lots and dance to crappy pop music. (And incidentally, is European music just stuck 15 years behind American music? Because everywhere we go, even the quiet, Old World bars or side-street Thai restaurants, we hear the same godawful mid-1990s techno and Euro-hip-hop, of the variety that Lee termed "Fisher-Price My First Turntable.)
Once it was established that we really were lowly nobodies, the conversation turned to writing, and the pathetic nature of writers, specifically those who are Americans traveling in Europe looking for material. Our new non-friend drunkenly (and accidentally) tore the cover half off E5D when I brought it out to explain the project.
"So what kind of bad ideas have you had so far? Have they been really bad?" Her eyebrows waggled salaciously, as though I could redeem my lack of fame by offering a laundry list of vices, regrets, and deeply misguided doings.
"Well, I ... I showed up here without a map," I said.
She scoffed. "Did you go to the red light district?"
"Er, no."
"That's terrible. Your ideas aren't bad enough." Looking at her friends, she added, "I want a hot dog."
"So will we be in your book?"she asked as she drained her beer.
"You haven't been interesting enough," Lee said brightly.
"Just mention the drunk girl in Amsterdam," came the slurred reply.
"Let's go see a sex show," her friend added. I'm not sure if it was a sincere suggestion or just the first excuse she could think of to ditch these non-celebrities.
They headed out with half-waves, leaving us once again anonymous and at peace. We were fine with that.
By the numbers
Cities visited: 2
Cities to go: 8
Museums visited: approx. 4
Amusement parks visited: 1 (Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen)
Pirate-themed bars patronized: 1
Level of theming in said pirate bar: lackluster, disappointing
Frommer-approved restaurants eaten in: just 1
Varieties of tours taken: 3 (walking, boat, bike)
Chocolate croissants consumed: approx. 8
Other pastries consumed: approx. 8
Number of bikes, in thousands, recovered from Amsterdam canals annually: 25
Number of bikes fallen off (by me): 1
Bike-falls into canal (by me): 0, so far
Rank of falling-off-bike-and-into-Amsterdam-canal as killer of my mother's high school acquaintences, at least as far as I've heard: 1
(Number of her classmates drowned in said canals: 1)
Level of my fear of meeting this demise: high
Tourists in Amsterdam killed by trams each year: 2
Times I have almost become one of those two: 2
Population of Copenhagen: approx. 1.7 million
Number of bikes in Copenhagen: approx. 2.5 million
Most common variety of look given by passersby upon seeing my copy of E5D: confusion
Second-most-common: scorn
Fantastic street performers seen in Copenhagen: at least 5
In Amsterdam: 0
Percentage of Amsterdam street performers who are tone-deaf hippies strumming broken guitars, presumably hoping for some spare change for weed: approx. 95
Number of Amsterdam museums that I really can't believe actually exist: at least 5 (Handbags & Purses, Vodka, Erotic, Cannabis, Sex)
Cities to go: 8
Museums visited: approx. 4
Amusement parks visited: 1 (Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen)
Pirate-themed bars patronized: 1
Level of theming in said pirate bar: lackluster, disappointing
Frommer-approved restaurants eaten in: just 1
Varieties of tours taken: 3 (walking, boat, bike)
Chocolate croissants consumed: approx. 8
Other pastries consumed: approx. 8
Number of bikes, in thousands, recovered from Amsterdam canals annually: 25
Number of bikes fallen off (by me): 1
Bike-falls into canal (by me): 0, so far
Rank of falling-off-bike-and-into-Amsterdam-canal as killer of my mother's high school acquaintences, at least as far as I've heard: 1
(Number of her classmates drowned in said canals: 1)
Level of my fear of meeting this demise: high
Tourists in Amsterdam killed by trams each year: 2
Times I have almost become one of those two: 2
Population of Copenhagen: approx. 1.7 million
Number of bikes in Copenhagen: approx. 2.5 million
Most common variety of look given by passersby upon seeing my copy of E5D: confusion
Second-most-common: scorn
Fantastic street performers seen in Copenhagen: at least 5
In Amsterdam: 0
Percentage of Amsterdam street performers who are tone-deaf hippies strumming broken guitars, presumably hoping for some spare change for weed: approx. 95
Number of Amsterdam museums that I really can't believe actually exist: at least 5 (Handbags & Purses, Vodka, Erotic, Cannabis, Sex)
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