Amsterdam/London:
Zonde
12 May 2012
We’re exhausted, but we’re here, and this look out the hotel room made me wish that I could forget what a pill I was last week, about traveling. On the plane over the Atlantic, I filled more than half of a Field Notes Memo Book with a scrawled stream of consciousness in which I did propose some plausible explanations — plausible to me, anyway. If the plausibility doesn’t evaporate, I’ll share my thoughts. But not right now.
We were so famished when we arrived at the hotel that we went straight to one of the dining rooms for a late lunch. I struck up an accord with the server by pronouncing the soft-shell crab salad that I ordered “mooi.” She breezed by the table later and asked, simply, “Lekker?” I said “Yes!” (hopeless). I asked for “de rekening, altsublieft,” and said “Tot ziens” on my way out. At no point was I buried alive with Dutch that I couldn’t understand. So there’s some ice that got broken.
More anon. I can barely think straight; I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours.