If it's Wednesday, it must be A-dam. My life changed a little bit when I looked at the train schedule at the station and saw "A-dam" used as an abbreviation for Amsterdam, and "R-dam" for Rotterdam. What can I say, I'm easily amused and it made me happy early in the morning. Amsterdam is less than 30 minutes away from Utrecht by train. On Wednesdays we go into A-dam for lectures with NGOs, and yesterday we were at the IIAV, the International Information Center and Archives for the Women's Movement. It is housed in a former church, and it can be a borderline religious experience stepping into the place, as it has nearly everything about the Dutch and international women's movements. We had a lecture about the European Feminist Forum, which is a network of feminist affinity groups that advocate for social change at national, regional, and international levels. In the afternoon we had a lecture about masculinity and violence, which is always a welcome change for me in women's studies. I always like discussing masculinity because I spend so much time deconstructing the concept of "woman" and femininity, and also because I think the group as a whole needed a little bit of male energy and a lot of male perspective--just to counterbalance all the estrogen in the air.
For lunch we went to a neat little Turkish restaurant, where we sampled their assortment of pita concoctions; I had the one with feta cheese and spinach. We all had baklava, and then while everyone was having their tea chasers, I tried two of the cookies from the bakery case, which, despite being bright yellow and pale brown, were actually fairly good. All this and a drink for less than five Euros!
Iveta got us train tickets all the way to Amsterdam Centraal (our stop was one stop before Centraal) in case we wanted to go into A-dam. Surprisingly, I was the only one who wanted to take advantage of it! Which of course was fine with me. I realized that in all of this traveling, this was my first time entirely on my own since Bologna, and the first time trying to figure out trains on my own--sheer bliss! I didn't really know what I wanted to do, except just to take advantage of my ticket to Amsterdam and walk around to try and get a feel for the city. I did find the map that I wanted to get, but "feel for the city" part was a little bit more complicated. First of all, the weather yesterday was cold, wet, and dreary--typical October Dutch weather. I had to be realistic with myself that I would not see the A-dam of a postcard, which was probably the most important part. Secondly, I did not venture far beyond the train station, just walking down the main street, past the royal palace (I think), and back up to the train station. I only spent about 45 minutes or so there, but it was enough time for me to get a picture in my head of how the streets run and to find out that despite its size, shops and businesses in A-dam are just like those in any other Dutch city and close around 6:00. I was so proud of myself when I went back to the train station and got right onto a train headed to Utrecht Centraal--I'm a pro at this! It felt unbelievably good to be traveling alone, on my own terms, without other people stressing me out, and discovering Amsterdam and the Netherlands for myself. And discovering, for instance, that I don't think you really need a ticket for the commuter trains in the Netherlands, because I never saw a conductor or any sort of authority on any of the trains I took. My next scheme is to test this hypothesis perhaps head to Belgium next weekend, without a train ticket to Rotterdam--I know, it's crazy, but I think it just might work! Or maybe I'll just take advantage of the 30 Euro student fare that Ashley found on the internet.
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