Cheese & Brownies

Today we did so many things that are stereotypical of Amsterdam and Holland it's a little shameful. I think it is my duty to warn you here that later on in this post some things may be discussed that are not suitable for children and perhaps my parents; but I'll notify you when that section gets closer.

The day starts off quite tamely at a cheese market in Alkmaar. Alkmaar is about a half an hour train ride away from Amsterdam. It's cheese market is one of only four original cheese markets and has existed since the 1500's! You should know (if you for some reason don't already) that I LOVE cheese. I had been looking forward to this market for a while. [We didn't go to Gouda because it was farther away, more expensive, and less famous / old.] Alkmaar's cheese market is open from April to September, but only on Fridays and only from 10 AM - 12:30 PM, so we really got lucky with our timing! This was only the second Friday of the 2010 season and we were only in the Netherlands for three full days, so I'm extremely pleased with our timing here.

The town itself was very small and completely walkable. There are countless cafes with outdoor terraces, and once again (I don't know how we do it!) we had a gorgeous blue skied sunny day. This is not typical for the Netherlands in April, yet all three of our days here have had ideal weather. We arrived at the cheese market a little after ten and things were well under way. The large square had fenced off the market area. There were rows and rows and rows of big yellow circles of cheese lining the streets. Then there were these men that reminded me of normal-people-sized oompa loompas. They wore all white suits with a white hat, but the hats had different colors of ribbons around them. The red, blue, green, and yellow ribbons signified each of four warehouses that contributed cheese to the market. These men were responsible for carting the cheese to different places around the market. We got to see the weighing machines, where they determine the weight and price of cheese, and how they carry cheese. It is difficult to describe how they carry the cheese so you'll have to see my pictures later. Then the cheese gets carried to big semi trucks, and one guy stands at the back of the truck and literally rolls wheels of cheese to somebody inside the truck who puts it onto a shelf. They also had a stand with pre-cut and sealed cheese sections that you could buy. It was 10 euros for a bag, and though we had no idea how much or how little cheese was in a bag, we decided to split it. Turns out there was 6 sections of cheese! A lot of cheese! And there are at least three different kinds. So that should last us quite a while!

Once we had seen everything at the cheese market we began to wander around the town. Surrounding the cheese market were little booths which mostly had cheese to both taste (free little cubes, like Seattle's cheese festival) and buy, but there were also stands for the traditional Dutch pancakes (which are actually spelled "Poffertjes", not Profiteroles, obviously), a stand for traditional herring snacks (no way did I try that), as well as knickknacks and wooden clogs etc. Needless to say I got as many free little cubes and slices of cheese as possible, and they were all amazing (minus one, which tasted like horseradish). Cheese:Holland::Beer:Belgium - it's actually difficult to find a bad one.

So after all our freebies we paced up and down the little town's streets. I was on a mission to try a lot of typical Dutch food. The guide book that Arthur gave us had a list of different dishes and descriptions, so I was trying to work my way through that. I vowed not to spend any money on food today that wasn't traditional. So cheese counted, and then I got this little sausage rolled up in a bread pastry from some bakery. It was pretty cheap and not that good. And I have no clue how to pronounce it. When I asked the baker, he said something that didn't sound at all like the letters "Saucijzebroodje".

We saw on a map that there was a place to rent canoes, but canoes turned out to be motor boats and we didn't end up doing that.

Then we went to a cafe and sat outside in the sun, where we actually - believe it or not - got a little bit of color on our faces! Amazing! We tried "Bitterballen" there, which are deep-fried breaded meat balls. They're usually dipped in mustard, which we didn't do, and they're usually eaten while drinking Dutch beer, which we did do. They weren't typical meatballs, it kind of had a custardy-mashed-potatoe-ish filling with meat chunks in it. Very interesting and tasty. After sitting in the cafe for quite a while enjoying our lives, we made our way back to the train station and went back into Amsterdam. At this point it was late afternoon (around 3ish) with plenty of daylight left.

In Amsterdam, we first went back to the I Amsterdam sign to try to get some freaking pictures. Those kids were crawling on it like a jungle gym yesterday and it was impossible to get any worthwhile shots of or with the sign. But we didn't have anything else to do with our afternoon, so we just sat there...waiting...jumping in where we could to snag a shot. FINALLY, after hours of waiting and jumping out of our seats, running up to the letters, watching somebody else come in and unknowingly ruin our picture, and going back to our seats, we got individual pictures with each of the letters, as well as pictures of just us individually with the letters "I Am", "ster" and "dam". We also got a couple pictures with both of us in it that are super cute.

After that we wandered around the shopping district in central Amsterdam getting lost and going in circles. Eventually we decided to move on to the Red Light District and see it in the daylight. It was really cool to watch all the neon lights come on and see the district wake up for Friday nightlife. It made me a little sad how early I saw some of the girls in their little windows. We went in and out of stores and shops, and finally landed at another cafe for dinner. Here I got "Pannenkoeken" which is another type of Dutch pancake that is somewhere in between an American pancake and a French crepe in terms of size and thickness. I ate it with the traditional syrup and powdered sugar toppings and it was quite good. I also got a "Tosti" which is the Dutch's crappy, crappy version of a Croque Monsieur. Very disappointing, but cheap.

At the cafe, this Londoner struck up a conversation with us. He spoke pretty quietly, was by himself, had his hair slicked back so that you could see tattoos around his ears, and talked to us for quite some time. It was a little weird, but we carried on a conversation with him. Eventually he asked us the red flag questions like 1) "so where are you staying?" where we quickly answered "with a friend"; 2) "do you have plans tonight?" where we quickly answered "yes"; and 3) "so...do you girls wanna go to this place over there and have a smoke with me?" where we quickly answered, "no, but thanks". He was shocked that we didn't smoke and was confused why we were even in Amsterdam. We soon took our leave of Slightly Creepy Guy. By this time it was full on dusk / mostly dark and the city's glow was in full force.


FROM HERE ON, PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. IF YOU KEEP READING, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO JUDGE. Events described are legal (in Amsterdam, anyway), I'm 22, and oh yeah, I'm in Amsterdam: the city where anything goes no questions asked and crazy things happen all the time. So really, we were just trying to soak up the culture. Our mentality was, "we're young and we're here, so why not?" This is my disclaimer.

Earlier in the night we bought special brownies, which was a big brave step for me since I'd never tried anything like them except for the spacecake, which had no effect. We were eating our brownies walking down the street, just because we could, when we stumbled upon a castle AND another I Amsterdam sign. At the time it seemed mind blowing. How could there possibly be two? How come the tourist information guy only told us about the one that was way farther away? Was this on easier to get pictures with during the day? Were there more than two? So many questions...I was so confused at first because we were like, "Oh, there's the I Amsterdam sign.....wait....this isn't the one we spent ALL afternoon at....". So we sat in front of the letters to get back at all those jerks who made taking good pictures so hard. I figured this wasn't actually such a mean thing to do since it was dark and we moved when people were trying to take pictures. As with the spacecake, I really did not enjoy the taste of the brownie. But it tasted a little minty and I was on a mission, so bite after bite I eventually got it down. It only took me three times longer than Laura to eat the whole thing. Then I drank a bunch of water and ate some dried fruit to get rid of the taste. And then we just sat there, waiting to see if anything remotely exciting would happen. We people watched for almost an hour. Part of this people watching included watching a large handful of guys urinate in these kind of outdoor urinal type of things. The stands are square shaped and have four urinals divided by walls. Guys literally just walk up, take a pee, and leave like it's totally normal. Apparently public urinating was and still is one of the city's biggest citizen complaint, so that's why they have these stations. Pretty funny.

Still feeling totally normal, we decided to go all out and go to a live show in the Red Light District. A very bizarre and interesting experience to say the least. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but we got what we paid for. The show was in a popular District theater with only about 14 seats across in a pretty shallow room. There are different acts with either couples or solo performers who do some things I had no idea were possible. Everything was timed to music and choreographed to the last detail. Most of the actors looked thoroughly bored. I mean, I don't know how you can not look bored since they do what they do probably at least five times a night. But it felt a lot like we were just watching a dance show, but with less clothes on. One of the solo performers literally had no rhythm so it was funny that she was doing dance pieces. I guess if I was a Red Light District performer that's what I would look like, since I also have no rhythm. Definitely not my calling. The solo performers either culminated in some kind of weird trick that I have no idea how you find out you are good at, or they use volunteers. And by use I mean they kind of just straight up violated their poor volunteers. Hysterical to watch though.

The guys working at the theater have a code for people in the audience...misbehaving. If somebody from up above saw somebody in the audience doing something they shouldn't (use your imagination), they would announce in jibberish something through the PA really quickly, and another theater worker would come up with flashlights and single out these gross guys and do crowd control. Also, there were girls there, so we weren't alone in that, which was nice! The acts were around 10 minutes each, and as the night went on the show became more fun. I think the actors and/or the audience got either more drunk or more messed up on any number of Amsterdam's drug offerings throughout the night. To be fair, partway through the show we joined that generalization as our brownies started to kick in. So in all, it was a totally crazy night by my standards but...I was in Amsterdam! So I'm pretty happy about how everything went. For any other details you'll have to talk to me later. And that was that. No judgement? Great!


OK CHILDREN AND / OR PARENTS, YOU CAN READ NOW; I'M BACK TO TALKING ABOUT NORMAL THINGS.

That kind of concludes our super long day of eating and being the most stereotypical Amsterdam tourists ever. After our long evening, we went back to Hans' place where he was already asleep. I won't be sad to leave Amsterdam or Hans.

Quotes:
"Hey! Don't I know you from the Sex Museum?!" - This lady that we saw at the I Amsterdam sign. We saw her yesterday at the museum where we took turns taking pictures of each other. Really hilarious that we saw her at the sign too...where we also took turns taking pictures of each other!

"Is it, like, a legit root?" - This ditzy American girl on the tram asking about a root some guy was telling her about that helps cure migraines...Oh ditzy Americans. You're awesome for our reputation. Just awesome.

"I went for a pint and stayed for 3 years." - The Slightly Creepy Guy on how much he likes Germany's beers.

[And TONS of other funny things were said too but stupid me did not write them all down! And I am very sad about this. Sorry!]

Accomplishments:
Tried so much Dutch food: fresh local cheese and brownies included.
Went to a live show. I'm still surprised that happened...!

Travel Tip:
NEVER drink Amstel or Heineken. Even if you are in the Netherlands, you are not obligated to drink these awful beers. You might think that because it's local, it's better. No, it's terrible! Don't waste your money. I don't understand how they can be mass producing such terrible beer and be right next to Belgium. You'd think they could get some tips on how to make good beer or something!

Nice People Alert:
Lady From Sex Museum - I just really liked her. She was so funny and was kind enough to take a picture of both Laura and I at the I Amsterdam sign, so we have a good souvenir from all that time spent just sitting in front of it.


We head out for Switzerland tomorrow morning! Very excited to meet our CouchSurfing hosts there!

P.S. Edit: At the live show they gave us phallic lollipops. It was actually one of the best lollipops I've ever had. But we ate ours on the tram on our way back to Hans' place and got some very weird/amused looks. Oh, Amsterdam...