Community Life

I have finally returned to Florida, the Sunshine State, which is ironically in the middle of one of the wettest summers on record. But I still have a backlog of posts about life in Amsterdam to get up. So for the time being this blog will continue. Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading!

I thought that people might appreciate a pictorial glimpse into the day-to-day life of the OZ 100 Community in Amsterdam, and it's surrounding environs. I can provide that! My last few weeks in the city I made a concerted effort to photograph some of the ordinary, every day bits that you normally take for granted, living there. Now that I have returned home and had a chance to go through my pictures, I realize there are some huge gaps in the pictorial record. But we'll just have to do the best we can with what we have.

(For more, check out this post for pictures of the canals, markets and more street pics, and this post for some shots of our chapel)

The open window was my room. I had a small room which didn't lend itself well to be photographed and was in a state of perpetual chaos, so there are no extant pictures of the inside. Actually, though, it was one of the best rooms in the Father House. It was certainly large enough for my needs, it had its own sink, and most importantly, as you can see here, it faced the inner courtyard and not busy and loud Oudzeijds Achterburgwal, where the drunken football fans never sleep.



We continue our tour down the spiral stair and into the courtyard. These metal steps are a source of fascination for one particular Oudezijds toddler and thus a source of endless terror for his mother. 'Bove' (bohv-uh) is the Dutch word for 'upstairs' and not coincidentally one of the first two syllable words this small explorer mastered.

You can tell it's summer because someone has stashed their canoes in the courtyard. If we could tilt the camera slightly downward we would also see a profusion of tables, chairs and benches, perfect for barbecues on warm summer evenings.

Down a flight of steps from the courtyard lies this long corridor. It serves a number of purposes: wood storage, access to the workshop and bike shop, tool depository, entrance to the KruisPost Medical Clinic, and...

...as the all important fietsenstalling. Basically, a garage for bicycles, which one can roll out the door, up the ramp, and onto Oudezijds Voorbergwal.

Out on Voorburgwal we find the front entrance to the KruisPost.

The KruisPost serves a heady mix of tourists, uninsured immigrants and homeless people. I occasionally worked in reception there and it was always an interesting experience. Our visitor book, which lists nationalities of the patients, reads like a roll call at the United Nations. I actually learned the existence of a couple of nations I had previously had no idea of while working there.

The kauit, or common room, is another room that is difficult to photograph. It has a low roof and quickly becomes crowded when there are people in it, which they usually are. For all that it is the place that visitors first enter, many of them people off the street looking for the coffee and tea we serve mornings and afternoons (and maybe a warm place to sit as well!).

Scott and Katy came to visit me in March. Here I ply Katy with some hot tea.

This is a slightly historic picture. It may be one of the last photographs of the old chairs in the Kayuit! They had a lot of personality, by which I mean they were very uncomfortable. The new orange ones are a great improvement, plus they are from Ikea (naturally!).

Before we head out on the street, I had to share this with you: a rather informal attempt at drying some extra laundry on a sunny day! This was not, I should note, my laundry.

This street runs perpendicular to Oudezijds Achterburgwal and Voorburgwal (literally, 'first wall' and 'second wall', the two main thoroughfares of the Red Light District). It runs straight down to the Dam Square. As you can see here, the Dam is often host to a small fair, complete with rides.

Almost home! This rather seedy looking corner is how I knew where to turn for my house in the middle of the RLD.

It's not just a pretty name: the street does feature plenty of red (and pink) neon. But if you want to see it at its best, you really have to see it at night.

The lights are on, the crowds are noisy and the girls, of course, are in their windows. It's a crazy scene, like something out of a fevered dream.


The storefront with the red awnings is actually a prime window location for several girls. But what do tourists stare at? The swans in the canals, mostly. Maybe they just don't know what else to look at.

And to be fair, the swans are beautiful.

Next post: What's so great about living in a community anyway?

Be Prepared

Know Your Amsterdam Weather

Having now experienced Amsterdam in all four seasons I thought I would catalog some of the weather types that a visitor to this city might expect to encounter:

• Rainy
• Damp
• Wettish
• Soggy
• Thinking about raining
• Will probably rain later
• Looks nasty enough to rain, but no actual precipitation
• Cold
• Cold and windy
• Colder than it should be, it's May dammit!
• Snow falling but not sticking to the ground
• Hailing
• Snowing/Hailing
• Hailing/Raining
• Snowing/Raining
• Snowing/Hailing/Raining
• I'm just going to stay inside and open a bottle of wine
• Cloudy...ish
• Sunny, sort of
• Not sure
• Ambiguous
• TBD
• Decent biking weather
• A bit chilly/damp, but still bikeable
• Misery on wheels
• I'll take the tram today
• Raining tourists

Ah hah! I kid Amsterdam. We've actually had a few strings of quite nice days recently. But the weather around here? She is fickle!

The Red Light District

A woman with bleached-blond hair just road down the street on her bike singing at the top of her lungs.

Saturday morning there was a guy standing in the bridge over the canal in only his underwear, holding up a cardboard picture frame that had 'object' written on it.

Things are never dull in my neighborhood, I tell ya.

Orange and Black

Yesterday was Queen's Day in The Netherlands, a major national holiday. I will have a full post with pictures up later, but as lovely as the day was in Amsterdam tragedy struck elsewhere. The Royal Family was in a parade in Apeldoorn when a rogue motorist ploughed into the crowd. Apparently he was trying to hit the royal bus. He failed at this, but several people have died and many more were injured.

It seems very strange that anyone would want to attack the Dutch royal family, but these are the times we live in. Please pray for the families of those affected by this tragedy on what should have been a day of celebration.

The Other Way To Learn A Language

The accepted way to learn a language, and the method that I am diligently pursuing, is to pour over books, listen to audio, ask a teacher questions and take notes in class. This is one way to learn, for instance, Dutch. It is not the only way.

The other way? It appears to be simply playing computer games with a friend.

We have a new boy in the community, Brogan. He is Prossi's oldest son, but he has lived in Africa until now. He speaks English, but not a word of Dutch. I think he has been a bit lonely here because the children here speak only Dutch for the most part, so it is difficult to play with them.

But I have good news for him: he'll learn, and probably much faster than I can.

As I write this he is playing computer games with Norai. Norai speaks no English. Brogan speaks no Dutch. But these boys are nonetheless communicating with each other: arguing over which game to play, taking turns at the keyboard, and encouraging each other to try new techniques. I'll wager that within the day Brogan will know the meaning of 'jij bent'* without ever having cracked a textbook.

* Essentially, 'your turn'.

At The Park

I stole an hour during lunch and explored the Oosterpark today. Lucky you, I took a camera!



Like most parks in A'dam, this one is very bike friendly. Typically you ride around until you find a likely spot, then chain your bike up behind the nearest park bench.



No, not litter. This is my lunch! $3 Subway Club, special of the day. With spicy sauce! Eat fresh, baby.



I put my back against a tree and enjoyed the view while I ate my sammich. Plenty of ducks were sailing by.



Along with the occasional dog.



Have you ever seen such blue skies?



I was far from the only person enjoying the perfect weather.



Some people might ask, "Why make a statue of a boy riding a goat?" Here in The Netherlands we ask, "Why NOT make a statue of a boy riding a goat?"



It's about 18 degrees Celsius today. In Florida, that means it's time to roll up your long sleeves.



In Amsterdam, that means it's time to put on shorts and a t-shirt and catch some rays.

In fact there were many folks decked out in swimwear.



The fences keep the city out.



Hope you enjoyed this trip to the park almost as much as I did!

In posts to come - visits from friends and some more exploration of the city.

Not the Cheese, But the City

In March, I took a trip to Germany.

Germany is not far - it's less than two hours to the border by train (you must remember that The Netherlands is only about twice the size of the state of New Jersey). You roll across flat, green farmland bisected by muddy ditches. The occasional trees cluster around the occasional farmhouse. Everything is compact, including the tiny, shaggy ponies which one occasionally sees grazing.

Slowly, the landscape changes. The land rises, and it's not all in use. The houses get a bit larger and more assertive. Trees range freely over the hillsides. Now we're in Deutschland.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The way to travel cheaply in Europe if you're a poor student or a poorer volunteer, is to have friends in places you want to visit. I have a friend named Shu Yi who teaches at a university in Muenster. Her flat was unused while she was away in America for a few weeks. I have another friend, Deasy. She speaks fluent German, and wanted to visit Muenster. So Deasy and I planned a trip there to visit our friend who would not actually be in attendance.

We had to change trains twice, but we made it to Muenster in good time. The light was failing, but there was still plenty of time to walk around the city.



Muenster is a small city, as cities go. Small, but centered around a huge church, with a second, nearly-as-amazing one close by. I've noticed there seems to be some sort of inverse proportion law at work in Europe between city and cathedral size.

The inner ring of the city is quite old and reflects what it must have looked like in medieval times. That's it pictured above, at night. Below is the same street leading up to the smaller but more modern of the two cathedrals.

When we ventured inside this church we had an amusing encounter that would prove typical of our interactions in Muenster. The older woman who showed us around kept attempting to speak to me in German, even though I don't speak a word. Meanwhile Deasy, who is fluent (but, admittedly, looks Indonesian - because she is) was generally left out.

Doesn't she look German to you?!?



Anyway, Deasy's knowledge of all things Germanic included knowing the whereabouts of a lovely 'gasthuis', a really old-world style restaurant. It was such an amazing old place that you'd expect it to be swarmed by tourists and run by the state preservation agency. But no, it was just a typical German restaurant with antlers on the walls.





I apologize for being in all these photos, but Deasy was hogging the camera.

The other thing to see in Muenster, besides the churches, is the Rathuis.



Despite it's unfortunate pronunciation, this is actually German for 'town hall'. And this town hall happened to hold special significance - the Treaty of Westfalia was negotiated there. This treaty, among other things, made The Netherlands an independent nation!



Deasy and I make some noise in the Hall of Peace. The hall is lined with portraits of the original delegates and their represented lords.

On our second day in the city we finally ventured into the Dom, the huge cathedral in the center of town. This is a building that is actually too big to be captured fully on camera, by a tourist, standing on the ground. It is truly massive, though, and really old.




It was a gray, chilly day, so there weren't many tourists. Lucky for us. The interior of the Dom holds a secret, which we got to explore all by ourselves: a beautiful, quiet graveyard in a courtyard at the center.





I like the way German's think about food. They are pro-meat, which is a stance I can get behind. And they eat jelly donuts for breakfast. Everything is cheap to boot!

Also? This is a small beer in Germany:



Everyone we saw in Muenster was either old or young. Must be because it's a college town. How would you like your university to look like this?



With such a perfect backdrop, Deasy and I couldn't resist hamming it up a bit.




Finally, some more scenes from the streets of Muenster (which doesn't lack for churches - I guess Muenster actually means 'church'?):








This last is me heading for the exit, or possibly the underground WC. Cheers!