10 january 2005

My alarm – which is actually my cell phone, since I have no clock – goes off at 7:45: a synthesizer-swing melody that, when accompanied by the rattling of the vibrating phone on my night table, jolts me awake. Even though, once again, I was up until 3:30 tossing and turning.

One wall of my room is a floor-to-ceiling window, and it is pitch black. Welcome to winter in the northern latitudes.

I fumble around and check my pockets twice: cell phone, pen, a few euros, photocopy of my passport, strippenkart for unexpected tram rides, map, keys. After the little mugging incident I decided not to carry a bag anymore. I also refused to carry a bag in New York, so I never got into the habit, but Erin gave me this really fantastic one for my birthday last month, with lots of pockets. I filled it with drawing implements and gum and bandaids and almost anything I or anyone in my vicinity could possibly need, and I really enjoyed it for the week it was in circulation. I felt so prepared. Alas. Now my book and my sketchbook rest in my left arm, and a bright orange clementine dangles in a bright red mesh bag from my right. Walking down the street I try hard to project an appearance of confidence and complete worthlessness.

Three concentric U-shaped canals cup central Amsterdam. I live on the top right of the outer U, and my Dutch class is on the top left of the inner U. An average American crow flying in a characteristically crowish straight line across the U would complete this journey in about fifteen minutes. Alas, this is not how a biped experiences Amsterdam (wait... are crows considered bipeds?). Despite it being a dramatically longer route, meter-wise, I travel down and then back up the U, avoiding the numerous canals, dead ends, and unpredictable turns of the central city. It’s like going from Florida to Baha via the Great Lakes, in order to avoid the mess that is Texas. Hypothetically, of course.

Down three flights of stairs and out the door onto Plantage Muidergracht. It is dark and quiet on my street, with just a single bicyclist pedaling by. In my sweater and scarf I am warm enough. A left turn over the first canal onto Niewe Kerkstraat. A few more bicycles, including several parents pulling over to drop their children at Dikkey Dik, a nursery school. I reach the Amstel, and the sky is showing the faintest hints of morning. On the horizon are a few streaks of pink.

I cross the Amstel on a wide white bridge outlined in large yellowing lightbulbs and walk along its west side. The street follows the canal, but the water itself is obscured by houseboats. I meander around Christmas trees that have been abandoned on the sidewalks during the past week. At Herengracht, the inner U, I turn left and begin my circuitous journey. As I move west the sky lightens, and more people walk and pedal by. Homes and offices share the same blocks, so there is as much coming as going. At intersections with the streets that radiate from the center – Utrechtstraat, Vijselstraat, Leidsestraat – cars pass and trams clang. Between these it remains quiet, the narrow brick streets sending the small shoe shuffles and bike tire clicks out over the water.

At Huidenstraat I turn right, and after a narrow, dark block of overhanging buildings, the street opens up into the (rhymes with “Mao”) Spui. The Spui is my favorite square: cobbled and open, scattered benches, surrounded by a book shop, a magazine shop, and a bar that in the morning serves coffee to tables of people sitting in front looking out.

As quickly as the sky opens it closes again and I am back down Spuistraat, with the strip of sky overhead now light blue and clear. A few blocks down is my building.

I wish this commute upon everyone.