2 july 2005

new trip, new blog:

further adventures can be found at www.balkanblog.blogspot.com

1 july 2005

Regina has an expression for me. She doesn’t know if it’s a legitimate Spanish expression or one that she made up with her mother, because Regina and her mother have the kind of relationship where they make up language and it seems so natural and intuitive that they forget it is their own. Regina is tall and warm and has long brown hair that falls over her face; she wears hippie shirts and refers to special conversations as “pretty.” She is a lot younger than me and a lot softer, and often the things I do make her cover her mouth. But she was one of the few people that knew early on how fast this time would go, so we agreed to be sponges together, espongas, to soak up Amsterdam every day. In between soaking we sat together in the Crea Café sifting out our experiences over light coffees, hers sweet. So she knows a bit about me by now. Regina’s expression for me is that I have flowers on my ass.

It means, more or less, that I am really fucking lucky. Which I already knew.

This week has been my last official week in Amsterdam. I’ll be here again before flying out, but by then my international friends will be back in their respective countries and my Dutch friends will be on holiday. So for all intents and purposes this was the week for the tying up of loose ends. I hate loose ends.

First there was the part where all the logistics fell into place. The discount / student fare / two-seats-per-plane-at-this-rate ticket back to New York that I had purchased for the wrong date was easily changed to busy mid-August as the STA affiliate travel agent shook her head in disbelief.

An email arrived in my inbox advertising a room for the fall in a sun-filled dog-friendly vegetable-growing Eugene house near both the railyards and the riverside bike path.

A friend from another residence randomly relocated to my building and offered to store my extra bags while I am traveling.

Let’s not even go near the notice I got about an unavoidable seven-hour layover in Chicago on my way west. Notice that arrived approximately one week after a friend I haven’t heard from in ten years randomly emailed. Guess where he lives. Guess how many people I knew in Chicago before that.

As these details fell into place I eased out of my Amsterdam life. I had one last night at the Doos with the full cast of characters. Maria and I ate huge amounts of fruit in Vondelpark, then met up with Peter and Kasha for red pepper soup. Natalie and I hopped between the Rozengracht shops to find her shoes for her sister’s graduation. Gianluca and I traded favorite books.

Then there was my night out with the Dutchies, Madeleine, Renske, Casper, and Cynthia. I met them all months ago when I was doing my lab work. At the time they seemed busy and I assumed that I was too temporary and English-speaking to have much to offer. But then we were all on the Urban Ecology course together, and somewhere between the speedy guided tours and the leisurely late-night drinking we talked a lot about government and marriage and language and plans. And Wednesday night they had pizza and wine with me to say goodbye, and that was huge for me.

Today I went to the post office to mail my last round of Dutch postcards, and I found a new journal and some traveling shoes to swap for my flip-flops. Regina came to help me clean and we drank honey rum and listened to Ryan Adams, and Moritz came by to reclaim the Walt Whitman anthology I borrowed in March.
I skipped out on all the big parties; I didn’t go to a single one. Last night I just sat on my sofa and read Isabelle Allende. It was perfect. I really love this city, and I didn’t want to celebrate or mourn the end of my time here. I just wanted to have one more night of being in Amsterdam as if that wasn’t about to change.