Amsterdam

"They say curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity also brought me to Amsterdam. Nobody from my college came to study in this city before, and I cannot fathom why. It’s certainly a city that is world famous for its notion of freedom, its history, its art, its nightlife and its culture. Yet, the average Lafayette student would go somewhere in Spain, spend a good four months basking in the sun, come back with a tan and sometimes, a fake Spanish accent and pretend that they have seen Europe. “Amsterdam? There’s nothing there but drugs and prostitutes. My parents would never allow that. And besides, Spain is amazing!” they say. I don’t deny it. After all, Sinterklaas lives in Spain. So do the Zwarte Pieten. Spain must be pretty awesome.

My curiosity about Amsterdam was different. What sort of people would this city draw from American colleges? Should I expect a group of random shallow individuals who are here simply for the drugs? Or should I expect intellectual thinkers and global citizens out to gather a European perspective? Perhaps a lot of free-spirited adventurers? Maybe a lot of creative, talented artists? All I knew was that I would be sorely disappointed with my belief in the human race if the group consisted only of the former. I am a people person – and I believe that human interaction is a crucial process in developing and understanding the human condition.

The city of Amsterdam itself inspires curiosity. The Netherlands has a welfare system. They charge a ridiculous 60% tax to the higher earning members of society. I’m an economics major, and I simply don’t understand how a person deals with having 60% of his earnings taxed away. Then there are the legal drugs. Prostitution is tolerated. The society is uniformly open to homosexuality. There is support for abortion and euthanasia. The city is built around canals, and its inhabitants travel everywhere on bicycles. In the summer you can even ride around in a little boat. There is much history and tradition to be found in the narrow winding streets, along with quaint little shops, giant open markets, tulips and flowers, savory ethnic cuisines and pleasant live music. The nightlife is vibrant. The Euro is strong. The people are tall, beautiful and always dressed impeccably. They say Paris is the fashion capital of the world. Clearly, they underestimate the Dutch.

My first impression of Amsterdam – it looked chaotic. The maps were confusing. The streets all looked similar. I walked out of Centraal station to see trams and buses everywhere. More interestingly, they seemed to be narrowly avoiding the scores of pedestrians and travelers who keep toppling their luggage over on the tram tracks. The taxi ride to my housing compounded the feeling of chaos – tram lines were laid right on the road, so the cars were sharing the space with the trams. I’d never seen that before – it looked like a recipe for disaster. Such a system would never work back in Dhaka – here the trams are just like glorified buses on tracks – what’s the point, I wonder, if they don’t allow you to escape from traffic jams and busy intersections? The streets themselves were narrow and hardly allowed two cars to pass through.

Then there were the canals. And little boats in the canals with people in them simply enjoying the sun. This was the first time I had seen a city built around functional canals, and it looked amazing. And there were bikes everywhere. Parked on the streets, parked across lampposts, parked on bridges and parked in rusty bike racks which seemed to be more prevalent than trashcans. As luck would have it, my taxi driver ran over a man on a bike. No harm done though. I thought I had seen my fair share of crazy cabbies growing up in Dhaka, but even I was a little overwhelmed. And also a lot more apprehensive about those bikes. Clearly, seeing a man hit by a cab within my first hour in the city was not a good sign.

Every city has a unique spirit – one that is represented by its smells, its taste, its sounds, its structures and its people. From my experiences of the past several weeks, I can safely say that Amsterdam is surely the most unique of all."