Monday, August 13, 2012

Hamsterdam


The 10-year-old boy in front of me at Passport Control in Amsterdam is preparing to puke. Fortunately I had some warning. He had jerked suddenly and suspiciously 180-degrees away from the crew-cut Dutch guy sitting behind glass in the passport booth, lowered his head and scrunched up his scapulae like a waterbird settling its wings while getting ready to spear a fish. Instinctively, his parents both stepped sideways a step or two, and I stopped in my tracks, a good three meters back. Then he let go, with a sound like glass marbles pouring onto the cold concrete floor. No moaning or sniveling, just the sudden and surprisingly voluminous waterfall of liquified toast, eggs, Cap’n Crunch and whatever else spilling onto the floor. And then, a coda – and another half-cup’s worth comes out. Mom waits a respectful beat, and then approaches to cautiously pat his back. I step three queues to the left and watch the expressions of the Dutch immigration squad behind their partitions. They seem only slightly bemused, and I can tell they are happy their jobs do not involve mops or buckets, but only scanning passport pages and asking people what their business entails, inside the nation of the Netherlands on this day.

Is this a portent? A sign that I should not, in fact, embark upon my audacious and time-sensitive mission outside Schiphol Airport during a seven-hour layover en route to Detroit? Everything to this point had gone so smoothly. Underwear and socks change in private toilet stall in KLM Crown Lounge? Check. Free café au lait and turkey/cheese roll breakfast inside Crown Lounge? Check. Figure out complicated credit card and infrared-scanning lockers system so I could store my laptop and carry-on backpack inside the departures terminal whilst touring Amsterdam in the morning? Check. But here, my first hurdle – over a boy’s puddle of vomit, and I’m not even outside the airport yet. I held my breath, and got through.

In the bowels of Schiphol, there is a train terminal. Somewhere, you would think a giant neon arrow would point ingénues like me toward the ticket counter. But instead, there seems only to be two-dozen ambiguously labeled cavities in the earth, into which mechanized walkways are taking people in different directions to various points around Europe. If I went down the wrong hole, I might end up in Vladivostok, Istanbul, Yerevan, or Athens, when all I wanted to do was ride 15 minutes down the rails to downtown Amsterdam. I asked a KLM stewardess, staring up at something on the ceiling, if she knew where I could buy a ticket. Without making eye contact, she lifted her arm and pointed sideways, at a giant neon sign that said TICKETS, about 20 yards away. I purchased a round-trip ticket and miraculously found my way onto a train heading into downtown Amsterdam, also known as "Hamsterdam" to my 7-year-old daughter. I believe she thinks the town was named for hamsters.

What I found there when I exited the glorious old train station at 7 a.m. on a Saturday made me gasp, and grab for my camera.


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