My Other Netherlands Picture

 The other day I was discussing my utter mystification at my lack of pictures from the Netherlands. I went back through my phone - and my camera - and Facebook - and nothing. I know that I shared pictures of Amsterdam with people, but I can't imagine digging back through the thousands of texts that I've sent Janet or Mike or Cyndi or Kevin or Marcelle to track them down. Bizarre. Anyway, this is the other one I found. We're sitting in a two hour security line at the Amsterdam airport, caused by some computer glitch and made worse by lingering work shortages caused by COVID. 

This is it? Weird. I know I should have more pictures from the Netherlands, but I simply don't. It's like someone tapped into my camera and phone and deleted them - or hypnotized me and made me delete them. I'm blaming the Belgians.

Missing An Entire Country

 As is apparent, I'm always creating new challenges for myself to fuel my posts on this long-suffering blog (Proust, Pessoa, Marcus Aurelius, Faith, 2025 Books Read, next year's 2026 Films Watched). Consequently, and especially since I dropped off of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (a couple years ago), I've been devoting more time to the blog (and even if I'm the only one who reads the silly thing it's still time well-spent). However, it dawned on me that there doesn't seem to be anything here relating to the Netherlands (which used to be tagged as Holland for some reason). Seriously, there was only one post, from fifteen years ago, relating to an even older trip. I mean, I haven't spent much time in Amsterdam, but I have passed through there. So why don't I have anything? On Janet and my first trip to Portugal together we passed through Amsterdam on the way back, and I know I sent pictures to people, but I couldn't fine any on my phone. I popped back onto Facebook on the sly (partially for reasons relating to this summer's move), thinking that I must have posted something there, but there was nothing. Bizarre. Maybe it's locked away in a file somewhere - or on my camera, maybe? Weird. It's like an entire country disappeared. One of my goals is to try and sort out where those pictures are hiding.

By way of recompense to the Dutch here's a picture that I snapped during our crazy trip back from Portugal (matched only by the nightmare of getting to Portugal) as we passed through Amsterdam. It was a 100 degrees, and, allegedly, it was the only time it had ever reached triple digits in the country's history (which I don't necessarily believe, although I remember people talking about it at the time).

Journey Through the Past: Amsterdam

So, I was always wondering why I got so many threatening messages from the Champlain College computer system in regards to what an absolute band-width pig (more on the appropriateness of this word later) I am. Granted, because of the Global Modules and the various administrative sides to my position - as well as a lot of class material and Powerpoints - I do have a lot of stuff stored on the college drive, but never as much as it seems would warrant my continual crimes against the college memory storage (and not even in a Proustian fashion). So, after scouting around, I found a wealth of old pictures that were hidden away within folders and subfolders. Actually, not only were they hidden away, they were completely forgotten. So, let me post some early (and rough) pictures of Amsterdam, that I thought were long lost. I think they were taken in 2002 or 2003, on the way back from either my first trip to Dubai (which I think is when they were taken, which would make this the fall of 2002) or my first trip to India (which I think would make this the early spring of 2003, and why can't I remember it?). Anyway, Amsterdam was the first city in Europe that I visited, and I liked it very much - maybe I'll post a story about fingernails tapping on a glass that I remember from Amsterdam soon (wow, I guess I really should edit these things in advance and not just type them as I go, because just mentioning the fingernails means that it was on the way back from India). Hmmm, although this might still be the fall of 2002 - I'll just have to ask my friend Michelle who has a great memory for these things. Oddly (or maybe not), the things that jumps out at me is how fat that guy in the wooden shoe is. OK, I've now determined that it was early spring 2003. I'll post more about the trip soon (as I try and jump-start my memory). I remember really liking Amsterdam quite a bit, and finding it not nearly as seedy as its sometimes portrayed.