In Amsterdam
Where did I leave off? First, sorry for the incredibly inconsistent upload schedule (as though there’s anybody reading this): travelling is incredibly messy, especially the way I do it. But here I am in Amsterdam.
Since the last installment, I stayed with the Esperantist in Utrecht—it went very well! We spoke at length in Esperanto, the first time I ever really spoke the language with anyone else. My host is an Esperantist of long standing, so his Esperanto was beautiful. He was very accomodating of my staggering through the language, but with the exception of a few “how do you say…” moments, we spoke in Esperanto the whole time. It felt a bit like a high-school oral test: speak about yourself, your past, your interests and activities. I even had to give and listen to phone numebrs in Esperanto, a true challenge. I realized that I don’t know my phone number, really; I just know the syllables of it in English. I had to think very, very carefully to translate it. I practiced it in Esperanto and French afterwards, just so I have it down.
So here’s the deal: I checked into a hostel in Amsterdam called “The Bulldog” because it is right in the middle of the city and reasonably priced compared to other options. Turns out, it’s a globally-renowned party destination right in the middle of De Wallen, known as the red light district. The red lights, in case you don’t know (I didn’t) are those that illuminate the sex workers in their booths: the streets and lanes are lined with glass doors, behind which stand sex workers plying their trade. To enter, you make a gesture or glance at them, and they open their door and invite you in to a bath-house style booth. The red light is a merciful wash of color: I saw one of the booths empty with a plain, white light shining, and the reality was positively clinical. In the dark, in the red light, the effect is as though Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick dreamed of electric sex work.
In one of the coffee shops, there was a table with a touch screen built into the top, probably to gamble or control the juke box. The surface was scratched and beaten up, and the customers sitting at the table completely ignored the screen. I remember seeing such things in technical museums when I was young, and before that in science fiction movies and television. Then, I thought that such a thing must be the height of technological sophistication and would surely be the center piece of any room. It was shocking to see it attract no more attention than a table cloth or coaster; I suppose that’s how you can tell that the technology is completely integrated into the society: it dissolves into the background, as though it were there the whole time.
Dutch lessons: “hoi” means “hi”; you’ll often hear it doubled: “hoi hoi!”. There is something charmingly Mr.-Burns-answers-the-phone about it. Of course, the Amsterdammers speak excellent English and, in practice, whole regions of the city simply are English-speaking. I think that this has at least as much to do with the French, German, Spanish, and Italian tourists as it does with the Anglophones. Of course, the Dutch also speak French and German, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Spaniards and Italians could slide by in their native languages. More thoughts forthcoming, but suffice it to say: if English is the international language, what does that mean for the English-speaking nations and cultures? Will they dissolve and become diffused among all the other nations, no longer to have a meaning of their own? I do not know, but it sure is convenient to speak English comfortably.
