I've Been Meaning to Say ...

About Amsterdam

The Dutch have a reputation for being very practical. While we were in Amsterdam I noted how practically they dealt with matters still unsettled over here:

• Single use plastic bags: Neither of the two little places where we shopped for groceries offered plastic bags. At all. Instead Amsterdammers carried their food away in panniers, knapsacks and reusable nylon bags. 
• Slavery: Amsterdam museums have decided that the human suffering of the slave trade that fuelled the Dutch "Golden" age should be called out for what it was. Notes on paintings, maps and other fine things pointed out the absence, or cruel depiction, or treatment as an object, of people abducted from Africa and sold into slavery. 

While the Dutch were showing us how things should be done, we scored a couple of tourist fails:

• Shopping in Dutch: we though we would know what we were buying without understanding the labels. This worked, except for the first half litre of milk. Bruce thought it had gone sour. I found out when I translated the label (too late!) that it was buttermilk.
• Trespassing: at the wonderful City Archives, a show had just closed on one level of the "Treasure Room." That did not stop me from figuring out how to infiltrate the perimeter so we could be shooed out a few minutes later by archive staff. 

More on the Dutch sense of humour. 

• A Dutch expression of surprise is "my clog is broken."
• In a shop window: "Definition of marriage - a permanent sleepover with your favourite weirdo."

Bikes are a mixed blessing.

• Sixty thousand bikes are stolen in Amsterdam every year.
• Forty thousand abandoned bikes are collected every year.
• Twelve to fifteen thousand bikes end up in the canals every year, either put there by people or blown in by high winds.

About Elizabeth Warren

I am, like others, sorry that Elizabeth Warren had to end her run for President. Of the many things I have read, two summed it up for me the best. One was a tweet that said, "of Biden and Sanders, Warren is the best candidate"; and a comment by Jane Junn, after recounting all the ways Warren had excelled in her campaign, "What she wasn't was a man."

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

After: Guest bathroom

After: Ensuite bathroom