Eerste Dag

June 14th, Netherlands vs Denmark - the first day of the Amsterdam World Cup experience. And as far as initiations go, it was a pretty good one.

I headed - via trusty two-wheeler of course - to the bustling neighbourhood of De Pijp. Specifically, to Marie Heinkenplein, a not especially touristy residential and commercial square (more of a semi-circle actually) about 10 minutes from the center of the city. More specifically yet, to Barca, a mildly upscale tapas bar.

I figured if it was full, I had a choice of several other spots right there - an Irish pub called O'Donnell's, and a few classic Dutch spots in De Beiaard and Cafe Kale de Derde.

In the end, Barca was all I needed and then some. Inside it was packed to the rafters with at least 4 large projection screens and a mix of trendy-but-hipster-free guys and girls. Outside were benches and tables and another 4 screens at least. This is scrubbed and clean Amsterdam, not the grittier one (there are at least 2 games left for that).

Average age: 28

Percentage expats and tourists: 10% - ideal for creating a more authentic Dutch atmosphere.

Average height: Preposterous

*Note - if you are going to come late to a pub anywhere in the world to watch football and hope to see the screen, choose a country where your typical male or female is not a giant.

Price of Heineken on tap: 2.50 Euros - quite reasonable

Food: Non-existent.

I was informed by the server that they don't serve food during games. This was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, but it made sense when you saw the mass of people they had to navigate through.

Vibe: Happy, patriotic, chill, hot, and by about the 30th minute, pretty loaded.

Nestled into one of the few remaining spots outside, I soon got to experience the easygoing openness of the Dutch and chatted with everyone around me. I couldn't see the much of the screen because of the reflection. I'll assume the planners hadn't counted on the sun appearing in the city. But given my more immediate scenery (photos below), I wasn't complaining.

My immediate neighbours were three very friendly med students, one armed with a Hello Kitty cellphone, and another who felt instantly bad for the Danish defender who scored the own goal to put the Dutch up 1-0. Behind me, somehow the bottom of a wine glass broke off. (Did I mention this wasn't a hardcore football crowd?).

Fine fellow fans Claudia, Marielle, and Mirte

Onto the action on the pitch... The Dutch squad came out pretty strong, giving the crowd 4 or 5 "Oooohhh" moments within the first twenty minutes.

The football songs were booming throughout the bar as of the 10-minute mark. These were incomprehensible to me, unfortunately, aside from "Hup Holland Hup, laat de leeuw niet in zijn hempje staan". This means "Hup Holland Hup, don't let the lion stand in his undershirt", as far as I can tell.

After a more worthy strike was scored at the 85-minute mark (by Dirk Kuyt - be very careful how you pronounce his surname here), the Danes were dismissed as expected and the revellers turned the streets to orange, setting their sights on the Japanese on June 19th. I'll be heading to a more raucous area to file the next report - wish me veel succes.

(P.S. Biking home through a sunny Vondelpark to shake off a 3-beer, no-food late afternoon buzz? Highly recommended)

A moment for reflection

Nervy times with only a one-goal lead, until...

...goooaaaallll! Kuyt tallies after Elia's solid effort

Thievery Corporation

Walking into an Urban Outfitters store in Santa Monica, California in the year 2000, I knew I was in a cool place when a live DJ was spinning tunes in between the first and second floor.

Even cooler was the sound coming from the speakers - the chillout/reggae/ambient/Indian/

banghra/who knows what else sounds of Thievery Corporation.

Returning home a few days later, I quickly, er, "bought" a bunch of their songs online (this was before my conscience kicked in a few years later - I now only buy music on iTunes, honest).

Fast forward 10 years and they've become a top-3 favourite in my books. And in yet another nod to Amsterdam's ever-present entertainment options, I was able to see them live for the first time here at the venerable Melkweg. The room was perfect, with packed balconies and a full floor.

It was an unreal show, with a hugely positive vibe in a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings. Each song brought out a different lead vocalist, from Brazil, the US, Argentina and Jamaica by way of Washington D.C. The live band accompanying the DJs featured top-level musicians playing the trumpet, saxophone, bongos, sitar, bass, and drums. The show kicked off with the sexiest, happiest big mama ever, Sister Pat (photo from the 'Net).

It can be tricky to describe the music since I don't know any comparable groups, so I'll leave it to one of the group's founders at the end of this post to at least describe their philosophy. A Last.fm search for similar artists lists a number of others that are way more obscure.

Basically, it was a cultural and musical experience that dipped me in a vat of coolness from which I have yet to emerge (although friends might suggest otherwise). I HIGHLY recommend picking up some of their songs. Le Monde, Revolution Solution, Le Femme Parallel and Air Batucada should give you a good start, but virtually any song from any album is good. Ditto with a recommendation to see them live wherever you can.

Happy to hear your comments as well...

From Rob Garza:

"We definitely want to contribute to the opening of ears, eyes, and minds. With our live shows it’s a poignant example of music and culture mixing together in an explosive vibrant way. To see a Persian singer singing in Farsi, as America debates on a war with Iran, next to other band members from all corners of the earth singing in Spanish, Portuguese, French and so on, it makes people wonder... and if you can get people to question the things around them, just a little, then that’s not such a bad thing."

Istanbullish

Last month, we saw the classic Wordsworth in this post.

To quote a similar genius, I believe it was Pitbull who said:

Then we gonna go fo, and fo, we gon freak some mo.

Four days in Istanbul start tomorrow... the Istanbul Lonely Planet app is loaded on the iPhone, the Turkish Lira is not so dear-a, and the dolmus and the Bosphorus await us.

So no posts here for the next few days unfortunately - the next one will come Monday or Tuesday of next week. See you then.

Viva Italia

Two perspectives on this weekend's De Smaak van Italie event near Utrecht, at the Kasteel de Haar. Each one valid in its own way.

Version 1

Wow, this place is great! Beautiful castle, serene setting, hundreds of booths serving up all manner of Italian delicacies, great wine everywhere.

Look at this celebration of cultures coming together - coffee booths, delicious sausages and cheeses and elaborate oils and sauces everywhere, right alongside friendly and talented Dutch artists and authentic knick-knack kiosks.

Thank you, cool Dutch cop, for calling a cab for us and making sure we got a fair deal.

Vespas and Ferraris on display, with Italian furniture it's like I'm strolling through Palermo. Look how warm and gracious every vendor is. Bellissima!

Version 2

This place blows. It took me two and a half hours, with a bike, a train, and a rip-off taxi ride to get here? 9 more Euros than the fare charged by the taxi in front of us? Hey Italians or Dutch or whoever is running this thing - a road sign, maybe a shuttle bus would be an idea for next year.

Mmm, bread and olive oil. At every second stall.

Nice castle - too bad it closes at four and no one told us. Lovely weather too - if the light were any flatter, it would be Kate Moss.

No, condescending coffee machine vendor - I don't know exactly which cup to use for the cappuccino machine. But thank you for scolding me nonetheless. You may just want to cut back on your own product though, lest your teeth get any more yellow.

A piece from Italian digital artist Tiziana - will update with full name if I can find it

Expat Experience

Central Park, NYC September 2009

After a particularly angst-ridden weekend and with some big decisions coming up here in Amsterdam, I reflected on what it means to be an expat.

Forgive me as we go a bit deeper than normal - maybe it's the rainy Sunday, the remnants of dark Belgian beer that is as heavy as lead, or the desire to know that others can relate and that I'm not the only one. (Lemme know).

There were a number of moments in the last 48 hours where I felt more like a foreigner than at almost any time in the past 8 months. Skin-crawling, head-spinning, chest-searing what-have-I-gotten-into-and-get-me-outta-here moments. Then it hit me: being an expat is a lot like those initial stages of falling in love.

The parallels are endless. The two experiences are alternately thrilling, terrifying, joy-inducing and nausea-inducing as you set foot upon new terrain.

• Age and experience are part of a double-edged sword: you can become rigid and set in your ways as you grow older, diminishing your ability to be flexible and accommodating and truly open; at the same time, setbacks on the path have less of an impact - you learn to roll with the punches more and are able to hit the reset button more readily.

• They can both be financially (half-kidding) and emotionally (no joke) expensive, if you make the wrong choices initially. Although neither is irreparable.

• As both conditions extend from days to weeks to months and years, of course you see the cracks and the flaws (hopefully no warts). They've always been there, well before you arrived, but the early glow of newness and adventure has obscured them. You have fallen prey to your own expectations of that person or that place.

• Time changes your perspective. Familiarity breeds both comfort and contempt. And, depending on the level of your affection for the person or place, you either roll with it and choose to focus on the positives or you jump ship in search of home or a new destination.

• You sometimes stay in the same place too long thinking you can get used to it - but this may not happen. Are they warning signs you're ignoring, or simply a matter of getting to know this new being? It's almost impossible to tell the difference.

• Your heart breaks at the same time that it swells, often within the same few minutes, the same few hours.

• A thousand little indignities, real or perceived, bump up against your previously defined sense of self.

• Speaking of sense of self, you lose part of it for a while - the familiar surroundings that have shaped you and been your mirror. You now have a new mirror and the way it reflects is definitely not the same.

• You experience in a very raw way the fear and discomfort that come with putting yourself out there, but also the rewards that sometimes come from doing so.

• Essentially, it's what you choose to focus on, day in and day out, that determines whether you can make it from the early stages to a more lasting situation.

I suppose this is all true of many situations in life, but I've never felt it so acutely as when I'm a foreigner - in a new land or a new relationship.

World Cup

Ok, folks, some exciting news. I will be covering World Cup 2010 from a Dutch (and especially Amsterdam) perspective on behalf of Lonely Planet, as part of a team of bloggers in various countries under the Lonely Planet banner.

While there will still be some regular (i.e. non-sports) entries on this site, for the next month you will see a definite orange tint to the posts, with a football-mad country and a team that is currently ranked 4th in the world.

While this doesn't mean a trip to South Africa, I will be covering the scene in various hotspots of Amsterdam, from my dual perspective as an expat and as someone with a foot in Dutch culture too.

The Team van Oranje was last a powerhouse in the 1970's, making it to the finals in '74 and '78 but coming up just short each time, including an agonizing last-minute shot off the post that would have won it against Argentina in 1978.

Dutch soccer royalty (fitting since the formal team name is the KNVB, the Royal Dutch Football Association - the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbal Bond if you want real street cred) from years past includes names like Johann Cruyff, Dennis Bergkamp, Ruud Gullit, and Marco van Basten - with Cruyff being the mega-royal. You can literally walk in his shoes all over Holland today, as he has his name on his own high-end line of footwear.

Today's big guns? Top-division clubs across Europe have stellar Dutchmen such as Wesley Sneijder (Inter Milan), Robin van Persie (Arsenal), and Arjen Robben (Bayern Munich).

There's no end of off-field drama to be seen and heard of as well, with the customary complicated personalities on the team and complicated rivalries on the streets in this multi-national city. There are 177 nationalities represented in Amsterdam, so I suspect every night will be game night!

And we may or may not see the odd coverage of Sneijder's rather attractive partner, whose name is also rather complicated - Yolanthe Cabau van Kasbergen.

So watch this space for de Dutch details of on-field and off-field action as the world gets ready to go bonkers from June 11-July 11.

Fun With Signs

Seen in: Malaga

For the skeptical shopper

Cultura

Malaga has over 3000 years of rich cultural heritage, and was founded in 770 B.C. by the Phoenicians and incorporated in 1487 by the King of Spain. (Nerds, don't e-mail me with corrections - this stuff is from the International Development office of the Ayuntamiento de Malaga).

It is the birthplace of Pablo Picasso. It is home to 25 museums and art galleries, including the Picasso Museum. It is applying for the prestigious cultural capital of Europe award in 2016, la candidata a capital europea de la cultura.

It has a massive cathedral built between 1582 and 1728 (seen below). It is a gateway to such historic places as Granada and Nerja.

And I swear I'll check it all out next time.

The beaches, restaurants, and nightlife all conspired to keep me saying "manana, manana" to my best-laid plans to enrich myself culturally.

I did manage to get some more photos though.

Mas Malaga

S'up, playa? Why are you so compelling to so many of us? There most be more to it than simple sun and water and scenery.

I figure beaches hold their immense appeal not only for their many forms of toplessness but also their inclusiveness.

In a world that often creates divisions and barriers, the beach endures. They speak to the socialist in all of us. No matter how crowded it is, you can always find your little spot of real estate, often no bigger than a towel.

There's room for everyone, from opposite ends of every spectrum - rich and poor, old and young, families and singles, tanned and British.

Malaga has a number of them - El Palo and Pedregalego for the locals and language students, Malagueta and Misericordia for locals and tourists, and more on either side of the coast.

These are not the white lush beaches of travel brochures, but they definitely do the trick. The water is stunning, you can walk for miles as the small waves roll in at your feet, and a wide promenade dotted with inexpensive restaurants, cafes, ice cream shops and free outdoor exercise spots lines each one.

More images below from another great week in Malaga, particularly as Amsterdam went a little retro with wet wintry weather today.

One of the many exercise spots along the Malaga coast

This terrace, this view? A measly 650 Euro per month

At one of Pedregalego's many cafes

The breakfast menu at La Cabana in Pedregalego

Antonio Banderas is omnipresent, here watching over the beach near Misericordia.

Because Misericordia loves company.