Hello, Holland, where have you been all my life? Part 1

Nearly ten years ago, I fell in love with a country. Scotland seemed to hold everything I found glorious and intriguing in a place. I always more or less attributed my love affair with Scotland to it being my first serious time abroad, first time having friends from other countries, being in college, being at that time, at the threshhold of adulthood when the world is wondrously exciting and an adventure to discover. I thought it was the traveling, the international feeling that I fell in love with, but really, it was Scotland. After that I went to Mexico, to Trinidad, spent two years in West Africa, experienced Namibia, but never again did I enter a place and think I could love it as much as Scotland. Until now. As I sit here in a glass cafe in the top of a tall tower with a magnificent view of one of the greatest cities in the world, I realize that I really fell in love with Europe all those years ago. My 9-year-old self was right all along. From the time I first picked up a James Herriot book, from the first time I hear German for the first German I encountered, from the first pictures of castles and tales of English aristocracy, I have been in love with Europe and its cold climes and harsh languages. Hearing those languages and watching their lifestyles was why anthropology became so appealing, but studying Europe and its cultures were old-school, uncool, and old hat. Asia and Africa was where it was at. That's where people who really wanted an adventure—to really see the world—that's where they went. Europe was where everyone went for vacation, it was expensive and even a little elitist. So I followed suit. I went other places looking for the same feeling. I studied during a short trip to Trinidad, did work in Africa, and though I still want to see many parts of Asia, nothing has captured my heart, my romanticism, my interest, my spirit as much as Europe. And now I have come full circle—found it again with the same people who were there in the first place.

Amsterdam, and Holland, surprised me. I figured people liked to go there to do things legally they couldn't anywhere else or otherwise for business. I thought it was a large metropolitan city with lots of modern buildings and neighborhoods, the history long since plowed over, but I couldn't have been more wrong. This is exactly everything I wanted. Walkable streets with neighborhoods full of old brick buildings and cobbled streets. Buildings many stories tall and squished together, bridges over canals, flowers planted along walkways and sold on the corner. Little shops carved into old buildings with people living over them. Places still too small for cars to maneuver. People on bicycles with crates full of wine and flowers and bread, children riding in the seats behind. People walking their dogs through tree-lined grassy parks that are deliberately put in every neighborhood. People who are kind and polite but allow you as much anonymity as you need. It's been incredibly relaxing and interesting to just sit or walk and soak in a city, to sit back and watch the Dutch-ness happen. All of it just feels so right.