Two weekends ago, I traveled to Amsterdam to meet up with some old friends from DU. All of my roommates here in Prague came along, which made for an exciting “crossover episode” in my eyes. We stayed in a hostel near the city center and ended up sharing it with two wildland firefighters my buddy had met at the airport. They’d been on their way to Barcelona but were redirected to Amsterdam, with no connection until after the weekend. So, they joined us, and we all spent the weekend together.
Amsterdam had a compact, structured feel—very different from the grand facades and winding streets of Prague. In hindsight, I wish I’d done more of the museums and tourist attractions that Amsterdam has to offer, but with midterms just behind us, I think we were all ready to ditch scheduling and simply relax. We rented bikes, fed an army of birds and waterfowl in a park, took a sunset boat tour of the canals, and spent hours walking or biking from café to café.
While this was all great fun, the late nights and endless cafés started to feel like scenes from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a novel I found to be a rather bleak account of “high-class European travel” that amounted to little more than day drinking and disillusionment. I get that Hemingway intended to depict the mindset (or lack of it) of people who’d lived through World War I, and my negative feelings have more to do with the characters and the way the narrator presents them than with Hemingway’s writing. Still, the comparison stuck with me. The characters had prosperity and opportunity but sought meaning at the bottom of crystal glasses and in endless bottles of champagne.
Looking back, I had a fantastic weekend with friends, full of laughter and relaxation, and I don’t see it as time wasted. But I do wish I’d balanced things out a bit more. To make up for it, I decided to walk nine miles from the hostel to the airport in the middle of the night on my last day there, just to see more of the city. That walk turned out to be lovely—I passed through a forest preserve, along a beach, through some industrial areas, and finally along the highway until I arrived and could wait for my early-morning flight.
Part of me feels like I’m over here to experience as much as possible and be “productive” in a way. I have the chance to travel more than ever, and I want to make sure I’m making the most of it, but I also don’t want that pressure to stop me from letting loose and simply enjoying time with close friends, even if it means skipping some of the museums and sights. I think I’ve done a solid job of finding that balance on my other trips, so I can look back on Amsterdam as a blast and a well-spent weekend. I have a few more trips planned, and I want to keep this sense of balance in mind for each one.
After Amsterdam, my parents came to visit, which was much needed. I’ll touch on that in my next post.
DU Abroad 