Wouldn't you like a wooden shoe?

Coming down from the sunrise over the quilted clouds into the dim, artificial lights of Amsterdam reminds me vacation is over… time to quit the joy of my (albeit rather sick and miserable) family and friends (ok, I was joyous at least) and back to the ambiguous struggles of what is popularly known as the real world

(ok, it’s not so bad as that…but the visual metaphor sure made it seem that way!)

I am now farther east than I have ever been in my life…

More of the signs here are in English than in Dutch. For the first time I am in a country where I don’t speak the language at all. But I feel as if I haven’t left the Anglophone world.

The airport is modern, luxurious, and blessedly easy to navigate. More than I can say for some airports

(when I left for the US I got off the RER train at Charles de Gaulle Concourse 1, was redirected to concourse 2, then found myself facing nothing but train platforms. I finally found my way to a big empty space upstairs leading to concourses 2A-2G. Nobody would stop and tell me how to find the Air France counters, not even my fellow Americans. No wonder. There’s one in each concourse. But which concourse am I supposed to be in? I swear, it says nothing about it on my e-ticket!!! I finally blunder into one of the screens that records all the flights and figure out the way after stopping at a few more help desks- thank goodness I didn’t resign myself to the line that stretched halfway down the concourse after winding around several times without checking to make sure that was the right one- I checked into the right line. Well and good, but my hands and back wished I’d sucked it up and coughed up the money to do my laundry in France…as it was, I almost had to pay the heavy baggage fee anyway…)

There is a casino, a sushi bar, and gift shops every fifty feet peddling tulip bulbs, chocolate, cheese, blue and white dishes, and anything you can possibly make in the shape of a wooden shoe or a windmill.

Amsterdam from the air reveals long lines of seemingly identical buildings. As we rise, long strips of black and green resolve.

I’m not on my way home, but I’m going back where I belong, for the moment. I’m not a stranger anymore. I know how to get where I’m going. I know how to phone my parents when I get there. I even have mastered getting on and off an escalator dragging 90 lbs of luggage.

(side note- I’m not quite so skilled as I thought. I got a bit lost changing RER trains on my way to the St. Lazare station from the airport. And I’d left my keys at home. Lucky for me I got back just in time to catch a stray priest going home, who managed to get me a spare key from the diocesan office. Ok, we’re working on it.)

(BTW, the RER trains are like the metro but go further out into the Paris suburbs and cost more. With my discounted main like tickets, it cost almost as much for me to get from the airport to the train station as it does for me to take the train from Paris to Rouen!)