To Amsterdam

Well, travel to Amsterdam has been nothing short of eventful. Let’s start at the beginning. With plenty of time to spare I arrived at the Indianapolis airport. Once boarded, the crew informed us that there was some auxiliary power issue, but that it should not create any problems. Just we were about to pull away from the gate, we were delayed an hour on the tarmac. Finally the captain came to his senses and permitted us to deplane. No more than 10 minutes later we reboarded the aircraft. The jet was small and the flight was nearly two hours to New York. Luckily I still had 1 hour to catch my flight to Amsterdam.

At 6:30pm I had a slice of pizza at the New York airport.

The plane to Amsterdam was nice and large. The bathrooms were spacious and I befriended a cognitive scientist from NYU. Dinner was served on the plane at about 7:30 pm (eastern time). One glass of wine and two zanax later, and I was flyin’ high above the Atlantic. Apparently, sometime during the past 8 years since my most recent transatlantic flight, they started charging for wine. $5 for one glass of Jacob’s Creek Shiraz-Cabernet. I slept very little on the 6ish hour flight over. 4 hours after dinner, breakfast was served. Within an hour we were on the ground.

With the aid of a travel agent, I found the train from the Amsterdam airport to the central public transportation station. It took me 20 minutes to purchase a tram ticket (strippenkaart) because, in part, I was using the wrong machine so I could not find the option to purchase the card. Finally I figured it out and headed out to where the trams stop outside the station. I was searching for tram 9, but it seemed never to come. At this point it was about 9am Amsterdam time and I was feeling a little punchy from lack of sleep. A little wandering around revealed that the tram 9 picks up passengers from the other side of the station. I got on the 9 and watched the stop board for my stop (Tropenmuseum) to appear. It never did and I found myself at the end of the line, alone on the tram. With justification, the tram operators were peeved. On the way back I got my stop. Following directions given to me by one of my hosts, I went south on Linneausstraat waiting to find my street Dapperstraat on the left (one or two streets). Dapperstraat never came. Finally I buckled and asked a local where Dapperstraat was. She pointed not up or down Linneausstraat, but across it. Turns out Mr. Borsboom, my academic contact here, did not mean by “1st or 2nd street on your left” that Dapperstraat crossed Linneausstraat. Rather, the two streets were parallel. Only after walking up and down Linneeausstraat for about a half hour did I figure this out (with the aid of a nice Amsterdamer). I arrive at the apartment, but the last name of my host is not on the buzzer box. It takes me 10 minutes to get up the nerve to randomly ring one of the buttons. Luckily for me it was the correct one. Apparently the label on the buzzer had fallen off. A friend of my host let me in, gave me the tour, and he was on his way. Hungry I set to the streets for a bite. At this point it had been 12 hours since the croissant they gave me on the plane. Few places were open and of the places that were open, not a word of English was to be found, not even at McDonald’s (which, by the way, looks infinitely better than American McDonalds. Frustrated I returned to the apartment hungry to await the arrival of my host who has been away in Austria on a skiing trip. It is now nearly 9:15 pm Amsterdam time and still nothing to eat. Something tells me that by the time he gets here, it will be too late to get dinner. I did manage a 3-hour nap, which helped with the jetlag. There are at least two wireless networks that I’m picking up, but unfortunately both are password protected, so it might be some time before I get to post this.

Tomorrow at noon I have lunch with Denny Borsboom, so eventually I will eat something.