Glorious arrival

Goede mittag van Amsterdam, broad readership!

I am sorry for keeping you all waiting for so long to hear confirmation of my safe and glorious arrival in this fair city, but rest assured that I have in fact arriven and all is well.

Things began auspciously, as my experience with international travel immediately reaped benefits. Upon checking in for my flight well ahead of time, I was provided with a complimentary upgrade from coach class to the much-coveted colicky baby section of the plane. Learn well, travel novices: foresight has its privileges.

And while I am in Amsterdam at present, my current base of operations, militaristically speaking, is the Hague, or den Haag in Dutch (which is actually a contraction of the Nederlandse 's Gravenhage, in case you wanted even more pedantic background info). The Hague is normally a sleepy town, but at the momentje there's big haps afoot: the trial of Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity. I had wanted to go to the Palace of Justice to see some of the proceedings myself (I'm told they are particularly entertaining because Slobo, as he is affectionately known around town, is defending himself with unsurprising megalomanicacal fervor). Unfortunately, the trial is suspended this week, which is lucky for Milosevic. I was really hoping to give him a piece of my mind. The permissive secular-humanist moral relativism may be all de stijl in Europa, but I've got the balls to go out on a limb and take the kind of strong, unorthodox opinion on this matter that the broad readership has come to expect from this site: genocide is wrong.

For whatever reason--long-dormant synapses firing, study of cognate-rich German--my ability to communicate in Dutch has improved. Now I can make simple requests in the native tongue (e.g., "I would like one return ticket to Amsterdam, please."). Unfortunately, however, this means that I know just enough to really expose how little I know, because upon my asking a question in Dutch, the native to whom I have spoken invariably comes back with "[unintelligible]", at which point I am forced to say "I speak no Dutch," and am given the universal "you ignorant American" head-shake of disgust.

The goed and schlecht of the day:
==Goed: the Amsterdam Historical Museum, which I had for some reason overlooked on previous visits, isn't just goed, it's groot. This opinion will hardly surprise anyone who knows of my twin fascinations with Amsterdam and history, but still, wow. I spent three hours there and I'm the same person who thought the Louvre rated a half-hour, tops.
==Schlecht: visiting the aforementioned museum at the same time as a school group of hyperactive Dutch pre-teens is not so great. Also disturbing was the realization that thirteen-year-olds in this country of giants are on average about as tall as I am. And that's just the girls.

Some helpful euro-notes:
==If you are in Holland, wander into a bike lane by accident, and notice a fleet of fietsers bearing down on you, one effective way to avoid incident is to emit a high-pitched scream and immediately fall to the ground in the fetal position. However, the pointing and laughing that this behavior will engender among the natives may well be more harmful psychologically than the bike collision would have been physically. I should have just jumped out of the way.
==The next time some Europhile rags on America and cites McDonald's as an example of the cultural vapidity of the US, be sure to reply by telling them they're a big fat hypocrite because the europeeps LOVE the McD's. I am constantly assailed by the salty, savory, greasy smell of McDonald's burgers and fries, and had the misfortune to be sitting across from a native stuffing his face with the aforementioned today on a train. If they're so put off by our culture, why are they scarfing it down, loaded with catsup? Also, USA!! USA!!