I don't think there is a metro here

Posted by minou_degrassi at 12:19 AM on September 1, 2007.

This is the first really foreign place I've lived in. I don't understand the language and am completely unfamiliar with the culture, customs, and politics. I'm here for grad school, by the way.

Everything is either curious or really funny to me. It helped to live in Paris first where everyone is all up in your bizznizz about things that don't concern them.

So:

- Does Easyjet have a fixed tour for hoards of British blokes to come to the red light district, or do they get that idea on their own? I notice it's primarily the Brits who are sex tourists. Well, them and the Japanese - natch. All other nations seem to come for the pot.

I've yet to see a whore who doesn't look totally used. It could be that I'm also running through the red light district at the wrong time. 2 in the afternoon is not when the star prostitutes would come out.

Before Maggie and Jessica start the revolution about me hanging around prostitution districts and risking my neck, just know that the hooker zone in Amsterdam is miles away from the Bois de Boulogne. In fact, it's tame: you can take your picture with a working gal. Most of them are so blasé they chat on their cellphones while putting themselves on display. It's like the Gap, but for sex.

- Why do Jews have a bad rep for being cheap and moneygrubbing when the Dutch beat them by a country mile? No wonder the Nazis made sure poor Anne Frank didn't get out alive.

I'm not complaining, I'm pretty cheap myself, so I feel like I'm among my people.

- I love how roughly half of the pastries are unidentifiable. I've had three pastries whose names I couldn't pronounce, which looked questionable, but were fab.

- Amsterdam seems to be the only place in the world where total Marley worshipping, dreadlocked hippies are not ridiculed. Well, maybe other Dutch people are ridiculing them, I wouldn't know.

- They sell coloured contacts at the local Target/Zellers/Carrefour, but only in blue and green. Gum, batteries, condoms, coloured contacts: those are your essentials.

- Amsterdam is the umpteenth European city I've been in that confirms my belief that "Chinese" just sounds like a racial slur in all other languages but English. Italian - Tichinese (but with all that drawn out elaborating and hand gestures), Czech - Chinsky, Dutch - Chinees (which I imagine sounds like "CHI-KNEEEEZ!!") Conversely, "Canadian" or "Canadese" makes me sound like a wop. It's still better than "Serbian" or "Servisch" which looks like a portmanteau of Serving Wench.

More to come as it happens.

7 comments

Kennedy

Posted by minou_degrassi at 09:38 AM on August 21, 2007.

Excuse me if I'm flaky or an uber asshole as of late. Apparently I've got wild, never before had allergies.

Also, I sold my baby. That's right, the Benz has been sold to a young Russian. He was born in '89, kids. He's exactly the same age I was when I got possession of her.

It's the end of an era.

"I'll take good care of it," he said to me.
Please do, I told him.

1 comments

Kipling

Posted by minou_degrassi at 12:51 AM on August 20, 2007.

About a week left in Toronto. It hasn't been awful but it has been annoying. Why is it that everybody I don't know here is a self righteous shit who feels the need to lecture.

In less than six weeks I have been lectured on:

- Crossing early at a light
- Standing left on a subway escalator at 1am
- The proper way to go through revolving doors (and here I thought there was only ONE way)
- The Problem With Women in General (often while out)
- "Swerving" 10 cm into the bike lane with my car
- Not looking cheerful enough
- Looking too cheerful
- Undertipping even though the service was awful
- Not loving Toronto enough (I said the CN tower was in bad shape).

Strangers/citizens of Toronto don't lecture because they care, which I could accept. Canadians have a reputation for being really nice. I think the rest of the world has confused passive aggressive for nice. When I think of nice, I think of New York or Paris. In New York, random people would see us looking at a map and stop to give directions. In Paris, just try accidentally dropping something on the street - someone will always chase after you to return it. I lost my passport at an internet cafe there and got it back, in tact, a week later. Toronto is the only city in which I have had the change from the tip thrown into the street after me because it was deemed insufficient (the Red Lion in the Beaches, just for the neg-promo).

On the upside, I adore the CN Tower's light scheme at night. I talk about it constantly to everyone.

5 comments

Summerhill

Posted by minou_degrassi at 09:38 AM on July 14, 2007.

Nassim's impressions of Toronto are gold.

"In your country, you are really aggressed by food propositions."

5 comments