I’m supposed to be catching a flight to Switzerland right now. But my plans fell right through the floor, mainly because my mom doesn’t want me to travel alone. The study abroad adviser of 13 years here told me that Switzerland is the one country she would feel perfectly fine telling me to go to by myself. I am 20 years old, living in another country, yet here I am still in my dorm room because mother said so. The power that species of human has is striking. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go down without a virtual tussle. Alas, c’est la vie.
I expressed my frustration by posting the song “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now” from the musical Hairspray on her Facebook wall.
A Skype message from my mom popped up on the screen and it said, “I like your sense of humor.”
Today is her birthday. She also happened to be born on the Egyptian Mother’s Day. She is a pain as a mother, but a remarkably beautiful person.
Traveling to Amsterdam was an ordeal. We left the university around 5:30pm, and arrived 9am the next morning. I’ve decided that traveling at night is the worst. Here is why: You can’t sleep and by the time you get to your destination, you’re exhausted and all you want to do is crash. We rode a bus to England, hopped on a ferry to France, and the same bus drove off the ferry and through Belgium to Amsterdam. 15 1/2 hours total.
As soon as we got off the bus, we checked into the hostel. It was a lot nicer than I had expected, with a buzzer that monitors who gets into the lobby, a helpful front desk, and clean rooms. Leanne and I were lucky enough to get our own room and bathroom+shower.
Running on a short, rocky doze from the ferry and bus rides, we hit the streets. The first thing I noticed about the city was that it was swarming with people on bicycles. The second thing was the sophisticated transportation system. There was a sidewalk, a bicycle lane, a car lane, a rail-track, and a bus lane (I might be making this last one up..) – the whole set flowing smoothly in two opposite directions. The third thing was all the rivers and canals slicing through the streets. We crossed bridge after bridge after bridge. Wide water-ways weaved through the city, and we watched canal tours glide by, sending waves of ripples that cracked the sheets of glassy ice floating on the surface.
While walking down a street lined with eateries, a man with a belly and an apron stepped out of a Pizzeria and cried, “Bella!” In a handful of other Italian words, he invited us to dine. It was the perfect quaint place to eat. We told the manager that it was Leanne’s 21st birthday, and he brought her a tiramisu cake with a sparkler, on the house.
After lunch, we visited the Royal Palace in Amsterdam and wandered around the majestic, gaudy rooms. (I would lose my humanity living in a palace. I would turn into a porcelain doll.) Then we made the trek back to the hostel for a pre-dinner nap. I could have slept for hours, but I hoisted myself out of bed and 14 of us set out into the cold night for dinner and to celebrate Leanne’s birthday. Since I don’t drink, my hands were empty most of the night and I was the designated photographer. The group went bar-hopping and we ended in an Australian bar called Coco’s Outback. It played good music and we found a room for ourselves that looked down on the dance floor.
We didn’t get back to our rooms until 2am. At 4am, I woke up to a loud THUMP. I looked over the top bunk railing, saw Leanne tangled in her blanket on the floor, and heard her ask the darkness why she was down there. We had planned that she sleep on the bottom bunk just in case, accommodating her birthday celebrations, and we were right to. It was pretty hilarious.
