Tourist for a day

From the moment we started our University of Amsterdam buildings tour today, the wan morning light was already obscured by dark and ominous clouds. The wind was like a whip, lashing all of us from warmer climes into submission. "Embrace the weather!" our brave Iranian student shouted at me as I hunched under my umbrella through the wandering and interlinked alleys behind each building. Yes, embrace something, that is for sure!

The University of Amsterdam is spread throughout the city, and the academic staff are all educated on the historical aspects of the buildings the University is working to preserve. Our tour began in the old shipping district, on the canal behind our main building. A dynamite factory and adjacent warehouse from the Oost Indie (East India) Shipping Company have been converted into the Social Science library. Next door, the law school takes up an entire block of buildings, with Dutch master paintings, and a screen that rivals an airport terminal telling students where to go.

The Dutch have an excellent way of preserving history. Dates and numbers are left intact in a portion of a building to show its birth, an inception, or an incarnation of sorts. And, when the demands of modern society place a need for the building to be re-invented, the architects are required to work modern futuristic style in with the old brick and mortar. So tucked within the old architecture of an aging city, one will open a door into a room flooded with light, staircases of marble reaching through pillars of glass and steel, beams of oak alongside metal air ducts and wiring cables. It is fantastic and surreal.

In the uppermost region of the old Oost Indie Shipping Warehouse, we climb to our destination. I think I gasped out loud when I saw the ancient beams stretching along the attic walls, little windows nestled in an alpinic roof. The rain lashed the outsides while inside, I was already perusing book shelves, smelling the dust, paper, and glue. A Social Science Paradise located in the Attic of a building! It was like climbing the ladder of your Great Grandfather's home and discovering his boxes of relics in the attics- old pictures, skulls, and bones creeping out of dusty cardboard marked with labels like: Journey to Borneo 1892.

But the whole city is full of these treasures. We head to the Square of Scribes, where inscriptions are inlaid in the cobblestones, and one can purchase books in a bookstore dating back to the 1600's. On the edge of this square, tiny and indiscreet, is a door with a single nob in the center carved with the word: Begijnenhof (The Beguine's Court). "It is considered the quietest place in all of Amsterdam", or so the locals say. Look up: http://hollandhistory.net/history_of_amsterdam/beguines_court_begijnenhof_amsterdam.html

Now, after this serene and tranquil place, imagine the shock my fellow students must have felt when our advisor led us straight from this into the Red Light District. This is, after all, Amsterdam. We are, after all, Medical Anthropology students. And we will, after all, have to do a field trip here for our AIDS unit in January. I actually think that this adventure was mild in comparison to the fact that our group has to get to know each other in a very intimate, and ultimately Dutch, way: with our shared-sex bathroom in our own building: The Spinhuis.

As our advisor drops us back at our meeting point for the morning, soaked, shivering, and ready for tea and coffee, he mentions a brief note. Our own building, housing the Anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam- that rebellious unit of social scientists known throughout Holland for unique and divergent research- is the site of a very old prison. Yes, I am going to school in a prison. I think this is what I used to call it in high school, but now it is true. We are told that the Spinhuis is where the women prisoners (what are they hinting here?) would be relegated to spin thread, while the people would come and watch them, like visiting a movie, or a zoo. Maybe there is some other history here we are supposed to be learning?

I decide there won't be any 'spinning of the wheels' here.

After heading our separate ways for the day, I hop-skip-and-jump my way back over the growing puddles to the Bushuis Library, and immerse myself in the magic of books. I have been waiting a long time for this!! I find my piece of sunlight while a storm rages outside, finding dissertations, books and documents in multiple languages, on subjects hard to track in Salt Lake City, Utah. I mean, there just aren't that many researchers publishing on the Sami over there.

My tourist visa ends the moment I have books in my hand, a Dutch library and InterLibrary Loan card, and am heading back home. A quick detour to the Chinese Market for... tea, and instant noodles. I'll set the waterkoker on and sit down for a long read.

Bliss for me.