Amsterdam

I had an interesting weekend in Amsterdam (one of the best cities in Europe). I left on Saturday and had to spend nearly 3 hours on the train next to a Pakistani man who kept asking me for my age/phone number/marriage prospects, and then just babbled away with bad breath in Urdu. He blasted India in half the conversation, saying that we're the reason why he can't visit India although he has an Indian visa. I was trying to be nice, but at one point, I finally exclaimed, "Okay, I'm going to sleep. Bye." 1). Why do men think that asking for your age/asking you to guess their age is a discreet way of picking you up? 2). Harshly (and ignorantly) criticizing my country is not going to help your case, buddy. The weekend was fun. Monday was Koniginnstag, or Queen's Day, a celebration of former Queen Juliana's birthday. It's become one of the biggest national parties in the Netherlands, and my goodness, Amsterdam was raging. Everyone wears orange, and basically drinks from sun-up to sun-down...think Marathon, er, Patriot's Day in Boston but with many more millions crowding the streets. There is loud music from hip-hop to techno (mostly techno) blaring on the streets, vendors & carnival/amusement park rides (including this crazy gizmo called Booster that Nick made us try out...it's a massive roller coaster arm that turns you upside down at 5 Gs hundreds of feet high in the air, and makes you pray that the seat fastener is properly working), and drunken debauchery everywhere. The Dutch, while a hearty & friendly bunch, aren't what I'd call the most elegant types. Although quite trendy and 'hip,' they tend to be bigger in not only size but also volume. I really like Dutch when Frederika & Maaike speak it, but to hear it yelled and cajoled on the streets is not so pleasant. I suppose any language is like that, though. We ate Mexican on Saturday night, I cooked Indian on Sunday night, and we then stuffed ourselves with pure grease on Monday. I was a bit disappointed to have not seen one of Amsterdam's many famous museums, but ran into a massive crowd as we didn't properly plan on the right time to go (early in the morning when the museums first open). Amsterdam is a liberal's heaven, but a smoker's nightmare...I've never reeked so much of stale cigarettes...or stale pot, for that matter. On Saturday night, we attended a birthday/salsa party of a Spanish pianist in Nick's girlfriend Yuko's studio. It was really fun - a tiny room full of Spaniards gettin' down with salsa. I talked with a nice French girl for awhile who confessed that she wanted to dance but "felt a little too French and embarrassed!" I told her that she's still Latin and could do better than a German...and to my humiliation, a German was standing next to her! He was a good sport, though, and laughed, admitting that Germans many times don't know what the heck to do if they hear salsa (they're often worse than red-blooded Americans)..."Usually, we just look for more beer!" I got lucky on that one! Today on the train, after reading in German, I had the sudden urge to finally "enjoy a reading experience!" and quickly bought a copy of National Geographic in English. I was immediately depressed. The April 2007 has a special report called "Global Fish Crisis: Saving the Sea's Bounty." It was all about how fisheries have overfished to the point where nearly 90% of some species of fish are depleted...90%!!!!! The report addressed economic problems, environmental problems, problems in developing nations (areas around Europe, Japan, and northern U.S./Canada are so depleted that these nations are going to the African coast to fish...leaving nothing for the millions of Africans who rely on the fish for protein and other nutritional benefits), and so much more. I know I can't change the world, and I know that many of you don't want to read another heavy entry of mine (sorry! This journal is a good outlet for me! :) ), but I just wish people would realize that if they became vegetarians or simply lowered their consumption of meat, we wouldn't need to kill the planet the way we do! Consider this: fish could be left alone to their own ecosystem, untouched and not bothered. This would regenerate the ocean's ecosystem and restore proper levels of fish populations in the waters again. Eating less (or no) beef & livestock (don't even get me started on the horrors of the meat industry and how they slaughter) would mean that we don't need to deforest in order to create ranches/grazing areas for cattle - this would save the ecosystems of forests around the world (for example, the Amazon, to name a major environmental concern) and hundreds of creatures who rely on the forests for survival. Also, nearly 2/3 of the grain supply in the U.S. goes towards feeding livestock; this food could go towards the millions of ordinary people who starve everyday in the world (the U.S. included)! I often hear the argument that "vegetarians don't get enough protein. Vegetarians have unbalanced diets and cannot survive as so." OH really? As far as health goes, so many diseases that humans suffer from would be lessened in strength and numbers of cases (heart disease, bacterial agents in meat causing infections and internal complications), people wouldn't have problems with obesity, and the human diet would be far more properly balanced with greens, fruits, and other vegetables. I understand that in earlier times, people in middle Europe needed to eat meat because there wasn't an availability of fresh vegetables/fruits before...these things simply don't grow in this part of the world due to unfavorable climate conditions. However, life today is different. I buy at the outdoor market every week in little Detmold in our main square and find an enormous variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Spices, once only found in specific regions of the planet such as the Indian subcontinent, are now plentiful and readily available. Eating a vegetarian or less-carnivorous diet is also much cheaper on your wallet (bums in Boston would scowl at me many times when I offered them apples or fruits, insisting that they "need a Big Mac...I can't eat all that sugar!") So...why the resistance? Do people really 'NEED (OMG I'm craving steak, I'll die without it...ahhh!)' meat?? Another point that the National Geographic article raised was about our attitude towards the ocean. I quote: " 'Cruel' may seem a harsh indictment of the age-old profession of fishing - and certainly does not apply to all who practice the trade - but how else to portray the world's shark fishermen, who kill tens of millions of sharks a year, large numbers finned alive for shark-fin soup and allowed to sink to the bottom to die? How else to characterize the incalculable number of fish and other sea creatures scooped up in nets, allowed to suffocate, and dumped overboard as useless bycatch? Or the longline fisheries, whose miles and miles of baited hooks attract - and drown - creatures such as the loggerhead turtle and wandering albatross? Do we countenance such loss because fish live in a world we cannot see? Would it be different if, as one conservationist fantasized, the fish wailed as we lifted them out of the water in nets? If the giant bluefin lived on land, its size, speed, and epic migrations would ensure its legendary status, with tourists flocking to photograph it in national parks. But because it lives in the sea, its majesty - comparable to that of a lion - lies largely beyond comprehension." --National Geographic, April 2007 We seem to think that because we don't live in it/don't see it, the ocean's well-being doesn't affect us. I used to babysit for kids who thought that while playing hide-and-go-seek, as long as they can't see me, I can't see them. Unfortunately, that's not the way that the problems we've created in the ocean's ecosystem can be dealt with. I'm not insisting that everyone must be vegetarian (although for the aforementioned reasons, I think it'd be great) - I realize that's impractical. One billion people, mostly from developing nations, rely on fish for protein and other nutritional elements. I just think that we could use some more fairly enforced rules and regulations, i.e. allow the African people to eat their own fish instead of stealing it for a wealthy American couple dining at Tru Restaurant in Chicago who really doesn't need it...