Amsterdam is awesome; not just because of its airport, which has a baby care room complete with little bath tubs and changing stations and curtain enclosures with cribs and soft music, or because the airport has a library complete with everything from art folios to childrens' books in various languages; not just because there is an amazingly organized, clean and functioning transit system; not just because the guy who serves you breakfast and a delicious cup of coffee and gives your daughter a plate with sliced cucumbers and butter croissant because it's the only thing she seems to want to eat also spends 10 minutes directing you on the best walking path of the city complete with historical commentary; and not just because there are separate roads, alongside and parallel to the "regular" roads just for bikes. No, not just for those reasons.
Amsterdam is awesome because people queue. And when it's your turn, it's your turn. And the guy standing behind you in line does try to (or get to) cut in front of you just because all he has to buy is one kilo of sugar.
-kjd
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LMAO!! Oh, the things we treasure after only a few months here. Like today, I am treasuring reliability of public infrastructures. Going on 17 hrs without power. And blue heron is packed making wifi slow.
ReplyDeletep.s. Roger and I BOTH put salt (thinking it was sugar) in our coffee's at the AMS airport - and we weren't even together!
I came to the monkey bars to learn about cookies and find myself mentally in Amsterdam this morning. Your post Made me wonder whether if America went metric we might start to spontaneously queue. Certainly a pervasive feeling of competition and anxiety is no way to run a nation or an airport... but we must learn from examples what TO do and not just what NOT to do.
ReplyDeleteYour gloss here is the first time I've felt a desire to actually visit an airport and not just get through an airport on the way to the destination (which I am slowly learning is always home, wherever we are; there's no place like it)—lovely teaching in this, so thank you & Namaste