Blown Away in Amsterdam

Winter weekend, my ONLY weekend without children, away away. Very excited as I pack - a 40th birthday party, a weekend in Amsterdam, not much money to spend, but time, precious time alone! I intend to get to the birthday dinner, maybe spend a bit more time, but then take days for me, to wander and discover what it is I actually look at when I don't have the Bean and the Pumpkin at my every step.

Well. I got sick. The weekend became something quite different from those expectations. Got more than I bargained for. I guess.

Picked up at the airport by BigX, and there's another old friend, just in from Canada too!. Wow, I'm going to trip down Memory Lane this weekend! Whisked into town, past canals in whipping rain and wind, to my hotel: like the brochure, up incredibly! steep short steps to the rooftop room, it looks over the canals and those incredibly picturesque Amsterdam houses alongside. Those steps have to be walked to be believed. (I remember that the first time I was in Amsterdam, in '95, I thought I'd landed in a complete dive, on account of the steep steps. Not so.) Off to a GREAT Indonesian restaurant, of course!, and then BigX's wife also joined us, fresh off the road from a meeting in Germany. Oh this is Europe now. Wonderful. This is just how it is - you get excited about other stuff when this is the baseline of your experience.

Then, I got sick... Woke up at 3.30 in the morning, CONVINCED that it was 8am, got cranky when my breakfast didn't arrive, wrote in my journal mad night thoughts, then looked at the watch again: 4.30am! Howling wind outside, screaming around the edges of the roof and across the canals below. Couldn't sleep. Dreadful guts. Cloudhead.

So the weekend became instead about turning 40 - we're all about there now - and evaluating the First Half. Planning the Second Half. Others in the group had made some concrete actual changes for their Second Half - I admire that, need to apply that sort of time-horizon to my own life. Steps to take now to secure the Second Half? The First Half had so much experience and roaming and discovery in it. Wonderful trip down Memory Lane, and also very real now experience of a great city, wonderful place.

Everywhere there are people on bikes, the most incredible types of bike-contraptions. A Bucks-Fizz is a transporter, for children, even under plastic, or dogs or shopping. LMM would love this human-scale city, this physical vibrancy in the people on account of much cycling, the Nine Streets shops, Albert Cuyp market with tonnes of the food we want to eat, not just the Irish selection-by-distance..and multicultural, people from everywhere. Just, how do you get to work HERE, without any Dutch, without being married to one, or descended from one?

I DID NOT stride across the city in glorious solitude, speak to attractive strangers in bars, or shop for a precious, personal treasure for life. I DID reflect on this group of friends, fellow travellers, my cohort, and that we're all at a similar place - much perspective, much left to do. And that we are not alone: there are lots of people with mixed marriages (in the sense of coming from different countries) different roots. All of us travelling the globe, comfortable in lots of places, drawing rich lives by being slow-mo-mobile, adding languages and possessions to suit the country we're in. And good it is.