Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Adventures in Amsterdam

I traveled out of Gatwick airport on Monday for what was supposed to be a quick trip to Holland and back. I'm still here and won't be leaving until Thursday but I digress. At the airport and on the plane I encountered examples of capitalism at work. There were vending machines in the airport that were selling books. This of course was in addition to the book stores in the waiting lounge, I didn't stop to see how much the markup on the books were.

My second encounter was capitalism masked as charity. The flight I was on was selling lottery tickets where all proceeds from the tickets went to charity. As they went on to explain if you won between 1 and 20 pounds that was redeemed on the food for sale or in the airmall store. Of course trying to buy something for the exact amount you won was probably going to be quite a challenge which most likely would result in spending more than your winnings. In case you're wondering I did not buy a lottery ticket.

As I mentioned earlier I was supposed to be in and out in a day but once I got here other items popped up which required me to stay for the week. The hotel around the corner from where I was working is booked for the week so I stayed in a "city hotel." It was a very basic accommodation no reception, no bar, just a bunch of rooms. The rooms were nice however the beds were 2 twin beds pushed together. Not very comfortable especially since there was a gap between the beds. Since I had a meeting in Amsterdam on Wednesday morning I decided to stay in the city tonight, I even managed to walk around for a little while. Across from the train station was a 3 storey parking garage for bicycles, thousands and thousands of bikes were racked. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera.

At lunch I generated a number of laughs at my strange eating habits. When they opened the cupboard to take out the bread and peanut butter I saw bags and bags of chips. I asked if I could have a few and they were stunned that I would want to eat chips with my sandwich. Chips are for eating with drinks from what I was told. Nobody would even try having chips with lunch, however I get talked into trying all kinds of different foods.

1 comment:

Amy said...

So did you get the chips or were they horrified at the uncouth American in their midst? We'll have to send you over some Fluff to have with your sandwiches too.