I went to Amsterdam for the weekend. I left on Saturday and got back yesterday. I had ordered my train tickets online and they were supposed to be delivered to my house, but they never arrived. So I called SNCF earlier in the week, and they said, “Well, the tickets were mailed the day you ordered them.” And I said, “OK, but they never got here.” So I was told to go to the train station with my reservation number and my credit card the day of. I was not told that I would have to re-purchase tickets and wait a month to be reimbursed until I got to the train station on Saturday morning. The man at the train station started out being all superior and said that I should have just come to the train station to buy the tickets, since I live in Paris. After I made a big fuss about how inane the SNCF reimbursement issue was, he wanted to be friends. I guess my performance of indignation was French enough for him.

The impetus for the trip was that my friend Rich was visiting Amsterdam, along with his friend Michael. They were staying at the Golden Bear Hotel. Rich had gotten an international cell phone for the trip, which was smart of him. (I still haven’t bought a French cell phone, but I think such a purchase is very likely in the near future, possibly after my December travels in Eastern Europe.) I had some trouble getting a hold of Rich on Saturday, so I wandered around the city on my own for a while. I managed to call him on Sunday morning at 10:00. As he did not quite sound ready for the day, I said that I would call him back in the afternoon.

While I was walking around on Sunday morning, I passed the Bible Museum (Bijbels Museum) and decided to go in. I was very glad I did. The collection was fascinating, primarily because it was so eclectic. Inspired by one of the former owners of the house who had been obsessed with building a model of Solomon’s Temple, the museum houses several models of Solomon’s Temple, plus a model of the Tabernacle in Jerusalem that housed the Ark of the Covenant. There are also Egyptian artifacts that the owner had collected, to elucidate the time the Israelites spent in Egypt. When I was there, the museum was hosting an exhibition called “Rembrandt and the Bible,” with some eighty etchings of biblical and quasi-biblical scenes by Rembrandt. There is a garden with biblical plants, and a room by the garden with biblical scents. The basement houses a multimedia exploration of Bible publishing. My favorite aspect of this was a set of bookshelves designed to depict the Bible as a library. You could open some of the books and see images inside. The Plague of Frogs from Exodus had a whole bunch of little rubber frogs inside it. The story of Joseph from Genesis had a bright swath of amazing technicolor fabric. And the book marked “Creation” had a mirror inside, which was just too cute. What makes the collection eclectic is that they have also opted to show some of the features of these two canal houses, including two seventeenth-century kitchens and a number of eighteenth-century ceiling paintings of mythological figures, by Jacob de Wit.

When I got out of the Bible Museum, I met up with Rich and Michael for stir-fry at “Wok and Walk.” We decided to make our way south to the Heineken Brewery, because I had heard that the tour there was good. But on the way we ran into a parade. Now, while I was walking around in the morning I had noticed an unusual number of children dressed in festive attire, so I had deduced that it was some kind of holiday. It struck me as early for Saint Nicholas, but it was indeed the “Sinterklaas” parade. The strangest thing about the Sinterklaas parade was that the majority of participants were done up in colorful Renaissance costumes and blackface, portraying Sinterklaas’s problematic sidekick, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Apparently Zwarte Piet does much of the gift wrapping before he and Sinterklaas travel by boat from Spain, or perhaps Turkey, to the Netherlands. Upon their arrival, Zwarte Piet gives candy to good little boys and girls, but stuffs bad children into a sack to bring them back to Spain, or perhaps Turkey. Later that night in a gay bar we saw a fascinating music video called “Sinterklaasboot,” which I managed to find on youtube.

The parade ended shortly after we got there. So we proceeded to the Heineken Experience, which was pretty great. Michael kept pointing out that it was basically a two-hour Heineken commercial. But for ten euros, we got three beers and a fun tour. The highlight of the tour was the seeing the bottling process “through the eyes of a bottle,” which meant standing on a platform that moved and viewing one of those films that is designed to make you feel like you’re on the roller coaster. Or conveyer belt, as the case may be.

On Monday, I met up with Rich and Michael around noon, and we went out for some very tasty pancakes, followed by a trip to the Anne Frank House. I had not been excited about the Anne Frank House, because I thought it would be depressing. And it was depressing, but it was possibly the best-designed museum I have ever experienced.

By contrast, the Sex Museum (Venustempel) was a total mess. It could be much better organized. A lot of the exhibits are kitschy, which sometimes works really well and sometimes doesn’t. The kitschy Marilyn Monroe exhibit is interesting, and there is a silly “Sex through the Ages” exhibit, which we thought was a lot of fun. But the kitschy prostitution exhibit was just bad. Obviously the collection is heavy on kitsch and photographs because it’s geared toward stoned frat boys. There are some really interesting objects. If they would label them correctly and display them more effectively, they could do a better job of engaging historians of sexuality…and maybe teach the horny frat boys a thing or two along the way. It was definitely worth a visit. For three euros, it’s worth a visit even if you aren’t studying history of sexuality. Possibly more so if you aren’t.

For dinner on Monday we had an Indonesian Rice Table, which was really, really good. My train left around 1:00 Tuesday afternoon, so we had time for brunch and some shopping before I headed back. By the way, across the aisle from me on the train was a guy with a very large bag of pot. He rolled a joint on his tray table all the way through Belgium. No conductor said a word to him, and Customs didn’t stop him.

I arrived back to learn that the money I wired on Friday has not yet arrived in my French bank account. My French bank told me today that if it isn’t there tomorrow I should contact my American bank. But since tomorrow is a holiday in the US, I decided to call today. They were so patient and helpful and pleasant on the phone. To be fair, my French bank teller today was also very patient and very sympathetic.

I gave my presentation on Chapter 3 of The Politics of Friendship in seminar today. I was saying to Laura that if I had known we were only going to get to Chapter 3, I probably would have signed up for a later chapter. But it was kind of fun.

And now I have to write my paper for this conference in Poland next week. I am supposed to email it to the conference organizer by Friday morning. I am not sure that will happen.