Back to Amsterdam (and the first time)

This past Wednesday evening, Justin and I took the train to Amsterdam Central Station. We went to a reading group (on Deleuze primarily, but we also discussed Beatriz Preciado) that is attended mostly by students from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, which I highly recommend checking out. The school, I mean. I've posted a link to ASCA's website. The reading group was comprised of a strong peppering of Americans, which was good but also not so good. Use your imaginations.

So after the reading group we went out to a little bar nearby with my friend Lena and this other guy and proceeded to drink like six bottles of wine and ended the night going to a fondue restaurant where I became a bit irate with the guy's views on his own lack of "privilege" and banged the table a lot. Not like my brother Curt bangs the table, though -- that's scary. This was merely adding some force and noise to my argument. And then we rode home on the high speed train, across the Netherlands through the night... Very fun.

Last night we went back to Amsterdam. Preparing for the trip, I had a number of small but satisfying victories. I figured out a) how to find the train schedule online (which is in English); b) how to find the Utrecht bus schedule online (which is not in English); c) how to get to the squat house we were going to in Amsterdam itself. I also managed to apply for a discount pass, which was no small task and involved using the Pas Foto machine at Utrecht station, and also filling out the application form, which is in -- can you guess? -- Dutch.

Anyhoo. These small victories make me very happy. I can get myself from place to place and sort of communicate! Yes. So the reason we were going to Amsterdam was because of this fund-raiser party for this Samba group. The group is basically twenty or more mostly female drummers/percussionists, and a "conductor" who works with hand signals and a whistle. They drum super loud and it's super inspiring and mesmerizing. The Samba group plays at a lot of local and national demonstrations, and was raising money for new instruments and stuff. There was a vegan dinner, lots of dreadlocks, lots of other stuff... It was very fun.




Here are some of the photos Justin took of the first band and of Lena's friend when she was conducting (she's the one with the whistle), but the place was dark and very, very smoky. Very smoky. The two bands that opened up both played American music, by the way. The first one was kind of a Johnny Cash/Elvis/Lou Reed cover band. They wore plaid shirts and cowboy hats. The Dutch have amazing American accents. Apparently it's because there are a lot of US movies that play here, and they're subtitled rather than being dubbed, so the Dutch youth grow up hearing a lot of American speech.