Day 1: 5 am in Amsterdam

And this is how I know ...

The great Michelle Shocked song from her first [boosted] record ... well, the church bells toll at 5:30 am here in Amsterdam. Not 5 ... sorry, Michelle.

I was expecting it to be colder, but it's warm enough. Overcast. So many bicycles, all of them big, sturdy, plain and slightly rusty. Thousands and thousands of bikes. Mothers on bikes, with two children in wooden baskets. No baby seats, just wooden seats. No one wears helmets. Young pretty girls who, if they lived in America would never walk or bike after the age of 15, bike around without any consciousness of how unusual this would be half a world away.

Sure, there are a lot of cars, but there are a lot more bikes. And lots of mass transit.

It's also nice not being the palest person in the room for a change. Being partly Dutch [my mom was a DeWaal], I feel something of a connection to these people. They seem serious. I get that.

Someone said that the Dutch were a tall people. I don't find that to be unusually true. I'm 5' 11" and seem to be no more or less tall than the average here.

Lots and lots of graffiti here, everything is tagged or defaced. That surprised me. I felt like I was in the other Holland, Brooklyn, for a while.

And the canals, and the marshy ground. Everything is underwater. How do you keep buildings from rotting? It seems an impossible task. I would expect the cars to be all rusty, but generally they are not.

Very few dogs here. It's like San Francisco, there is no place here for dogs or babies.

And the red light district and the coffee shops? More on that later.