Wow Place #278: Amsterdam, Netherlands
There’s a curious phenomenon that occurs when you’re on a long trip. I’m talking a multiple-month, 15-country journey like I did in Asia, back in 1987-88. As you bop around from sight to sight and country to country, you tend to bump into the same people, again and again. Steve and Ansha, the Dutch couple I met in Pangandaran, Indonesia two months ago – “What a coincidence to run into you here on Railay Beach, Thailand!” Max and James, the two American buddies I shared a beer with along the Thai/Lao border in January – “Fancy running into you guys again, in April, on the Annapurna Circuit trek in western Nepal!”
On a long trip, the world is an amusement park, with nearly everyone riding the same popular rides. At some point, you’re bound to cross and re-cross paths with your fellow travelers. And when you do, those unexpected reconnections are often delightful. Or weird, if you didn’t like that person before and certainly don’t like them now. (“Uh no, Wilhelm, I’m still not looking for a travel partner.”) Or downright strange, like the time I met my mother in Amsterdam – or at least, my mother’s doppelganger.
Here’s how it plays out. After 10 months of non-stop travel, I’m starting to run low on money. And what do you do when you’re 25 years old with an increasingly-empty pocketbook? You call your parents, that’s what!
“Uh, hi Mom and Dad. I don’t suppose you could send me some money? I’ll pay you back.”
“[Sigh] Where should we send it, Dave?
“Not here in Istanbul, certainly. How about Amsterdam?”
“Sure. Do you have enough money to get there?”
“Oh, I’ll get there.”
With my last two $20 bills, I buy a one-way bus ticket from Turkey to Holland: 52 hours on a broken-down jalopy that makes a Greyhound bus look a 6-figureTesla. Along the way, we stop three times to fix flat tires…make multiple detours so the driver can “drop off packages…” You get the idea. A Midnight Express-like Turkish prison stay feels like it’s one wrong turn away.
Eventually, after MANY games of Hearts with my fellow travelers and no-doubt numerous customs infractions by the bus company, we finally arrive in Amsterdam – one of the most-charming places in Europe. What a lovely, lovely city – with its storybook, gingerbread architecture, its endless bridges and canals, and its ever-present cyclists who never, EVER slow down! I wind up staying with a friend who needs a house sitter for a week – perfect! Free digs! Even if the only music in the house is Paul Simons’ Graceland, my ever-present, Amsterdam sound track. (I’m walking through Holland with diamonds on the soles of my shoes!)
After cleaning up a bit, I eventually head out to an Indonesian restaurant to collect my parents’ money from a most-unlikely courier – my Mom!
Only it’s not my mom – it’s my Aunt Ruth, who is a dead ringer for my mom…who lives in Amsterdam with her college professor husband…who has received the money wired from my parents…and who I haven’t met since I was 7 years old.
To get the sheer weirdness of this, you have to understand the timing. For two years, I’d been living in Japan, teaching English. Then I went traveling around Asia for 10 months. In other words, I hadn’t seen my mother, Shirley, for almost three years. And there she is in the flesh. Same eyes, same face, same smile. But softer somehow, with redder hair. This is the strangest travel encounter yet!
“Hello David, nice to meet you again.”
“Gulp, uh yeah, nice to meet you too Mo…I mean Aunt Ruth.”
All through the meal, I can’t help thinking, “It’s Mom and yet, it’s not her. Did the Turkish bus driver slip something into my bottled water?”
Half way through dessert, Aunt Ruth finally exclaims, “If you don’t stop staring at me, I’m not giving you your money.”
It’s like I always say, it’s not the sights you remember from travel, it’s the people. When I look back on my time in Amsterdam, it’s not images of tulips or Rembrandts or even Paul Simon that come to mind. What remember most is the day I met the mother who wasn’t my mother. To misquote Simon, “I know what I know” — and I sure do know what I don’t know.
(I often wonder if coincidences are really coincidences, or if there’s a higher power at work. In a world of 7 or 8 billion people, what are the chances I’ll meet a certain person in a certain place at a certain time? Was it fated we would meet? Did I somehow manifest it? Or was it just luck of the draw? In the long run, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It’s what you do with the encounter that counts. What does this person have to teach me? What do I have to teach this person? How can this random meet up propel forward the mental and spiritual development of both of us? Is it coincidence or fate that you’re reading this post today? What insights might open up for you today by the end of this sentence?)