In Amsterdam I stayed with Alison. A friend of friend of my mother’s. I remember meeting her once when I was nine or something, but don’t think I have met her since. But when I told my mother’s friend (Morena – I grew up playing with her daughter and she still lives in the same neighborhood as me, she’s almost like an extra mother for me, beside my three aunts) that I was going to Amsterdam, she asked if I wanted her to contact Alison. And I thought, why not. It wouldn’t hurt.
So, thanks to that kind of spur of the moment contact interchange, I got on tram 17 from the Amsterdam train station and went south to Oude-West.
And, turns out, Alison is an amazing host. She didn’t only provide me with a bed, but also with food, maps, directions and a movie night in her seriously amazing home cinema, somehow geniously set up in the tiny but very neat apartment of hers. We saw Warm Bodies, a romantic comedy/zombie movie. Super cute. SUPER cute. The footage, the uplifting story, the incredible soundtrack.
Alison introduced me to both Indonesian and Morocco food, after I asked her about the tyical Dutch food and she said that it was nothing special – but there are many immigrants in the Netherlands from Indonesia and Morocco.
I realize this small text contains a lot of superlatives, indeed, that the things I’ve written about Amsterdam in general are almost too positive. And at least some of it is probably due to the very warm and generous welcoming I had from Alison (and her son Bo – don’t forget Bo, who managed to be really nice too, despite being a teenage boy and all that that entails).
It can do so much to a visit to a new place, the kind of people that you meet. And for some reason, I’ve met so many good and interesting and just awesome people when I’ve traveled during the last couple of years. It’s not as if I don’t meet any cool people when I’m back home, but it just happens so rarely. It’s probably because I’m much more open to the new when I’m traveling. Maybe I should try to get in to the traveling state of mind in Stockholm too. Because, despite all the good meeting people while traveling brings, having to say goodbye to all these incredible persons that I meet on the road is frustrating and painful. It forces me to start planning new trips as soon as I get back home again.
The front of the 19th century house in Oude-West, where Alison lives.
Katja Malmborg 