Rarely do the systems in Amsterdam leave you hanging.
I do recall being on my way to the airport to pick up some Molly’s only to discover no trains running because of an accident down the line. No deaths, but unprecedented stoppage at the city’s hub.
As I wondered what to do I heard my name and looked to see a friend—let me correct that to say an acquaintance—in a similar predicament but already well along in the lengthening line for taxis. I shared her cab, Amsterdam the village rescuing me from one of the scant times it failed me as a city.
I thought of that today after a young woman reneged on our appointment at the last minute. No problem, no problem at all. I’ll just mull over which cafe near her office I can amble to for middag coffee and work and head there.
Ah, I am near Kriterion, a cafe and movie house run by students. There I shall go. Except—what’s this?—Something is getting filmed in the cafe itself. No one is being served. Shame.
Alright, I will wander down to Cafe Koosje (sister cafe of Cafe Stevens, one of my stalwarts and where a Molly School often meets). But, what? Closed due to a power outage of some kind? Hmmm. Now I am getting a cheese shop sketch feeling and wonder if I shall ever be able to re-commence my Walpoling activities.
But with that train experience in mind, I will walk past the zoo and Henri Polaklaan (one of Amsterdam’s singular streets), onto the Entrepotdok, and into the Kadijksplein so as to enter Cafe Orloff. On a sunny day like this tourists and nonwriters will sit outside. It should be quiet inside.
And that is how I find it, an older man, alone, reading the newspaper at the long center table, a younger man (another laptop addict) clicking away at one of the two tops that guard Orloff’s circumference.
The quiet lasts just long enough for me to order coffee and settle into work.
Because now a half dozen women come in. They are all, roughly speaking, my age. They are all, as their discussion makes clear, ex-pats (Americans, Canadians, an Aussie) who have been here for between a decade and a few months. They are a social/support/welcome group of one kind or another.
They talk about money and houses and children and clothing. They have everything I do not. They bubble with acquisition and comfort and pretend friendship. They are the folks who make me fear returning to America or living anyplace I understand the language. Not a single thing they say will make it to posterity.
This is not to say anything I say will, but for the moment, with no friendly cab to jump into, I’ve only writing this post to save me.