[DANGER: NON TECHNICAL CONTENT BELOW]
Well next Saturday at least. The project kept getting delayed but I guess it’s finally here. Going to Amsterdam for a week to build out a little co-location for the company. Whenever I brought up the subject over the past 7-8 months or so people almost universally responded with jealousy, wanting to go themselves. I suppose this may be a shock but I really don’t want to go. I’m not fond of long trips especially on airplanes (don’t mind long road trips though, at least I can stop whenever and stretch, or take a scenic route and take pictures).
The more I looked at Amsterdam the less interested I was in going there – or Europe in general. It seems like a very old, quaint, cultured place. Really the polar opposite of what I’m interested in. I traveled a lot around Asia specifically growing up(lived in Asia for nearly six years), and had a quick trip down to Australia. So I feel that I can confidently say that I have traveled a bunch and really don’t feel like traveling more, I’ve seen a lot – a lot of things that I am not interested in and am not (yet) aware of other things that may interest me. I also don’t like big crowded cities either. I swear I’ve spent more time in Seattle than San Fransisco since I moved here almost a year ago (not that I enjoy Seattle – but I have a few specific destinations to go to there, where I really have none in SFO at this point).
People of course obviously bring up how certain things you can do in the Netherlands legally that you can’t do here legally at least (like that stops anybody from doing it here). So it’s really not a big deal to me. I actually looked quite a bit at the red light district, and didn’t see anything that got me excited.
The one thing I did sign up for when I was booking the trip on Orbitz (my friend’s site hipmunk.com directed me to Orbitz), was a canal pizza cruise, which seems up my alley – if only they served the only alcoholic drink I order. I really can’t stand the taste or smell even of things like wine or beer (or coffee or tea while I’m at it – I’m sure there’s something wrong with me in that dept…). I’ve looked around for other things but so much of it seems culture related and my attention span for that stuff lasts about 60 seconds. I also don’t know how much free time I may have there, maybe little. My two trips to Atlanta for the build out there I had a COMBINED maybe 7 hours between the two (total time there about 12 days), and many 15+ hour work days, with more than one dinner at a gas station well past midnight.
I would like to find a place like this over there, since it’s so close to Germany. I asked one guy that is over near Amsterdam (runs a VMware blog), though he didn’t have a whole lot of suggestions. I have a good friend from when I was a kid that lives in Denmark, which I thought was close – not close enough though (~700km away), haven’t seen that guy in maybe 17-18 years.
I emailed a two of my very well traveled friends who know me well, know what I like, and neither of them had any ideas either.
In the remote chance that any of the 9 readers I have knows of a good place(s) to visit or thing(s) to do in Amsterdam let me know.
So I suspect short of that little canal cruise I’ll spend all of my time at the Holiday Inn and at the data center. Save my cash for my next trip – I intend to spend a week in Seattle towards the end of next month. My company has a satellite office there so I plan to work during the day and have fun at night. Much celebration will ensue there. I’m obviously very excited to go back to my favorite places, neither of which I have not found replacements for in the Bay Area.