THE LOWLANDS

Amsterdam marathon runners under the bridge

And low lands they really are. We watched the Amsterdam marathon for a bit on Sunday at the top of a "hill" after the bridge, one that even I, after running 36k, could have summitted in less than a minute. No Heartbreak Hill for sure. Participants were almost solely men, and had first names on their bibs which allowed for sprightly personalized encouragement. Seeing the front runners, who have dedicated so much of themselves to this, ankles the width of a child's wrist, yet so strong, graceful and sure, never fail to bring tears to my eyes. 

Still can't sort this out

The marathon was one of many things seen over four days with my favorite Dutch tour guide, who is currently living safely away from Centraal, magnet to bridal parties, drug seekers and tulip devotees. She's closer to Oosterpark, which is quite beautiful in the fall with different color leaves on a variety of trees and graceful lines otherwise. There's a red tennis court that is fenced two feet back from the baseline, another indication of the shortage of space in the Netherlands, I suppose. We watched players with big forehands who had seemed to have adapted fine.  As well, it's a community shaped by immigrants that has a cozy, village feeling with many produce shops, boulangeries and general places such as shoe repair, curtain stores and stationery stores that we used to have in the US.

Another little park nearby

Having become something of the snowbird I used to roll my eyes about, I'd not been looking forward to the suffocating embrace of the North Sea, but with the exception of half an hour on the last day, the air was dry and the sun was often out, though it was significantly cooler than my protected nest in Provence. Both Nat and I happen to be living temporarily with clothes in storage, which in both of our cases, includes coats. So on the first day, I found myself regularly pulled in to racks of €10 plastic sweaters until finally we scratched the itch at the nicest vintage store I've ever been to, Penny Lane, where we both scored quilted coats of the perfect weight. ​

New coats at Nat's very nice temporary digs

While customary morning pages didn't happen, I chose to take the lack of caffeine in Nat's house as an opportunity to sit and think and watch at some of the different coffee places nearby. They ranged from stark and designery to hippie with wood and hanging wires. All had delicious looking pastryish things with which these lanky Dutch seem to not be enemies. I still don't understand their whole eating sitch, which gravitates towards fried, meat, bread and cheese. So to avoid that, Nat took us on a global tour, with stops at restaurants that represented many of the residents in these lovely immigrant communities;  Eritrean, Lebanese, Yemeni, Turkish, Surinamese, Xian Chinese. Swedish and oh, gosh, I can't remember what else. But not Dutch.

Ariel view of designy coffee place overlooking the Amstel

Another coffee place nearby, translated as The Icebreaker, founded in 1702, shortly before some of the patrons

Nat, water frozen in time and a cardamom bun from the Swedish place where all the Americans go

Hand-pulled noodles which weren't all bad

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Because I know we walked 45 miles, we must have done other things besides eat, but am not sure what they were. And yes, we did eventually approach Nine Bridges and Albert Cuyp market, but early or late when it was easy to see the charm that made them the overrun tourist hubs they've become. 

There's a stall at Albert Cuyp that I have insisted on visiting every time since our first visit in 2017. They sell gozleme, something I had been transfixed by when staying on a beach in Samsara, Turkey many years ago. Women in many flowered layers and scarves (while we waited in our bathing suits) adeptly rolled out dough with something that looked like a shortened broomstick, then put this very thin layer of dough on a stone placed in hot ashes on the sand. They'd scatter parsley and feta, then let it cook, folding it in a way similar to a crêpe. So the first time I had one at Albert Cuyp, where they are made with spinach rather than parsley, it was both delicious and reminiscent. We were served by a teenage woman whom, every time we've been back, rain or shine, any day of the week, continues to be there. She has become more than a gozleme vendor, rather a person who was young when we first encountered her and has grown up with her mother, the roller and sprinkler, and grandmother, the dough ball maker, in the stall. There is often a line for their fine product, keeping the young woman focused on what she needs to do, so we usually get little from her but politeness. This time, perhaps because it was 11 in the morning and we were the only customers, we got a smile. I think of her often.

Beautiful heavy linen at the Noordermarkt

The photo

​These few days together made me look starkly at the arc of life. For years it was I who planned trips, packed too many things in, oh so gently nudging people who'd rather "chill" to carpe the diem in a new place. At first there were small changes; me not being the first to figure out where on the map we were going, which coins to use, or how to navigate a foreign subway system. As the young got older and the old got even older, we're now at the stage of me being egged along to do one more thing while I'm begging for a café stop. I know I could fight it for a while, but there's an inevitability that's hard to ignored. I have known enough people who posses an exceeding doggedness, modeling a commitment to sucking it up, for which I'm grateful. But there's an unpleasantness of character that can come with too much pushing oneself, an anger or bitterness. So, as I continue to age, one of my many jobs will be to figure out when to push through and when to beg for mercy and a cappuccino.. 

Sunrise on the construction site

Back in Aix, I'm living across from a construction site, which has increased by two storeys since I arrived four weeks ago, so that I can no longer see the mountains in the photograph above. There are double paned windows so it's not too noisy and I confess to finding it interesting to watch them. The crane is used a lot and there aren't that many of them, working really hard all day long. The only time I've seen them "idle", is when they open up their storage container, bring out a folding long table, light up a barbecue, cook a lunch and then all sit down together. Civilized enough that the crane operator climbs down, then goes back up after, no small ascent.

The house hunt goes on, no luck yet. The challenge is that I have a clear image in my mind of what I want and with the exception of the apartment below, nothing comes close to it. While the agency representing this dream apartment doesn't take applications from foreigners, I sent a begging letter yesterday, and am hoping it might yield some results. In the meantime, I'm lucky enough to rattle around in this temporary airy and uninteresting three bedroom, enjoying my walks up and down the pretty lane that smells sometimes like decaying plane tree leaves that remind me of the smell of human bodies, and sometimes if I'm lucky, burnt eucalyptus.

I would so love to live here. Please put good thoughts out there for me