Home > Mission to Amsterdam > Archives > 2008 > April > 19 > Entry
Monday Market Days
I need to issue a public apology since I have not blogged as much as I originally planned. These past few weeks have been especially busy while I have tried to suck the marrow out of my last bit of time here in Amsterdam. As a result, I will post some catch-up blogs. I hope you will bear with me and enjoy the most memorable stories from the past few weeks.
This past Monday, I was scheduled to attend class in the afternoon and then work the sleeper shift in the evening. I had a grand plan for how I would use the morning, but my plan didn’t work out. I ended up walking around my neighborhood in pursuit of a memory card and rechargeable batteries. As soon as I stepped out of my back door, I saw an increased amount of people on the street and realized, “It’s Monday Market Day!!!”
I had been wanting to go to a Monday Market since I first heard of it. Monday Markets are like the ultimate flea market/Goodwill shopping experience. Since I was raised on a steady diet of antique shopping and backwood’s Texas town touring, I really looked forward to an eclectic feast for the senses.
I wound my way through some booths, touching bolts of fabric from around the world. There were Muslim women with their head shawls and their attentive husbands trying to decide which kind to buy. There were tall Dutch women in packs looking at the piles of resale clothes, trying to find the perfect deal.
I stopped at one tent stuffed full of costumes. My family loves costumes. Our attic is full, and we regularly hunt at Goodwill for new finds; all thanks to a faithful Grandma and mom who valued the imaginations of their young daughters. My eyes lit upon a beautiful violet pair of used ballet slippers. I slipped them onto my feet. They fit!!! I puzzed over whether to buy them for a minute and then realized I would never again find such a comfortable and beautiful pair and they were only five euro!
I walked through the market some more, thinking about how much better this was than Canton Trades Days or any other flea market I had ever been to.
Then I saw it. An old map of Amsterdam. It was a remake for sure, a map made in the seventies to look like Amsterdam in 1641. I brought it to the owner and asked how much it cost. He said five euro and I could hardly believe my ears. I was looking at it, deciding whether to buy it, when a random old man with a very American voice walked up and started talking to me about it. He showed me all the differences between Amsterdam today and Amsterdam 350 years ago. He used to live in Colorado and Washington, so we talked about the States and Europe.
I then meandered on through the market and ended up at a hat booth. I picked one up and asked the vendor if it was a girl’s hat or a boy’s hat. He gave me a funny look and asked, “Exactly how do you define what is for a boy versus what is for a girl?”
This seemed like a strange response to my query until I looked down and took in his denim skirt and brown ribbed leggings ending in huge Goretex boots. Thankfully, he didn’t seem offended. There was a slightly humored look in his eyes. He was a huge Dutch man with a grizzly face and silvery gray ponytail.
The vendor grabbed my map and proceded to give me a history lesson of Amsterdam. This was becoming quite the learning experience. He asked where I was from and then told me how he hitchhiked through the United States and Canada for six months back in the 1980s.
We probably talked for 45 minutes, but he had my map in his lap, so I couldn’t really go anywhere. His story was fascinating—even if a little farfetched. At one point, he said he opened YellowStone National Park with the head park ranger who gave him the keys to open the gate and let him go off and hike in the wilderness, only cautioning him not to pick up antlers. In his story, he said on his backwoods camping excursion, he happened upon some poachers and reported them, thereby saving the park’s population of ‘beer.’ He called deer ‘beer’ which was also rather amusing to me. I didn’t think it was worth correcting since I caught his mistake only halfway through his story, and by then, it was too funny.
I decided I really like talking to people on the street. My Monday Market day started a plan formulating in my head… what if I were to walk everywhere with my map or a similar conversation piece. Think of all the people I would meet.
Comments