I'm Only Homesick When I Don't Want To Go Home

7.8.26

Why Not by Hillary Duff plays in a grungy thrift store in Paris. My 8 year old self holds my hand while I sift through discount racks and fail to find a keepsake. We leave for Amsterdam tonight.

Some obscure sense of obligation compels me to grab a Caudalie skin oil from a pharmacie next door. I don’t even know what it smells like but I’ll thank myself in a couple days when a dutch barista compliments the scent & asks what it is.

We stick to narrow slivers of shade on Rue Mouffetard & I grab a tiny stuffed mouse with a backpack on for my (almost) 3 year old niece. The cashier says “wala!” after wrapping it for me. We eat rotisserie chicken sandwiches in a park where every shaded bench is already occupied.

J bought me a silver ring with a green stone. I’m touched but I immediately start talking about the prospect of degloving my hand with it like Jimmy Fallon did. If you don’t know what that means, don’t look it up.

Everything is honey. The air, the buildings, the color of the wine. We sit at a cafe on a roundabout and a man at a table behind us gets up to vomit in the corner. He sits right back down and finishes his meal as if nothing happened. The heat melts us all into odd, mildly repulsive versions of ourselves.

Later, J stops in the middle of the train station to snap pictures with a giant smile on his face. He’s a big public transit guy. I take pictures of him while he takes pictures of the trains.

The woman in the seat in front of us turned down the blinds 15 minutes into the ride. Still, J was looking out the window. I asked why, when all you could see were shapes. The view was mostly blocked by the shades. He nodded and said “Shapes are good!” I swear, sometimes I see his 8 year old self holding his hand too.

Its lovely, leaving a city & realizing it’s just one clump of buildings surrounded by land. And you can listen to music while you stare out the window. This is something you get to do, something we haven’t always been afforded as humans.

Just yesterday, I was looking at one of the first fairground organs from 19th century. The machine read music off giant sheets of dots & lines. 20 minutes of music sat about 2 feet high off the ground. The tour guide explained how rarely people used to hear music. You couldn’t listen to music in your home unless you owned instruments or had the money to hire people who did.

People had to go to public spaces like the fair to hear music. And you definitely didn’t get to choose what you listened to. Now, I get to share this ride with all of these people & I get to have my headphones in, listening to whatever I want. Equal parts miracle and tragedy.

We arrive in Amsterdam and I feel all my knots unravel. The air is cooler here, less overwhelmed by B.O. The first woman we speak to has big green glasses and offers to help us navigate before we ask. It felt a bit like meeting a cartoon.

The elevator in our hotel is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s just a platform going up and down. You can look up and see the long tunnel between levels. I lose my nerve and send J up with the bags, opt for stairs instead.

At a Japanese/Italian fusion restaurant, we have a Dutch waiter who spent a few years living in Astoria, Queens. He perks up when we tell him we’re here from Brooklyn. He carries on a very enthusiastic, engaged conversation with J and barely makes eye contact with me, even when I interject. I don’t take offense but I do feel like I’m intruding just by being there.

7.9.26

There are no ads on the subways. In fact, there are barely any ads...anywhere. In America, ads float by in the sky while you lay on the beach. I’m delighted to be here & devastated I eventually have to go home. On the train I look up DAFT visa eligibility requirements. J researches the path to becoming certified in his profession here.

Today, we went to Giethoorn, a small town an hour and a half outside Amsterdam with no roads, only canals. The Venice of the Netherlands. It was unreal.

When we got there, we realized we accidentally signed up to have our own private boat...we would be the captains. J got the hang of it after 5 minutes (they were basically bumper cars) but those first few minutes were stressful. He turned to me and said “I never want to do this again.”

It almost feels cruel to get a day long glimpse of a place like this. This is what life could be like if only, if only, if only... I try to relax into it. Hear the birdsong. See the ducks float past. A little girl throws bread at them in the most insanely aggressive manner. I eat pizza piled high with olives and laugh at the way her aggression doesn’t match the atmosphere. Hydrangeas burst on all sides of me.

On the bus ride home, I start listening to “Actress of a Certain Age” by Jeff Hiller. I loved him in Somebody, Somewhere & I’ve seen him perform at Raaatscraps a couple times. Fun listen!

For dinner, we had mediterranean at an old movie theater converted into a three story restaurant. Afterwards, we stopped at a “coffeeshop” (dispensary). The guy working there did not seem keen to answer our questions. We got a pack of space cakes and sat on a bench to split them up into reasonable portions. We end up taking so little, we feel nothing at all. I have a friend who came here during study abroad in college & had the worst high of her life because she and all her friends ate entire space cakes & panicked. It ruined weed for her for years.

7.10.26

So much of traveling is just realizing that you want everyone you love to see this, taste this, hear this, touch this. It’s beautiful and incomplete because it can’t only be us. Everyone we left at home, I want them here. I’m greedy and homesick but only because I don’t want to go home.

Today we had Layers bakery, walked through a market full of Dutch books, a market full of flower bulbs (apparently everything looks a little bit like garlic), and made our way over to the Rijkmuseum.

My favorite part was Ed Van Der Elsken’s photography. Street photography is fascinating to me, especially as Meta glasses are being pushed on us & questions of privacy and surveillance circle overhead. Is it ethical to capture a face that doesn’t ask to be captured?

They interviewed the woman in one of the main photos hanging outside the museum. In the picture, she’s riding her bike and sticking her tongue out of the photographer, annoyed at him for pointing the camera at her. She looks so gorgeous in the photo & she seems proud of herself in the interview. As she should be.

7.11.26

Cinnamon rolls are one of my all-time favorite pastries & this seems to be the city of the cinnamon roll. Growing up, we had cinnamon rolls every Sunday morning & special ones on Christmas. They smell like home. We grabbed biscoff & churro cinnamon rolls from Canelas and moaned the whole time we ate them.

The shopping scene is incredible here. I got a yellow purse, a silver belt, a shirt to share with J (I love dating a man who leans into a little color in his closet), a few postcards for friends and family, a going-out shirt and white jeans. DAMN!

We went across town to the resistance museum. It gave me some hope, seeing the very personal and varied ways people resisted the Nazis. At the end, they had a little spot for visitors to leave messages. One note said “the US is failing an open book test right now,” and many others echoed a similar sentiment.

While these are valid statements, I was surprised that was the takeaway for people who had just walked through the museum. We had just spent two hours walking through a museum that showed how covert resistance often is. For the safety of those involved, it has to be. The revolution will not be televised. Resistance is still happening today and we have to stop telling ourselves it’s not. That only gives you permission not to participate.

7.12.26

Sat next to a patch of daisies in Vondelpark while a blonde toddlers laughter floated across from the next tree over. Two parents filmed her on a vlogging camera. It’s odd, not knowing whether it’s a home video or parents exploiting their child on social media.

I felt a little dizzy and nauseous. Laid down and remembered a yoga instructor with a firm but calm presence guiding us through class the day before our flight. She said: “focus on what feels good in your body and lean into it.” I dutifully closed my eyes and focused on the breeze against my skin, the sun warming my temples, the smell of grass & the sound of footsteps behind me. A group sat to our left and a woman said “ohhh, this grass is SO good, I’m so happy.” The nausea got quieter.

Watched the trees dance for a while. The leaves at the top of the branch are brighter, more directly exposed to the sun. We sat joking about a hierarchy amongst the leaves. Do the leaves at the top feel superior or exposed? I know it’s a silly thing to project human tendencies onto them.

In one area of the park, they let wildflowers grow without being tamed or trampled on. Big, beautiful birds perch in a nest up high. Parents bike with their kids licking ice cream cones in a bucket attached to the bike. I learn they’re cargo bikes and I imagine having one.

We stumbled upon the tail end of an informal concert where a Dutch man wore a military style hard hat and thrashed around on the floor and a woman wearing a flowy white dress practically punched the keyboard. Wacky, experimental stuff that was really working for a park employee who wiggled at the front of the crowd. Once the song ended, the lead singer got up off the floor and politely said “thank you.” His change in demeanor, from thrashing to niceties, made me giggle.

At a cafe, we laughed until we cried over a joke that is absolutely not going to be funny to retell. You had to be there. I’m just writing this because I want to remember: it is still possible to laugh until you cry. And it should always be noted when it happens.

We had a fancy dinner where J read through the lyrics to Sneakernight by Vanessa Hudgens and we poked a candle on the table into a misshapen blob. One more stroll in the park before bed. A man peed under a tree & continued to play guitar right after. We repeat the signage we snapped a picture of earlier: wildplassen is verboden.

I’m sad tomorrow is our last full day here.

7.13.26

Today was entirely devoted to dilly dallying. Much like the rest of this trip has been. We headed across town to a street full of shopping and I found yellow parachute-esque pants with colorful details around the pockets and cuffs. Got a pair of glasses in a thrift shop (I lost them literally immediately upon my return to NYC. RIP).

Had Chun sandwiches. Delicious. I found myself thinking of my mom & the scrambled egg sandwiches she used to make.

Went back to Vondelpark to walk around and read. One of my favorite memories of the trip was just laying with my head on J’s stomach, reading by a gorgeous pond while a dog ran after birds in the water.

When J proposed dinner, I didn’t want to leave & said I wasn’t hungry yet. He suggested we go ahead and find something anyway because I have a tendency to ignore hunger cues until they are actively making me angry. He was right. By the time we got to dinner, I was hungry enough to be in a bad mood.

Went back to Buurtcafe Des Tros. The host said “weren’t you guys here two days ago?” & we blushed a little because the host was hot and he remembered us. I need to take a second to acknowledge that everyone in this city is hot. J and I actually felt like we were being kind of perverted. So many times, we’d leave a conversation with someone and turn to each other like “holy shit. That person was so hot.” How many times can I say hot in one paragraph?

The bartender had lived on the Upper East Side as a kid. He said “The people there are very weird.” Hell yeah. An American mother and daughter sat next to us and struck up a conversation because the daughter was about the move from D.C to NYC.

We spent this entire day dreaming about moving here. Getting caught up in logistics of what it would look like, which visa we’d be on, whether we could have kids here, etc, etc. It’s hard to just let a vacation be a vacation. It’s easy to construct an entire escapist dream around it. Especially when it seems my chronic headaches have gone away completely.

7.14.26

Leaving tonight and I wake up sad about it. Try to will myself to enjoy the final moments. We go to a bakery with stainless steel countertops & pops of blue & more cinnamon buns to try. We take the tram to the library which looks like a fancy office building with a big play area for kids and cozy seating.

J asks if I’m okay because I’m being quiet. I am okay. The anticipatory grief over leaving this place is just blanketing everything.

It’s hot by the time we make our way to lunch and I’m snappy in line for sushi. At the airport, I meet a wild geese listener right before she boards her plane. She’s an American studying at Cambridge. She signs off by saying “I hope you can do some poetry watching on the plane,” which was sweet and surreal to hear.

I was not in the best headspace when we ran into her. I had literally just been bitching about how long of a walk we had from security to our gate, moaning because my backpack was heavy and I felt grimy with sweat.

When we walked away, I was worried I hadn’t given her the experience she might have been hoping for. I wasn’t rude by any means but I definitely wasn’t my most sparkly self. Who is right before an international flight??

This is something I need to let go of. There will be times when I meet people who have a parasocial relationship with me and I might not live up to whatever version of me they’ve created in their head. That has to be okay.

On the plane, the man in my row argues with me when I say I have the window seat. I show him my ticket, point at the sign. He insists he has the window seat and I acquiesce. A woman in the row across from us says “you do have the window seat. Don’t let him gaslight you.” He’s a lucky guy because I prefer the aisle anyway. I didn’t back down just to please him. He turned to me a few minutes later and apologized, which softened my opinion of him until he took off his shoes.