Bordeaux and Palmiers

When I was younger, I thought that the word “niente” was English. I think I may have heard my mother use it once or twice, but otherwise, it just floated around in the air whenever my father’s family was around. It wasn’t until much later that it even occurred to me that it might not be English, that other people might not understand that “niente” actually just meant “nothing.”

There are a lot of little things like that that enter our consciousness when we’re young and don’t come to the front of our brains until much later, under certain circumstances. The word “stoop,” for example, is one that I thought everyone used. Not “stoop,” to bend over, but the part of your apartment building where you could sit and watch the world go by.

“Stoop” is actually a word that came into New York English from the Dutch, back when New York was still called New Amsterdam, yet another fact I always sort of knew, somewhere in the fuzziness of the back of my brain, but that didn’t come to the forefront until I visited it and realized how similar the two cities are, and yet how different.

Amsterdam is a city where everyone gets lost: even my friend Emese, who has an uncanny ability to manoeuver her way around any city, even one she’s never visited before, cannot seem to find her way around the curving city. I, with no sense of direction, usually manage in cities by going the opposite way of the way I’m sure I’m meant to be going. In Amsterdam, my first instinct is right. Maybe Amsterdam operates under a certain kind of logic that only I understand. Or maybe it just doesn’t make any sense.

At any rate, there’s no doubt about the fact that Amsterdam is quaint and sweet and European, three things that New York is not. And yet, there’s something about the way the buildings look, the stoops, the streets… there’s something about Old Amsterdam that reminds me of a sleepy sort of version of New Amsterdam, and I think it’s lovely.