Even as I walk, it is a struggle to keep my eyes open. I am going on 40 hours without sleep, the world taking on that hazy, throbbing, sleep-deprived glare, the lights are harsh and do not want to focus. I had such grand plans for my 3.5 hours in Amsterdam, but all I want to do is curl up into a ball and sleep.
As soon as I step into the bathroom, a familiar wave of “underwhelm” floods over me. The stalls are floor-to-ceiling plastic laminate, off-white with speckled blue. The toilets feel plastic and cheap; there are no vertical tanks and the water flows weakly into the bowl upon flushing – seemingly impotent in comparison to our noisy, torrential, tornado-like toilets. There is only a short, narrow mirror offset from the two plain ceramic sinks. Even the shadiest Taco Bells in the US have snazzier toilets than the Amsterdam airport, and I begin to wonder if Americans just love their bathrooms. Our bathrooms have colorful tile and big, well-lit mirrors; shiny metal stalls that create an air of spaciousness with their open tops and bottoms. Did you know that you can buy dual aquarium/toilet-tanks? The CBS featured “Fish’n’Flush” is just one of a whole line of home improvement products that lets you blend your bathroom time with some quality pet-bonding. You can watch little Nemo swim around while you heed nature’s call. The “Fish’n’Flush” page boasts that this is what you need if you are a homeowner that wants to make a statement. On the same page is an ad for helping the world’s poorest of poor. We like our bathrooms, apparently.
Amsterdam is simply not as shiny as I feel it should be. It is like my dingy, graying MacBook – dulled in the splendor of the shiny new metallic models – exuding an aura of aging technology. The strange dissonant drabness lingers as I walk around. I stare in bleary-eyed amusement at a woman in fitted pants and high heels, and a gentleman in a gray blazer – his hair spiked into a faux-hawk, the product crispy and shiny – they walk with authoritative strides, collecting stray trash with their bare hands. I’ve never seen such a well-dressed custodial couple. Everywhere there is cleaning. Motorizing and cleaning. They love their motorized carts here – there are carts of every kind – passenger carts with back-to back benches, driven by well-postured flight attendants in crisp blue skirt-suits with bright white trim - that swerve frenetically around rolling luggage and dawdling travelers. Police on gimmicky segways that whirr weakly through the crowds. There are standing carts and sitting carts; blue carts and green carts; carts with metal boxes on the backs; carts dragging wheelchairs; carts - little orange carts – with brushy floor cleaners that spray and scrub the dull tan-gray tiles. Everywhere there is endless cleaning and motorizing.
With my overweight bags stacked on a little pushcart, I meander through the branching hallways. The light drizzles down through a slatted ceiling that looks like someone’s unwanted venetian blinds. Venetian blinds – how I hated them as a child. They were on all of our windows and there was nothing I wanted more than fluffy, billowing curtains or a satin window shag - something to soften the harsh angularity of the vinyl strips and the sharp corners of the window frames. Here in the airport halls, these ceiling slats dull the florescent light, and it fall flat on the drab décor. The floor is a 70’s era gray-brown, the walls alternately paneled peach wallpaper, frosted windows, or tiny coral-colored tiles.
It is almost 11 months to the day that I was here before, lost and scared, an untried mzungu embarking on my first real academic expedition. I am back now, admiring the cheese and chocolate, the well-dressed herds of flight attendants, shopping clerks, and snappy passerby(s?). I am excited and ready for anything, although desperate for orange juice and a nap. I curl up on the sofa near the unending “waterspa” that whirs and buzzes and opens and closes – a massage bed topped with some sort of super snazzy water-massage device that the lonelyattendant runs again and again and again. People walk without pausing, turning their heads as they pass to stare curiously, but they do not stop. So the spa goes on whirring and buzzing and opening and closing, and all around the little motorized carts – blue and green and orange, stand-up or sit-down style – go puttering by. In the gray, muted lights I curl up on top of my luggage, piled beside me on the bench, and close my eyes to this electric lullaby.
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