Back from Amsterdam

By Ted, De Birhan Media Staffer

23 October  2011

Sorry folks for the disappearance without informing. I just got back from a few days trip in Amsterdam. Was so cool.  Enjoyed myself.

I went there with three motivez at hand:

• ·         Enjoying myself or simply as a tourist
• ·         Making linkages with the likes of mine- friends in similar fields
• ·        Studying ways of kick starting a kind of media organisation that could be perhaps continental – this is not even at an incubation stage.

Therefore, I arrived in Amsterdam on Thursday the 20th October 2011. Finding a bed was one of the first and hardest things to do. I went to one of the hotels in the Amsterdam Central area and I was asked to pay €289, as most Ethiopians would say when they find things expensive, I also said, “Maybe I will come later” and headed to Dam, older part of Amsterdam where youth hostels are found. I bumped to a man who wore a tattered cloth and said when he saw me “Ethiopia or Somalia?” in an inquisitive voice.  “Ethiopia” I replied.  “You” I asked. “I am from Aruba”, he answers. Never heard of that country but this is what I found on Wiki about that country.

Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km (aprox.) east of Guajira Peninsula (Colombia). Together with Bonaire and Curaçao, it forms a group referred to as the ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles, the southern island chain of the Lesser Antilles.As one of the four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands, together with the Netherlands, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten whose citizens share a single nationality: Dutch citizen.

He promised to take me to the cheapest Hostel, shared one, in Dam area if I help him with few cents. I got in one of the shared rooms –four beds in a small room. In the reception area, while checking in my room two people who claimed to be Italians asked the receptionist that he send them to the room that Europeans tourists are in. The receptionist said that he could not do that, as most of the rooms are fully booked. These two lads and I ended up in the same room finally.

I used the next day to tour and play games in the city played games near the Dam Square. Just a distance from the square there, were few protesters domiciling in tents and giving leaflets on the “Occupy New York” and economic crisis.  

I later on went to visit Red Light District literally the legalised Sebategna and Kazainchis of Amsterdam. At dusk, headed to eat my dinner at an Ethiopian Restaurant, Addis Abeba Restaurant, in the heart of Amsterdam. Delicious food and remarkable service really. There continued talking to some Ethiopian men I met. It stuns me what we always rush to know the political side of our counterparts in dialogues. We just wanna label them always. I was not easy for the man to unravel for  most of his efforts, he tried to know whether I was an opposition or supporter of the ruling regime. I returned to this same Restaurant the next day (yesterday); three new Ethiopian men came to eat, who sounded so political and talked about the Arab revolutions and so on. They tried to eavesdrop what I was saying on the other table to. I finally thanked the owner of the Restaurant for the greatest hospitality and service and left.

In this trip, I also met another important person whom I always wanted to meet in person. This important Ethiopian man came with his daughter and spent good part of his time minding his playful daughter and listening to my endless talk. This was the interesting part of my journey, I feel I was isolated a bit and wasted my tiny skills alone. I know many skilful Ethiopians dispersed all over the world, working in proletarian jobs. Had there been one International Association of Ethiopians that works to defend the rights and interests of Ethiopians, many of us would have found safety or would have realised our envisioned ideas walked. To do so, wonders or at least do something effective finding ones types or forming networks/ contacts is essential.

That will come.

Save some money and go visit Amsterdam!!!