live from the Damrak

I remember the early days of my relationship with Amsterdam. I remember sketchy impressions drawn from countless books, articles, and conversations about the city. I remember packing bags and anxiously awaiting a two-week exploratory trip across the Atlantic to personally discover Amsterdam and inquire if it might be a place God was leading us to start a new church, a new home. And to this day, I remember reading the first e-mail -- written from "an internet cafe on the Damrak" -- by the first member of our team to land on that distant shore, in preparation for the larger group's arrival.

It was so exotic, so adventurous, so tremulous to imagine my friend Steve sitting in an "internet cafe" (who'd ever heard of such a thing?!?) surrounded by strangely-accented Dutchmen, sending out his instantaneous report from the heart of urban Amsterdam -- presumably waving off the smoky marijuana haze and shielding his eyes from the beckoning prostitutes as he typed his electronic epistle to the "reinforcements" who would be arriving in just a few short days. I remember trembling from the excitement and fear of the new Old World.

Oddly enough, I compose this post from an internet cafe on the Damrak, as I count down the minutes before catching a train from Centraal Station on a routine trip to a regular meeting in a different part of the city. And I realize how mundane this experience actually is -- how annoying, in fact, because it simply signifies that my computer is still in the shop and I must seek alternative means to keep up periodic access to e-mail, blogging, and other means of connection to 21st Century society.

Ah, the ironic twists of perception, live from an internet cafe on the Damrak...