Thanksgiving day in America is just another Thursday in Holland. So instead of feasting on turkey, we’re going to take a day trip to Amsterdam. Early in the morning, the trains are crowded with commuters, so we spent a little time getting a better look at Haarlem before heading to the station.

On our way to the station we passed a place called the Sauna Center, where we made appointments to get massages at 9:00 tonight.

Just before we got to the station we passed a two-level parking garage. Where one would normally expect to see a few hundred cars parked, there were racks with thousands of bicycles. We are impressed with their transportation priorities.

Once we were on the train we had about fifteen minutes to study our map of Amsterdam to plan out the best use of our limited time in the city. The map shows a large pedestrian zone that starts close to the station, so we set out for it as soon as we got there.

What we found was essentially an outdoor shopping mall. It’s crowded and commercialized, and we don’t like it. There’s the usual mix of bland and generic chain stores with a sprinkling of specialty shops. English is widely and fluently spoken, and credit cards are cheerfully accepted.

Our day of dodging mobs of shoppers in Haarlem made us believe that that city is a popular shopping destination. Now we feel that this entire country is built around shopping.

After about a mile of walking we needed a break from the hysterical and hyped-up shopping frenzy, so we slipped off onto a side street and collected ourselves at a coffeehouse called the Soft Temple.

Unfortunately, today turned out to be a rainy day. We’re told that rainy days are common in Amsterdam, and this puts a damper on walking around the city, and on taking many pictures with the digital camera.

We spent a lot of time indoors at a place called Cannabis College. This is a non-profit institution that compliments the Hemp Museum, a more commercial place up the street.

The first display we saw at Cannabis College was the casualties of the war on drugs. They were ordinary and respectable people who’s lives (and the lives of their families) were destroyed by draconian sentences for possessing or growing small amounts of cannabis for personal use.

The rest of the ground floor promotes the various economic benefits of recreational, medicinal, and industrial hemp. There are books on growing cannabis, cooking with cannabis, and the politics of cannabis. Industrial hemp produces extremely versatile oil, pulp, and fiber; and there are hundreds (thousands?) of products on display that were made using these components.

None of the products displayed at Cannabis College are for sale, but they can direct you to a place where they are. For a small donation one can tour a room on the lower level where about a half dozen high-quality medicinal/recreational cannabis plants are grown using modern indoor techniques.

One of Amsterdam’s most distinctive characteristics is its canals, which form concentric semi-circles radiating out from the Centraal (yes, it’s spelled with two a’s) train station. Since the streets mostly follow the canals, they also conform to this layout.

Most of what we saw of Amsterdam is very bicycle and pedestrian friendly. They also have an extensive system of buses and trams as well as a high-speed underground. As a result, most people are content with their bicycles. The small number who drive cars here are so aggressive that it’s amazing more people don’t get run over.

Another new reality are motorized scooters, mopeds and micro-motorcycles that seem to be quite popular in many European cities. In our country, they are not normally tolerated on sidewalks and in pedestrian zones. But here, they seem to be everywhere. They are noisy and obnoxious, and people drive them too fast and dangerously for us to feel comfortable sharing walkways with them.

We got back to Haarlem early enough to eat some Thai food and lounge in our room for a while before heading back to the Sauna Center for our massages.

It took us too long to learn that in Scandinavia and northern Europe, most cities of any size have at least one bath house. This one has a very hot sauna, a steam room, a hot whirlpool bath and showers. All of the facilities are coed, towels are provided, and all clothing is to be left in a locker while the attendant holds your key.

Hanging out naked in a public bath house may be foreign to us Americans, but our hang-ups toward nudity are just as foreign to Europeans.